Oolite Multiplayer? Please read

[Thargoid]

OK, one more time - the only file that can be written to is latest.log. And that cannot be read in by the game during play.

Doing a plist would mean manually editting and creating it every time, at complete risk of screwing it up and the whole thing breaking. Plus every time the OXP would need to be renamed or started with a shift-start, or it would get ignored with the cached version used.

Basically you'd have to write (or rewrite) an OXP every time you wanted any update on what the NPC-player has done, which is nonsense.

And an AI cannot mimic a player with any reasonableness, at least without it being a stupidly complex AI or more likely a hybrid JS/AI combo.

[DaddyHoggy]

As somebody who has recently written a report for the MOD on the state of the art of AI (within the defence industry both militarily and COTS) I can tell you what we have is AI that make very good opponents (in carefully managed areas of training, mission rehearsal) but we absolutely do not have any AI that has very good human cognitive/believable behaviours (for real time applications) - and if the US DOD who have spent in excess of $10Bn over the last 20 years on AI (in the form of Computer Generated Forces (for Training)) in applications such as ModSAF, JSAF and now OneSAF can't crack it - and they really, really want to - it's not going to happen any time soon, in any other field.

(And before anybody tells me how brilliant the AI is in PC game X, Y and Z is - I will give you a list of a hundred carefully constructed constraints put on those AIs so that they give the appearance of being very clever, thinking AI.)

[Diziet Sma]

Sorry for the OT, but..

As somebody who has recently written a report for the MOD on the state of the art of AI (within the defence industry both militarily and COTS) I can tell you what we have is AI that make very good opponents (in carefully managed areas of training, mission rehearsal) but we absolutely do not have any AI that has very good human cognitive/believable behaviours (for real time applications) - and if the US DOD who have spent in excess of $10Bn over the last 20 years on AI (in the form of Computer Generated Forces (for Training)) in applications such as ModSAF, JSAF and now OneSAF can't crack it - and they really, really want to - it's not going to happen any time soon, in any other field.

So does this mean (and I really really hope it does) that they are a lot further off having autonomous robotic soldiers than many people think?

[DaddyHoggy]

Sorry for the OT, but..

<snip>

So does this mean (and I really really hope it does) that they are a lot further off having autonomous robotic soldiers than many people think?

Erm, yes and no.

No, because, in theory the doctrinal RoEs (Rules of Engagement) are easy to turn into instructions (we already do this for UAVs, drones and bomb disposal robots using languages such as C-BML (Coalition-Battle Management Language) - laws of physics of weapon ballistics are also easy to produce programmatically).

Yes, because the LOD (Level of Detail) required to meet current RoEs mean (even a real soldier) can't fire until Identification stage of DRI (Detection "I've seen something", Recognition "It's a tank", Identification "It's a T80 and it's not one of ours, it's one of theirs") - so what's holding up robotic soldiers is 1) LIDAR combined with hi-res thermal and visual sensors for the DRI process are very prone/vulnerable to attack and difficult to protect without interfering with their capability (Taliban are already shooting off the LIDAR systems we have fitted to our deployed vehicles (they've probably seen The Gadget Show or Google autonomous car on YouTube) 2) The legal ramifications of allowing an armed robotic system autonomy have yet to be tested. Predator UAVs are regularly armed with Hellfire missiles - its sensors identify and target potential threats but a human operator still checks the video feed and actually pulls the trigger even though the Predator *could* do it itself...

Hope that helps?

[Diziet Sma]

Hope that helps?

It does indeed.. many thanks.

[Astrobe]

I've only read the few last pages of this thread, so sorry if I repeat things that have already been discussed.

I feel like when people say "multiplayer", they don't necessary mean "player versus player". Just letting a bunch of player play together would be a nice enhancement: we could do escort missions with all real players, fleet versus fleet battles versus AI, etc. This would give birth to a new category of OXPs. Players-versus-AI only multiplayer removes the burden of balance; the market and other variable elements of the universe don't have to be the same for each players (except for the AI-controlled ships). Synchronisation glitches would be far less game-breaking.

Maybe one way to begin to explore multiplayer is to expose a networking API to OXPs?

[DaddyHoggy]

I've only read the few last pages of this thread, so sorry if I repeat things that have already been discussed.

I feel like when people say "multiplayer", they don't necessary mean "player versus player". Just letting a bunch of player play together would be a nice enhancement: we could do escort missions with all real players, fleet versus fleet battles versus AI, etc. This would give birth to a new category of OXPs. Players-versus-AI only multiplayer removes the burden of balance; the market and other variable elements of the universe don't have to be the same for each players (except for the AI-controlled ships). Synchronisation glitches would be far less game-breaking.

Maybe one way to begin to explore multiplayer is to expose a networking API to OXPs?

To summarise what the Devs have replied many, many, many times in this thread. Introducing ANY player v player however limited would require a rewrite of the engine, because it is not, in any shape or form, set up to cope with this. At that point the game would be branched and it would not be Oolite, it would a game that looked like Oolite, used many of the visual attributes of Oolite, possibly even used a subset of the available OXPs, but multiplayer Oolite, is a Oxymoron, it cannot be Multiplayer and be Oolite (without starting again).

[another_commander]

Maybe one way to begin to explore multiplayer is to expose a networking API to OXPs?

Security alert. Your Internet may be in danger if we do this.

[Gouanaco]

Guys i have an idea on how to do multiplayer. I came up with this sometime ago when i thought about trying to multiplayer into a 1 player game that was nearly impossible but! i thought of a way

And it could actually work in Oolite too.

Ok so this is big but:

Computer 1: outputs ships cords/data etc etc to the latest.log
Program: reads the latest.log and reads the data -> it then sends that data to the other computer.

Computer 2 (Program): Reads the incoming data and then either using inbuilt programs or 3rd person programs it auto presses some keyboard keys.

These keyboard keys are pressed when Oolite is open and in a certain order Oolite picks these up as code. so like for example.

Keys: A & B

ABBABAB = Ship moves left
BABABBA = Ship fires lasers
BBBABABAABB = Ship explodes...

(Although those keys are already used etc, but finding some keys players dont use would work)

This i hope is an idea on a possible way to-do multiplayer.
I would also be willing to work with someone to create this (Despite im no good in Oolite programming [yet], but i do have some skills in batch etc)

[Smivs]

I can't see that working.
For one thing we are talking hundreds of entities including NPC ships active at any one time, and writing every detail of them and what they are doing via a third party (eg a log file) just doesn't sound practical. Also of course the log is just that, it is a log of info relevent to the player for diagnostic purposes - you wouldn't want it longer than it already is!
Also, which machine will actually host the game? That would take a bit of negotiation for just two players, but if you are seriously talking multiple players...
Are you aware also that there is a strict policy of never letting Oolite write to external programs. This is for security, of course, and is never likely to be compromised.
I must point out also that Oolite is a single player game. That's the way it is because that's the way we like it, and the dev team are far too busy inproving the game to put effort into something that is generally unwanted.
If you want multiplayer, just wait for Elite:Dangerous

[Gouanaco]

Subject: Oolite Multiplayer? Please read

I can't see that working.
For one thing we are talking hundreds of entities including NPC ships active at any one time, and writing every detail of them and what they are doing via a third party (eg a log file) just doesn't sound practical. Also of course the log is just that, it is a log of info relevent to the player for diagnostic purposes - you wouldn't want it longer than it already is!
Also, which machine will actually host the game? That would take a bit of negotiation for just two players, but if you are seriously talking multiple players...
Are you aware also that there is a strict policy of never letting Oolite write to external programs. This is for security, of course, and is never likely to be compromised.
I must point out also that Oolite is a single player game. That's the way it is because that's the way we like it, and the dev team are far too busy inproving the game to put effort into something that is generally unwanted.
If you want multiplayer, just wait for Elite:Dangerous

hmm yeh lol

T'was just a suggestion.
And what's that game your talking of? Elite: Dangerous
omg i completely forgot about this XD

lol im gonna have to watch that one

[Diziet Sma]

Suggestions are good.. and always welcome.. but please do take the time to read the thread and the linked references first.. it has been debated and discussed to death, by some very clever people.

Short version: For a wide variety of reasons, it simply is not physically possible. It would be easier to rewrite the game from scratch. But at that point, it would no longer 'be' Oolite.

[cim]

Guys i have an idea on how to do multiplayer. I came up with this sometime ago when i thought about trying to multiplayer into a 1 player game that was nearly impossible but! i thought of a way

And it could actually work in Oolite too.

That's not far off how you could actually workably implement it - but use the debug console protocol, which is at least somewhat designed for getting and setting information about the universe, rather than messing around with the log files. As I've mentioned upthread, someone who knew what they were doing could probably get a workable 2-player deathmatch LAN (the simplest form of network multiplayer) up and running in a few months that way. I suspect much more than that - including NPCs, cooperative play, working stably over internet rather than LAN, etc. - would be extremely difficult, though.

[Zireael]

The closest I see Oolite ever coming to multiplayer would be some sort of a database similar to Noctis's GUIDE which would store some sort of timed events in a persistent universe.

For example, for the first month the Old Worlds enjoy Navy/police protection. Then every month something could happen. A Thargoid invasion. A system changing its' government or tech level. A Navy excursion into witchspace reducing the chance of witchdrive malfunction.

Thoughts?

[Commander McLane]

The closest I see Oolite ever coming to multiplayer would be some sort of a database similar to Noctis's GUIDE which would store some sort of timed events in a persistent universe.

For example, for the first month the Old Worlds enjoy Navy/police protection. Then every month something could happen. A Thargoid invasion. A system changing its' government or tech level. A Navy excursion into witchspace reducing the chance of witchdrive malfunction.

Thoughts?

We sort of have something similar in the story-telling threads here, where I can follow and enjoy the events in other players' Ooniverses. However, these of course don't feed back into my Ooniverse (or into each other's Ooniverses, for that matter). I don't know Noctis, so I don't know whether that game has a mechanism for that.

One problem with a central database would of course be that because of OXPs our Ooniverses are so vastly different from each other. A typical event in your Ooniverse may be totally impossible in my Ooniverse, if I don't have the right OXP (or combination of OXPs).