Multiplayer. Time acceleration. Opt out model for time synch.

[Habalabam]

(I didn't find a recent thread on multiplayer)

To me, the griefer potential of KSP is too massive for MMO.

Multiplayer, to me, will be my friends and me trying to set up some joint effort.

• Mining/refueling orbital stations.
  
• Establishing some large colony.
  
• Multicraft missions. Rescuing/Supporting each other. Space tugs.
  
• Flyby shenanigans (formation flying/dogfighting on Kerbal).
  
• Roleplaying a lunar mission (each one controlling a member of the crew in the same craft).
  

Gameplay wise, the large discussion seems to be around time warp. I've already dismissed the idea of MMO, so it seems to me that the best solution would be to have time acceleration set to the lowest that is desired by any one player. If somebody is in the process of landing on the Mun, the rest of the players will spend the time at 1x acceleration.

As long as it is easy for me to either watch the other players (performing their docking maneuver or whatever) or spend the time in the VSB, then I do not see it as a big problem. Of course, some good alarm clock thing is needed so that if the time warp is accellerated back up, then I have the time to jump back into my ship and proceed with my mission.

However, what if a player is driving a rover around or flying an airplane? These are long running activities that are spent in 1x. While doing this he may not really care about planets positioning. Should then the whole game wait for him? I don't think it would ruin his gameplay if suddenly the sun raced across the horizon, even though he was driving in 1x. So I feel that, in the name of players respecting each others time, you should be able to time accellerate in space while 1x operations are going on planetside.

But what operations are "planetside"? How would the game know that you are not caring about rendezvous, transfer windows, day cycles etc?

So here is my suggestion:

I believe that this must be a new toggle button alongside the Time acceleration controls. Call it timesynch, global time or something.

When enabled:

• You are part of the time control that includes satelites, planets, moons etc.
  
• Time accelleration for everybody in "global time" is decided by the lowest desired time acceleration among the players in "global time".
  

When disabled:

• You are NOT part of the global time. You can be in any time accelleration lower than the global time. You risk some weird effects. Such as the sun suddenly racing across the sky and turning things to night without affecting your driving your little rover. If you forget to enable "global time", you risk that your planned rendezvous target suddenly is on the other side of the planet. You may crash land on the mun and try to fix stuff (in 1x speed) for just 6-7 minutes and suddenly see the rescue mission coming for you even though it strictly speaking took much longer for the mission to get there.
  

If a person in "global time" desires 1x time acceleration, absolutely every player will be brought to 1x.

The crux of this idea is that although you cannot opt out of being "hampered", but you can opt out of hampering if your current mission/activity allows for it. It brings flexibility. It allows for a mostly FFA model if everybody has it disabled, and it allows the die hard gaming people of forcing 1x across the board.

This requires a good alarm clock feature, so that you can spend time in VSB if you do not want to follow the landing/launch/docking or whatever which is going on.... without having to baby-sit your in-transit vessel in case the time acceleration suddenly kicks back in.

What do you think?

[Feradose]

As a rover lover, I would mind if the sun started rushing in the sky, even at 100x timewarp.

Wouldnt matter a lot for planes, unless youre flying an SSTSomeCelestialBody that needs its launch window.

Waiting for someone to go to even Dres and making my sun rotate around Kerbin (haha) incredibly fast while I am on a mining operation would also be bad.

Also, do atmosphereless power landings count as planetary actions that do de-sync? Wouldnt feel great if your perfectly aligned landing zone was suddenly pitch black..

[Red Iron Crown]

I'm really curious about how timewarp will be handled in multiplayer when it comes to stock. Every implementation or suggestion I've read about it has one deep flaw or another. In this case the deep flaw is waiting: If I am in global time and have, say, completed an interplanetary transfer burn, I can only warp as fast as the slowest player who is also in global time.

[Nemrav]

hmm.. LCD sounds great for ~4 people stuff around Kerbin, I think if you went beyond that into ~10+ people who might be doing a mun base at intervals, it might get difficult to coordinate any kind of consistent ferry to the mun or yet worse beyond... I think the best system would be to take DMP and add a "player(s) sync lock" option (set a local LCD warp and attempt at all costs to keep these people in the same sync) in order to keep players doing bases or flying planes/rovers from desyncing (which I found to be a major problem with DMP).

[Starwhip]

The way KMP (Yes, the old mod) did it was having a method where players could sync to one another. If players were synced, and one timewarped, the sync was broken and they were on separate timelines. Each player could still timewarp separately in their own little timeline, and it would not affect the timelines of any other player. (Basically it created multiple instances of the universe)

I'd say that this is one of the best solutions to the dilemma.

[Red Iron Crown]

The way KMP (Yes, the old mod) did it was having a method where players could sync to one another. If players were synced, and one timewarped, the sync was broken and they were on separate timelines. Each player could still timewarp separately in their own little timeline, and it would not affect the timelines of any other player. (Basically it created multiple instances of the universe)

I'd say that this is one of the best solutions to the dilemma.

The deep flaw with that one is that races become about who timewarps the most aggressively rather than who actually completes the task fastest.

[DuoDex]

The deep flaw with that one is that races become about who timewarps the most aggressively rather than who actually completes the task fastest.

Easily solved - no timewarp

But I think a good way to fix that is to either a) bind the warpers together so they are always in the same subspace or give them a hard limit on how much time they can skip.

[Red Iron Crown]

But I think a good way to fix that is to either a) bind the warpers together so they are always in the same subspace or give them a hard limit on how much time they can skip.

Then we're back to waiting.

[tater]

Either every single player warps time in lockstep, of multiplayer is a nonstarter for me. I tend to be interested largely in games that require time compression (naval sims like Silent Hunter, or age of sail stuff assuming a game ever gets made that doesn't stink (not holding my breath)), and multiplayer ruins all of them. They're fine if you want a LOLCARTOON version, I guess.

[Habalabam]

I appreciate that the idea is understood.

Yes, the concern is that everybody will be slowed down to the lowest setting in global time, which will result in idle/waiting for other players. Unless you want players to go in different time lines, and then later "synch up", I don't see how you can avoid this.

The crux of my idea is the opportunity to opt out of global time so that lengthy treks with the rover are not frowned upon by people doing orbit transfers because they want to time warp. The pace of the game varies extremely.

Also, it is just a toggle button that with a simple concept allows to play the game in many ways depending on how the functionality is used.

But there are of course many things that still would need to be hammered out. For instance:

* How do we handle when players at different time accellerations come into proximity?

A: I'd say that they need to be slowed to the slower of the two.

* When you are doing small maneuvers out of global time on the Mun, will the Mun suddenly spin underneath you ("Smacking" you with a mountain peek)?

A: There seems to be a certain altitude for celestial bodies in KSP where the indicated speed jumps from surface speed to orbit speed. If you are below this threshold, I would say that your craft should follow the rotation of the planetoid (the sun will be racing around). If you are above this threshold, that's a tougher call.

The ideal thing would be to have EVA and such possible to be done outside global time as such activities can also be time consuming all the while you may not care about the rest of the universe. However, I cannot see how that could work. Multiple vessels (including the EVA kerbal) involved in any EVA/docking operation will have slightly different trajectories which needs to be reflected when global time accellerates.

So, I tentatively conclude that opting out of global time can only be possible planetside, which results in everybody having to wait for docking/space station assembly/EVA/repairs etc to be completed.

I still think it would be a big win if you were able to do 1x stuff planetside while not stopping others from doing time accelleration, even if it is restricted to planetside operations below the aforementioned altitude.

[kenbobo]

Or they could have a time warp poll.

"<USERNAMEHERE> wishes to timewarp <FACTORHERE> for <TIMEHERE>. Vote yes or no."

[EdusacconBR]

what about an independent time warp? like removing the days,years etc and warping how much you want to where you want?

or a warp in a 'bubble', when warping, no one sees you

[Habalabam]

what about an independent time warp? like removing the days,years etc and warping how much you want to where you want?

or a warp in a 'bubble', when warping, no one sees you

The problem is that when you time accelerate, you expect everything else to move as well. If we are allowed to time accelerate completely independantly, our two game sessions will not agree on where anything (moons, planets, space crafts, orbital stations etc) is. The point of multiplayer is that we operate in the same universe.

Let's take an example: If we are able to time accelerate completely independently (as you suggest), and we are both floating in space by the same space station. I press time accelerate, what do you expect to happen? Shall the position of the space station and your vessel be dictated by my 10x time acceleration or your 1x time acceleration?

Another example: What if we were both trying to reach the Mun? If we use different time accelerations, then the Mun will not be in the same place or facing the same way.

[Esme]

I susepct I'm unusual in this regard, but I wouldn't have a problem with either a 'no time-warp' or a 'if everyone agrees, warp at the same rate' situation, so long as anybody could kill the warp (so as not to smack into a planet/mountain or whatever). In a 'no warp' game, I'd simply have multiple Kerbals under my control, some exploring Kerbin, some on off-Kerbin missions, and switch between them so I'm always doing something fun/interesting. I'd also regard having 'no warp' multiplayer as better than no multiplayer at all.

[Dodgey]

I honestly do not know how this topic is still an issue. StarWhip hit the nail on the head, or more accurately KMP did. I can not think of one theoretical flaw with their method aside from bugs.

Races are not a problem in the slightest. Just look at the in game time. You may have landed on Duna faster than your mate by timewarping but he might have taken a quicker orbit at slower time warp meaning he got there quicker.

I mean do people have so little trust in Squad as to think that they would start to make multiplayer without figuring out the timewarp issue first?

[Red Iron Crown]

Races are not a problem in the slightest. Just look at the in game time. You may have landed on Duna faster than your mate by timewarping but he might have taken a quicker orbit at slower time warp meaning he got there quicker.

That only works if the target of the race cannot be interacted with. Imagine the following scenario:

Player A and Player B decide to have a race to see who can claw and capture a particular asteroid first. Player A uses a low energy intercept and timewarps aggressively. Player B plots a higher energy intercept but timewarps less aggressively. Player B will intercept the asteroid first in game time, but because of Player A's aggressive timewarp his ship arrives at the asteroid first in real time and claws the asteroid. Who won the race, according to the game? Who should have won?

[Hobbes Novakoff]

It's strange how people fret about timewarp and say that this is some sort of insurmountable or game-breaking issue, when we already have not one, but two mods (KMP and DMP) that add multiplayer. In fact, KMP was the mod that turned stock multiplayer from an impossibility into a reachable goal. 0.24 broke ground for multiplayer (under the hood, not gameplay-wise) and there are now several devs working on multiplayer, according to the devnotes. Point is, SQUAD already has a system for timewarp in a multiplayer scenario, and unless someone can come up with one that somehow places no restrictions on player timewarp while somehow allowing them to interact at any time without creating a hopeless bowl of event-bubble spaghetti (This is probably impossible, but hey, that's what everybody said about space travel), that system is KMP's system.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Hobbes Novakoff
Stupid iOS autocorrect.

[Dodgey]

That only works if the target of the race cannot be interacted with. Imagine the following scenario:

Player A and Player B decide to have a race to see who can claw and capture a particular asteroid first. Player A uses a low energy intercept and timewarps aggressively. Player B plots a higher energy intercept but timewarps less aggressively. Player B will intercept the asteroid first in game time, but because of Player A's aggressive timewarp his ship arrives at the asteroid first in real time and claws the asteroid. Who won the race, according to the game? Who should have won?

Ok then I will restate my position, is there another system as versatile as the one that KNP uses that does allow for those races.

Though the above situation only doesn't work if Player A moves the asteroid. Besides this is a situation for the players to work out who won not us.

[Wjolcz]

I always imagined multiplayer to be role-based. One vessel. One guy controls the pilots, the other engineers/scientist. The pilot flies and can time warp while the other guy welds stuff together/does sience. That way if two people were in the same vessel both wouldn't want to grief or else they would completely fail the mission.

Let's say both of them choose theur roles at the beginning of the mission. The pilot has types of missions for pilots, like "fly there, make a report/land there take a sample". The scientist has something like "check the sample/take a science report at X spot, etc." The engineer would need KIS/KAS abilities: "weld this with that, connect X and Y with fuel pipes, then pump the fuel."

No space race. No multiple space programs. Pure cooperation. No need to figure out the time paradoxes.

Edit: And multiple missions could be ran at the same time that way. Just jump between them with some sort of voting system.

"Player X wants to switch focus to vessel Y. Choose YES/NO"

...or something.

Edit2: Scientists could also get some sort of mini-game when entering the lab. "Pour Mystery Goo on Duna surface sample to see how it reacts *cool visualization by DanRosas* DING! Science!" <-- that way the scientist guy would have something to do while the other would rove around and gather surface samples for him.

Edit3: Space races are stupid. Cooperation and friendship is what should be showed in this game. The only way you can succeed is to share the success with someone else.

That's how ISS was built, wasn't it?

Edit4: Now the unmanned flights become problematic with this idea.

Remember Telemachus mod?

One player controls the unmanned vessel, the other is the mission controls. Mission Control tells you to slow down and tries to overall help you to make the mission not be a failure. You forgot what's the speed of the reentry? Ask the ground crew! Need assistance with docking? Ask mission control to take over the control of the probe you're trying to dock to! Not sure how to set up a manouver node to be most efficient? Let someone else do that!

TL;DR: THERE'S NO TL;DR! Read the whole post!

Edited July 29, 2015 by Veeltch

[Habalabam]

I don't think multiplayer will be multiple players in one craft. Of course you may have occasional serious roleplaying sessions where this would be cool, but mostly not as there is only one pilot to a craft. Although the other roles are useful, they are more like tools being 95% idle.

My buddies and I will most likely play cooperatively, trying to get a successfull mining/habitation/research enterprise rolling. Populating the Kerbal/Mun/Minmus system. Many independant activities that will cross paths.

Time acceleration across all the various activities that will take place is a complex problem. There are multiple approaches that are simple, but I don't see any that is without drawbacks.

The crux of the problem is to have long running treks in 1x time accelleration (like rover missions, atmo flights, probe hopping, base mining/trucking/assembly/management) without forcing everybody else in 1x.

I realize that you can mitigate this by having time elastic activities, like tinkering in the VAB while others are out flying an airplane.

If SQUAD has the time warp system down, then I would very much like to see a thread describing the details. If anybody else feel that this is a solved problem, then please describe the solution (I never played the unofficial MP mod) and please also state what weaknesses you yourself recognize with the solution.