Oolite Multiplayer? Please read

[Commander McLane]

… so that if the jump takes 10 minutes the player has something to do (like evade some anomalies or so)...?

Well, in Oolite a witchjump takes between 0 seconds (for 0LY jumps; or maybe a minimum time equivalent to a 0.1LY jump was introduced at some point, I'm not sure about that off the top of my head; this would mean that the shortest jump takes 36 seconds) and 6.8^2 hours = 46 hours, 14 minutes and 24 seconds game time (= advancement of the individual game clock). Good luck with inventing something that keeps a player busy for 46-and-a-quarter (real-life!) hours straight before he emerges in his destination system!

And remember: things like the contract market depend on this passing of game time and advancing the individual player's game clock way faster than real time passes. And things like docking, launching, or buying equipment do, too. In a multiplayer setting, you obviously cannot advance an individual player's game clock faster than real time, while all the other players' clocks are not advanced.

If you want to get by with a radically shortened transition time instead (we're talking several orders of magnitude here; and 10 minutes would be already way too long for something you do as frequently as jumping to the next system; 60 seconds would already seem to stretch the limit of bearability in the long run), you have to change some of the fundamental ways Oolite is working in. By changing the fundamental ways you effectively change the game (see cim's post above for some of the details). In other words: the result isn't going to be very much like Oolite anymore. It's going to be a different game, but not "Oolite Multiplayer".

[Smivs]

the result isn't going to be very much like Oolite anymore. It's going to be a different game, but not "Oolite Multiplayer".

I think this is the key point really, and sadly for some reason it does seem difficult for some people to really understand this.
The changes that would have to be made to Oolite to make a multiplayer would so radically alter the game it would no longer be Oolite. And I don't mean just a little bit or in some small areas. The necessary changes would be so fundamental and so profound that the whole game would change dramatically.
Which is why (so far) anybody who might have come along who loves Oolite, likes MMOs and has the skills and talents to actually do this (rather than just talk about it), hasn't done it. Because they realise that it simply can't be done in the sense that making a multiplayer out of Oolite would result in something that is nothing like Oolite at the end.
The things that might work, like limiting everybody to one system and therefore keeping everybody in the same time-line, just aren't worth the effort, and even that wouldn't be Oolite, would it?

[GGShinobi]

Good luck with inventing something that keeps a player busy for 46-and-a-quarter (real-life!) hours straight before he emerges in his destination system!

Hah, now that is easy!! Just add a "Gaming Computer"-equipment where the commanders can play simulated games - for example "Oolite" - while they are waiting!



Now serious, I see that it would indeed be a very different game. What doesn't mean that it would not be possible to use nijinekos' ideas in another (multiplayer) game, but as you said, not in Oolite. (Perhaps Oolite-MM?)

And I'd also like to add to my defense that I have been told that making Oolite multiplayer would be a piece of cake, way too easy to be implemented by the game developers, so the task to do it had been given to the OXP-writers instead.

This made me realize that I'm actually missing some hints on how long the modifications will take when I'm purchasing equipment. The mechanics should be able to tell me (an estimation would suffice)! Should I fill a feature request for this?

The rule is actually pretty simple: 5 minutes, plus 10 seconds per credit.

cim, you are my hero (again). Thanks! I already had a feeling that the costs had something to do with the repair time. When doing a Maintenance Overhaul for my test-Falcon-S, the timer seems to run into the future forever!

[nijineko]

the result isn't going to be very much like Oolite anymore. It's going to be a different game, but not "Oolite Multiplayer".

I think this is the key point really, and sadly for some reason it does seem difficult for some people to really understand this.
The changes that would have to be made to Oolite to make a multiplayer would so radically alter the game it would no longer be Oolite. And I don't mean just a little bit or in some small areas. The necessary changes would be so fundamental and so profound that the whole game would change dramatically.
Which is why (so far) anybody who might have come along who loves Oolite, likes MMOs and has the skills and talents to actually do this (rather than just talk about it), hasn't done it. Because they realise that it simply can't be done in the sense that making a multiplayer out of Oolite would result in something that is nothing like Oolite at the end.
The things that might work, like limiting everybody to one system and therefore keeping everybody in the same time-line, just aren't worth the effort, and even that wouldn't be Oolite, would it?

i guess i win the can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees prize. if it is not too much trouble, please enumerate the changes for me, cause i REALLY don't see what you are talking about. all the changes people have talked about so far are things i can either shoot down and prove potentially wrong, or are comments so vague that the commenter either can't or won't define them. so far, it seems like were reaching a point of network sync = adjust some times = adjust strategy slightly vs adjust strategy slightly = magically completely different game... which latter concept i see as completely ludicrous.

right now we are jumping ahead in time... an artifact that is only possible because it is single player. it is completely unrealistic, and it may not be out of place to mention, in a game that makes you wait out the trip between witchpoint and planet/station, ITSELF violates the spirit of the elite games. right now it is easy to fail cargo and passenger missions BECAUSE we jump ahead magically to the adjusted time. if the configuration of ships outside a station or witchpoint changed significantly as a result of jumping ahead, if it calculated in a data sense where those ships would all be by said time, then i don't think i would mind. but it does not appear to (i may be wrong about that, please correct me if so), which is another point of violating the spirit of elite.

and perhaps that is the problem. i see removing these magical jumps in time and space and filling them in with content (interesting or boring) as supporting of and bringing back the true spirit of elite. after all, crawling across space is not exactly fun at times. interestingly, moving out of the space lane and going hyper until mass-locked doesn't bother me. likewise, while waiting for a repair, one's character could "go to sleep" and that wouldn't bother me either. in fact, i would see it as ADDING an element to the existing strategy, rather than taking anything away.

but anyhow, i've seen some valid counter points, and i fear i'm going to irk people more than i've already done if i continue, so perhaps i should stop here.

my sincere apologies for any and all irking i've caused. i hope that i've managed to explain my viewpoint to where others can understand, even if they don't agree with me. =D

[GGShinobi]

the result isn't going to be very much like Oolite anymore. It's going to be a different game, but not "Oolite Multiplayer".

I think this is the key point really, and sadly for some reason it does seem difficult for some people to really understand this.
The changes that would have to be made to Oolite to make a multiplayer would so radically alter the game it would no longer be Oolite. And I don't mean just a little bit or in some small areas. The necessary changes would be so fundamental and so profound that the whole game would change dramatically.
Which is why (so far) anybody who might have come along who loves Oolite, likes MMOs and has the skills and talents to actually do this (rather than just talk about it), hasn't done it. Because they realise that it simply can't be done in the sense that making a multiplayer out of Oolite would result in something that is nothing like Oolite at the end.
The things that might work, like limiting everybody to one system and therefore keeping everybody in the same time-line, just aren't worth the effort, and even that wouldn't be Oolite, would it?

i guess i win the can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees prize. if it is not too much trouble, please enumerate the changes for me, cause i REALLY don't see what you are talking about. all the changes people have talked about so far are things i can either shoot down and prove potentially wrong, or are comments so vague that the commenter either can't or won't define them. so far, it seems like were reaching a point of network sync = adjust some times = adjust strategy slightly vs adjust strategy slightly = magically completely different game... which latter concept i see as completely ludicrous.
....
....
but anyhow, i've seen some valid counter points, and i fear i'm going to irk people more than i've already done if i continue, so perhaps i should stop here.

I think that whole discussion shows what I actually think of being one of the best parts of the whole Ooniverse - the great variety. The game is highly customizable, and the opinions of the members of the community about what the game is all about vary very much as well. As the example above shows, for some people the changes needed to make Oolite a multiplayer game would alter the game too much, for others they would be tolerable or even perceived as being minimal.
Perhaps there is also a misunderstanding involved that some think that doing a multiplayer version of Oolite would mean that the original game had to be changed, while others think of the multiplayer version as a different, independent game? (just guessing)

[Cmdr James]

No, listen guys, please.

The primary reason is simply that it is too hard to do.

The secondary and related reason is that noone on the dev team wants to invest the time to make a multiplayer version, at least not from where we are now. To be honest as I have said before, if I wanted to write a multiplayer elite-like game I would not start from the oolite codebase.

Other concerns like whether the community wants it is quite another thing, enough people say they do but this is actually irrelevant. They could just as well say they want a FPS version of oolite. It just isnt going to happen anytime soon, because the code isnt right for it.

[nijineko]

The primary reason is simply that it is too hard to do.

amen to that.

ideas are easy to spout, no matter how good, bad, "right", "wrong", possible, improbable, or impossible.

none of us are able and/or willing to commit the truly impressive amount of time it would take to make it all happen. speculating and hypothesizing can be fun for some, but the bottom line is exactly as Cmdr James mentions.

[nijineko]

i have just had an idea for an alternative to multiplayer:

what about an oxp that logs certain activities with timestamps. you let it run, it generates a log as you play. then a companion oxp that reads said log, and sets an npc version of a player where it sets the ai and changes it, moves from system to system, performs trades and cargo/passenger transports, and so forth roughly in correspondence with the actual log of the player's activities?

some ideas of what it would track... items of trade, cargo/passenger missions to specific systems, systems/galaxies travelled to and when, frequency of witchspace encounters, what is attacked and how often - set the ai based on certain parameters, and so forth.

the data set would need to be reduced and simplified to a set of variables and data points. once the data is generated, the npc oxp would read the log files submitted by players and generate ships and travel patterns based on the logs.

thoughts?

[Rorschachhamster]

Why log if you have allready (probably) a handfull of "log-files" in your saved games files...
Just take other named save files and let you encounter yourself (and of course, if you want to meet others, you just have to swap save files...). This could work, I think.

[Diziet Sma]

Interesting.. there might be some useful ideas there for Commander McLane to incorporate into Personalities.oxp, when he finally gets around to fixing it.. (hint, hint! )

[Thargoid]

The only log file the game write is latest.log, and no OXP can read a file aside from the plist and script files that form the OXP (both for security reasons).

So the idea is a complete non-starter.

If you want multiplayer Elite, just wait for E:D.

[Diziet Sma]

The only log file the game write is latest.log, and no OXP can read a file aside from the plist and script files that form the OXP (both for security reasons).

Any reason it can't be done via the game-save file, since OXPs do have access to that?

[Thargoid]

You can only have one save game loaded, so you'd not be able to load the NPC player data and your own commander.

[Diziet Sma]

Now I re-read the proposal, yes, I see what you're getting at..

[nijineko]

not meaning use multiple save game files. was meaning extract meaningful data, or have the data written into a file the "CreateNPC.oxp" can edit in a format which can be transferred over to another file the "PlayNPCs.oxp" can read and use to control the action of specific npc ships... no save game file (other than your own) needed.

write it to a special plist then? once it is generated, transfer the result into another plist that the "PlayNPC.oxp" can read and use as an AI?

basically, all i'm getting at is a creative way to generate an AI that will mimic reasonably well the actual playstyle and actions of players (by logging certain types of actions taken in game in real time) for subsequent use in the game with the Personalities.oxp

pseudo multiplayer, if you will.