community attempt at multiplayer

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 7:44 pm

sorry for the long delay in progress.

Today I finally pulled up ipconfig and compared its results with what realityfactory says, and they match up. I'm not sure why I didn't do this sooner. Plus I got it too work on my schools server.

Here are my results:

Code: Select all

RealityFactory 075A Multiplayer Testing

Using a slight modified version of the rftechdemo level.

Started up host on computer one. Loaded successfully.

Started up Client on computer two and connected to the ip address displayed by the host computer.

I moved the mouse on the client computer and it showed the player looking to each side.

Also moved around positions seemed to match. Also tried Jump and crouch and they matched.

On the host computer it seems I am little above on the client on the Y axis. The feet of the client were on the ground but it seemed as if I was kind of suspended just a bit above the client maybe about a foot. This could have been a result of the location the second player start entity. I will check into this. I don't believe it should have acted this way because gravity should have brought him down.

I started shooting the client. The animation seemed to for the most part match correctly on both client and host.

It did not show the gun in other players hand, bullets, or explosions fired by either player didn't show either. Both players were still standing when I looked down to write some stuff down. Then I look up and the client's player is playing the death animation over and over. But on computer 2 the client was dead.

I then started the client back up, the body of the last clients player was still laying there on both client and host. I went and looked at some robots. I brought the hosts player up beside him and there were no robots in sight. Client got shot by the robots and died. Client came in again and both of his dead bodies were still playing the death animation. I took the host player too a room full of bots with the client player hanging back just a little ways. Robots swarmed around the host player and killed him. On client computer the Host player just fell over dead no robots near him.

For all the dead bodies it still showed them as an active player in the Hud compass deal in the right corner.

Everytime I went to the menu it crashed. Could be that I wasn't using the new patch, I will test this again with the new patch soon.

When I retest it I'll try and record a video so you guys can see what I mean.

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:48 pm

ok I got a few more bugs to add to this list.

I went to 3rd person on both pc's and one one computer its player is larger then the other player is small. So on both computers that its player appears just a little bigger then the other pc's player.

I fixed the crashing when going to the menu, by installing the new patch. But, when the host computer goes to the menu it crashes still.

The host computer can pick up health, but the client can't. When I went to a teleport it crashed. Also when shooting on the client computer everything disappears for a few seconds.

Put a third machine in and it actually had the dying bodies in the right locations.

scott · Post by **scott** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:35 pm

well just a stab in the dark, the size thing might be to do with actor size multpilication, not sure on about this area, cant this be changed either by the ini reader and the player setup entity? mabe its reading it from one and then from the other for the other players.

menu idea, when host goes to menu it would "pause the game" and so forcing the others to also pause mabe, change this mabe so that the game continues while the menu is pulled up, animations dont seem to work too well, jonas could you get a video of someone dieing on bother host and player computer.

and do i understand you correctly by saying that you ahd 2 computers joining the same server, if so, mabe test to see the limit of players, we may need to implment code that only allows 'x' amount of players or could cause lag when too many people join.

is it possible to show the health of other players on screen above them or something

this could be an idea to see what effects the atribute and if updates health taking of or just when state changes to death or something.

and good work for the test, will be verry usefull.

anyone else have anything to add, seems to be stable enouf but not useable at th moment, but its a start, isnt there an option to produce debuging info on crashes? may help to sort the menu one out.

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:58 am

Well I only had one player start and one player setup entity, I tried 2 and it didn't effect anything. So I'm thinking that bug will have to be fixed in the code. Yes I will try and record a video of it. unfortunatly I don't have school tommorow so I'll have to wait till monday to record it. I'll try and record on both the server and the client, so you can see the robots in different locations.

Post by **paradoxnj** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 10:55 pm

Are you sending the scale with the packet that spawns the actor?

Spyrewolf · Post by **Spyrewolf** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 4:09 am

Oh SNAP! i've just had the craziest idea!

tell me did the pawns seem to operate similar on both machines,
did they die when host or client killed them....

if soo, we can ignore the player code altogether and just use pawns,

i have a strong feeling that the player death animation is happening because it is not told to play once im multiplayer

if we can controll two scripted players both we will have full controll of animations and other thing like dead bodies staying there...

this is just a thought but hopefully is a step in the right direction

i see there is obviously synchronization issues with the pawns being all over the place, but if we can script location or what have you this too may be overcome.

it all depends on the interaction of pawns aross two computers...

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Sun Oct 22, 2006 7:50 pm

no the pawns wouldn't show up in the same locations. I had both players standing side by side and the robot would be there on one machine and on the other no robots were in sight.

That's a good idea though, if we get the pawns to match locations on both machines that just might work.

Post by **Jay** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:21 am

Well in first place it seems that two scripted players could be a solution, but then they had to have a special 'flag' so that they are not controlled only by the 'host'-(or server-) computer, e.g. that both computers have such a pawn.

While the monsters and npcs are to be controlled by the 'server'-computer. This way two players could fight a monster at the same time.

Then this could work.

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:26 pm

I just recorded a video on both machines, but for some reason the screen flickers, in the video. I'm going to go ahead and upload them. But if anyone has any suggestions on a good video capture program that doesn't record with a flicker let me know. I was using camstudio.

Here's the first video from the host computer.
http://www.youtube.com/v/N_iziJife6Y

Juutis · Post by **Juutis** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:05 pm

Maybe try Fraps?
http://www.fraps.com/

It's kinda hard to see what happens in the video... the flickering and low resolution are a bad combination.

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:16 pm

I'll right I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 5:39 pm

Fraps isnt free though... Is it? And also with the trial version you can only record 30secs and it exports to a HUGE file format, so you almost HAVE to compress the vids if you wanna upload them anywhere...

Well you guys sound like your making some good progress (finding out more information is good progress, you need to know what your dealing with before you can fix it

)

So good luck to ya!

-Id help but im hopeless at scripting for the time being, and I am quite unknowlageable about networks-

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 6:53 pm

Ok fraps took care of the flickering. I also figured out what I was doing to cause it to be so blury. I had the output Bitrate kbps set too low.

@psyco fraps limits you to 30 second recordings.

I'm not sure if I cought all the glitches I mentioned.

Computer 1 - host
Clip 1

Clip 2

Clip 3

Computer 2 - Client
Clip 1

Clip 2

Clip 3

Here's a playlist with each test together ie: Computer 1 test 1 then Computer 2 test 1 and on down the line.

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Wed Nov 01, 2006 10:27 pm

I was planning on installing msv++ express when it hit me in the face. I still can't compile even with that compiler. So unless we can figure out how to use that or some other program we are just as bad off as we were. I personally do not plan on ever purchasing msv++ 6.0 because its not any better then any of the free compilers.

So....... what now anyone have any suggestions?

Post by **QuestOfDreams** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 7:29 am

Well, then you'll have to wait until I've ported it to VS 2005 and wxWidgets or try this yourself...