DOOM question: muliple players on different levels..how implemented?
le...@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu
multiple players on different levels? I.E. if one guy goes to the next level,
how will you deal with it? Will everyone just suddenly go, or will the player
who goes first have to wait on the others to die or leave the level? Or will
all the levels just be one big goop that are all part of the active state at
all times (such that players can go back and forth independently to levels
whenever they desire) with broadcast updates being relevant to all the levels
at once? If you guys make the details of the game available (or even if you
dont) such that level editors abound), how will a multiplayer game work, if
each player has different levels? Will one initial guy who cranks up be the
one whose map is used? Also, when players die, will they be able to rejoin
on the same level (assuming they lost their last man) or are they out for
good? And can new players be added at any time in the novell version (or heck
even in the modem version ... that'd be cool to dial into a game that had
been previously 1 player). Well, whenever you guys can answer this, if you
have time, i was just wondering about some of these things. I hope that players
can move abouyt in levels independently, or some other such good idea! Tho
i guess its too late in the product development to change such things. Finally,
of what importance *is* the captain's hand? A 'key' of sorts to get into
a high security area via palm print door openers? Or some sort of mystically
enchanted weapon that crawls about to kill demons or other players when set
loose? Or just road kill? :) I'm just dying to know! Ciao for now!
Lewis Beard
le...@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu or le...@cs.olemiss.edu
le...@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu
Jay Wilbur
> To the guys at idsoftware (Shawn, Jay), I was wondering how ya'll will do the
> multiple players on different levels?
I passed your question on to John Carmack. I expect he'll have some reply type
text in a day or so.
---
Jay Wilbur (j...@idsoftware.com) Id Software
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Jay Wilbur
> le...@tacky.CS.OleMiss.Edu writes
> > To the guys at idsoftware (Shawn, Jay), I was wondering how ya'll will do
the
> > multiple players on different levels?
> <much text toasted>
>
> I passed your question on to John Carmack. I expect he'll have some reply
> type text in a day or so.
Carmack's answers:
multi player level state:
The original intention was to make the entire game one big level, but for
various reasons (both design and technical), we have opted to go with multiple
levels (about a dozen in each episode). When one player finishes a level, all
of the players will be transported out to the world map. We dicided this
reality breach was better than having the fast player twiddle his thumbs
waiting for the slow players.
level editors:
We are going to publish the format of all external data. There probably won't
be any explicit checking for modified levels over network games. If two people
are playing with different level sets, the worlds will not be consistant. If
you mess with the data, you accept the consequences.
player death:
When a player dies, they restart the level at the beginning after a short
timeout. You will not be able to add players to a game in progress. All
communications are established by the network game drivers before the real Doom
exe is executed, and there is minimal interaction with the driver during
gameplay.
The captains hand:
There was a section of the game that was reserved for officers only (not grunt
like the players), that the only way to get in was to take a severed hand from
the corpse of an officer killed by demons. I don't think this is still in the
game spec.
Ron Asbestos Dippold
>We are going to publish the format of all external data. There probably won't>be any explicit checking for modified levels over network games. If two people
>are playing with different level sets, the worlds will not be consistant. If >you mess with the data, you accept the consequences.
If speed is the consideration here, a quick CRC of the level data
might work, so you're only sending 4 bytes. If not, oh well, it could
be interesting! Maybe an extra feature for the TCP/IP server - I
can think of some really nice ways to cheat if you can use a slightly
modified level map.
--
That is not dead which may eternal lie,
And with strange eons, even death may die.
-- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Forgotten City"