The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release => General UQM Discussion => Topic started by: Zor-Ath#3 on February 11, 2004, 09:31:25 pm



Title: UQM online
Post by: Zor-Ath#3 on February 11, 2004, 09:31:25 pm
Does anybody know if it's possible to make UQM online? In my opinion that would be one of the greatests games ever.


Title: Re: UQM online
Post by: Culture20 on February 11, 2004, 09:40:38 pm
I direct you here:
http://uqm.stack.nl/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Gendiscuss;action=display;num=1075885072
It starts out about a magazine article, then quickly degenerates into an old discussion about why official UQM won't have internet melee.  Then, one of the Devs offers a glimpse of hope by offering coding assistence to someone who might head an unofficial network melee...

Bottom line: it's pretty difficult to do, none of the devs want to tackle it since it doesn't mesh with their original plans (reproduction of SC2), and there are a couple of networked clones that many people think are good enough.

There's an older discussion further down that goes more in depth, but I'm too lazy to search right now.


Title: Re: UQM online
Post by: FalconMWC on February 12, 2004, 12:49:09 am
Are you referring to this thread Culture20?
http://uqm.stack.nl/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Gendiscuss;action=display;num=1067655835;start=


Title: Re: UQM online
Post by: Deep-Jiffa on February 12, 2004, 01:27:38 am
Quote
Are you referring to this thread Culture20?
http://uqm.stack.nl/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=Gendiscuss;action=display;num=1067655835;start=

I am sure he refered to my thread, but I am also sure that he didn't have time/will to dig in the forum until he will find this old thread.


Title: Re: UQM online
Post by: FalconMWC on February 12, 2004, 01:38:43 am
Just double-checking that I got the thread that he was talking about - Nothing to get anxious about DJ.


Title: Re: UQM online
Post by: Culture20 on February 12, 2004, 02:29:59 am
Yep, that's the one I was thinking about.  There were earlier ones, but they didn't have explainations that were as lengthy.


Title: Re: UQM online
Post by: Michael Martin on February 12, 2004, 06:28:31 am
I should probably make this a FAQ, but nobody seems to read that.

"There will be no netplay in 1.0" assumes that the community outside of the current group of programmers does nothing but playtest until 1.0 comes out.

We've had, to date, two cases where people fabricated entirely new components and bolted them on to the infrastructure -- the graphics scalers, and a replacement for the OpenAL requirements.  Netplay would also require recruiting a co-developer.

If someone were to step forth with the experience and desire to add netplay, we'd listen seriously.  Just off the top of my head, I'd want to see two things before I'd be willing to call them "the netplay guy":
  • Enough understanding of the combat code to say how it currently works and what would need to be done to make it client-server.
  • Enough understanding of network coding to be able to design a combat protocol.
  • The ability to code SDL's networking library, preferably with a demo so I can see vaguely what it's supposed to look like.  (I don't know the first thing about networking.)
Now, netplay itself will be touching two major aspects of the program -- the part that reads input from the players and reacts to it, and the part that keeps track of what the application in general is supposed to be doing.  Both of those aspects are things where I'm currently either doing the modification, or where I wrote the system to begin with -- so working out the mechanics of tying a networking system into the game proper is mostly going to involve dealing with my code, so I'd be fielding most of those questions, and during development we'd probably be needing to keep one another posted so that our patches don't get in each other's way.

(Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that my three requirements for "netplay guy" boil down to "learn and handle all the stuff that we wouldn't otherwise need for all features of the original game."  The core team's job is to make sure 1.0 happens; co-developers are the only ones adding goodies right now.)