Multiplayer in KSP 1.8

[RedLeafPatriot]

@spearsp

I'd like to call attention to LMP, I hope it to be the successor to DMP the way DMP was the successor to KMP.  It is a small team actively working in their limited free time to improve upon DMP in the COOP career aspect as well as performance.  Currently to use LMP you have to pull from git hub and compile the project yourself using VB, for this reason it is not yet ready for public consumption.  SO there is still a passion for KSP multiplayer out there and for us that cannot program ourselves, I wait patiently.

Do try downgrading to kerbal 1.3 to test out DMP. Your saves will not be affected. (tested) As a precaution you can always make a complete copy of the kerbal space program installation folder before hand in case something goes wrong.

 

once you see the time warp mechanic in DMP mod you will abandon all other theories, Lan works great. there are just some performance issues that somewhat limit the size of vessels depending on how much punishment your PC can take.

[Joseph Kerman]

I have an idea as to how the Multiplayer system will work.

Time Warp: Instead of TimeWarp just being activated because of one person or the majority (for 3 players up), how about when all of them choose to timewarp? The lowest setting will always be chosen so there will be no complication if say, one wants to do a Jool mission and the other, building a space station.

Edited November 8, 2017 by Joseph Kerman

[RedPandaz]

19 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

I have an idea as to how the Multiplayer system will work.

Time Warp: Instead of TimeWarp just being activated because of one person or the majority (for 3 players up), how about when all of them choose to timewarp? The lowest setting will always be chosen so there will be no complication if say, one wants to do a Jool mission and the other, building a space station.

Kinda like in Plague Inc: Evolved Multiplayer mode?

[RatchetinSpace]

22 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

I have an idea as to how the Multiplayer system will work.

Time Warp: Instead of TimeWarp just being activated because of one person or the majority (for 3 players up), how about when all of them choose to timewarp? The lowest setting will always be chosen so there will be no complication if say, one wants to do a Jool mission and the other, building a space station.

Oh boy, Jool mission friend can wait for 3 years while space station junkie hogs the low time-warp setting. Just No.

Also stop bumping old posts and bringing up this silly topic.

[razark]

7 hours ago, RatchetinSpace said:

Oh boy, Jool mission friend can wait for 3 years while space station junkie hogs the low time-warp setting. Just No.

Or maybe the Jool guy can go play somewhere else, instead of constantly whining at the space station folks?

 

7 hours ago, RatchetinSpace said:

Also stop bumping old posts and bringing up this silly topic.

Posting to a topic a little over 24 hours after it was last posted to is "bumping old posts"?  Wow.

[RatchetinSpace]

12 hours ago, razark said:

Or maybe the Jool guy can go play somewhere else, instead of constantly whining at the space station folks?

I would write a long winded response about why you're wrong but you clearly have no concept of multiplayer.

[razark]

31 minutes ago, RatchetinSpace said:

I would write a long winded response about why you're wrong but you clearly have no concept of multiplayer.

You mean...  multiple players, all playing the same game?

For KSP, it works if they're all doing something similar, such as building a station, or traveling to Jool.  It's utterly ridiculous to expect multiplayer to work if one is building a station and one is going to Jool.  If a Jool-traveler is playing with people that are building a station, then time compression is the least of the player's concerns, and said player should reconsider why he's the odd one out that doesn't fit with what the other players are doing.

Otherwise, it's not really multiplayer, it's just everyone playing alone.  Might as well just have everyone playing on their own game, and have a chat server instead.  I mean, it's not really multiplayer hide-and-seek if one player is playing chess, and another is building a birdbath, is it?

 

But please, go ahead and explain to me why I'm wrong. 

Edited November 10, 2017 by razark

[Grand Ship Builder]

Red alert: Argument gone too far 

Anyways, for the time warp problem, why not do what DMP does? Syncing and stuff. Or simply let all players time warp however far they want, no interactions required, and all you really need is a way to know if they are time warping, as to not confuse the players if they are going extremely fast or just time warping.

[razark]

7 minutes ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

Anyways, for the time warp problem, why not do what DMP does?

Personally, I dislike that idea because it allows paradoxes. 

You have one player (A) in the future relative to another (B).  Let's say that A docks to a space station in B's future.  In A's past, B arrives at the station, and docks to the empty (because A isn't there yet in B's timeframe) port that A already used in the future. 

How should this be handled?  Who is docked to the port?  If it's B, because B arrived first (in the unified timeline), then what happens to A's ship?  If it's A, because A arrived first (in reality's timeline), then what happens to B's ship?

Or what if B deorbits the station before A docks in the future?  What happens to A's entire timeline, since there was never a station to dock with in the first place?

[HebaruSan]

45 minutes ago, razark said:

For KSP, it works if they're all doing something similar, such as building a station, or traveling to Jool.

I'm not convinced that all proponents realize just how narrow that lane really is.

Let's say you and I and two others decide to go to Jool. We assemble a ship in orbit cooperatively, then collectively warp to the transfer window, burn, and warp to the encounter. Great, everyone probably has a fantastic time.

Then we get there; say we circularize at Laythe. Now what? Suppose I want to start the Laythe surface outpost while you volunteer to collect science from Pol, and our teammates want to start mining Bop and Vall. I'll need to spend a lot of time on re-entry and driving and docking base components, while you and the others are waiting for transfers between the moons. That's going to be pretty boring for you. Just like that, our coop-friendly project (after all, we're still all "at Jool") has become precisely the kind of timing conflict we were trying to avoid.

[razark]

6 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

I'm not convinced that all proponents realize just how narrow that lane really is.

Indeed.  It really is quite limiting, and one of the reasons I don't see a large-scale multiplayer KSP working.  It's also why I would expect multiplayer to really only be useful when all players are trying to do something together, rather than splitting up and doing different things.

I'm not saying multiplayer KSP is a great idea, just that it is workable (within limits), and that I have my own preferences on how it should work.

 

See also:

On 8/26/2017 at 3:42 PM, razark said:

No matter how it is implemented, about 80% of players will disagree with how it was done.

[Grand Ship Builder]

10 hours ago, Grand Ship Builder said:

Or simply let all players time warp however far they want, no interactions required, and all you really need is a way to know if they are time warping, as to not confuse the players if they are going extremely fast or just time warping.

I think this could work out.

 

~ Myself

[The_Rocketeer]

I think the syncing issue can be avoided by making warp non-relative. Do your burn to set up your vessel's trajectory, go to map mode and click and drag the vessel along its path (like a manouvre node) to where you want it to be (alternatively a FF button could be more intuitive). Nothing else will move any faster, so you'll need to allow for that and burn to where a target is now rather than where it will be. Not very realistic, but realistic in all the right ways, no need for warp at all, no paradoxes, no syncing issues, just straightforward fun. Credit to @Tex (I think? Will amend if corrected) for this idea.

I think this is by far the most elegant solution to the MP question I've come across. It knocks the pants off what DMP does.

Edited November 11, 2017 by The_Rocketeer

[RedLeafPatriot]

Dudes, syncing issues are only a issue because the modders are trying to create multiplayer for free in their spare time. the KSP devs could hammer out the kinks and performance issues. it has nothing to do with how the time warp is implemented. The modders got it right, its fun and effective, just needs a lot of work.

 

Go DEVS MAKE MULTIPLAYER HAPPEN! HOYPE!

[sebi.zzr]

On ‎26‎.‎8‎.‎2017 at 2:31 PM, popos1 said:

I hope that squad will finally add multiplayer in the next update, like they very long time ago said.

When did that happened,can you elaborate?

 

[Scotskerb]

I think I may have a solution for the timewarp issue:

Maybe we could have a built-in Kerbal Alarm Clock system, and whenever you logged off of the server, it would ask if you have all the alarms you need, or, if you don't have any alarms, ask if you would like to set one. Then, once all players either log off or confirm that it would be fine to timewarp, the server would auto-warp to the nearest player-set alarm, and then wait for a player to log on, and it will automatically set them six hours (one Kerbin day) before the alarm.

I don't think this is the absolute best idea there is. It could definitely use some work. But it's a start.

[The_Rocketeer]

23 hours ago, RedLeafPatriot said:

Dudes, syncing issues are only a issue because the modders are trying to create multiplayer for free in their spare time. the KSP devs could hammer out the kinks and performance issues. it has nothing to do with how the time warp is implemented. The modders got it right, its fun and effective, just needs a lot of work.

 

Go DEVS MAKE MULTIPLAYER HAPPEN! HOYPE!

Syncing issues include docking paradoxes. You just can't have two ships attached to the same docking port in KSP. No amount of kink-ironing would fix that.

[Mukita12]

boy you want play Multiplayer???? INSTALL DMP MOD!!!

[RX2000]

Some games just shouldnt have a multiplayer mode. KSP is one of those games.

[MartialSplash]

On 9/1/2017 at 6:53 PM, NSEP said:

Multiplayer in KSP is like the development of Fusion Reactors. Its not the tomorrow of yesterday, it was the tommorow of last year.

If it never happended in the previous updates even though it was (and still is) under high demand, so you can assume its not going to happend soon.

Yeah it would be a good idea if that were added. I would love to mess about with my friends but I do agree that it is unlikely to be implemented. 

[Ten Key]

Removed some political content from this thread for 2.2b violation.

[popos1]

Multiplayer in 1.4, im still waiting, hope dies last

[Corona688]

On 8/26/2017 at 8:00 AM, qzgy said:

This has been asked to death. From what I remember, the main problem is a working timewarp system. For example, I timewarp to go to Eve for instance. That takes a while, more than a day. But you are on Kerbin flying a jet plane or something. So what do you do? 

It'd be tricky, but possible.  The way the game puts ships on rails is helpful.  Many of the needed changes would also be useful in single-player games, too.  How I'd do it:

1. Keep KSC time and ship-time separate.  Time at the KSC is always "present day".  When a ship goes on rails, it goes into "ship time" and stays there.  This means you could launch a Jool probe, timewarp all the way there, then return to the KSC a few hours after launch.  This would be useful in general, not just for multiplayer.  This bit has to be built first, everything else hinges on it.
2. Put a scrollwheel for time in the tracking center.  This is different from time-warp.  It can show where craft will be in the future.  It cannot scroll back past KSC time.
3. Allow the "fly" option for ships in the future.  You can set the tracking station six months ahead then jump into your Duna lander, which will timewarp six months automatically for you.  There would be restrictions on this.  Once you've flown something at T+1Y, you can't change your mind and fly it at T+6D.
4. Add "co-op" option.  This would be available in the tracking station when a connected player is flying something in your future.  If anything you own is in their SOI while they're there, you can jump into the same context.
5. Add a "watch" option.  Other player's objects, including ones not being flown, could be viewed but not flown, kind of like debris.  This could sometimes be annoying.  "Hey Jake, would you watch that debris for me?  I want it to burn up"

How would timewarp work in "co-op"?  Slowest player chooses.  If I set 50x and you set 10x, we get 10x.  This lets any player pull both from timewarp if they see something amiss.

There are a lot of corner cases and if you look too close, things won't be quite right.  You could land on Duna, wait 2 years, and see someone's inert base mysteriously appear, leap into the air, and crash the game.  You might drop out of co-op without warning when changing SOI.  Kerbals might die, ressurect, and zombify.  It would be very silly and Kerbal, hair-pullingly frustrating, and hopefully very fun.

It will probably have to be a mod.  If it's a good enough mod they might want to make it stock someday.

Quote

And besides, it's arguable that other areas of the game need to be addressed, such as the lack of a reason to go to other planets.

"Someone else is there" is a pretty good reason.  There's not a lot of reason to do anything in creative-mode minecraft but when multiplayer's involved people go crazy.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Corona688

[Piatzin]

Why not just have the option to open a game save to multiplayer, but also to be able to close it whenever the host wants to? It could be a system similar to Minecraft's, except that the host would have the ability to reject people trying to join, and would thus have the ability filter out unwanted participants. It wouldn't be the type of multiplayer that you could play with other people around the world, but if it's just you and some friends in the same room hanging out, then it would work.

Honestly, time-warp isn't a big problem in cases like this. Multiplayer with more than four or five people in it would lag anyways, IMO.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Earthlinger

[Corona688]

8 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

Why not just have the option to open a game save to multiplayer, but also to be able to close it whenever the host wants to? It could be a system similar to Minecraft's, except that the host would have the ability to reject people trying to join, and would thus have the ability filter out unwanted participants. It wouldn't be the type of multiplayer that you could play with other people around the world, but if it's just you and some friends in the same room hanging out, then it would work.

The problem remains:  How to handle Timewarp.  He's on Jool, you're on Kerbin, how to meet?  Unless you just teleport ships around.

I guess time doesn't strictly need to be synchronized.  Little things like the place of planets in the sky might be different in his save and yours, but if you're in the same SOI, the physics shouldn't care.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Corona688