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Multiplayer - State and Contributions.


Agent Jones

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Cool, I'm majorly impressed you got this far. Could you include some instructions to let people know how to try it?

 

Players don't need to be concerned about backing up the old executables... if they forget or don't bother, they can just run tdm_update.exe from their darkmod folder to revert their TDM to the current release version.

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I've included a simple readme file with instructions. Here they are:


To start a server, drop the files in your darkmod directory and doubleclick on the batch file. The starting map is a simple cube called 'mp', you can change it in the server.cfg (si_map). Keep in mind that AI won't work and it could crash the clients.
The client's installed FM must be the same as the server's, otherwise the client will keep trying to restart the game endlessly trying to find it.
To connect to your own server as another client, just start the exe and type 'connect localhost' in the console. Win_allowMultipleInstances must be set to 1.

 

By the way, I've noticed that sometimes the updater doesn't download the executable and tells me that my installation is up to date. That's why I suggested to back up your files. I don't know if it is the same for everyone here though.

Edited by Agent Jones
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I'd think completing objectives should trigger the mission end as usual.

Objectives should also probably be shared, so one player completing one does it for all players.

Loot should be a shared stat too.

 

The ideal gameplay should be coop, so then we have 80+ playable maps out of the box, and Tos's multiplayer for T2 would be the model.

 

Then maybe some people could make competitive Thievery like maps, too, but it'd be small compared to latching on to existing maps. That's if there's a choice about it.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Great job. I don't understand most of it, but I'm still impressed.

 


In any case, we'll need a mantling animation, which could benefit single-player guards too.

 

 

 

That's what I was thinking also.

Edited by Nico A.
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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm trying to get third person animations to work, using the default AI anims. The chars\thief\drawsword anim works and it looks cool, but the parry anims crash the game:

ERROR:Model 'models/md5/chars/thief/tdm_ai_thief.md5mesh' has different # of joints than anim 'models/md5/chars/guards/proguard/combat_sword_parry_left.md5anim'

I thought that the thief's mesh supported the proguard's animations. I'm not an animator, so could anyone shed some light on this?

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As long as those are both the up to date animations, they should work. All the human AI share the same skeleton and # of joints.

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It's possible that the player thief model is using the old skeleton...I thought I updated it along with the model years ago, but maybe I'm misremembering. Does it complain when you add any of the other proguard animations, or just that one?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wow... someone is actually making this happen? That's really awesome to hear :D I tend to not play games online that much, but I've always wondered what multiplayer TDM would look like, and since idTech 4 natively supports online modes then why not enable that somehow?

 

Please take a look at my old thread on multiplayer support as well. I expressed my ideas on this a while ago... such as allowing missions to define teams, so each player joining a server can choose a role of their preference in the mission (eg: Be a guard patrolling alongside other guard NPC's, or the thief(s) trying to sneak into the area).

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/16894-tdm-and-multiplayer/

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Please take a look at my old thread on multiplayer support as well. I expressed my ideas on this a while ago... such as allowing missions to define teams, so each player joining a server can choose a role of their preference in the mission (eg: Be a guard patrolling alongside other guard NPC's, or the thief(s) trying to sneak into the area).

Thanks, but first I need to get the current missions in a working state. At this pace, you might see something playable the next decade.

Is there a charitable soul who could update the old thief's animations to match the new skeleton? The new thief model lacks essential animations like strafing.

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Thanks, but first I need to get the current missions in a working state. At this pace, you might see something playable the next decade.

Is there a charitable soul who could update the old thief's animations to match the new skeleton? The new thief model lacks essential animations like strafing.

 

It's ok, my ideas can be looked at later if anything. A simple mode can do for starters, simply having multiplayer work at all would be huge.

 

As for animations, I think the player uses the same anim set as all AI's (not just thief)... which is a good thing since it means you should be able to select any class / appearance. Sadly I don't think I can help with this one... I'm just planning to create some content for TDM myself, and haven't even gotten introduced to modding with that. But I think that strafing animations and the like can be left for later, and things should work ok with the existing ones for starters.

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strafing animations will be very important though. Have you ever played an fps where the animations were shite and decreased the competitiveness of the game? CS:GO's crouching animations had a horrendous problem until recently and are still not quite good yet, as a result the competitiveness suffers. But since we are just doing coop for now it's no big deal.

Edited by c0mputer-fr0d
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As for animations, I think the player uses the same anim set as all AI's (not just thief)...

 

 

The player thief model must be using the old skeleton then.

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey guys, I know this is an odd thing to bring up, but I know we derive so much from Thief that we may actually want to look at something else that derived a lot from it.

I think we should ask ourselves why two thieves are better than one, and the answer I keep coming up with is mobility.

While I don't think we could do anything like the OCP leap frog from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, entire maps could definitely be made around the idea of boosting a friend up to something a rope arrow wouldn't be able to deal with, or wouldn't be available for.

It's also definitely something that could be included in single player viable maps, specifically to avoid lockpickable doors and the like.

 

This is something that obviously won't be viable for development in the meanwhile, but once the framework and foundation is there I think there's a lot of really, really good room for experimentation and development.

Edited by V-Man339

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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Since it'd be a branch anyway, I think whatever team works on this should be encouraged to have, or anyway debate the merits of, more coop friendly mechanics like that, since the gameplay will be open to big changes.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Since it'd be a branch anyway, I think whatever team works on this should be encouraged to have, or anyway debate the merits of, more coop friendly mechanics like that, since the gameplay will be open to big changes.

This. PVP and any other mode like coop or single player might as well be an entirely separate module, executable and setting for all I'm concerned, since balancing will be entirely different, assuming we even go that route.

Edited by V-Man339

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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  • 9 months later...

That's awesome! Thank you so much Agent Jones, I have been waiting for this since I have discovered TheDarkMod a few years ago!

 

An outsider developper POV:

 

I completely agree with demagogue, the perfect gameplay for multiplayer TDM should be coop with objectives, so just like the current TDM, but with multiple players. Indeed, it would allow to directly re-use the pool of maps that TDM already possess, and in particular it would be very fun to complete very hard missions with friends rather than alone.

 

Then, later, the guards may be made playable on the objective-based maps (if that's technically possible). In this case, the goal would still be to complete the objectives, but with the added difficulty that guard players would be way more difficult and smarter than AI guards to beat! This could turn out into something like Enemy Territory or Splinter Cell. So for the thieves, the goal would be to complete the objectives, and for the guards to reach the timelimit without thieves reaching the objective. Technically, this mode would imply the implementation of two things: playable guards and the trigger of the guards winning screen when guards win (timelimit is already implemented in the engine, so it can probably be easily reused).

 

So clearly, the coop is the way to go, because this is the fastest way to provide a playable multiplayer mode with lots of maps and minimal development effort (compared to other options), and in addition this is the most extensible one because you will then only need to add playable guards to add PVP (which will be lots of fun EVEN if it's not correctly balanced at first).

Edited by gbo
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