Serving MOUL Peer To Peer

[JWPlatt]

Greetings,

I am not familiar with age building or how Uru works internally, so I have the luxury of not being bound by thoughts of impossibility. Has any thought been given to integrating a server and netcode module into CC or TPOTS to support peer to peer multiuser play? I don't mean to ask that it work for hundreds of people. I'm aware enough of the load and communication issues to know better. I just mean for small groups of people, say two to ten, to visit the Cavern and other ages together without needing to rely on a single server. And if you were feeling adventurous with your programming, allow node servers for people who have high bandwidth availablity and who can link to another node server with another small group of people.

I'd like to hear how it could work rather than why it wouldn't.

[TomahnaGuy]

Uru (Live) was designed to run using an external server. The way the game was developed makes the code in it talk to the server - the server code is the "python" code which allows the client and the server to communitcate. Unfortunately, I don't see any plausible way to do multi-way communication without the use of a server.

Someone else might know though.

TG

[Goofy]

I've had a idea of having the standalone clients modified so that they can connect to a server, but keep what they already have. The server would have player made content on it. Kinda like I think conan works(I think its conan). Basicly the single player game would be modified so its online componet is active and it points to a multi-player server for more content.

I'm sure its possible, but I'm also sure it would be alot of work and very time consuming.

[JWPlatt]

That doesn't sound like what I propose, though I like the idea of being able to serve your own content. That is a natural extension of a peer to peer Uru. Each peer would need to have a local copy of your content to participate. Perhaps implement a more automatic download to get it upon demand. What I am saying is, like most games today (e.g. Microsoft's Age of Empires/Mythology series), each client can also be a server. Some also have the option, as you suggest, to connect to a more powerful commercial server as a service. I imagine the same should be true for Uru (and was). Peer to peer would better guarantee the continued existence of Uru even if a commercial server (e.g. GameTap) is discontinued.

[D'Lanor]

The net_age.fni file from UU contains a line: Net.P2P false

I have no idea how this should be set up if enabled though. Or if it does anything at all.

[TomahnaGuy]

That's interesting. I thought it was impossible for the Uru clients to connect.

TG

[Ashtar]

The net_age.fni file from UU contains a line: Net.P2P false

I have no idea how this should be set up if enabled though. Or if it does anything at all.

I remember someone mentioning at one time that the Peer-to-Peer directives we found in some of the UU config files was for the voice chat, which does use P2P communications from what they said.

Ashtar

[Chacal]

That doesn't sound like what I propose, though I like the idea of being able to serve your own content. That is a natural extension of a peer to peer Uru. Each peer would need to have a local copy of your content to participate. Perhaps implement a more automatic download to get it upon demand. What I am saying is, like most games today (e.g. Microsoft's Age of Empires/Mythology series), each client can also be a server. Some also have the option, as you suggest, to connect to a more powerful commercial server as a service. I imagine the same should be true for Uru (and was). Peer to peer would better guarantee the continued existence of Uru even if a commercial server (e.g. GameTap) is discontinued.

Several games have a "local server" feature, like the Battlefield series for instance. However this amounts to the same as a central server. You're just running the server code on your local machine. The physical location of the server code changes nothing. It would be a huge maintenance burden to have two different versions of the server.

So basically we are back to the idea of developing a server and making the code public so that anyone could start a shard.

[Lontahv]

I had an idea to make some global age that houses python-controllable network "puppets" for other avatars. This way, we could have everyone who isn't the local player be some kind of fan-made thing. Or... we could hack the exe... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...(huh? what'd I say wrong? )

~Lontahv

[MustardJeep]

P2P could happen but it will probably not happen in Uru:CC since you would have to alter code in countless places.

Seriously recreating Uru:CC with P2P integrated in a meaningful way would be on par with the creation of UU but with out the centralized control.

The biggest problem that I can see is that P2P would probably have to sacrifice some of the multi player synchronization. Implement a vault on each computer and you get sync issues between them, or leave the vault off and you get erratic behavior as someone kicks a cone sending it flying and you kick the same cone before their kick reaches you.

<Head explodes from the temporal paradox>

P2P isn't the holy grail ready to make Uru unsinkable, it's just a tool that could help take the load off a fan server.