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The Science Behind a Multiplayer Version

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DerrickMoore
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When you speed up time, planets also get sped up, as do other ships.

 

 

Oh, I hadn't even thought about that at all. Hmmm.... 

I agree though, that Pioneer needs community, but I dont think Pioneer needs multiplayer combat. But i wish players could interact a bit. perhaps through the in-game Bullitin Board?


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Marcel
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Yes but if you turned the star-dreamer into a warp drive, the planets and other ships would continue running at normal time. So would the player. The warp drive just multiplies the effect of the engines making the player go faster. Would gameplay be affected? Sure, but I think it could work. Just to be clear, I'm not sure if I really want a multiplayer Pioneer either, but it's fun to speculate about it!


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funkybibimap
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I think a warp drive would be quite detrimental to pirates. It's very difficult to destroy a ship in a few seconds, especially the big ones with lots of shields which are favoured for sensitive transport missions. You'd need a very large ship to pack enough firepower, but then you'd never be able to catch up on the target. That's why pirates need small ships. But then with a low firepower, it can take a long fight to shoot down a big ship. Warp drives annihilate any chance of a long fight. Also, police ships would be undoubtedly equipped with warp drives, and able to intervene very (too) quickly anywhere in a system.


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Marcel
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Those are good points. I suppose that's why in ELITE you'd be 'mass locked' when near another ship. If that happened in Pioneer then yes, the police might be able to intervene too quickly. A balance would have to be struck allowing the player to move through a system quickly, but not so quick that you'd get there instantaneously. I'm envisioning battles that would be much like they are now, but you'd be maneuvering over much larger distances with greater fuel penalties. Actually hitting a target at warp speed may be too difficult to make this work.


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fluffyfreak
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My thinking on using something like a warp-drive, or whatever the drives from I-War / Starglider2 were called, would be that it would require several things to be true before working.

For example it should be easy to drop a ship out of warp and to keep it out of warp. The ship might need to be travelling over a certain velocity before it would work, perhaps dependent on the mass of the ship. Or far enough away from a planet/object that it's gravity doesn't interfere.

 

We make up the physics as it is remember 😉

 

So ship-to-ship combat wouldn't need to change, it could offer other options too. For example you could ambush ships in warp if you knew where they were coming from, or escape from ships by dropping some kind of disrupting device and warping away before it activates.

 

The police shouldn't be a problem, jam the communications and your victim can't call for help, besides, travel wouldn't be instant, it would just be quicker. Rather than just being subjectively quicker as it is with the star dreamer.


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Brianetta
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The ship might need to be travelling over a certain velocity before it would work

Statements like this require a change to the physics engine. You don't have a velocity in space, unless you measure it relative to something, and there are a lot of somethings against which to measure. Remember, Earth (as well as anything landed on it) is belting along at nearly 30km/s, which is not slow at all. By having rules that depend on absolute speeds, you introduce inconsistencies. Fixing these inconsistencies would give you a game that looks and feels a lot like Oolite.

Oolite is, in fact, an excellent candidate for multiplayer. There, you only have to overcome the resistance of the people involved. Here, you have to overcome the resistance of the people involved *and* change the nature of physics.


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Cody
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Oolite is, in fact, an excellent candidate for multiplayer.

 

<chokes on his coffee>

 

We had to have a stickied thread about multi-player Oolite.

It was a question we were getting far too often (still do get occasionly).

Oolite Naval Attaché


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Brianetta
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Yeah, I'm aware of the situation. (-:

Thing is, both the dev teams seem to have a similar attitude to multiplayer. Technically, a completely multiplayer Oolite with no differences in gameplay (aside from the obvious) is achievable, because there's no issue with accelerated time and so forth. Politically, of course, it's a different matter.


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Cody
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<nods sagely>

Oolite Naval Attaché


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fluffyfreak
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Statements like this require a change to the physics engine. You don't have a velocity in space, unless you measure it relative to something, and there are a lot of somethings against which to measure. Remember, Earth (as well as anything landed on it) is belting along at nearly 30km/s, which is not slow at all. By having rules that depend on absolute speeds, you introduce inconsistencies. Fixing these inconsistencies would give you a game that looks and feels a lot like Oolite.

Oolite is, in fact, an excellent candidate for multiplayer. There, you only have to overcome the resistance of the people involved. Here, you have to overcome the resistance of the people involved *and* change the nature of physics.

You might not have a velocity in "space" but you certainly do in Pioneer and an absolute velocity relative to the star could always be calculated trivially.

 

Besides that's really nitpicking over one of the possible options that I mentioned, perhaps it's valid but it's not relevant to the point I was making that there are numerous ways around all of the things that people have listed as making it unworkable or some kind of sacrilegious change which would "ruin everything".

 

It might be a "different game" from Pioneer but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing.


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Brianetta
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It might be a "different game" from Pioneer but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

That's the only point I'm making. It'll definitely be a different game.


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DionisisK
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@everyone

There a lot of ways and levels to implement "multiplayer" aspects (with or without quotes) in Pioneer and at the same time not breaking the physics of the game at all or making small adjustments that immensely increase the gameplay experience is a truth. Also the truth, if we want to speak frankly, includes that many developers have spent countless days and nights to implement and correct the space simulation part as close to (Newtonian) reality as possible and naturally they are opposed to anything relates to compromization for the gameplay sake. Personally, as a player i have enjoyed the Sim and math part which i appreciate and also as a Dev myself i can understand the approach and deeply appreciate the huge ongoing effort. But, i strongly believe that there can be multiplayer aspects and i vertically disagree on political correctness issues raised (actually pioneers do break them:). I believe a good approach is what was from a senior here said roughly "code talks, post/ideas walk".

So, as i said before, i wanted to put a stone on the implementation part, with the clear final aim of enriching Pioneer with these aspects AND keeping the Physics intact (or almost). And these aspects

made, would/should be optional to the Pioneer player, in the sense that if he/she/it(?) wants then "connects" to the server and play or play standalone - (almost) same experience/features.  On the

implementation side, the very first attempt would be to make Pioneer (user) have the ability to store/retrieve the state of game of user in a Central Database server and for this step i have made a

working example (branch). The database server can host at the same time any number of Pioneer users that can have access to the server (i mean to store/retrieve their state) and these users are

ignorant one from the other (no interaction between them).

I won't elaborate further on the example, because this thread is for people that really want to make an effort on the science behind a multiplayer version of Pioneer and towards this direction, i will post more specific details in a new thread. What i would like to finally add/make request is that i can't test the branch on unix/mac because i don't have access + knowledge on these environments and also in order to incorporate the final version of the contribution there needs to be some minor support from the load/save/settings forms to integrate this functionality in a non-default optional basis, something that more seniors on the project can do.

Best Regards


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