I've had the same thoughts. I often hear a voice in the back of my head saying, "Go to warp factor four Mister (Sulu/Paris)" before I press Shift-F4.

I and many others would love a multiplayer version of Pioneer. But as soon as you think about how the game as a whole will play you need to start changing stuff. Lets say you got rid of time accel and replaced it with some other means of fast travel. What happens if you want to chase someone to fight them? You'll struggle to manually track them with the newtonian physics, so you'll need to create a tracking/following auotpilot function. Unless you want the "mass-locked" Elite style torus drive. And the time factor to land on planets would be excrutiating. Pioneer just isn't playable in permanent real time.

It almost seems like a better idea to make Oolite look like Pioneer graphically and turn that into a multiplayer.

<shudders at the thought>

I think chasing someone with Newtonian physics would be great. Of course people could warp away quickly, but hey, that's life in the future. Also, under the model I have suggested it would take the same amount of time to land on planets as it currently does.

We need a tracking/following autopilot function anyway. Frontier had one and Pioneer will too, if only to allow pirates to intercept the player. I would think that a warp drive that simply magnifies the Newtonian physics would result in similar combat, but over much larger distances. Maybe a peer-to-peer continuous real-time galaxy where you wouldn't really know if the other ships are AIs or not. When you're not playing you could park your ship in hyperspace or a hanger that's next to the docking area, or perhaps it would run as an AI until you got back to it. It's fun to think about and if someone with the proper skills made a version like that I'd certainly like to try it out.

Good post and well thought out reasoning yes that would solve the game play dynamics of changing Pioneer from single player to multi player.

The main technical problems of MMOs however is the management of server time. Communicating position in a single player is easy enough as all coms are short distance (within the computer) get more people over big distances and all players effectively have to communicate position to each other through a server rapidly. It will come but at the moment its not easy. I play supreme commander a bit and while the interface ain't completely twitch I frequently get lag all over the place. That's got a maximum number of players per game of 8. Eve suffers from lag sometimes although only when there are usually hundreds of players in a room they've got it pretty good but then it's not twitch. Vendetta seems to work well and is proper twitch.

MMO really has to be something designed in from the ground up.

I've got an idea, and a rough long term plan, to make a kind of multiplayer possible for Pioneer... or rather my idea might also help with multiplayer.

Coop play! The time compression and scale involved really do make the issue of multiplayer "tricky"... if everybody is in different ships!

Either add the option, or keep it as a mod, to have some of the larger ships actually be made of several different "ships flying in close formation". If playing alone you could hop in and out of the various individual ships to adjust settings as you need them (via in game remote interface, no need to don a virtual spacesuit and actually jump from pod to pod!). When reaction times matter (manual landings, combat, etc) you could get some buddies (or bots) to crew the different stations, or do it yourself if you truly are "Elite" <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

It would be a slower paced game, more like the bridge of a starship than the cockpit of a starfighter... but it would open up so many more gameplay options that more would potentially be happening at any given moment.

@NeuralKernel

There was a thread where I suggested similar methods of making the game multiplayer <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

In fact:

http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/topic/2582-great-project-some-newb-questions/#entry26315

and

http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/topic/2582-great-project-some-newb-questions/#entry26433

Nice! I do still think that the time issues need to be solved for multiple ships far away from each other, though. I was thinking that the existing limiter on time (when near a planet) could be incorporated for multiplayer. Everyone would have their own time setting but the globally used one would be the lowest setting. So if any one player pauses everyone pauses, if everyone is set to normal everyone is normal, if one person switches to max time it stays normal until everyone else sets their time to above normal. If everyone is at max and someone pauses then everyone pauses...

I figure even for a single ship with multiple players you would want something similar, maybe give every ship's captain or helmsman controll over the "local" time rate.

It would basically boil down to a consensus democracy and, with in or out of game communication, would be up to the job of a single solar system at least.

I think the problem is that changing the way the time acceleration works & the ship motion would totally screw with the game as it is.

So would other humans to begin with... it is a Lonely game of space exploration, after all <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Well, i would like to add here some thoughts and a proposal of mine on this subject (if i can of course).

First, I would like to say that i don't consider myself an expert on this subject - there exist a lot of people here, that have spent a lot of time, put huge effort and have much more knowledge than me.

But as an enthusiast and lover of space games/simulation of this kind i will dare to say some words.

Long time ago i discovered FFE in internet, downloaded it and started playing and got very excited. Can't recall now how many nights gone asleep or how many excels and access files i made keeping star systems, commodity amounts, routes, starports... After some time of playing i always wished it was multiplayer, or had some between players interaction. But this was not possible..

Then it came EVE-online, and i really love it in the beginning but after more than 7 years of playing, it became to me as a nest of griefers with no place / space for non-consentual pvp, harassment  and i quited.

Then this year i discovered Pioneer and i liked it from the beginning. Being a software developer myself, although in very different field (relational databases), i joined the developers to get to know the game better and to offer my little help on something i could do for it, and currently i harass them with questions:). I am after the idea of Pioneer getting multiplayer aspects too, but beyond the science behind that can be overcomed with some compromisations with original gameplay, there exist some technical aspects that should be taken into consideration. For example, to be multiplayer you need a central database server holding players' data and all things that should be shareable and facilitate their common/sharing activity and support from the client part. Although appropriate licenses and zero cost software exist for that (for example Postgresql which is my favorite can fit into this role very well) developing, maintaining, operating and supporting a single (database) game server is an issue itself, because it's different problem/project size scale from developing, distributing etc a standalone game. But there is always hope and dreamers..

In my very humble opinion, a movement in this direction can be done, but in very careful, small step and as an alternative to standalone gameplay and i will explain more from a technical point of view. A player can continue to play the game standalone as it is now and can development can continue same way and direction, but player can have another option if he would like. To play with a Server account. When he selects this mode, he logins to the server, authenticates, get his state and plays the game as usual. But he cannot save locally to file. He saves only to the server, which keeps all his data/state. And not with a save function as it is now, but as usual in online games (for example deliver/fulfilling a mission, buying/selling stuff etc commits to the server etc) to avoid cheating. In the beginning, only transferring credits between players can be enabled in server version, but after that step more and more functionality that exists and developed in standalone  can be added to the server version, to increase common view, adapted from the stadalone version. Even common commodity market as it looks now but with the ability to interact with many players, buying/sellling ship etc. I know it does not sounds like a thrill, when players "can't join sessions" but it is a start. Remote mining, possibly yes, an MB45 deployed machine can be great but this might need support for the concept of player hangar in the end, not just a ship hangar and it would be a server job issue. There will be server common time definately, but you can keep the stardreamer also at least in the beginning. A way maybe found to have some Lua functionality implemented on the server too. But these are too specific for this post to elaborate.

Personally, i am willing to go and put time and effort to make an endeavour to this direction in a very experimental state (at the moment i have already a database schema for some basic game entities), but i will need ethical support from main senior people and above all communication and collaboration, because this cannot be done in a just a simple mod without any support from the main edition. And of course acceptance of this endeavour as multiplayer aspects are actually out of game/project design scope as defined in  http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Design_Scope (see the fourth bullet in paragraph Guidelines for Design).

Best Regards to all!

There are already a number of challenges ahead for the devs with the rather basic idea of allowing clients to communicate with each other for things like leaderboards and such on the station bulletin boards.  As I understand there is client code already done to some extent, but someone needs to develop server side code, and someone would need to provide a server.

In any event, if it was implemented, and the server were to die, it would not really affect gameplay.

What is suggested about a full multiplayer version with a server is going to require someone to set up a central server (or perhaps a server client could be made) and then for it (or them) to be always available.

The other option is to make it work P2P.  This requires more challenges in code, seeking other players, etc, still needs a method for this.  Also requires people to be able to open firewall/router ports, make port forwarding possibly, so they can communicate directly with others.  Not good if you want people to be able to "just play".

I also suspect it would be a massive amount of work implementing true multiplayer capabilities into the game.

From what I have heard/read, the lead devs are not interested in working on such multiplayer functionality for the game.  However, its open source... if someone wants to take the code and make a multiplayer version of the game, they are welcome.  Otherwise, it may be best to wait for Star Citizen or Elite 4.  Both are going to be multiplayer.

Why all this talk about a central server? The project is built with Git, famous for decentralization...

I'm no expert, and I may be just spouting gibberish... but why not stick to the idea? Would there be a way to leverage some of the work from the experimental Diaspora Social Network (or something similarly decentralized) for some of the features discussed here?

On a side note... how about some Nethack style "bones files"? Whenever you crash or are otherwise killed.. the game saves where it happens and (sometimes..) makes a "City" or "Station" there to represent a distress beacon. When you die... if you've agreed to it... the game would upload the "bone file" to whatever infrastructure (central server, p2p list, mail list...) and maybe grab a few random ones to scatter through the galaxy...

@NeuralKernel,

Planning on posting a longer reply tonight after work but just to respond to this part.

There are a number of ways doing networking but if you want to have persistence then you currently need a centralised server system.

Take GitHub as your example does, we and our machines are the decentralised part, but there is still a server with hard drives where our data for all of the projects lives and which we access.

@fluffyfreak exactly.

All MMO games have a central database server that facilitates the second 'M'. This is the way imho to do it and imho the only workable way to do it.

As far as Elite 4 is concerned i am not sure after so many years whether it actually make it, or even can gather the required pledges it says it needs. The Star Citizen is a very promising issue, has already gathered multiple of pledges of what it says it needs, but it not free or open source.

Ok, the "Massively" part of MMOG would need a centralised server approach.

A "Multiplayer" part would need changes to gameplay/physics so that everyone was in the same timeframe, i.e. no time acceleration. That would be "synchronous multiplayer" - but you could have some form of "asynchronous multiplayer" still.

The suggestion of having other players to chat with at stations, and/or an online leaderboard - perhaps with what year + rank + sector + etc the player was in, wouldn't need the changes to make the game "synchronous multiplayer" and could still give you the massive aspect.

Then there's other options like Co-op along the lines I suggested in the links above. Where you co-crew a ship, or perhaps drop in/out of fights and the opponents ability to jump or accelerate time is disabled somehow. That could be done with a simple matchmaking service and players would opt-in, or someone could host.

So the options in terms of changes to gameplay from least to most would be something like:

1. player chat / leaderboards; only requires a server hosting the chat or html based board somewhere.
2. p2p one-on-one temporary gameplay with jumping and time acceleration disabled,
3. full co-op modes with multiple people on a ship or whatever,
4. Server hosting with completely disabled time acceleration / "instant" inter-system jumps / other forms of propulsion + anti-gravity to make landing & takeoff bearable.
5. The full MMOG, as #4 and #1 with more substantial backend work on servers

2, 3, and 4 all require the game to be running some kind of networking aware gameplay architecture. #2 or #3 are the easiest. For #2 the "player" effectively hosts a game so they are the server and just connect to themselves - another player could connect as a "pirate" so there is no separate server. #3 is similar but whoever hosts isn't having another player ship join they're just acting as server for multiple other people to join in.

It's #4 where everything goes a bit out of the window as this require the gameplay to really change since it's the only way it will work with multiple people in multiple ships where they can actually interact. To keep the pace of the gameplay you'd need some other form of propulsion so that interplanetary travel is more accommodating to realtime gameplay. I liked the way I-War handled this where you had to reach a certain speed before you could engage the LDS drive and zip along, that meant escaping from a fight required you to expose yourself and made escape more challenging. Likewise ascent and descent to a planets surface might need tweaking a bit... although with our super-powerful engines maybe not that much! 😉

The server itself could either be completely separate or it could just act as a locally hosted service within a game but it wouldn't feature always on or persistent behaviour. The ONLY reason games companies remove the option to host or run your own server is simply one of control, i.e; they want to control them and preferably earn money from them. #4 is essentially your typical quake server, it's running for the length of time that the host is playing the game, or as long as there personal server is up, the same as a minecraft server. Once it's switched off all the game data is typically lost, you could add saving and reloading like in minecraft and this might be the best solution.

#5 ... For an MMO typically you'd need at least; login authentication servers, chat/comms servers, patching servers, database servers (we used PostgreSQL btw!), world servers and finally the actual game servers.

Each of these "servers" are just processes they don't really need to be physical servers but as games grow they generally do to varying degrees.

"Login server"s generate your authentication token from your username/password that they verify against the database. You pass onto the least busy "world server" and give your token to prove who you are, that then finds which "game server" is hosting your part of the world and connects you. Typically you divide a game world spatially so there will be lots of "game servers" running each hosting a different part of the games environment. The "game server" fetches your details from the database and is what does the majority of updating it with what happens to you ingame.

On a commercial scale MMO you'd hide all of that stuff behind fancy-pants routers costing lots of money, but most smaller MMOs manage with both less servers, less hardware and consequently typically less uptime 🙂 but it's a manageable trade-off I think.

That might all sound a bit crazy but none of those servers are that difficult or crazy to write. Your database server is just PostgreSQL or somesuch that you chat to. The others are all pretty lightweight. The big one is the game server, it authenticates what the player does and distributes their actions to other players that are logged in. Handily these would be easier to write in some regards because Pioneer breaks down into sectors, systems, even just volumes around planets, in quite a nice way.

So nothing is too crazy about doing any of it, it's just that the further you go the more you get away from what Pioneer is currently, a game of lonely space adventure.

Andy

PS: this post is the most interesting thing I've done all bloody day!

@fluffyfreak

This is by far the best explanation and most interesting and enjoyful post i ever read in the forum. It raised some questions, though..

I am only after the #5 you mentioned, because imho this is what provides the best options, ability and unrestricted experience. While what you describe circles around EVE online's architecture, there is still lot of place for lonely space adventure. How? Simple, a player that wants to strictly enjoy lonely space adventure does not (have the ability to) send or receive actions to and from other players, effectively not "seeing" them with the meaning of interaction and maintaining the isolation. And the other players cannot interact with him/her, ie (the game server does not distribute their actions to other players). This player is a type/characteristic of the account defined when created and cannot become later a"normal" account. I can elaborate a lot further on that,i don't see why a pioneer could not go further.. :). And this is what in the beginning can be implemented. Parallel pioneer players on the same universe, isolated one from the other. And after that interactions and common aspects can be gradually added. Features are first implemented on "standalone" and then gradually "pass" appropriately on server. In the end, if this does not sound convincing and do not want to deviate from server type, if you distribute the server freely and one wants to do pure "lonely space adventure", just installs the server locally too and plays himself only on his server!

You mentioned, you have used Postgresql, i am not sure where are you referring to (i am eager to know:))? Also, the hosting and becoming freely available of the server, of course it can be provided to the user. There was nothing in my proposal of control in the behind part of my brain. Just, the best joy comes when you have a "single" world-wide "server" that all connect to - this probably be public Usually, individuals do not have the knowledge, means and resources to host/operate/maintain that. It's not that they are inhibited "externally" not to do it in any way.

Best regards.

I should also have mentioned that all of the above is a lot of work. Nothing that isn't technically feasible, but a lot of designing, coding, testing etc. It would be a long term investment for a couple of coders, probably more than a year for two coders since we're working on this in our spare time.

I listed them as I did because there are natural divisions in the tasks, for example you could implement #1 right now with minimal work, that would be used by all of the others. Separating the game into a local client/server architecture could be done next, that'd give you possible host/co-op ability like in #2 & #3. Separating that out to run as a separate server could lead to #4, with all the work it entails, and from there it's the leap to #5 a full MMO and further design work.

It does have to be all in though from the gameplay changing side. It's a big enough task without having to effectively support two kinds of game side-by-side so if "PioneerMMO" ever came to be it'd have to either be a separate fork away from Pioneer with different developers or an all in change to the time-acceleration and things.

About PostgreSQL, do you mean what games we used it on or how we used it?

Using it we wrapped their helper libraries in our support library that gave us access to the database, that ensured that anything going to the DB was fully validated and sanitised. There was a time when that didn't work and you could actually drop the database from the client due to sloppy coding and us not having code reviews! Oh the hilarity that caused.

The PostgreSQL DB was just running on a Linux server. We had some racks of blade servers and ssh'd into them to compile the servers and maintained copies of the main dev' DB. On the production side there were a bunch of virtualised servers and physically separate boxes mirroring each other, if one crashed the others were supposed to fail-over to a running one with everything hidden behind a big fancy router that hid all that shit from the user.

I didn't have much to do with that side of stuff aside from being told about it since I was a developer.

"Parallel pioneer players on the same universe, isolated one from the other. And after that interactions and common aspects can be gradually added."

That's essentially what #1 through #5 steps were describing 😉 For an MMO (stage #5), or just persistent leaderboards & chat (stage#1), though you'd need hosting and bandwidth and that takes money. For steps #2, #3 or #4 you're effectively giving the player a way to host their own short games so your costs are almost nothing and the server is either built into the client or available as a separate exe, but that's a minor detail.

So there you go, there is a little interest in the idea, but it need developers not ideas and my task list is already more than a year long itself I reckon.

Robn has started work on getting an http feed into the game and could probably extend that to have leaderboards, possibly text-chat with xmpp or somesuch, which could give you something like step #1.

Andy

I agree with you, there is a lot of work to be done but it is more than worth it. I am not at all keen on the idea of having 2 separate and different games at all and support them, it is impossible for a single man or just two and it breaks/disrupts the whole effort.

Personally, i will put myself in an effort of initiating the #5, in the point that the starting of separation between server/client part, and this  can be done without disrupting the current development process and upsetting people/devs and i will start by building the central database part following closely what is being developed in the following versions of game. In any case in the end this could be used or utilized as a starting point. As you said too, a player can download the server too, no need for network hosting/bandwidth.

Since there is a little interest in the idea, or at least acceptance exist (?) from the senior people (they do not oppose) and formally accept the effort, i will start development and post on git. As you said too, it needs developers not ideas. I know it might seem too ambitious, but i strongly believe dreamers have a place.

Dionisis

I'm happy to discuss the idea but I'm one of the few dev's who doesn't use IRC. That's the best place to find and speak to most of us.

http://pioneerspacesim.net/irc

Otherwise you can use the mailing list :  https://corbyn.site5.com/mailman/listinfo/pioneer-dev_pioneerspacesim.net

It's not that there's little interest it's that it's so much work, and there's so much already to do that people are already occupied with big things so if you want to begin working on it yourself then that's great news and I'm sure people will help out where they can 😀

I'm happy too from you response Andy, I have started hanging on irc and yes i have began working on a Postgresql database a bit. My goal is to make something that can be sometime in the future combined with/absorbed in the main project, not something close, mod, alternative etc.

My main problems so far, apart from the fact that i am not a C++ developer although i know the basic concepts of OOP,  have been the understanding of concepts and way of implementing things of game (i tried this via looking at code and some .lua files and the part of documentation that exists), the fact that i am lacking some inside info on general design things - for example i know about StarSystem / CustomStarSystem/SystemBody classes, but now (suddenly to me) we have also Spacestation, ie i mean the break/adoption of classes that influences greatly the database schema but i guess some closer monitoring the mail list could alleviate this.. Also, it would be good if there exists constraints on design on randomness as it is looks now, ie the main instances of entities could be random via seed, or

hash_random() so they are deterministically repeatable and can be reproduced outside game via same parameters so they can be logged and stay same between different games/versions,

Thank you for your positive response!

This is entirely a personal point of view.  But I'd be very sorry to see Pioneer starting down the MMO route.  Maybe it's just selfishness, but not being an overly sociable person I far prefer to play amongst machines.  And besides, there's already a glut of multiplayer games out there, because it now seems to be the first thing people worry about when building a new game: how do we crowbar multiplayer into this?

There is an exception for me: when I play EVE Online I tend to play as a trader, and the economic system in EVE is absolutely fascinating to play with (though I can't say I'm terribly good at it).  I love playing with market orders and increasingly don't get into a spaceship at all.  And I know that that trading system depends to a great extent on the fluidity that comes from the economy being almost entirely player-driven.  And I know that that in turn rests on the politics and conflict that persists in EVE's universe.  So to that extent, I can't argue that multiplayer is never a good thing.

I also love the chat facilities in EVE, but these don't depend on players being in the same place doing the same thing.  EVE has a local channel for each star system, a channel for each corporation, and countless game-wide channels, of which the busiest is Help.  Chat in Help can be fun and entertaining, or troll-packed and irritating, and - just on occasion - helpful.

The chat could be recreated in IRC.  At the moment I only know of the developers' channel which I have absolutely no place looking at.  But one or more IRC channels for players, allowing them to socialise, compare notes, tell stories, even (as frowned-upon as it may be) roleplay, would be more than enough for me.  If EVE's trade system could be mimicked even to some degree in Pioneer using an AI economic system, then Pioneer would be as multiplayer as I'd ever want it to be.  I'd certainly consider it a great shame if we jettisoned the beautiful, detailed physics model to satisfy the MMO's need to have everybody blatting round the galaxy without getting out of sync.

@Irdwrwyn

Being an overly sociable person myself too i fully understand many of your questioning thoughts. What i can say is that this is not the way a multiplayer/MMO has to be or is in the end. There can be

privacy when/if needed or not and i think i have described above in my proposals/thoughts without getting into specific details the way isolation can be achieved with 2 different ways. In the end (if

all fails to satisfy extremely lonely persons as you and me might seem to be) you have to install in your machine 2-3 pieces of software more and enjoy playing completely alone.

I am not on the side of abolishing the beautiful, detailed physics model developed and debugged with huge effort just to satisfy the MMO's need, it justs need an adaption to them. As far as the

trading part, there can be both. For example to get your aspect you mentioned, roughly imagine you can be docked in Mars High and trading commodities in Stock-market or for example Commodities market.

Prices and amounts can fluctuate in daily basis with system parameters defined by the AI and by players (traders) moving goods around, trade or be able to produce/gather(!) them. They can be 2 different

markets (or not), one by the system and one by players so you can trade in whichever you want to  have your isolation. These persistent info obviously can be stored and maintained on a central

(database) server, but then we go too technical and i don't intend to go this way.

To sum up what my intention is, is to be able to do multi-things in a persistent world when and if you want to, with the minimum deviations from current gameplay model. From the reality point of you,

such effort is enormous and could take some..years to be implemented, if ever. What i can do though is to be put a stone (if i can) to this direction and i would be very excited if other people that

are involved into the project can participate in the sense of just reviewing schema/communicating because beyond database building and architecting, i don' t have tbh the technical expertee/experience for game servers and these sort of software.

Best Regards.