KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[t_v]

19 minutes ago, SkyFall2489 said:

4. Credit to @Vl3d - MMO. Not sure how to name this, but effectively players can be at different times to them, but their relative locations to the SOI center are displayed to others to allow for live interaction. Messes up physics sometimes, but offline players can be moving at 1x real time, so hopefully no kerbals starve.

This is actually my idea - Vl3d’s idea actually doesn’t mess up physics at all by having players synchronize to a server time after doing the operation they wanted to do. The downside is that while away from central server time, you cannot interact with other ships that are in central server time. My solution bypasses that by allowing anyone at any time in any scenario to interact at the expense of physics.  

 

[SkyFall2489]

50 minutes ago, t_v said:

This is actually my idea - Vl3d’s idea actually doesn’t mess up physics at all by having players synchronize to a server time after doing the operation they wanted to do. The downside is that while away from central server time, you cannot interact with other ships that are in central server time. My solution bypasses that by allowing anyone at any time in any scenario to interact at the expense of physics.  

 

Editing right now to correct it. Say, then isn't @Vl3d's idea just a limited version of the subspace warp system used by KSP1 multiplayer mods?

Edited July 7, 2022 by SkyFall2489

[t_v]

11 minutes ago, SkyFall2489 said:

Editing right now to correct it. Say, then isn't @Vl3d's idea just a limited version of the subspace warp system used by KSP1 multiplayer mods?

It is similar, but the difference is that no active effort needs to be made to synchronize the different bubbles, which means that interaction is facilitated in those cases. 

[Vl3d]

3 hours ago, t_v said:

3 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

Editing right now to correct it. Say, then isn't @Vl3d's idea just a limited version of the subspace warp system used by KSP1 multiplayer mods?

It is similar, but the difference is that no active effort needs to be made to synchronize the different bubbles, which means that interaction is facilitated in those cases. 

You can think of it as planet-wide subspace systems, where everybody plays in real-time (physics warp not allowed in multiplayer). Some extras added like space station bubbles. Everyone syncs to server time when they arrive. There's a kind of instancing.

In map mode during a journey there is only team based multiplayer. Every team / player has his own virtual time bubble.

It's all explained below - the main problem is that there's a transition when syncing to a planet after you arrive. So the celestial body configuration jumps as if you time warp to server time while in orbit or landed or whatever.

But at least it would be fun and it would not break causality.

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[SkyFall2489]

6 hours ago, Vl3d said:

You can think of it as planet-wide subspace systems, where everybody plays in real-time (physics warp not allowed in multiplayer). Some extras added like space station bubbles. Everyone syncs to server time when they arrive. There's a kind of instancing.

In map mode during a journey there is only team based multiplayer. Every team / player has his own virtual time bubble.

It's all explained below - the main problem is that there's a transition when syncing to a planet after you arrive. So the celestial body configuration jumps as if you time warp to server time while in orbit or landed or whatever.

But at least it would be fun and it would not break causality.

 

At this point, it's getting really confusing. We need to bring this mess into coherence so we know what we are debating before we debate it. Does anyone have any questions/clarification needed about my recently proposed Encounter system?

Oh, and why are we even arguing?

(taken from another thread about multiplayer, my comments a while ago)

On 4/8/2022 at 4:07 PM, SkyFall2489 said:

All of this... Great for some people, not for others. But what if we did both?

Keeping the main physics framework but allowing several different multiplayer "modes", as well as allowing mods to add more, lets every player play KSP2 their way. We don't have to go with one way or another.

On 4/8/2022 at 5:26 PM, SkyFall2489 said:

There's just way too many ideas, way too many arguments... That's why we need choice. This isn't a one or the other situation.

Might be hard to implement multiple multiplayer modes, but in a perfect world, this would be the best solution.

 

And then, I forgot about the third and fourth goals of KSP2 multiplayer:

3. working together on ship construction. As with any teamwork, divide and conquer to avoid chaos. But how do you divide? might not actually be a good idea, but some people want it. Maybe just have multiple peple work on sub-modules, and have one person put it all together? you can do that with craft file sharing in KSP1. No fancy multiplayer stuff needed.

4. teamwork in space, simulating the crew of a deep space mission. Either you're together, or you're apart. If you're together, no timewarp is needed, if you are apart, nearly any time warp system works.

So, looks like goals 3 and 4, although requiring some thought, can be discussed elswehere. Currently, the issue is the timewarp problem.

Edited July 8, 2022 by SkyFall2489

[Vl3d]

There should be at least 5 multiplayer systems:

1. Trading / market system

2. Team VAB / colony building in the same workspace

3. Cooperative team play on the same craft

4. General multiplayer (seeing other players in the game world and interacting with them)

5. Competitive (space race, team vs team, mini games)

Edited July 8, 2022 by Vl3d

[t_v]

7 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

Does anyone have any questions/clarification needed about my recently proposed Encounter system?

Oh, and why are we even arguing?

(taken from another thread about multiplayer, my comments a while ago)

On 4/9/2022 at 1:07 AM, SkyFall2489 said:

All of this... Great for some people, not for others. But what if we did both?

Keeping the main physics framework but allowing several different multiplayer "modes", as well as allowing mods to add more, lets every player play KSP2 their way. We don't have to go with one way or another.

I definitely agree that leaving multiplayer functions at least open to modification is a great way to fix this. Even if multiple options aren’t included in stock, allowing others to add them in would help

As for your encounter system, there might be a few bugs to sort out. When in an encounter, what ships warp? If a warping player’s ship is not in the encounter, what happens to it? How would outside observers see this? Would the ships be warped backwards to where they started but in the new configuration (e.g docked) or would they suddenly jump to the new position? Next, the dreaded problem of planetary positions. Can the planets for different players be different? Can they start an encounter if they are at different points in time? How would they do transfers then? 
 

These are only half of the questions that I have ready to be asked. Solutions that exist have lots of provisions to answer these questions in different ways, and you might find yourself running into them. If you only make the encounters happen when players are at the same time (corresponding to the same relative position of planets), then you just have subspace bubbles with an extra button to click. If you allow people to have any time they want but enforce a consistent time while in an encounter, then you have created a more flexible version of the MMO solution. If you allow people to start an encounter when their times are different (and the planets are in different spots) then you have created a kind of broken version of my solution. Encounters might fix a problem that the other solutions have, but the problems that the other solutions fix still have to be resolved. 
 

I should really make a post explaining exactly how the “timeless” “synchronization” system works because a lot of people don’t seem to be too concerned about functional causality breaks as long as gameplay doesn’t break

[SkyFall2489]

2 hours ago, t_v said:

I definitely agree that leaving multiplayer functions at least open to modification is a great way to fix this. Even if multiple options aren’t included in stock, allowing others to add them in would help

As for your encounter system, there might be a few bugs to sort out. When in an encounter, what ships warp? If a warping player’s ship is not in the encounter, what happens to it? How would outside observers see this? Would the ships be warped backwards to where they started but in the new configuration (e.g docked) or would they suddenly jump to the new position? Next, the dreaded problem of planetary positions. Can the planets for different players be different? Can they start an encounter if they are at different points in time? How would they do transfers then? 
 

These are only half of the questions that I have ready to be asked. Solutions that exist have lots of provisions to answer these questions in different ways, and you might find yourself running into them. If you only make the encounters happen when players are at the same time (corresponding to the same relative position of planets), then you just have subspace bubbles with an extra button to click. If you allow people to have any time they want but enforce a consistent time while in an encounter, then you have created a more flexible version of the MMO solution. If you allow people to start an encounter when their times are different (and the planets are in different spots) then you have created a kind of broken version of my solution. Encounters might fix a problem that the other solutions have, but the problems that the other solutions fix still have to be resolved. 
 

I should really make a post explaining exactly how the “timeless” “synchronization” system works because a lot of people don’t seem to be too concerned about functional causality breaks as long as gameplay doesn’t break

What ships warp: Ships selected to be in the encounter are copied into the encounter universe, with their old copies in the original universe deleted, having been replaced by the new, post-encounter ships. As the Encounter takes up only one SOI, planetary positions never matter. Players can't do transfers in encounters, but the act of doing a transfer is going to take a long time, needing time-warp anyways. Any ship not in the encounter is just jumped forward by the amount of time that passed in the encounter.

 

The point is to temporarily "merge" 2-5 single player worlds, with each player parting and going their separate ways when the encounter is done. In the MMO, there is one universe, in encounters, there are multiple, and the universe where players can interact is created and deleted each time. By making the universe small, to the size of a single SOI, we can ignore planetary positions and make the universe small enough that single time can work. (I mean everyone warps together by communal agreement, not time warp disabled.) Also, by decreasing the size of the SOI, we can reduce the computational load and the amount of stuff to be synchronized between players. 

 

Of course there will be ways to glitch the heck out of any solution, there may be Danny2462s as long as the KSP franchise exists. We can't fully debug everything, account for every edge case, so sometimes things will have to break.

 

And, not that i mentioned "in a perfect world."

If we look at the KSP1 multiplayer mods, we see:

LunaMultiPlayer, a mod that offers subspace warp and disabled time warp, has issues with certain things not synchronizing between players, such as any life support, rescue contracts, tweakscale...

As an LMP player, I can say that sometimes my vessels have mysteriously dissapeared, and the asteroid spawning system is all wonky - all because it was tacked on later and not well integrated into the game. Multiplayer mods are probably some of the hardest mods to make. Encounters might be one of the easier ones to mod, as less must be synchronized, and the rest can probably be copied from LMP's code.

[darthvader15001]

On 8/20/2019 at 5:16 PM, Geschosskopf said:

First, I have NEVER wanted MP in KSP

same.

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, darthvader15001 said:

On 8/20/2019 at 10:16 PM, Geschosskopf said:

First, I have NEVER wanted MP in KSP

same.

Ok, cool. You're in the MP discussion thread, so I can't really suggest much else than enjoy the MP discussions.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[Vl3d]

Let it be known that I have come to the logical conclusion that there will be a KSP2 single player mode in which AI-controlled teams will compete against you.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Vl3d

[SkyFall2489]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Let it be known that I have come to the logical conclusion that there will be a KSP2 single player mode in which AI-controlled teams will compete against you.

Could you explain your reasoning?

I know something like that exists in Children of a Dead Earth, a realistic near-future space combat game, but I'm concerned with how it will work with timewarp ,given KSP's much more advanced physics simulation. When the enemy does something while you are time warping, all that must be processed at warp speed.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Let it be known that I have come to the logical conclusion that there will be a KSP2 single player mode in which AI-controlled teams will compete against you.

Fixed that.

[pss88]

If there will be possibility to host private servers, sure someone will make KSP-bots to play with.

[Vl3d]

Speculation:

Single player will also have team-based gameplay, not only multiplayer. And we will probably be able to join single player sessions of friends.

The lines between single and multi player will be blurred.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Vl3d

[Xelo]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Single player will also have team-based gameplay, not only multiplayer.

Oh, team based multiplayer was confirmed?  
Or rather more specifically the Team vs Team gameplay your extrapolation on bots would suggest as opposed to just regular coop (everyone is in the same 'team').

[Pthigrivi]

26 minutes ago, Xelo said:

Oh, team based multiplayer was confirmed?  

No, nothing's been confirmed. We're reasonably optimistic multiplayer will exist, thats about it. 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Xelo]

47 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

No, nothing's been confirmed. We're reasonably optimistic multiplayer will exist, thats about it. 

Ah I see. Business as usual then. 

[SkyFall2489]

The single player joining of friends idea was effectively the same as myEncounter system I described a while ago.

[Vl3d]

2 hours ago, Xelo said:

Oh, team based multiplayer was confirmed?  

Yes sir.

"Because our team color application ..." - Nate

Edited August 1, 2022 by Vl3d

[SkyFall2489]

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Yes sir.

"Because our team color application ..." - Nate

Might that be misinterpreted?

That does seem like strong evidence though.

Edited August 1, 2022 by SkyFall2489

[Vl3d]

Just now, SkyFall2489 said:

Might that be misinterpreted?

That does seem like strong evidence.

Nate also liked this post:

In which I say:

"... There are "team colors" which clearly indicate multiplayer. This I think it's the most interesting point, because it defines "the team" as a primary abstraction into which "the player" is integrated. Meaning that multiplayer is a primary feature of all gameplay."

So I'm hopeful.

[Pthigrivi]

Or "team" could just be a consistent scheme each player or a group of players could chose for themselves in an ad-hoc way. He goes on to say each player can modulate each part's color scheme and opacity individually. There's no mention of multiplayer or how it will be structured, so there's no way to know whether this mention is meaningful. 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[SkyFall2489]

Like Space Engineers' Faction system, perhaps?

We really don't have much info to go on, and personally I'm happy to wait out the days until release if they don't push it back further.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

Like Space Engineers' Faction system, perhaps?

We really don't have much info to go on, and personally I'm happy to wait out the days until release if they don't push it back further.

Keep in mind that everything more than "you can choose the colors of parts" it's all wild speculation on based on almost nothing.

Let's not set ourself up for disappointment or wrong expectations. Nobody ever talked about teams or faction based systems.

Again, this is the way if you want to get another Cyberpunk 2077.