Project Trinity

[CarThief]

I dont think i've ever seen Zandronum desynch even once, even on the typically laggy US servers or semi-laggy servers. As long as no clientside only stuff like actors is in place i dont think that ever was or will be a problem.
I did hear survival multiplayer being a tad buggy, one person was unable to start Yurei Battle via the multiplayer menu, i think this was due to zandronum not assigning the correct gameplay flags, as doing this manually via the console and enable survival and cooperative did work just fine. Yurei Battle also worked just fine and dandy when hosted online as it bypassed that menu and just used the appropiate commands directly.

I wouldnt know of any other survival-based bugs though, if all else fails, perhaps make a coop mode and create a prison area? ACS could easily teleport players out of the prison area at the start of the game and any latecomers who join would spawn in prison, as well as any respawning players. Though if you're going this route you might want to add an default variable that allows for max retries, or infinite retries, of course.

[CutmanMike]

I get them all the time when coding interesting monster/boss behaviors.

I've spent all day recoding a lot of things to see how viable this thing will be for multiplayer... and it's not looking good. The fact things like randomization and jump states don't sync up correctly online, and how often I rely on these things to make enemies do things, is making it tough to conclude that it's worth bothering to make it compatible for online play. At least in Zandronum. The netcode in ZDoom is far more precise and doesn't require me reinventing inventory structures just so it displays things on the HUD correctly

[Balrog]

Doesn't ZDoom's netcode require a metric shitload of bandwidth and have various other niggles that led to pragmatic solutions like Zandronum in the first place?

[CutmanMike]

It does, which is why I'd much prefer to use Zandronum... if it will let me.

Release a singleplayer version now, then finish the multiplayer version later.

Could do this (except the now part, it's nowhere near done).

[Balrog]

It does, which is why I'd much prefer to use Zandronum... if it will let me.

Release a singleplayer version now, then finish the multiplayer version later.

Could do this (except the now part, it's nowhere near done).

Except then you'll have no motivation to do the multiplayer version because of how inferior it would be. If you're going to do that, just target singleplayer-only ZDoom and take advantage of the not-terrible modding features. (This is in contrast to skulldro, who are usually at least 1000 SVN revs behind ZDoom.)

[CutmanMike]

Indeed. I know people will cry out for a multiplayer version though so I have to try. I'll see how online testing goes with what I got so far and decide from that I think.

[CarThief]

Hm, guess i havent ran into anything as intensively coded then that would trigger such desynchs. Would it perhaps work better if there was a non-random pattern, or a pattern that was dependant on the player's location or status (kinda like fighting games)? Though it kinda runs the risk of people reading the patterns and sort of laming the boss out with that, possibily.

Or maybe you could create different versions of these bosses/enemies or give them a flag/item that sets gives them a unique but non-random pattern to act upon? Its better then nothing i suppose. Did learn alot of the art of compensation and trickery coding-wise while making stuff for GTA2, so perhaps ultimately something more simplified might work, too. As damn, that game has one unstable engine when doing alot of stuff or fancy crap and its multiplayer is so prone to desynch or crashing all the time.

Or perhaps its worth asking the developers to make the randomized state jumping and other random using things more stable online?

[CutmanMike]

I've decided to keep the project singleplayer for now. I will however write the ACS as if I was writing it for multiplayer, so if Zandronum does fix a couple of things it won't be too difficult to edit it for online play.

[Colonel ServBot]

Well, the thought of this thing being offline makes me shed tears of joy.
I don't always have the ability to go online, and when I do, I can't play MM8BDM because of that Zandronum Server Limit and my inability to set up DoomSeeker. Not to mention the unforgivable lags
Also, even if this isn't meant for online play, it won't stop fans from making their own mods and online co-op campaigns.
Plus, I believe this might draw more fans towards CutStuff.

[CarThief]

I dont think singleplayer was ever to be scrapped in the first place, MM8BDM had it from the start and even GVH could be played in offline bot matches, as simplistic as it was. Later on he even went and added campaigns and Yurei Battle, so i dont think CMM would neglect singleplayer so easily. :P

And i'm certainly gonna see if i can make it work online myself when its released, while i'm no master at super-complicated coding, there's always practical solutions and replacements to be had that might strain the engine less. How long do you think its gonna take before its complete or a beta comes up anyway? Or still too early to speak of such?

And the ACS is causing the desynchs? I would have thought it would be the intensive decorate coding instead, honestly. Given some mods out there that use such an intense amount of ACS, no doubt.

[CutmanMike]

It's the decorate stuff, it's very limiting.