Skyrim Multiplayer / Co-op?

[kuro1n]

I find it funny when people claim it doesnt work or the engine doesnt support it etc, yet they have NO CLUE whatsoever they just repeat what they've read by other most likely clueless people. Obviously it IS possible, its just very hard and even harder to get going good.

And yea having a lan mod would be good enough and enjoyable, i mean 2 people, 1 person takes the role of the companion for example and the first person got control over the normal character + equipment and all that stuff. Companion person cant interact with the world in other ways than doing damage heal etc for example.

*sigh*

I challenge you to explain a practical approach for integrating a remotely controlled compaion online, having the two clients to render the same world and actors and each one playing as the pc in their client. Having previously worked with OB and FO3 engine and programmed some online applications, I see no serious way to achieve this. But if you have the knowledge, I'd love you to share some concepts with us.

Your pretty words and "*sigh*" doesnt make it harder, as there has been mods for oblivion where mutiplayer has been supported (not perfect but its there, a fast search revealed oblivion reborn for example and I've seen friends jump around in a somewhat laggy shared environment) I dont see how you can be so certain that cant be done for skyrim, a new game a new engine where the mod tools arent even out yet so I think you should stop acting like a besserwisser.

 

Also as this is a new engine that will most likely be used for other titles there is a chance they tried to make the engine somewhat adaptable for future uses.

 

EDIT: Spelling etc.

EDIT2: To save some time you could for example check http://www.qwerty-games.com/viewvc/OblivionReborn/ for the oblivion reborn source.

Edited November 24, 2011 by kuro1n

[necKros]

I find it funny when people claim it doesnt work or the engine doesnt support it etc, yet they have NO CLUE whatsoever they just repeat what they've read by other most likely clueless people. Obviously it IS possible, its just very hard and even harder to get going good.

And yea having a lan mod would be good enough and enjoyable, i mean 2 people, 1 person takes the role of the companion for example and the first person got control over the normal character + equipment and all that stuff. Companion person cant interact with the world in other ways than doing damage heal etc for example.

*sigh*

I challenge you to explain a practical approach for integrating a remotely controlled compaion online, having the two clients to render the same world and actors and each one playing as the pc in their client. Having previously worked with OB and FO3 engine and programmed some online applications, I see no serious way to achieve this. But if you have the knowledge, I'd love you to share some concepts with us.

Your pretty words and "*sigh*" doesnt make it harder, as there has been mods for oblivion where mutiplayer has been supported (not perfect but its there, a fast search revealed oblivion reborn for example and I've seen friends jump around in a somewhat laggy shared environment) I dont see how you can be so certain that cant be done for skyrim, a new game a new engine where the mod tools arent even out yet so I think you should stop acting like a besserwisser.

 

Also as this is a new engine that will most likely be used for other titles there is a chance they tried to make the engine somewhat adaptable for future uses.

 

EDIT: Spelling etc.

Yeah... new engine, right.

 

Sorry if my attitude seemed wrong to you, but you're pretty much implying things that are not true. Again, if you have any new ideas on the matter I'd like to know, because it is an interesting subject.

 

This is one of the best OB online projects:

 

They even got to display animations in the "inserted" remotely controlled actor. But that's as far as you can probably go. There are some client-server, or client-client interactions that are probably too hard to implement. I'm pretty sure these issues will remain the same in Skyrim, because the engine hasn't changed in its core. You can tell that right away after some minutes of gameplay.

[kuro1n]

No I cant say I have a new take on the project as I am a artist not a programmer. However saying its impossible to create is wrong, its certainly possible to support some kind of multiplayer, oblivion reborn had synced stats, npcs, animations (afaik) and some other things but they stopped with the project when they got some commercial project started. The problem imo is that the ones capable of doing a mod such as this will need a lot of time and they could spend this time on making money on a commercial project instead.

 

How many would choose to work on a mod for free over potentially making money instead, me and a friend of mine have worked with mods and projects but ended up quitting due to better opportunities showing up as we progressed.

 

EDIT: Id say the biggest challenge is to get the data that is transferred optimized so you dont have lots of unnecessary data being transferred. I mean if they didnt have so high latency or lag it would most likely look quite decent.

Edited November 24, 2011 by kuro1n

[leewells]

I don't quite understand the logic of this... Skyrim's landscape is way to dynamic and anchoring on the *single* player. For an example If you came into the game and went through Helgen and your friend comes through 15 mins later, they can't complete the quests because Helgen is in ruins already.

 

A server would have to process quests and dynamic content for each individual player and keep track of them along side of each other which is already rather cpu intensive with just one player, the best server out there wouldn't be able to do this with more than 10 players.

 

As someone else posted, the engine would have to have been developed with client/server states, else you cannot pass game specific calls (via loopback or network) except in memory which would be very dangerous if you didn't trust those friends with your PC.

 

The biggest thing would be the combat system. The combat system, as it stands, relies heavily on your PC's interpretation of aim and skill, therefor it it were multiplayer, the server would have to trust each node to make its own calculations of hits/crits/kills and pass those events to the server, else you would have to have a 40mbit connection just to play (that would be billions of packets a second.....).

[kuro1n]

Yea i kinda came to the same conclusion but the small scale this mod would be for it wouldnt be very serious as long as there is a way to ban/kick a user. : )

[Symphonicx666]

It all sounds like a massive pipe dream to me. I know there's some dedicated modders out there but this doesn't feel even remotely achievable.

 

I agree a MP version of Skyrim would be absolutely un...be...liev...able....But personally I'd say the mod community would be better served at concentrating on making Skyrim an even better SP experience.

[Kazakovich]

Can it be done? Perhaps, With a lot of engine-squeezing and fingers crossed. Maybe not very well, but I wouldn't say we won't have a co-op/multiplayer variety a few years down the line.

 

Should it be done? I'm not so sure... Thing is, Skyrim, like its predecessors, is singe-player centered. It's what dictates how everything is designed. It's a decision taken very early on, and in order to make the best out of a co-op experience, you'd have to do a lot of overhaul work in the very basic design of things. Now, the payoff of all this is, of course, relative, but at least for me, I'd rather have a well-crafted single-player experience.

 

Of course, I don't oppose of anyone trying. How could I, it doesn't affect me unless I choose to, and it would be an ambitious and impressive task, to say the least.

[Scorpio9]

First of all, I'm not programmer and I don't intend to be one, my programing knowledge is basics of html, javascript and css - so I suck.

But, I know how things are developed, I worked and I'm still working on some games.

I also understand the hype of players who know nothing about game development and mods like this.

 

 

This is how I vaguely imagine co-op process:

 

- disable everything for player1 (turn it to placeholder)

- integrate player2 (only placeholder)

- split screen (each player has his part of screen)

- connect/fixate/assign cameras to players (so every player can see him self like he's playing SP)

 

- add aura, circle whose center is player 1, basically it prevents player 2 from going to far from player1 (r = 10m, aprox.)

- enable controls input: player1 (mouse + keyboard), player2 (gamepad)

- integrate basic movement (W,A,S,D) controls for both players (player 2, gamepad equivalent of W,A,S,D)

- add player tracking ability to camera (true SP camera example: running in 3rd person)

- add models and walk animations

 

- integrate advanced controls: jump, run, sprint, sneak, attack

- add ability to aim and connect it with camera and player fixation

- add animations

 

- give to player1 admin privileges, only he can: enter/exit region, talk to NPCs... other main stuff

- player 2 has roll of companion

 

- integrate menu for each player and make it real time

- add advanced controls (menu controls, quick slots...)

- enable for both players to interaction with objects (pickup, loot, alchemy...)

 

Now we have playable game and online hell of development process can start.

Sry for inconsistencies, proffesional programer could write several pages on this, but for 15min of typing can't be that bad. :)

[necKros]

Let's just better wait for a TES Online.

 

 

(BELIEVE).

Edited November 24, 2011 by necKros

[PaladinRider]

Less time consuming to make a whole new game from scratch with multiplayer in mind. If I recall, but I cannot support it, the Oblivion multiplayer was done via synching text files.. I believe they were basically creating text files constantly, because that was about the only way to get the information required out of the engine. Not the best medium, you can image, short of re-updating the NPCs representing the actors. Again, I cannot support this, it's just something I've read. Certainly out of my grasps.

 

A little bit irritating too as I'm pretty tired of seeing a new multiplayer thread every week.