adding multiplayer

[razark]

Where is the idea that multiplayer is going to be rushed into the game soon coming from?

If you read the dev notes, it's all been about fixing things lately, and not a word about multiplayer.  The devs haven't even really said much about multiplayer since they mentioned they were adding it.

[Alshain]

5 hours ago, Jatwaa said:

As much as I am for MP, I am NOT for mandatory MP. I just can't see myself being forced to MP. That is what MMOs are for. I too play sandbox 90% of the time. I am not looking for scenarios much, just having another user playing in game. They should never drop the SP option. I highly doubt that was their intention.

I don't think anybody is suggesting a mandatory multiplayer.  That would be a rather extreme approach.  I really don't think Squad would take such an development stance.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Alshain

[Rath]

On 12/16/2015 at 9:42 AM, egoego said:

Why do people always want to go to war with each other? KSP is a game of building and exploring and learning. It doesn't need any more explosions than the one from failed maneuvers.

I assume this quote is sarcastic, but it shows a good reason why KSP shouldn't have a multiplayer option. (Even so cooperative exploration or space station building would be cool.)

If anyone wants to play war, he/she should go and play a war game. But they shouldn't try and make this nice little peaceful building/learning tool, that KSP is, into something violent.

KSP is a game where you can do what you want.  Me playing BDarmory does not effect you in any way.  Weapons will never be in stock.  I support that.  Its still fine to play with them.

And no, that quote is not sarcastic.  You are assuming something wrong.

[kiwi1960]

MP will happen... some won't care... some will.... but bug fixes (etc) comes first.

Its when... not if.... it will be added.

However... how would the MP game differ from the SP version of the game, you can say it will not, but if they *just* add MP then what is the point? I suspect that when its added, some features not available in the SP game will be added, to make it more MP friendly. The option to disable warp being one.

Maybe this discussion should focus on what those features will be... rather than if its added, Squad said they will add it, so....

Give them a few ideas to run with! If they just added MP then its not going to work out very well, unless mod writers stepped in and filled the gap, and that in itself creates problems because no two mods, or mod writers, are the same. One mod writer might be A+ while another writes a mod to learn how its done... and bad mods leads to complaints...

Personally... unless .... features... are added, I won't touch it. The reason being that I have enough mods now that it affects computer performance... 5+ minutes to load the game, yeah, right, I'm hoping 1.2 will fix all that and then I might change my opinion... I'd need a better game to look at it, or at least... features in the MP to make it worth my while to use it.

One idea would be up to eight new bases, all on the equator (is that the word?) would be good so you really can have independent play but competition thrown in... a "real" space race then... of course, in such a game, you would need weapons to protect your base, lest the evil Kerbals nuke it to set you back at least a few days...

with such an addition... the mind boggles at the fun you could have...

As it stands.... just MP and nothing else... not worth it.

[Alshain]

I would disagree on that.  The International Space Station is the perfect example of what people can do when they work together.  We already have the ability to dock and build stations, surface bases could certainly be better, but that would help single player as well.  Doing similar missions of joint construction in KSP would be a lot of fun, just to see what you can build together.

Space Races are definitely a fun idea, it doesn't necessarily need more KSC's though.  DMP as an example has a protective bubble right around the launch pad which hides you from other players till you get into the air a bit, and at that point it's unlikely anyone would be able to target you easily unless you purposely coordinated your launch.  For space races, there would have to be some achievements implemented.  Not like Steam achievements, but more like the Final Frontier mod, except instead of recording Kerbal achievements, it would record the player name.  That way you can see who landed on the Mun first, who landed on Duna first, etc.  However, space races do have a downside.  It's less casual.  Players would have to all have the same amount of playtime and start on the server at the same time or it becomes unfair.

That said, you could have a gameplay mode where you start a new game and play the entire game to a predetermined goal... like landing on the Mun or Moho.  Unlike traditional KSP this game would end once the goal is attained and you would start a new game, rather than just being a persistent game where you keep ticking off check boxes on a list.  That would be a good way to do a space race as well and would be in short scope like an FPS or RTS game, so it would not have the issue of needing players to spend every free moment in a persistent game.

There are a lot of possibilities, I suspect, at least initially, that Squad's implementation is going to be pretty much just like DMP, which a lot of people find fun but buggy.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Alshain

[LioTJ]

actually, it's really a bad idea to play multiplayer, it's still just a bug ( 

[Jatwaa]

If people want to play virtual war in KSP, let them. It's not hurting anyone. If they want to race boats, let them. Sure the game says SPACE but not many games offer modular building and physics the way KSP does. Don't like a war server, dont access the server. Host a peaceful space coop server. I say live and let live. The more people buy KSP and enjoy it their way, the better for Squad to fund future progress for KSP be it multiplayer or bug fixes.

[Andsim]

will be a multi-player on KBP? it would be nice

[Red Iron Crown]

Welcome aboard!

Multiplayer was mentioned as a planned feature a long while ago, updates about it have been scarce so I'm not 100% sure if it's still on the agenda or not. There's a fairly large thread discussing how it might be implemented here:

 

[DualDesertEagle]

I honestly don't think it would work out too well. Let's just say ur gonna start a co-op landing. While the closer bodies like Mun an Minmus probably wouldn't be too much of a problem coz with 2 players plannin' ships to get there with there would probably be enough fuel to compensate for diverging decisions of the 2 players that would need to be corrected but on a longer flight these corrections would sum up and probably result in the 2 docked co-op ships runnin' out of fuel long before achieving the mission goal. Coz the thing is, at a certain point there's always gonna be some kind of disagreement about certain things.

 

At least that's how I understand it would work or rather NOT work.

 

Or it would have to be like "I'm goin' to Laythe, who's joining me?" and the HOST of the mission would have to be the leader of the whole mission, also setting weight limits for every ship joining him so the TWR wouldn't drop too far.

What would definitely work out is everyone building their own stuff to just meet at a certain place or someone starting a project (like a space station) and setting the standards to which every ship that wants to dock with the station needs to be compatible.

[ZooNamedGames]

2 hours ago, DualDesertEagle said:

I honestly don't think it would work out too well. Let's just say ur gonna start a co-op landing. While the closer bodies like Mun an Minmus probably wouldn't be too much of a problem coz with 2 players plannin' ships to get there with there would probably be enough fuel to compensate for diverging decisions of the 2 players that would need to be corrected but on a longer flight these corrections would sum up and probably result in the 2 docked co-op ships runnin' out of fuel long before achieving the mission goal. Coz the thing is, at a certain point there's always gonna be some kind of disagreement about certain things.

 

At least that's how I understand it would work or rather NOT work.

 

Or it would have to be like "I'm goin' to Laythe, who's joining me?" and the HOST of the mission would have to be the leader of the whole mission, also setting weight limits for every ship joining him so the TWR wouldn't drop too far.

What would definitely work out is everyone building their own stuff to just meet at a certain place or someone starting a project (like a space station) and setting the standards to which every ship that wants to dock with the station needs to be compatible.

I'm confused, by co-op. Do you mean two players controlling the same craft or two crafts heading to the same destination? Regardless, why does fuel matter, or more importantly TWR? If the craft works in singleplayer why not in multiplayer? If it's because players will fight over the controls and want to go to different locations then that's no different if you had two people fighting over the keyboard in singleplayer.

There's an easy solution, you don't fight over the mission plan, or you don't co-op on the same mission if the other person won't cooperate.

Just because some people don't play well on one project, doesn't mean multiplayer as a whole is out.

[DualDesertEagle]

1 hour ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I'm confused, by co-op. Do you mean two players controlling the same craft or two crafts heading to the same destination? Regardless, why does fuel matter, or more importantly TWR? If the craft works in singleplayer why not in multiplayer? If it's because players will fight over the controls and want to go to different locations then that's no different if you had two people fighting over the keyboard in singleplayer.

There's an easy solution, you don't fight over the mission plan, or you don't co-op on the same mission if the other person won't cooperate.

Just because some people don't play well on one project, doesn't mean multiplayer as a whole is out.

What I meant was 2 players docking their vessels (let's say 1 of 'em built the transfer stage and the other built the lander) and then going to the same location together. There are different ways of doing it and when there's disagreement about what way they're going there it could be that they do burns that would be suitable to do it one way and then they decide to do it a different way for which they've already wasted too much fuel. That's where fuel would matter.

The TWR, on the other hand, drops with every bit of weight that is added to the transfer craft. Now let's say a guy built a transfer stage designed to take a certain payload to a body that requires a certain amount of fuel to get the transfer stage and payload there. He flies it into orbit and then chats "I'm going to Laythe, whoever wants to join me can meet me in LKO with a lander that isn't any heavier than x tons!" Now someone could bring a super-light lander that there's still some more possible payload to pick up and decides to let someone else join with his lander aswell, which according to its maker is just light enough to not compromise the mission. Now be it the 1st or the 2nd guy who underestimated the weight of his lander, the result would be that the transfer stage with the 2 docked landers is now too heavy for the mission to be completed and they end up stranded in space or somewhere else, most likely causing an argument who's to blame for that.

 

I also didn't say it wouldn't work AT ALL, I said it wouldn't work out TOO WELL! And the latter is probably true coz I've taken part in so may co-op games and no matter how well they all went for a while, at a certain point there was always some disagreement of some sort, causing whatever quest or mission was to complete to fail. And in a game where u spend alot of time sitting through burns or long periods of time warping I doubt that anyone would give the same thing a 2nd try with the same person, especially when they're arguing who screwed up at what part of the mission.

 

Even when ppl are building a space station or ground station there could be arguments like "Hey, I wanted to dock on that docking port, undock and f**k off!" and ppl crashing their ships into those of whoever p****d them off. In that case it's less of a problem tho coz a space station is more or less stationary (at least it doesn't leave the SoI of the body it's orbiting) and ppl who wanna dock with it with their own craft can only screw up by themselves most of the time.

Edited August 20, 2016 by DualDesertEagle

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, DualDesertEagle said:

What I meant was 2 players docking their vessels (let's say 1 of 'em built the transfer stage and the other built the lander) and then going to the same location together. There are different ways of doing it and when there's disagreement about what way they're going there it could be that they do burns that would be suitable to do it one way and then they decide to do it a different way for which they've already wasted too much fuel. That's where fuel would matter.

The TWR, on the other hand, drops with every bit of weight that is added to the transfer craft. Now let's say a guy built a transfer stage designed to take a certain payload to a body that requires a certain amount of fuel to get the transfer stage and payload there. He flies it into orbit and then chats "I'm going to Laythe, whoever wants to join me can meet me in LKO with a lander that isn't any heavier than x tons!" Now someone could bring a super-light lander that there's still some more possible payload to pick up and decides to let someone else join with his lander aswell, which according to its maker is just light enough to not compromise the mission. Now be it the 1st or the 2nd guy who underestimated the weight of his lander, the result would be that the transfer stage with the 2 docked landers is now too heavy for the mission to be completed and they end up stranded in space or somewhere else, most likely causing an argument who's to blame for that.

 

I also didn't say it wouldn't work AT ALL, I said it wouldn't work out TOO WELL! And the latter is probably true coz I've taken part in so may co-op games and no matter how well they all went for a while, at a certain point there was always some disagreement of some sort, causing whatever quest or mission was to complete to fail. And in a game where u spend alot of time sitting through burns or long periods of time warping I doubt that anyone would give the same thing a 2nd try with the same person, especially when they're arguing who screwed up at what part of the mission.

 

Even when ppl are building a space station or ground station there could be arguments like "Hey, I wanted to dock on that docking port, undock and f**k off!" and ppl crashing their ships into those of whoever p****d them off. In that case it's less of a problem tho coz a space station is more or less stationary (at least it doesn't leave the SoI of the body it's orbiting) and ppl who wanna dock with it with their own craft can only screw up by themselves most of the time.

Again, the players cooperate on a mission and don't get bogged down in the little details or they don't cooperate at all. The consequences are their own, not Squad's. So regardless of who's flying where, or who's driving what, the players cooperating should know and agree on it beforehand and if there's a dispute, then again it's up to those players to resolve it, not Squad's.
 

The multiplayer as it's been discussed can work fine. It's the cooperation your concerned about and as the leader of a group of mission controls in Real Space Program (link in sig), I can tell you players can cooperate well and to great success, however it should be noted that it's with the right people. The players will have to use their own judgement to tell them whether or not playing with someone else will be fun and profitable or cause nothing but strife.

[Andsim]

3 player on my server will different thing not meaning use same ship or that but each player have different assign. server is private not listed on ksp server listing

Edited August 20, 2016 by Andsim

[Wjolcz]

Multiplayer in KSP will either:

1. Not fun, thus a waste of dev time

2. Look like the Telemachus/Houston mod

Let's be honest, DMP is a together alone scenario where everyone does their own thing anyway + bugs caused by paradoxes and stuff like that. IMO MP should look like the Houston mod or wait for a game called "Kerbal Aviation Program" (<- imagine that).

[Alshain]

5 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

Multiplayer in KSP will either:

1. Not fun, thus a waste of dev time

2. Look like the Telemachus/Houston mod

Let's be honest, DMP is a together alone scenario where everyone does their own thing anyway + bugs caused by paradoxes and stuff like that. IMO MP should look like the Houston mod or wait for a game called "Kerbal Aviation Program" (<- imagine that).

That's your opinion.  I think DMP is a very together scenario where everyone works together on a common goal.  I agree it has bugs, that's why I'd like to see a better implementation of it.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Alshain

[Andsim]

DMP was good mp but the bug was issues,  mp is ideal good. but there have to be ban hammer to expose those use bug or cheated

[Vanamonde]

New thread merged into the master thread for multiplayer discussions. 

[Northstar1989]

I must admit, I'm a bit confusedby all the talk of 'together alone' being this horrible thing, or griefing...

Together Alone is literally the signature feature of my second favorite game of all time- Minecraft.  And it'sdatill a great game for MP- even with griefing.  It's not like player communities don't work out ways to deal with such things anyways...  Whitelists anyone?

KSO also has something unique from Minecraft that should make MP much more gratifying.  Fundamentally, it's a hard game.  It requires a lot of technical knowledge and planning to carry out really impressive things like an off-world ISRU infrastructure, and thus multiplayer would allow players to split up tasks and only do the things they like while contributing to something greater.

For instance, maybe I really like flying spaceplanes, so I just build and fly soaceplanes to orbit carrying other player's payloads there for them and leaving them in LKO.  Could work really nice in a MP career mode, as it would create economic incentives for specialization like that...

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited September 9, 2016 by Northstar1989

[shadragon]

Since I've begun playing, I've convinced three friends to buy KSP. Would be nice to have a peer-to-peer connection so we can share the same solar system and both be active in the same space simultaneously. A sandbox we can both stomp around in. 

I'm not suggesting an open "everyone with a copy shares the same space"; that would be chaos, but between me and a friend would be great. We could build stations, or I could talk them through issues over VOIP, etc. 

Being P2P it would use resources on the host and target PC so no server support would be needed. 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Multiplayer is already in the list of planned features.

What exact form it will take is anyone's best guess.

Personally I don't really see the point in it since both players will likely end up spending 95% of their time alone in the VAB designing ships. Very rarely have I been doing something and thought another person would be helpful. Even docking 2 ships together would likely turn out to be harder with a second person at the controls, unless you are perfectly synced and have a lot of communication your going to end up working against each other more often than with. I think when multiplayer is eventually added it'll be neat and certainly there are some fun things to do with another person but ultimately it doesn't mesh will with KSP's core gameplay which is mostly 75% building/designing, 20% launching, and 5% actual piloting.

[Dafni]

Its possible to bounce save files back and forth between people. Obviously you cant play on the same save at the same time, but its a nice way to build stuff together.

For me the most/best multiplayer feeling in KSP comes in the form of life streams. Its a very interactive experience, works perfect for KSP, and you can share craft or scenarios that you "built together" later on.

[Vanamonde]

This is a good idea, @shadragon. It's such a good idea what we've created a master thread for this frequently-proposed idea, and your thread has been merged into it.

[Omega563]

18 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Multiplayer is already in the list of planned features.

What exact form it will take is anyone's best guess.

Personally I don't really see the point in it since both players will likely end up spending 95% of their time alone in the VAB designing ships. Very rarely have I been doing something and thought another person would be helpful. Even docking 2 ships together would likely turn out to be harder with a second person at the controls, unless you are perfectly synced and have a lot of communication your going to end up working against each other more often than with. I think when multiplayer is eventually added it'll be neat and certainly there are some fun things to do with another person but ultimately it doesn't mesh will with KSP's core gameplay which is mostly 75% building/designing, 20% launching, and 5% actual piloting.

When playing KSP (Kerbal Space Program) and using DMP (Dark Multi Player) me and my friends when we were flying spend about 80% of that time doing things together. It all depends on how you play, for us a proper multiplayer would be the best thing that could be added to the game as it would be considerably less buggy and more stable than DMP which we are using at the moment.

I agree that it is not for everyone and I certainly agree that any multiplayer should not be in an MMO style but rather P2P (Player To Player) allowing small groups to play together. Having the ability to host your own server would also be preferable. I should also say here that some kind of search for open games may be of benefit to those who's friends don't play KSP so that they may search out people to play with.

I also have to disagree with your statement that multiplayer "doesn't mesh will with KSP's core gameplay" as I consider flying crafts and building planetary bases and orbital stations as very much core aspects of the game; All of these are things that my friends and I regularly do together.

All in all Squad has done an amazing job so far and I can't wait to see where they go next.

[EBOSHI]

I've been waiting over a year for next sign of multiplayer since I'd seen this Devnote that Felipe(HarvesteR) had said "the underlying framework for the next big things, like Multiplayer".
I wish some sign of it come out after releasing v1.2.

...don't you?