The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I probably am not the first one to suggest this... but what about updating a little of the code to handle input via TCP/IP... instead of having your friend sit next to you, we could all do well with some net-based super melee!

Hmm. No I don't think that network melee had been discussed before. That's a very interesting idea. Perhaps the develpers will throw an option in for that in a later version.

I think internet melee is higher on the priority list though....

That's what he's talking about...

Also, it has been discussed before.
An implementation which could handle the usual latency on the internet would require a total rewrite of the melee code. This is something which we are not prepared to do at this time.

How hard would a low-latency LAN version be?

Not too hard. Basically, you'd keep the game at both ends synchronised at all time.
At every chance the player has to do something, you'd need to wait for the other party to transmit its move/non-move.
Now, a player has the chance to respond every frame, which is 24 times per second. So you'll need at least a link with a worst time (not average) latency of 41.6 ms.
If you only allow a player to respond every two frames, which is probably still (just) enough not to be noticed by humans, a link with double that latency is acceptable.
A lan has many times better response times than this, and if you're close together it should even be playable this way on the internet.

All this being said, this still doesn't have a high priority for us at this time.

I am sorry - I thought he meant network melee - not the internet but only through a network.

Also, looking at the different ships, some would be disadvantaged against a human player. I would think that if we ever did the system we could base it off of points. For instance, you could have a 200 point team, thus you could select ships as long as the total ended under 200 points.

Only problem, we would have many ships abandoned. Take for example the Thraddash, Illwrath, (Supox maybe) Earthling, Vux, Umagh, Syreen and Zot-Fot-Pik.  
Anyone see a way around this or am I mentally one the moon?

 

The Internet is a network. Three guesses where the "net" in Internet stands for.
The word you're looking for is LAN (local area network) or possibly "intranet".


Why would this be any different from playing against a human player on the same computer?

OK - LAN, you are very correct, But I think everyone got what I meant.

Meep-eep, regarding your second quote:

There is no difference between human versus human over the internet and over the keyboard. Except for a few things:

Tactics, for one, everyone is going to start out with his/her tactics. Thus resulting in some interesting battles. But as time goes on everyone will revert to one tactic. They will also "forget" certain ships. The reason why this will very likely happen is because it will be play multi-player MUCH more. Not to mention you won't be playing with just your friends and thus just your friends and yours tactics.

So what I am suggesting is that someone who knows what they are doing can "adjust" certain ships to make them better. Such as making the cone longer on a umagh etc.

There are other differences, but I have to get offline now. If you watn Meep-eep I can post them for you.

We are not planning on changing the ship properties as they were decided on by TFB.
Neither are we planning on implementing network play in whatever form any time soon for that matter.