KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[t_v]

6 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Yes, I admit you might need to limit map-view somehow so you don't see the positional jump. That's solvable.

Ok, this is a statement that has come up multiple times- what do you mean by this? I see a few problems with a few different interpretations:

If it means fade to black/you temporarily can’t see other planets but you can see them once you are in a bubble: how does this solve the jumping problem? The planets have still jumped, the jump is just made more visually appealing but not removed. 
 

If it means that other celestial bodies are hidden while you are in that bubble, that is a more serious problem. Sure, planets haven’t jumped, but that’s because they have effectively been removed from the game while you are in that bubble. What if I was refueling and about to go on a trip to Jool? Restricting where the player can go from certain celestial bodies or stations is really bad. And then if you decide to show the positions of the celestial bodies, then look, there’s a jump. 

[Lettuce]

2 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Mun is a destination with its own multiplayer real-time bubble. Time-warping to it would be allowed.

Post a video of you performing a landing on any celestial body other than Kerbin using the rules you are proposing. The transfer isn’t the only part of a journey that takes time to execute. If you can do so in under 2 hours from launch to recovery then most of us would have our concerns disproved, the major one being that your system would make the game too time consuming for the majority to play.

[SkyFall2489]

I feel like we're just talking about concepts at this point - although it may be a little hard to test things out in KSP itself, because the only multiplayer mods I know of only use master controlled warp, subspace warp, or no warp.

Still though, be sure you know what you're talking about before talking.

Edited April 10, 2022 by SkyFall2489

[t_v]

6 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Why we come up with other "solutions" when this works perfectly fine is well beyond my grasp.

Because there are still problems, like the one currently being discussed, which we can try to solve. It’s a fun mind game. 

5 minutes ago, DwightLee said:

It does matter very much to me where a planet is in its orbit

Exactly, which is why we need time warp, to be able to control that without waiting very long times. If this is about the “why planetary positions don’t matter” post, that was referencing between two or more players. Between two or more players, you can avoid having spaceships desync and change relative position when warping, even if planets are different between the players. Hopefully this explanation helps. 

8 minutes ago, DwightLee said:

Where a planet or station or craft is in its orbit is a very big deal ( at least to me ). The KSP game is navigation over time and space to a place in the future where these craft, planets, stations ( what have you ) line up.

Very much so, and this is the biggest deal in the game. Look at point #1: if a station is in orbit of a planet, it can be at any time, because it will repeat its orbit infinitely. This frees it up to warp at will without any repercussions like slamming into a star or slingshotting into deep space. So, 

11 minutes ago, DwightLee said:

any solution that allows one person to time warp while another does not, is going to generate this issue.

Because these craft are able to warp at will, they warp along with whatever time warp people are at. What if multiple people at different time warps are approaching a station? On each person’s screen they’ll see the station warping at the rate that they are warping at, causing no desyncs like LMP manages to do. Once they dock, that’s it. No jump. Second person arrives and they see the docked ship, which might break causality depending on their relative times, but the person who arrived first IRL arrived first and they can freely interact. No desyncs, and no jumps. 

[Vl3d]

15 minutes ago, Lettuce said:

Post a video of you performing a landing on any celestial body other than Kerbin using the rules you are proposing.

It's not me, but the video seems to follow the rules. Most important thing is that he set his destination, started the journey, time-warped to the Mun. Then he came out of time-warp. At that point he would sync to the Mun local real-time bubble. For return to Kerbin similar process.

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by Vl3d

[DwightLee]

On your last point... no. If I arrive a year and a half in the future to a place in an orbit where you are now ( and you dont move a year and a half in the future ) someone WILL shift in time and space, dramatically when you sync up to meet.

[Vl3d]

18 minutes ago, t_v said:

Ok, this is a statement that has come up multiple times- what do you mean by this?

Maybe a cutscene of arrival or a temporary zoom-in to the planet in map view. That's up to the art department.

Certainly you could zoom out to see the whole map after syncing.

[Lettuce]

5 hours ago, Vl3d said:

 

He time warped in LKO but because he set the mun as a target and the manuever brings him out of Kerbin SOI fine I’ll give you that. He then warps to Periapsis of his orbit  fly-by so + 1hr 11min which brings you to just 4 min shy of 2 hours not enough time to return.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Lettuce

[t_v]

So in my solution, time doesn’t exist except for the purpose of warping. In LMP, you are used to two players having the same time in order to interact, but that is not necessary in game. It is similar to how floating in deep space is equivalent to free falling near a planet, and you can treat the situations the same despite being different in some ways. What is the difference between the transfer window to Duna in year 15 and 500? Nothing, if you aren’t planning to go to any other planets. Similarly, what does it matter if a player reaches a station in its 1500th or 10000th orbit? It is at the same place in its orbit, and the positions of other planets don’t change that. 

[DwightLee]

3 minutes ago, t_v said:

So in my solution, time doesn’t exist except for the purpose of warping. In LMP, you are used to two players having the same time in order to interact, but that is not necessary in game. It is similar to how floating in deep space is equivalent to free falling near a planet, and you can treat the situations the same despite being different in some ways. What is the difference between the transfer window to Duna in year 15 and 500? Nothing, if you aren’t planning to go to any other planets. Similarly, what does it matter if a player reaches a station in its 1500th or 10000th orbit? It is at the same place in its orbit, and the positions of other planets don’t change that. 

Regardless of if you look at it or not, time does indeed exist, because planets are orbiting their star over time, the moons are orbiting the planets over time, the craft and stations are in their orbits as well. It does not matter if you take the clock or the calendar away, time still exists.

[Vl3d]

19 minutes ago, t_v said:

What if multiple people at different time warps are approaching a station?

Why warp at different speeds? Just let the server warp you all at the same speed.

What if the first player changes the orbit of the station or crashes it before the second player arrives? lulz

[t_v]

Just now, DwightLee said:

Regardless of if you look at it or not, time does indeed exist, because planets are orbiting their star over time, the moons are orbiting the planets over time, the craft and stations are in their orbits as well. It does not matter if you take the clock or the calendar away, time still exists.

Yes and that is preserved, but time can be different for each player. One more clarification: if you were to join a server by yourself, it would play exactly like single  player. When you are with other people and warp, all ships warp and all the planets warp. Time works as normal. But for other people, their ships and planets didn’t warp because they didn’t warp. This is exactly like LMP. The difference is that they would see, in real time,  the warping player’s ships warp. This doesn’t desync ship positions because when the non-warping player goes to interact with the player who has warped, they are either in a situation where the warp doesn’t matter (like  on a surface) or will have to warp themselves to interact, thus resyncing time. 

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

What if the first player changes the orbit of the station or crashes it before the second player arrives? lulz

The same as with your solution, the station’s orbit changes or crashes and the second player sees the change reflected for them in real time. 

[Bej Kerman]

43 minutes ago, DwightLee said:

I boost to the planet in this position, do work there, they boost toward the next ( or home ). any solution that allows one person to time warp while another does not, is going to generate this issue.

What the other player is doing has no bearing in what you are doing. This "issue" does not appear in Dark/Luna Multiplayer, which allow you to time warp as you please. Restricting anything still remains a matter of burdening players for the sake of immersion.

[t_v]

The difference with LMP is that you wouldn’t be able to touch the station until after the crash happened, whereas with the other two the crash has already happened. 

[Bej Kerman]

6 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

30 minutes ago, t_v said:

What if multiple people at different time warps are approaching a station?

Why warp at different speeds? Just let the server warp you all at the same speed.

Why burden X players (who are attempting a docking around another station) for the Y players getting to the first station?

1 minute ago, t_v said:

The difference with LMP is that you wouldn’t be able to touch the station until after the crash happened, whereas with the other two the crash has already happened. 

Both are effectively the same.

8 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

What if the first player changes the orbit of the station or crashes it before the second player arrives? lulz

Aagin, basic permission settings.

[t_v]

2 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

What the other player is doing has no bearing in what you are doing. This "issue" does not appear in Dark/Luna Multiplayer, which allow you to time warp as you please. Restricting anything still remains a matter of burdening players for the sake of immersion.

This explains both LMP and my solution perfectly. The additional thing with LMP is that not only does it have no bearing, you also can’t see it until you synch. 

2 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Both are effectively the same.

Yep. But one of them mean that you have to undergo that jump, and the other you can interact despite time being technically different. 

[Vl3d]

4 minutes ago, t_v said:

The same as with your solution, the station’s orbit changes or crashes and the second player sees the change reflected for them in real time. 

I agree. I think our ideas have a lot in common, except that I am more strict with the real-time gameplay close to the planet so we don't have causality issues with overlapping colonies and we don't see each other warping. I would just hate seeing people with the same engine as me zoom past. It feels like cheating, breaks mini-games.

[t_v]

1 minute ago, Vl3d said:

I agree. I think our ideas have a lot in common, except that I am more strict with the real-time gameplay close to the planet so we don't have causality issues with overlapping colonies and we don't see each other warping. I would just hate seeing people with the same engine as me zoom past. It feels like cheating, breaks mini-games.

All three have a lot in common, I saw that when making the synopses. But each one is distinct because it sacrifices a different thing to fix different problems or priorities. I personally think that time is too great a sacrifice. 

[DunaManiac]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

It's a hybrid system, it also has its own bubble. You can travel to it both directly in real-time AND by warping in orbit. It has its own multiplayer bubble. It's on rails in the planet bubble. When you leave for another destination you plan a journey starting from the shipyard using its map view configuration. If you wish to re-enter the Kerbin bubble, you depart the shipyard and resync with Kerbin.

But my point is, that system does desync players inside kerbin's supposedly uniform bubble.  First off, how do the individual vessel bubbles' time relate to the planetary bubble's time? Could you see a situation where you have multiple stations at different times?

Secondly, if one can step outside of multiplayer at any point to timewarp while inside the bubble, then that is, by definition, desynching players inside the bubble, which it's only purpose is for players have a supposedly uniform time. What purpose then, does the planetary bubble serve? How does that avoid all the problems of ordinary timewarping? Furthermore, you'd agree that most people given the option, would timewarp rather than spend a few hours waiting for a kettle to boil. So you have the bubble violated in every rendevous.

So what you're describing is a system where each vessel has its own bubble, and you are synced to its time whenever you enter its physics range. The planetary bubble is irrelevant by giving one the option to step outside of multiplayer. That's not to mention the virtually impossible to hide jump as you move to a completely different point in the orbit due to the vessel-sync up. It's not impossible to have a scenario where one is approaching the station at night, only for it to be day when you get inside its bubble.

So I ask again, how is the hybrid system compatible with;

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

But you do not desync players in time on / in proximity of the celestial body. It should be written in stone.

Edited April 11, 2022 by DunaManiac

[t_v]

10 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I would just hate seeing people with the same engine as me zoom past. It feels like cheating, breaks mini-games.

In a competitive setting, use of time warp could lead to getting an edge. But the same thing could be achieved by planning a journey faster than others. If you are worried about cheating in minigames, they will likely be based on an honor system or plugins will be coded to run the game which will restrict time warp within the game. 

[DwightLee]

53 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

What the other player is doing has no bearing in what you are doing. This "issue" does not appear in Dark/Luna Multiplayer, which allow you to time warp as you please. Restricting anything still remains a matter of burdening players for the sake of immersion.

Just checked them out, same thing, when you Resync, someone is going to move in time and space... exactly what I have been saying about multiplayer.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

If you sync to the Minmus real-time bubble, you can zoom out and see the solar system as defined by the server specifically for Minmus.

No, they are not where they were when you entered the SOI, because (let's say) you've been spinning in orbit until you synced.

Well, you would have to change that, otherwise players couldn't do flybys or gravity assists. As soon as you hit the local SOI all the planets and moons around you would shift and your exit trajectory would be wildly off. This is especially important around Jool where using Tylo and Laythe to capture is a pretty critical maneuver. The other thing is it would create big headaches for basically all planetary transfers, because launch windows would only come up every few hundred days in real time. Duna windows are almost 8 months apart in earth time. 

Thats the important bit here. Planets aren't just graphical elements, they're moving objects in real space that you interact with. All of your interplanetary transfers are based on key alignments between multiple bodies. Their positions are not arbitrary. You need a consistent timeline everywhere because thats what determines where everything is relative to everything else when planning transfers or rendezvousing  with a station or landing on a specific location on a rotating planet. 

Anyway, going on seems like harping. Do you understand what Im saying though? 

[t_v]

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Well, you would have to change that, otherwise players couldn't do flybys or gravity assists. As soon as you hit the local SOI all the planets and moons around you would shift and your exit trajectory would be wildly off. This is especially important around Jool where using Tylo and Laythe to capture is a pretty critical maneuver. The other thing is it would create big headaches for basically all planetary transfers, because launch windows would only come up every few hundred days in real time. Duna windows are almost 8 months apart in earth time. 

Thats the important bit here. Planets aren't just graphical elements, they're moving objects in real space that you interact with. All of your interplanetary transfers are based on key alignments between multiple bodies. Their positions are not arbitrary. You need a consistent timeline everywhere because thats what determines where everything is relative to everything else when planning transfers or rendezvousing  with a station or landing on a specific location on a rotating planet. 

Anyway, going on seems like harping. Do you understand what Im saying though? 

So, this specific example is not really relevant because when on a journey, it doesn’t sync you until you complete it (which means being in a stable orbit with no maneuver nodes ahead of you)

The thing I’m not really sure about is your second paragraph. I can’t tell if you are allowed to warp to your transfer window as part of your journey, in which case the server controlled time is purely for visuals. If not, have fun waiting for transfer windows. 

[Pthigrivi]

48 minutes ago, t_v said:

So, this specific example is not really relevant because when on a journey, it doesn’t sync you until you complete it (which means being in a stable orbit with no maneuver nodes ahead of you)

The thing I’m not really sure about is your second paragraph. I can’t tell if you are allowed to warp to your transfer window as part of your journey, in which case the server controlled time is purely for visuals. If not, have fun waiting for transfer windows. 

I guess what Im saying is why are we disconnecting these space-time realities to begin with? Just have one consistent timeline no matter where you are and then you don't have any of these problems. It's also the way to prevent seeing people warp away or gaining a competitive advantage in space races. You all exist in the same in-game calendar all the time. If Im synched in orbit with another player and they time warp I don't see their vessel zoom away. I see it gently drift away exactly as would normally, because Im seeing their vessel as it was in my time. They see the same vessel as it is in my future. 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[DwightLee]

10 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I guess what Im saying is why are we disconnecting these space-time realities to begin with? Just have one consistent timeline no matter where you are and then you don't have any of these problems. It's also the way to prevent seeing people warp away or gaining a competitive advantage in space races. You all exist in the same in-game calendar all the time. If Im synched in orbit with another player and they time warp I don't see their vessel zoom away. I see it gently drift away exactly as would normally, because Im seeing their vessel as it was in my timeline. They see the same vessel as it is in my future. 

I am going to have to think about that, exactly what that would require. You are saying never resync. If you want me to meet you on Duna if you are already there, then you will have to advance your timeline to the point where I arrive there. That everyone is playing in the same universe at different times ( unless they intentionally timewarp to when another player is also there ). I was about to dismiss it out of hand... but... you have me thinking, that might resolve all issues. All my issues anyway.

Edited April 11, 2022 by DwightLee