Multi-Player and my quick thoughts on it, after my install

Okay, it's been talked about to death... maybe.... but unlike a new thread for questions, these are STATEMENTS, not questions... and are my personal observations, from a "newbie's" point of view... as I'm older, hardly tech savvy, and have never done multi-player stuffs in my life.

It took me roughly 5 or 6 hours, to get it all going, but when I did... at the early hour of 4:30am.... I was pleased to see that it worked surprisingly fine. Here are my 3 key takeaways that I got from my confusion in those ensuing 6 hours (that maybe should have been 30 minutes)... but whatever... I never said I was the sharpest tool in the shed:

1. On the BeamNG-mp home page, there is no .rar file anymore. Just download the .exe file pressing the green button and that's it.

2. Unless I'm wrong (and if I am, please do correct me); you need to download and install Discord to make this thing work. The launcher by itself doesn't do anything except just sit there, unless Discord is open and operating. They don't say that distinctly in so many words.

3. When you first get into the multiplayer version, it's like opening the regular game for the very first time. Everything will start vanilla/default, and if you have special key bindings to other hardware... you're going to have to rebind everything from scratch!
Good news is that once it's done... it's done. And you can have separate settings for the single game vs. the multi game, as they are completely independent from each other as far as that goes.
Think of multi-player as a parallel universe to your regular "single-player" game.

LATER EDIT:
4. When you join someone's MP session, you don't have to have the host map/car/parts/etc. already in your repo collection. While it's loading you in, it will automatically download and install everything you need.
Yes, when you end the MP session, the added items don't stay in your repo for the single player game. (I believe they store in a temp folder, until you're done with that particular MP session); but at least it takes care of it for you in the interim of just that session. Which is pretty cool, and something I was unaware of until last night, when I played with MP some more. (And because of that, I got to discover the Liberty Island Map, which is pretty neat for what it is).

I hope I've saved other people about 6 hours, by making the mundane assumptions that most people ignore... a little more obvious. I'm a very literal person. I prefer even the smallest steps made crystal clear, just to make sure I understand. I hope this helps someone.

LATER ADD IN: I shall also add that the experience was decent frame rate, smooth people driving around me, all name tags on the map displayed as they should, and apart from the occasional "spawn-in" pause when others enter the session... the game faired very well. All physics in other people's crashes was observed to be accurate. I didn't see anything terribly out of the ordinary like people spawning their cars on other people's cars... but then again... maybe I just got lucky.
The game did wind up crashing while in session, just once... but that's small potatoes in something so incredible that we even have in our midst in the first place... so I'll give that a giant pass for the time being.

In conclusion, what amazing times we live in now. A year ago the devs said, multi won't work, so stop asking. Now it's amazing it's here, and I reckon in another six months, it will be even better and treated like a foregone conclusion-- as though it had been here all along. Funny how perspective and time passed does that to us.

 

One of the current obstacles with the MP is latency. Let's say you're driving at 60mph down a road, and your friend rear ends you. On his screen, you've been hit, but due to latency, he was a few meters behind you

 

You can just copy the settings folder over from your singleplayer cache and put it into the multiplayer install, and it restores all your keybinds and settings.

 

Oh ok. Haven’t played it often enough to notice it yet, but that makes sense.
--- Post updated ---

Oh thanks for sharing. I didn’t even think about that option, though I’m not really knowledgeable enough on the game’s details, to know where to find that cache file.
I guess I could have saved myself some time if I had known that.

 

You need to have discord open to make this work????

 

Well I can’t say for sure that it’s got to be open while playing, but it certainly has to be installed on your computer— with you having an account/username/password.

Somehow I believe it recognizes it’s in there. In my case I think I’ve gone to open Beam, it automatically fires up Steam, and then Discord gives some sort of display to indicate that it’s at work somewhere.

I lay you a bet that if you were to Ctrl/Alt/Del, and look at your task manager under Applications, Discord is doing something in the background, even if you didn’t open it, or are not actively in it.

My understanding (albeit limited), is that the BeamMP server is the means by which to convey your computer’s data to others, but Discord is the conduit (or pathway) that allows data to travel.

If I’m wrong, someone please correct me. I hope I’m not offering you misinformation.

This is my first excursion into this realm of gameplay. I’m a child of the 1970’s, and grew up with something called “Video Pong”. You played it on your TV and vertical hashmarks were your paddles!
(You know... just to help put things in perspective!).