Where Is Multiplayer?

[RedPandaz]

5 hours ago, Mark Kerbin said:

And you think they have money for that... how, exactly?

Monthly subscription for multiplayer

[Mark Kerbin]

 

47 minutes ago, RedPandaz said:

Monthly subscription for multiplayer

No. How much would that cost. $5 USD? 10? How many people would actually want to spend the money...

Doesn’t change the time warp and lag problems. Plenty of less intensive games still lag even if they use dedicated servers. And I don’t think there’s gonna be that many people who want to be on one server. And timewarp is just... well continuity issues are real.

Go use a mod for it if you want, but I can pretty much guarantee that this will never be done by squad.

[klesh]

6 hours ago, Mark Kerbin said:

And you think they have money for that... how, exactly?

 

Take Two Interactive certainly has the money for it.  That being said, they don't even have dedicated servers for the enormous ca$h cow of GTAOnline, so the idea of them ponying up for lil' ol' KSP to have multiplayer servers is the longest of shots.

[GrouchyDevotee]

I could see a market for a purely atmospheric Kerbal flight game.

Learn aerodynamics, weights and balance, Bi-planes, mono-planes, high and low wing builds, Builds for speed, builds for cargo, STOL, race planes, acrobatics.

Have races, cross country navigation challenges, load lift competitions, etc. 

Very select market, that would completely insist on support for various flight control setups.

Probably have to add pew pew pew...

Make good enough fluid/aero-dynamic in game physics, and the game might be able to compete with the flight sim market. SPH would need some work to appeal to a mass market.

 

[RedPandaz]

2 hours ago, Mark Kerbin said:

 

No. How much would that cost. $5 USD? 10? How many people would actually want to spend the money...

Doesn’t change the time warp and lag problems. Plenty of less intensive games still lag even if they use dedicated servers. And I don’t think there’s gonna be that many people who want to be on one server. And timewarp is just... well continuity issues are real.

Go use a mod for it if you want, but I can pretty much guarantee that this will never be done by squad.

5 a month maybe. That's easy. Lego Universe was 10 per month, still a good deal

Time warp, just have a standard system warp speed be no warp, play interplanetary space as single player or in small groups who can all argree on a warp speed

[mystik]

On 5/9/2018 at 9:19 AM, RedPandaz said:

Maybe real time would only work in-atmosphere/planet range [sayyy, 1000km?]

1000km = 1.000.000m

Imagine having to get to such an orbit, do you know how many hours this would take in real time? I don't, but I find orbiting at 70.000m to be tedious, I usually just leave it running at that level to avoid pausing the game.

[KerbolExplorer]

Timewarp in mp could only affect the ship of the user thats using timewarp.

[lugge]

In this (and many other) thread a lot of people said why multiplayer is not possible, from a technical point of view.
The reasons are mainly technical, such as part count and timewarp.

But, can anyone tell me what exactly is the point of multiplayer in a game like KSP is?
I still cannot figure it out.
What fancy gameplay experience is provided by a multiplayer mode?

In which way can or should players interact?
I have the feeling, in a multiplayer environment, still every player will run his own space agency, doing his own missions. The fact that players share a common universe does not add anything, they don't interact a lot.
When I go to a planet, there is not much more to do than plant a flag (or gather science, if the tree is not yet unlocked).
Would there be more to do if another player is already there?

To be honest, even in my missions I do not interact a lot with older crafts or space stations from previous missions.
The only one thing I can think about is a shared mining operation.
But as it is, bases, space stations and mining are only for RPG or rule-of-cool.
In most cases, it is easier to just launch a fuel tanker from Kerbin (even in career).

So, please tell me anyone: what is the point of multiplayer?

Edited May 22, 2018 by lugge

[pandaman]

21 hours ago, KerbolExplorer said:

Timewarp in mp could only affect the ship of the user thats using timewarp.

In which case, as soon as you enter timewarp you are no longer in the same timeline as other players so you are effectively timewarping out of multiplayer into single player mode.

 

3 hours ago, lugge said:

But, can anyone tell me what exactly is the point of multiplayer in a game like KSP is?
I still cannot figure it out.
What fancy gameplay experience is provided by a multiplayer mode?

I'm not a huge fan of multiplayer, and would very likely not use it if available, but I can see the fun in several players, presumably a group of friends in most cases, playing together on the same save at the same time.  They could cooperate on missions, such as a joint mission to Duna, each with their own ships for example, or collaborate to assemble a space station.  And of course they could 'go to war' with each other too should they wish.

I can't see it being practical for large groups, or for several players all just doing their own thing and crossing paths occasionally, that's where the timewarp/paradox issues become a problem.  But for a relatively small group of players that are happy to cooperate and stay on the same timeline (all timewarp together) then I can see it potentially becoming an option' in stock.

[Fraston]

Dark multiplayer. And stop begging for it.

[Greenfire32]

8 hours ago, lugge said:

But, can anyone tell me what exactly is the point of multiplayer in a game like KSP is?
I still cannot figure it out.
What fancy gameplay experience is provided by a multiplayer mode?

You can divide up tasks. One player can send out communication satellites while the other person sends rovers.

You can cooperate tasks. One player bad at landers? One player bad at interplantary stages? Build to your strengths, dock and go together.

You can have "international" space stations where multiple players come together to dock and refuel.

You can do your own thing and periodically check in on other players.

There's lots of things you can do in multiplayer. KSP is a sandbox game and that doesn't change once you add multiple players. We already have to "make our own fun," I don't see how multiplayer negates that.

[RedPandaz]

On 5/21/2018 at 6:19 AM, mystik said:

1000km = 1.000.000m

Imagine having to get to such an orbit, do you know how many hours this would take in real time? I don't, but I find orbiting at 70.000m to be tedious, I usually just leave it running at that level to avoid pausing the game.

It doesn't take long though, and you could always leave the area. And the AoE could always be smaller- the principle is the same; I think 500 km could probably work just fine

[LoSBoL]

I think the reason why there is still no multiplayer in KSP (and why there isn't going to be one) could be sought in the way it 'should' be implemented and not so much in development time.

There are literally hundreds of opinions on 'how multiplayer should or could be implemented', which ever one SQUAD would choose, there are more people that would hate the way they'd do it, then it would make people happy about it.
To me that sounds like a very good reason to just leave it be.

I think the Making History expansion is the closest thing to multiplayer as we are going to get, someone makes a mission, and others can play it.

[Piatzin]

Oh hey, this again

CoUgH CoUgH

Don't rip each others throats out, yeah? Happens sometimes

[Guest]

And now, a message from the Kerbulan Empire:

[Raptor9]

17 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

And now, a message from the Kerbulan Empire:

[snip]

 The main reason I don't like playing multiplayer games, and wouldn't play KSP multiplayer even if I could.  When I actually have time to play KSP, the last thing I want is a bunch of trolls and immature adolescents trying to destroy everyone else's fun for the sake of their own.

[razark]

49 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

...a bunch of trolls and immature adolescents trying to destroy everyone else's fun for the sake of their own.

Which is why any KSP multiplayer implementation should avoid letting this happen.

As stated here:

9 hours ago, pandaman said:

But for a relatively small group of players that are happy to cooperate and stay on the same timeline then I can see it potentially becoming an option' in stock.

 

[AVaughan]

You still have to come up with a way to handle timewarp that keeps everyone happy.  (And any version which has players playing in different timelines is basically a fail.  When you are in different timelines, you might as well be playing single player).   I just don't see that working for anything beyond driving around with rovers or flying planes around.  Otherwise there would just be too much we want to warp to my next maneuver, but someone else is in the middle of a launch/landing or some other engine burn.  

Edited May 23, 2018 by AVaughan

[RedPandaz]

On 5/22/2018 at 7:27 PM, AVaughan said:

You still have to come up with a way to handle timewarp that keeps everyone happy.  (And any version which has players playing in different timelines is basically a fail.  When you are in different timelines, you might as well be playing single player).   I just don't see that working for anything beyond driving around with rovers or flying planes around.  Otherwise there would just be too much we want to warp to my next maneuver, but someone else is in the middle of a launch/landing or some other engine burn.  

I suggested a way to fix that

[Kerbinchaser]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

 

WHY? WHY ME? WHY ME KRAKEN? RRRRRGGHHHH!!!!

why is this thread still alive??

Edited May 25, 2018 by Vanamonde
Let's not get carried away with font size, please.

[razark]

21 minutes ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

why is this thread still alive?

Have you not learned?  If this thread dies, another will rise to take its place.  There can be no escaping the multiplayer discussion.

 

24 minutes ago, RedPandaz said:

I suggested a way to fix that

Many have in the past.  Many will in the future.  Many solutions exist.  They all have people that like and dislike them.

There is no single solution that will make everyone happy, and so it will continue.

[mattinoz]

On 5/23/2018 at 12:27 PM, AVaughan said:

You still have to come up with a way to handle timewarp that keeps everyone happy.  (And any version which has players playing in different timelines is basically a fail.  When you are in different timelines, you might as well be playing single player).   I just don't see that working for anything beyond driving around with rovers or flying planes around.  Otherwise there would just be too much we want to warp to my next maneuver, but someone else is in the middle of a launch/landing or some other engine burn.  

KSP is built on idea that it's mod-able. So any stock multiplayer doesn't need to the "everyone happy timewarp handling" it just needs the simplest. As long as it doesn't exclude Mods adding other options.

Once you concede that, Stock Multi-player only needs to handle peer-to-peer inside the same physics bubble (which does need strict timewarp rules) and a host that handles orbital mechanics to handle on-rails craft and determine when two users are in the same bubble. All the heavy calculation is going to happen on the players machines in peer-to-peer. All the methods to avoid paradox of different timewarp scales happens in the Host.

[StrandedonEarth]

We don’t know what else T 2 has planned for the Kerbal Franchise. Squad is still responsible for developing KSP, but for all we know (pure speculation) T2 could already have a top-secret effort by another studio going to develop Kerbal Flight Simulator or Kerbal Kombat Simulator (complete with multiplayer), that will be sprung on an unsuspecting public when it hits beta or goes gold (end pure speculation). 

There are many good reasons in this thread (and others) that could explain why Squad doesn’t seem to want to touch it. On top of that it would be extremely difficult to pull off. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of players that want it, and then it’s for different reasons. To me, most uses listed here for multiplayer would be plagued by boredom or timewarp issues. 

I will admit building and deploying my own Kerbal Kombat Kreations for both ground and air does intrigue me, but I believe that would be better done with a separate game focused on “near”-surface air-air and air-ground combat in a closed arena. I would posit that leaving the arena amounts to fleeing combat and forfeiting

Edited June 1, 2018 by StrandedonEarth

[Capt. Hunt]

One big problem I see is arranging launches.  How are so many people going to be able to share one launch pad? 

A queue system?  Say goodbye to your launch windows if you have to wait for a slot on the pad; especially if you get the inevitable griefer who just decides to leave a rocket on the pad indefinitely (oh, and if you add an AFK timer to prevent griefing, it would also make meeting launch windows more difficult).  Would only work with a small number of players whom you can trust.

More pads?  Just delays the inevitable, besides, where are you going to put them?

Separate instances at launch?  Makes it impossible to do anything with friends in or around the space center, kinda defeats the whole purpose.

Starting in orbit?  What's the fun in that?  It gets rid of a huge chunk of gameplay and makes parts optimized for launch useless.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Capt. Hunt

[0something0]

 

BWhat if multiplayer wasnt real-time? 

Objects in KSP are "on-rails" so its position at any time can be predicted under normal circumstances. Players can choose to share their vessels to a server as long as it fits the criteria for going to space center(landed/in stable orbit) where then it is stored clientside with the craft files being temporarily downloaded from the server. Each vessel would also have a record of when it was shared/unshared in-game time so players must be in that time window to see that vessel. This system allows players to playing their own timefram while still being "multiplayer". This just the loose concepts.