Local Multiplayer?

[Hans Olo]

This probably has been talked about before, but it's a cool enough idea I think do bring it up.

I realize that it would be difficult to make Oolite multiplayer, partially because of the time system. But what if it was local multiplayer around a single system? You could take a single system and fly around shooting at pirates or each other. And could you make it so that all parties engaged their wormholes at the same time to the same planet? That would eliminate the time issue.

[cim]

More or less, this could be done now (though it would probably only be suitable for local network rather than internet play) by replacing the debug console with a server using the same data protocol, and using  ScriptedAI NPCs to represent the other players on your machine. There might be some slight increases to the ScriptedAI functionality needed, but if someone was to seriously take on this project I don't think we'd object to making them as they'd be useful for single-player OXPs too; other than that it shouldn't need any further core functionality.