Multiplayer were are you? devs are you reading this?

I know this probably has been brought up before on this forum, but were the heck is multiplayer?, what can be more fun than players crashing into each other?, demolition derbies, all out wreck fest, last car standing....lots of possibilities here.

 

They have other features they are worrying about before they are implementing multiplayer. Tdev/Thomas has already mentioned in previous threads that multiplayer will eventually be put into the game, also this game is still in early access/alpha and not even beta yet so stop complaining.

 

There has been a dry spell of new multiplayer threads for the last few months, and when last I checked, BeamNG's search system wasn't very good, so I won't fault you for not noticing that questions in regards to multiplayer have a bad reputation among forum regulars. Especially with how many times this has been brought up. I may even forgive you for failing to notice the other multiplayer thread that has been floating around the last few weeks and all of the information that it contains.

But that you boldly decided to post two separate threads about multiplayer within two minutes of one another is something else entirely.

 

Just a few weeks ago or more there was the small debate in the last "Mutiplayer?" thread

Debate from around two weeks ago

Also

Yesterday: RelaventMpThead

 

seriously more people would buy it if it had multiplayer don't ya think?

 

indeed more people would buy it if it had a fully working multiplayer.... but as covered many many times over, the important thing to do initially is to make a game that works and would be worth the huge task of programming a multiplayer system for. Not to mention the sheer computational complexity of having two computers running full soft bodies synchronized over the limeted bandwidth of the internet

 

Why not have the physics calculated server-side then?

 

It's smart but it would clog up fast. Say you only have 4 players on a server; they all spawn 2 cars each; 8 cars/vehicles now need to be calculated. Point is resources would get eaten up fast on very powerful machines that cost lots to run and produce.

 

Maybe the first couple players get the physics calculated server side then the rest of the players have to have a good PC.

 

That isn't practical and would be annoying in practice.

 

Server side physics does not rectify the need to high bandwidth

 

I think this really needs a more creative solution. I'm not speaking from experience but it seems like there are some things that could be done. Have a small set of master nodes that are tracked and synced between players and let most of the nodes be calculated locally, have a simple locator that moves these nodes quickly and have the deformation interpolated in between. Could also have LOD's for the models as well as the node/beams for cars that arn't the local players, could also dynamically sync less nodes at a distance. Things wouldn't be perfect but it seems like it would be a good start toward a reasonable amount of data to sync. Parenting and stuff! idk =D

 

IMO, for now just LAN servers would be OK.

 

And for the umpteen billionth time. LAN versus internet makes no difference.

 

On a LAN connection you can have up to 1Gbps with a ~2ms ping so there are fewer constraints so it's a lot easier to implement.

 

Except its not any easier to implement.

Performance is higher yes. But from a code perspective, its the same. ok there is nat, not a major issue, that is basically the only addition required for online play though. Otherwise, you simply open a TCP or UDP socket to a destination IP address and port regardless of whether its LAN or WAN