Multiplayer Omod project

[tesgamer419]

Hello, the other day I thought of how amazing playing Oblivion co-operativly progress through and adventure through cyrodil. So this is how the idea for this project started. After disscusing the idea with my friend (th3fall3non3) austin, we dicided it is a completely plausable idea and with enough time could deffinatly be accomplished "although it may also me a coders nightmare". We quickly found that there is already a mod with the same objective and plan on seeing what that has instore. What i would like is for other ideas and if we find problems along the way you could be able to help "get ur hands dirty now and everyone could benefit from the excprience later." Our main objective is to have co-op gameplay equal to that of singleplayer gameplay with some exceptions ofcourse. We think its going to have to work allot like Fable where one player joins another players world over network connection and have simoltanious gameplay, be able to complete missions, advance levels ,check each others inventory, ect.Th3Fall3non3 and i will be checking back on the forum as much as possible to gather input and ideas for the mod so feel free to exspress your feelings . Thankyou.

[ub3rman123]

Unfortunately, you'd need to alter just about every script and quest in the game to get them to not explode when there's more than one player reference.

[Th3Fa113n1]

We are still in the early stages of development. We want the multiplayer to be similar to Fable 2's multiplayer (you join the other person's 'game world'). The main goals of the project:

* Allow animation sharing

* Allow the player to see the other player's equipped items/weapons

* Allow the players to be named, instead of just being 'Player One', 'Player Two', etc.

* Allow players to see each other's stats

 

There are many secondary goals that will be addressed in due time with more updates. Until them, the four major ones will be what we focus on. If you have any good ideas or would like to help, reply. Thanks.

[TabuKuroshi]

One problem is getting player A to be able to view player B's items, mods, etc... This would require some kind of cache to read from, unless you are going to have people connect via a common server, this is a big problem. Some people have 1gb+ in regard to mod space used.

 

Another is say you could get around this. What if Player A has a mod set in a cell while player B has a different mod in that same cell?

 

Then the issue Ub3rman mentioned.

 

From my point of view and that is from someone who isn't a programmer, I can see some major problems to overcome. For someone who knows more about it there must be tons of things they see as an obstacle.

 

Good luck, I would be cool to see something like this released.

[bben46]

There have been several projects started to do either what you propose or to make Oblivion into a Multi player type game. All have eventually been dropped as just too difficult. The game engine is not suited for this at all.

 

Some major problems that I can foresee, that is assuming you can get it to work at all. Low FPS due to having to process multiple players. Nearly every script would have to run twice - once for each player each time it ran - and a lot of scripts are running all of the time in the game. Low video resolution to compensate for the extra processing needed for multiple players. Hesitation to catch up on processing.

 

It would be easier to find a game engine that will support multi player or co-op playing and remake Oblivion - or a similar game to avoid copyright hassles.

[Th3Fa113n1]

Just to clear some things up:

 

The way that we intend the mod to work is not as a co-op questing mod or anything like that. It is intended to be used as a co-op slash-n'-bash mod where players can cooperatively delve dungeons, explore, etc. It will probably be run from a server.

 

When a player joins another's 'world', it should work like MultiTES4 where player 2 is represented as an NPC, which brings its own host of problems.

 

We do have many problems that need addressing, so we've made a long list of problems and their level of severity.

 

My first problem (being able to see the other player's equipped stuff) hasn't exactly been solved, but I found a nice work-around.

How it works:

Instead of being able to view the items that the player has equipped, the player will be able to equip 'equipment sets' of various types of equipment. These will be 'dummy weapons' and whatnot with zero value, weight, AR, damage, etc. that are just there so that the player isn't naked. The other player (on their own computer with their own inventory) will still have their items equipped, retaining their original AR, damage, enchantments, etc.

 

As of right now, I just made two sets (Full Iron/Mage robes) just as a proof-of-concept test.

 

The change is in the form of a scripted spell that can be cast on the other player to change the 'equipment set'. It opens a messagebox with the appropriate options. I will eventually add support for many kinds of armor, robes, weapons, and perhaps clothing as well.

 

Any other mods that we want support for, we will add support for. Until then, other mods may (probably will) cause some bugs.

[ub3rman123]

Still, even a basic dungeon must rely on some scripting. For example, the trap script for the swinging mace. It counts the player's health, and it has no choice for which player; there's only one player reference in Oblivion. It'll explode and go nuts if it counts 2 and I dunno what'd happen if it has to find two health variables.

 

Unless you're doing a very basic dungeon consisting solely of static objects (No NPC's, they'd probably bug up with two players as well), you'd need a lot more work.

[Th3Fa113n1]

As I said before: There will not actually be two players at once. Player 2 is represented as an NPC on Player 1's computer, and Player 1 is an NPC on Player 2's computer. Therefore, the slowdown is minimum (as far as extra scripts go).

[Nexus Set]

Check out obliviononline.com, if it's still around. You could probably get to play/test their alpha/beta.

[Th3Fa113n1]

Oblivion Online has been dead for years.