Mulitplayer?

[Scott_WAR]

I have downloaded and played the demo , but everytme I log into the multiplayer lobby, there is nobody there. Is this becasue I am playing the demo and cant see full game owners,...or is there nobody ever playing this game online?

[Hawk]

I don't think there are many who play online with others, simply because this game takes quite a long time to play.

[Brit]

I have downloaded and played the demo , but everytme I log into the multiplayer lobby, there is nobody there. Is this becasue I am playing the demo and cant see full game owners,...or is there nobody ever playing this game online?

At this point, there don't seem to be very many people in the chatroom. I think I may need to add a few features to help players meet up and play.

[Innocence]

At this point, there don't seem to be very many people in the chatroom. I think I may need to add a few features to help players meet up and play.

The problem isn't really meeting up - the problem is, as Hawk writes, that the game takes a very long time to play, a commitment which most people is unable to fullfill. Really, the only solution to fully functional multiplayer is PBEM - as we've discussed before

[Scott_WAR]

Well, PBEM is an option, however there is another which could use the existing lobby. In other games I have played there have been games with daily or even weekly turns. You log in, do your turn, click submit, then dont need to do another turn for 24 hours or whenever the game has its daily deadline set at, unless yours was the last turn submitted for the turn, in which case you can go ahead and do your next turn after all moves and combat is resolved.

This way its possible to either have the game start whenever it is filled up even if all players arent present,...or for those who wish, a game can be started with all players present, played as normal for a while, THEN go to daily turns,.....etc.

[Innocence]

You log in, do your turn, click submit, then dont need to do another turn for 24 hours or whenever the game has its daily deadline set at, unless yours was the last turn submitted for the turn, in which case you can go ahead and do your next turn after all moves and combat is resolved

Problem is, this would either require the host to have an online server running 24/7, or require the developer/publisher to set up an online server solution for benefit of the players.

The former isn't practical for the majority of players (at least not until electricity becomes free )

The latter would likely require pay-to-play, which would kill the game. If the game was a major cash-cow (like Blizzard's StarCraft) I guess the publisher might offer the service for free, but EoS is unfortunately a niche game.

[Brit]

As far as PBEM:

Yeah, I was thinking that the player's game-server would have to be on and connected to the EOS game-server all the time. I suppose that's not really practical for some people. A variation on that would be that the game-server is only available and connected some of the time, and players can only get their turn-updates and submit their turn when the game-server is on and connected to the internet.

I suppose one varation on that could be that the EOS game-server could hold people's updates and turn-submit-orders until the game-server is online. The data is actually quite small (in the first few turns of the game, it's 10K-20K per player for the turn-update, and about 2K for the player's orders being sent to the server). It does make things more complicated, though. For example, "declaring war" and "open-market trades" couldn't happen immediately.

[Moon]

Another problem (and the main reason for the lack of PBEM from what I recall) is that the average EOS game will have A TON OF TURNS. 100-200 turns and more is not unusual. So if you would process one turn a day... well, you do the math.

In testing we found that multiple one-hour sessions are the best way to go. You can play a few dozen turns that way, then pick up another day. It's like PBEM, just better

[Scott_WAR]

As far as PBEM:

I suppose one varation on that could be that the EOS game-server could hold people's updates and turn-submit-orders until the game-server is online. The data is actually quite small (in the first few turns of the game, it's 10K-20K per player for the turn-update, and about 2K for the player's orders being sent to the server). It does make things more complicated, though. For example, "declaring war" and "open-market trades" couldn't happen immediately.

This is kind of what I meant. The game would be saved on the same server used for the lobby (it might have to be upgraded a little), and would always be available whenever any player logged into the games MP lobby. However instead of having one player designated as the host, and them needing to be on to reslove the turn once all orders are in,..instead, make it so that when all turns are in whichever player submitted the last turn (and thus is the player online at that time) will be designated 'host' and their client will resolve the turn.

As for the 'declaring war' and 'open-market trades' the same issue will arise in PBEM I think. In fact this system is pretty much the same as PBEM except no emailing,.....so no reloading turns etc...

[Brit]

This is kind of what I meant. The game would be saved on the same server used for the lobby (it might have to be upgraded a little), and would always be available whenever any player logged into the games MP lobby. However instead of having one player designated as the host, and them needing to be on to reslove the turn once all orders are in,..instead, make it so that when all turns are in whichever player submitted the last turn (and thus is the player online at that time) will be designated 'host' and their client will resolve the turn.

That's something I hadn't thought of before.

The issue I see with that is that the host actually has a complete game-map on their system. None of the client machines have a complete-map. In order for any machine to act as host, I think what would have to happen is that the host would have to upload the game data to the internet server. This is essentially the host's save-game file, which can get quite large; more than 10MB.

[Scott_WAR]

Yeah thats what I was afraid of. Anyway thanks for listening,....I will be getting this game as soon as I can afford it. I have also spread the word a little about it in a guild that I

am in,...one person has already bought it, and another is probably going to get it,.....its definately an addicitng, 'one more turn' game.

[Brit]

Yeah thats what I was afraid of. Anyway thanks for listening,....I will be getting this game as soon as I can afford it. I have also spread the word a little about it in a guild that I

am in,...one person has already bought it, and another is probably going to get it,.....its definately an addicitng, 'one more turn' game.

Cool. Thanks.

[Innocence]

In fact this system is pretty much the same as PBEM except no emailing,.....so no reloading turns etc...

Ehm, there is no way of 'reloading turns' in a PBEM game when using the wego system (as EoS does). You send in your orders and receive the result from the host. Reloading your old turn wouldn't help.

@Moon: Stars! games rarely lasted >100 turns, so that might be a problem as you say. The thing is, it's next to impossible to coordinate more than 3 people meeting online at an exact time, so there really needs to be an alternative asynchronous way of playing EoS for real multiplayer to be viable, if not PBEM then an online stand-alone EoS server (like PitBoss) where the players can log in and do their turns at different hours.

[Scott_WAR]

Ehm, there is no way of 'reloading turns' in a PBEM game when using the wego system (as EoS does). You send in your orders and receive the result from the host. Reloading your old turn wouldn't help.

Whoever the 'host' is, that is whoevers machine actually does the turn,....can reload and redo the turn until it gets the results they want,....so yeah it can still be done, just only by the host.

[bugwar]

I wonder how to fix the problem of the host rerunning the turn till he gets the desired results.

I see two problems. First, the host revises and resubmits his unit orders after viewing the results from one iteration of game processing in order obtain a better outcome. After solving this the second issue is the host reruns turn processing several times, hoping that the program's random number generator will provide better results in at least one run.

The first problem could be addressed by requiring the host to submit his following turn orders before the other players do. That way, no matter the number of times the application runs the turn, the host takes the same actions.

Ensuring that the host order files are there before the other players is a two-step process. In the first step, the host program prepares a file for transmission to each client before the clients can submit their following turn orders. That file contains an application-encrypted version of the host's orders for the following turn. When the client application receives that file, it notifies the client player that he can submit orders for the following turn. The client player's orders are encrypted and returned to the host application along with the original host orders for that turn.

When the host receives the order file from the client, the application compares the host order file sent by the client with the one it has. If the two do not agree, then the application refuses to process the turn.

The second problem can be addressed by including a seed value for the random number generator in one set of player orders. Then, no matter how many times the turn is run, you get the same results.