Working Multiplayer Attributes ??

[buasudah]

Just tried multiplayer and it seems none of the attributes work except flying (from what ive tested so far).

I was under the impression that only "not multiplayable" marked attributes don't work in mp, could someone explain it to me?

Is there a list of attributes that do work, and if not, could anyone PLEASE write at least a few of them so i don't have to test everything..     thanks.

[buasudah]

Anybody..??  Any info would be greatly appreciated..

[Epimethee]

Sorry, multiplayer is currently not enabled in FFX 3 – the references are leftovers from FFX 2 for the the first game. TaskmasterX did work on getting multiplayer in FFX 3, but I don't think he was able to released a finished product so far. It is complicated work and there are few people interested in MP.

I guess we ought to remove the references to MP in upcoming versions.

[BentonGrey]

Well, although I haven't had the opportunity to play MP much at all, I was hoping to have a much greater use for it soon.  I for one would have interest in seeing it developed...although I understand that y'all have more than enough on your plates.

[buasudah]

I dont understand, are you tellin me all FFX attributes dont work, or that none of them work?
Do all/some/any of SCRIPTED or BUILT-IN work ??   
 
Please be more specific..

[Mystik]

non of the ffx attributes wrk- most if not all attributes that came with the game should work

[buasudah]

thanks for the clarification and may i say - THAT'S HORRIBLE!

really hope somebody does something about it..

[BentonGrey]

Yeah, you definitely can't fault the FFX team.  They have created INCREDIBLE toys for us, and all for the joy of doing it.

[buasudah]

Man this game IS a lot of joy and im not blaming anyone im actually very grateful its just a damn shame thats all..

Please tell me one more thing, is there maybe more "multiplayability" in previous versions of FFX ??

[stumpy]

Well, not to not throw as big a damper on this, but I don't think we ever explicitly turned off FFX for MP. My understanding was that there are plenty of FFX attributes that might work okay in MP. But, some (most?) definitely won't and the majority just weren't written with MP in mind and have never been tested for it.

Testing is the biggest single roadblock to FFX in MP. With a single-player game, I can check an attribute I am writing by just starting a mission and seeing how it works. When it's buggy, I spend some time tracking down the bug and rewriting the code and then test again. Rinse and repeat. It's tedious at times, but I can do it at my own pace, at three in the morning, or at lunch while at work, or whatever. With MP, basically, I need someone at the ready to download new code dozens of times, replay a session, tell me what happened and upload his log files, etc. That can be a real drag, especially because half of the changes are little things like adding a print statement or something, then running, then spending 15 minutes figuring out what the new info means (while my testing partner is waiting). Honestly, I would probably not fiddle with MP FFX unless I had two computers in front of me on a LAN so I could do it myself.

That said, someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but out of dumb luck, some FFX attributes will work because they don't do anything that needs special treatment in MP. That might include a big chunk of the FFX attributes (think FAST FLIER, maybe ACROBATIC, etc.). And, some will simply not work, and a few may even cause FFX to crash and burn. And, some may work if one is careful about branding and transferring files like ffxcustom.py between computers. My point is, I don't think it's a simple "FFX either works in MP or it doesn't." Some attributes may work and others will not. It's a case-by-case thing.

[buasudah]

Thanks Stumpy, i get it now. Hope you get to that 2 computer lan testing sometime.. Actually, hope a bunch of you guys get together and make everything multiplayable hehe..

[Epimethee]

Thanks for clarifying this, Stumpy.

[DrMike2000]

Just to clarify how hard this is:

Custom Commands dont trigger at all across FF multiplayer.
If we're in a MP game, and I have a special TK LIFT command on all cars in the level because I have the Telekinesis attribute, then when I do this, your PC has absolutely no idea that Ive just called this command.

Why should it? The FF multiplayer game that shipped had NO need of cutsom commands in MP.

What I found, experimentally, was that when the car got picked up and moved on my PC as a result of the TK command, the same object wouldnt move on your PC and the two got badly out of synch. I think in FFvTTR, this caused both games to crash, or at least abort the multiplayer game.

I could have some invisible AIs spawned and damage them by specific amounts as a really cludgy way of passing messages between the two computers. I never actually wrote thei "musical mouse organ" method but it was hypothetically possible.

Thats if I was the host.

If I was the client using Telekinesis, and you were hosting the game, then I think there was absolutely NOTHING I could do. Damaging characters in script didnt work, so I was basically unable to proceed.

The fact that I remember all this a few years on is testimony to how hard I banged my head against this particular wall, and how much it hurt.

So yeah, no Multiplayer for you, Im afraid. It cant be done.

[stumpy]

Thats if I was the host.

If I was the client using Telekinesis, and you were hosting the game, then I think there was absolutely NOTHING I could do. Damaging characters in script didnt work, so I was basically unable to proceed.

Yikes! I was thinking in terms of setting up the semaphores using that approach - have a set of dummy tiggots and pass data by damaging them via script, the data stringified and packed into floats. That's sort of a pain on it's own (because of the need for some handshaking). But, if scripted damage on the client doesn't get passed to the host (or, presumably, to the other clients), then that idea is shot and we really are SOL with any attribute that requires that sort of sync across nodes. Given that odd asymmetry between damage reporting between host and client, I don't even know that conceptually straightforward attributes like INVULNERABLE would work without a major rewrite (basically turning FFX off for the attributes off on all the clients), if at all...

I suppose we could try importing a python communications protocol module into the game, but even something 'simple' like telnet would really be getting into a no-man's-land of dealing with firewalls, IP resolution, ping latencies, etc. Blech. :wacko:  Once again, IG didn't quite give us the tools we need here...


Hmm. Do powers like Increase (bumping a character's speed) work in MP?

[DrMike2000]

I think.. cant quite remember...

Setting a characters speed (for example) on the host took effect, but if you did on the client nothing happened.

If the trigger happened both ways, eg it was a hex to speed drain swap, then it would activate that code on the host and so it would work. But doing it on the client only (say via a MAKE ME FASTER command that the client uses) would either do nothing or cause the character to get out of synch and crash.

And I think this tolerance for script-edited movement got worse with FFvTTR - trying to do pretty much anything would cause the MP game to terminate.

To be honest, working multiplayer was up there with trying to get first person camera controls - the FF game just wouldnt do it with the modding tools we had.

My recommmendation for anyone wanting good mutliplayer is to get City of Heroes instead.