Point me please. Multiplayer discussion and development

[terrysmith2000]

I am trying to figure out what is going on with the multiplayer functionality. I have downloaded the source, and have read about the summer of code work that was done a year or so back.

Is this work being discussed in this group or on a mailing list or in IRC? I have tried searching. Thanks for what pointers you have.

I'm interested in what is underway; I can certainly test; and might be able to contribute code.

[Arthur]

So far most of it has been discussed on IRC, but we could discuss it on the mailing list if that would be more convenient for you. hiker is the one you would most likely want to talk to; otherwise hilnius is the GSoC student doing most of the existing backend (though he doesn't visit the forum regularly).

Hope that helps, and welcome here.

[terrysmith2000]

Thanks. That helps. I'll have to brush up my IRC skills.

Until then, I am a dot net developer who grew up in C/Unix. I have a crew of 12 years olds who would love a multi-player game where they could crash into each other.

I am doing some commercial stuff that might interact with this, but I understand the GPL and support open source. And a day job.

[charlie]

I have a crew of 12 years olds who would love a multi-player game where they could crash into each other.

For a long time, crash physics have been one of the weakest aspects of STK. I have not tried 0.9 to see if it is different, and I believe some improvements were made over the 0.8 release cycle, but it would be interesting to see what ideas/concepts/solutions you (or anybody else) might have for improving upon it.

[terrysmith2000]

For a long time, crash physics have been one of the weakest aspects of STK. I have not tried 0.9 to see if it is different, and I believe some improvements were made over the 0.8 release cycle, but it would be interesting to see what ideas/concepts/solutions you (or anybody else) might have for improving upon it.

I think STK is simply awesome -- so no one should get confused. I really only know 0.9 and crash physics is weak from the viewpoint of competitive destruction. You can bump cars, but you can't easily force people off the road and you you can't push them onto a ramp so that that they spin for several seconds before crashing into an object and have a yard sale of parts and pieces. As I said, I am working with 12 year olds. I have watched them play toon-town, minecraft, and the call of duty/destiny type games. The sheer need for physical mischief (as in pushing one another off cliffs in minecraft) is tangible with the good kids and the demon seed. From some personal experience, I think this would work with people drinking beer (legally) as well.

So, random thoughts of things that could be added.

- cart damage and destruction. I'm playing with unity3d and some of the racing games have multiple graphics for various damage levels (fender becomes dented-fender becomes smashed-fender becomes burning-fender)
- cart dislocation. Existing combat is pretty cool (flyswatter, bowling, and thermo-nuclear cupcake). Being able to push someone off the track and have animated problems and/or damage would be cool.
- arms race. being able to unlock new weapons is highly prized by my users. The reward is watching new ways for your enemies to crash/die. The same mechanic with different animations is fine with them. I could easily see them saying, "I shall smite you with my red-velvet cupcake of doom'. Their gameplay experience is different than mine. They bring a lot of play to the table.
- collaboration: in plants vs. zombies and toon-town being able to heal is something. The ability of player to right (upright) a cart or give a speed boost might allow team play vs. the AI's.

This is all thrown out in the spirit of discussion. I am not complaining.

[hiker]

Hi,

...

I think STK is simply awesome -- so no one should get confused. I really only know 0.9 and crash physics is weak from the viewpoint of competitive destruction. You can bump cars, but you can't easily force people off the road and you you can't push them onto a ramp so that that they spin for several seconds before crashing into an object and have a yard sale of parts and pieces. As I said, I am working with 12 year olds. I have watched them play toon-town, minecraft, and the call of duty/destiny type games. The sheer need for physical mischief (as in pushing one another off cliffs in minecraft) is tangible with the good kids and the demon seed. From some personal experience, I think this would work with people drinking beer (legally) as well.

So, random thoughts of things that could be added.

- cart damage and destruction. I'm playing with unity3d and some of the racing games have multiple graphics for various damage levels (fender becomes dented-fender becomes smashed-fender becomes burning-fender)

Well, I am not sure we want to go in this direction. First of all, it is a lot of work (atm each kart is individual, so we would basically modify each kart one by one, and that means adding different crashed looks, plus the animations necessary to go from one to the next), and we simply don't have that amount of man power. Secondly, I am not entirely sure how it would feel - you see your kart exploding, then suddenly it is back to perfect state? And it might be a bit disturbing for kids to see them being smashed into pieces (though I admit I am might be a bit paranoid here ).

- cart dislocation. Existing combat is pretty cool (flyswatter, bowling, and thermo-nuclear cupcake). Being able to push someone off the track and have animated problems and/or damage would be cool.

I have worked on that in the past, I always liked the effect that you could push slower karts out of your way (i.e. an unrealistic push where you hit a kart from behind, and the kart is pushed to the side, so you can pass it). Unfortunately the other devs didn't like it, so I never finished that. You might be able to tweak the existing values a bit: look at data/stk_config.xml, and search for the entry:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

   <collision impulse-type="normal"
               impulse="3000" impulse-time="0.1" terrain-impulse="1600"
               restitution="1.0" bevel-factor="0.5 0.0 0.7"
               physical-wheel-position="-1" />


Just before that section are long comments explaining the values. Code-wise you can check src/physics/physics.cpp, function KartKartCollision().

We also hoped that with different kart physics this effect could play more of a role, but never had time to look into that more closely (this would also require to make the AI smarter to use this aggressively).

- arms race. being able to unlock new weapons is highly prized by my users. The reward is watching new ways for your enemies to crash/die. The same mechanic with different animations is fine with them. I could easily see them saying, "I shall smite you with my red-velvet cupcake of doom'. Their gameplay experience is different than mine. They bring a lot of play to the table.

We don't have that many different items in the first place, so locking some away is imho not ideal (which is why we decided to lock karts/tracks instead). Different animations would of course be nice (e.g. drivers being angry when hit), but again that's a matter of work, and at this stage we have one 'full time' artist only. We intend to add more animations to make the game less repetitive, but not with high priority (unless we get artists who can do the animations for all karts ), programming-wise there is not that much to do to trigger them.

- collaboration: in plants vs. zombies and toon-town being able to heal is something. The ability of player to right (upright) a cart or give a speed boost might allow team play vs. the AI's.

We already have a soccer mode (which can be cooperative if played with 4 people), and we certainly want to add some cooperative game play (be it a team-based battle mode, or team-based races), but think that we need network-play first, in order to have enough people to play together.

Cheers,
Joerg

[terrysmith2000]

We already have a soccer mode (which can be cooperative if played with 4 people), and we certainly want to add some cooperative game play (be it a team-based battle mode, or team-based races), but think that we need network-play first, in order to have enough people to play together.

I have not even tried that [soccer] yet. So I was just throwing out ideas to answer the question.

I want the network play most of all. I am ramping up on the code base with my little controller/arduino project. And I am remembering c++ (slowly). But in terms of testing, let me know how I can help. I have a few spare computers and can do Amazon servers if need be.