4 Player multiplayer!

[BlumenKohl]

Re: Re: Re: Re: 4 Player multiplayer!

Originally posted by RhapSidious
Actually it's a limitation due to actual p2p code in the engine. It is a HUGE pain in the ass to change since most of the code incorporates it. So D3 and Q4 are both going to allow a max of 4 players in mp.

Oh that made my day....thank you for a good laugh!
:dozey:

This is Carmack we're talking about here, he's not a numbskull who picks P2P just for the sake of picking P2P, buddy... you can have more than four players, Tim Willits has already confirmed that the engine will be scalable way past 4 players.

 

[Anthraxxx]

Re: Re: Re: Re: 4 Player multiplayer!

Originally posted by RhapSidious
Actually it's a limitation due to actual p2p code in the engine. It is a HUGE pain in the ass to change since most of the code incorporates it. So D3 and Q4 are both going to allow a max of 4 players in mp.

People were talking about this on Raven's forums (re: Quake 4) a long time ago. Sad but true.

Well I'm perfectly happy with Source being the MP engine of choice for the next 3 years.

Well ****berries!! Only 4 person multiplay for Quake 4!!!!

 

[BlumenKohl]

*bangs head on keyboard*

P2P has NOTHING to do with the amount of players you can have, people.

Yeesh. It's scalable beyond 4 players.

Think of it as a file sharing program, replace the files with packets and crap like that, you can have 2 people, you can have 20 million people.

 

[oldi1knoby]

If the engine is really limited to 4, and thats not a design decision, NO ONE will license the engine to create MP focused games. No matter HOW pretty it look or how many boxes can be stacked and knocked over. 4 people limits the play. You could have more players in Quake 2! What the hell is wrong with ID today?

 

[RhapSidious]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 4 Player multiplayer!

Originally posted by BlumenKohl
Oh that made my day....thank you for a good laugh!
:dozey:

This is Carmack we're talking about here, he's not a numbskull who picks P2P just for the sake of picking P2P, buddy... you can have more than four players, Tim Willits has already confirmed that the engine will be scalable way past 4 players.

Well if you check out the link that Koopa was kind enough to find, you'll see that p2p code is the problem. This problem has been a topic of discussion on Raven and D3 forums for months now...

I'm glad you were amused by my post, but I think if you investigate, even a little bit, on the topic, you probably won't be laughing for long.

DOOM3 and QUAKE4 will only be 4 player MP Max. Get over it. I aint a HL2 fanboy or nothing, I was just relaying some relevant info. So next time someone posts about a topic you don't really know about, think before you flame.

 

[RhapSidious]

Originally posted by koopa
Hmm. This dates from a year ago though:
http://forums.ravensoft.com/ib/ikonboard.pl?;act=ST;f=10;t=23242

No 'official' comment as far as I can tell.

Thanks for finding the link Koopa, I was too lazy to do it.

As far as I can remember, it is confirmed by ID staff in some of those linked articles.

BTW, those posts are dated July and August 2003, and are very current. The articiles they are referring to might be that old though.

 

[Guest]

ffs

Dont even start talking about q4 MP, we know absolutley nothing about it.

As for Doom3, the only reason it isnt doing anything on a large scale with MP is that Carmack didnt want to spend all the dev time working out the issues with the MP portion of a game that is focused on SP. They arent trying to do anything innovative with MP on this game, just something basic yet fun. They will get the shit with MP worked out after Doom3 is released, and they have said numerous times they will most likley release a MP expansion after Doom3 to impliment some of the improvements they made into the game. Its a simple matter of priotities. They want to make an engrossing and immersive horror game and dont want to have working on the MP aspect of the game take time and effort away from the SP experience.

As for Quake4, nothing about the MP has been released. Seeing as how iD will continue working out issues with the engine and MP aspect of the engine after Doom3s release, its logical to assume that progress will be made in that area before Quake4 is released, and that the MP for quake4 will be on a larger scale than that of Doom3. Still, anything said about Quake4 MP at htis point by anyone other than Raven or iD is pure speculation.

Its not that the engine isnt able to do MP on a large scale, its just that the dev team hasnt yet devoted time to working out the issues that the engine has with large scale MP. Dont forget the large scale all MP game using the Doom3 engine that nerve is singed on for. This shows that they will have the MP issues worked out in time.

 

[PappaSmurf]

OMG YOU ****ING DUMB NUBBIES.

Just because DOOM3 SHIPS with 4 player multiplayer, that does not mean mod's cant make 32 player games. No one has any information which suggests that you wont be able to do this.

Seccondly, iD could, and probably will release a DOOM3 multiplayer pack, like they did for Q3, only better.

Thirdly, Quake4 is FOCUSSED on single player but it ALSO has a BIG FOCUS on multiplayer.
****ing open your eyes and stop jumping to conclusions dummasses :flame:

 

[Apos]

Still, anything said about Quake4 MP at htis point by anyone other than Raven or iD is pure speculation.

Actually, even things said BY Raven are pure speculation at this point. The Raven guys at QuakeCon have said that they are only seeing a solid D3 multiplayer implementation for the first time AT QuakeCon along with the rest of us. They say they have been throwing around concepts for a general direction on what features to include, but nothing is certain yet. So there is nothing to speculate ABOUT: even they don't know what they will ship yet.

Thirdly, Quake4 is FOCUSSED on single player but it ALSO has a BIG FOCUS on multiplayer.

Rick Johnson of Raven "Quake IV is primarily a single-player focused game which will be continued on a near storyline from Quake II. That's not to say that we won't have multiplayer, but our primary focus is currently the single-player experience."

They will have solid MP, but it is not a "BIG FOCUS," at least currently. Maybe later, when the game is less than a year away from release.

No one has any information which suggests that you wont be able to do this.

Given that the SP game doesn't seem to like having more than four or five peson-sized enemies running around at once (without slowing down even uber systems), I wouldn't expect this engine, at least at it's current visual quality settings, to be all that suited to massive online games. The engine could certainly be stripped back, but by the time people have systems ready for MMFPS games in Doom3, it'll be years down the road, and other companies will certainly have made their own improvements as well.

That's not a bad thing, it's just a thing. I'm actually pretty interested in Doom3s multiplayer setup- they are trying at once both something new, and nostaligic. I probably won't stay interested for too long (vanilla DM variants kinda bore me) but it sounds like a great throwback to the original Doom MP games, which were tight and personal.

The Starcraft-like joining is VERY different, but don't knock it until you've tried it. It worked fine for Starcraft (many more smaller games joining and starting all the time, since there aren't any central "servers" per se to wait around for a space on). However, again, that system is NOT very conducive to MMFPS, and the fact that they say it will apply to Q4 as well, not to mention that Raven apparently has to seriously consider what D3 MP will be like before deciding on what they can plausibly do, suggests that this is the way it will be for some time (since Q4 isn't coming out till late 2004 at the earliest). I doubt we'll see anything as massive and as large-team focused as Natural Selection on a Doom3 engine game for quite some time.

Hopefully, HL2 and D3 will fill different niches, both creating and expanding new game types.

P2P has NOTHING to do with the amount of players you can have, people.

Actually, yes it does. P2P is great for very small games. It doesn't, however, scale well at all. It is not, however, the WRONG choice. It is A choice. You get some advantages and you lose some advantages.

P2P is not the same thing in a FPS MP game as bitorrent, where more peers means more bandwidth (because uploads weren't being used). More clients doesn't make it better: every new client means that every computer playing now has to send out more packets to a new destination, and worry about the timing on yet another system. Each player has limited bandwidth and time to sync up every other player and game object, every computer has to figure out what information to send to every other computer.

This is an advantage in small games. It's a disadvantage in larger games. id wants to push the envelope on smaller games instead of staking out the already crowded 16player+ market. I say: more power to them for taking a different direction in the technology and gameplay experience.

 

[RhapSidious]

Originally posted by PappaSmurf
OMG YOU ****ING DUMB NUBBIES.

Just because DOOM3 SHIPS with 4 player multiplayer, that does not mean mod's cant make 32 player games. No one has any information which suggests that you wont be able to do this.

Seccondly, iD could, and probably will release a DOOM3 multiplayer pack, like they did for Q3, only better.

Thirdly, Quake4 is FOCUSSED on single player but it ALSO has a BIG FOCUS on multiplayer.
****ing open your eyes and stop jumping to conclusions dummasses :flame:

Another idiot in action.

 

[dawdler]

I can't see many mods based on 4 players. It looks like HL2 will still be going well after Doom 3. Another reason to celebrate really.

Actually, I can think of a rather large number of highly detailed coop mods... But that is assuming you can actually coop with all these 4 players, doubt it...

 

[RhapSidious]

Originally posted by Apos


They will have solid MP, but it is not a "BIG FOCUS," at least currently. Maybe later, when the game is less than a year away from release.



Given that the SP game doesn't seem to like having more than four or five peson-sized enemies running around at once (without slowing down even uber systems), I wouldn't expect this engine, at least at it's current visual quality settings, to be all that suited to massive online games. The engine could certainly be stripped back, but by the time people have systems ready for MMFPS games in Doom3, it'll be years down the road, and other companies will certainly have made their own improvements as well.


Actually, yes it does. P2P is great for very small games. It doesn't, however, scale well at all. It is not, however, the WRONG choice. It is A choice. You get some advantages and you lose some advantages.

P2P is not the same thing in a FPS MP game as bitorrent, where more peers means more bandwidth (because uploads weren't being used). More clients doesn't make it better: every new client means that every computer playing now has to send out more packets to a new destination, and worry about the timing on yet another system. Each player has limited bandwidth and time to sync up every other player and game object, every computer has to figure out what information to send to every other computer.

Exactly. Throw having to pre-set up games, no mid-game joins, etc and Quake3 style 16/16 or 32/32 MP is almost impossible with the D3 engine.

Even with custom modification, which would be a major (pain in the ass) reworking of D3 code, it would takes years before cpus/gpus would be powerful enough to run that number of players and still look as good as the single player will when it's released.

I predict that Source will be the engine of choice for massive mp of the future, and that's fine by me.

 

[Gunner]

Originally posted by PappaSmurf
OMG YOU ****ING DUMB NUBBIES.

****ing open your eyes and stop jumping to conclusions dummasses

Keep the language in check ( the spelling too lol ).

 

[Anthraxxx]

Gamespot has a nice article on the Doom 3 multiplay.


http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/doom3/preview_6073440.html

or read it here...
_________________________________________________
Surprisingly, the highlight of QuakeCon 2003 isn't its new venue at the fabulous Adam's Mark Hotel in Dallas (moved from the event's traditional home in the neighboring city of Mesquite), but rather, a playable version of the multiplayer component from id Software's highly anticipated first-person shooter sequel Doom 3. We were able to jump in for a few rounds of head-to-head deathmatch play, though the graphically impressive shooter will also support other multiplayer modes, including team deathmatch. However, the developer has stated previously that it has focused most of its efforts on Doom 3's single-player game, which will make use of id's powerful new game engine and its ability to render impressive real-time shadows and portray its characters with extremely high polygon counts and realistic physics. So we were intrigued when we heard that Doom 3's multiplayer would be on hand at QuakeCon, especially since the game's extremely high-end graphics seem like they'd be restrictive in large-scale multiplayer matches with lots of character models onscreen at once, and since many of the game's levels will be dark, tightly enclosed areas designed to induce claustrophobia.



Doom 3 will feature multiplayer modes in addition to the single-player game.
The level we played took place in a futuristic starbase into which demonic influences had just begun to encroach--this influence was represented by a few specific areas of the otherwise sleek, high-tech base being covered by a pulsating, fleshy mass. We played a few sessions of four-player free-for-all deathmatch in this small level, whose layout seemed a bit reminiscent of a few of the smaller deathmatch maps in Quake III. The two-level map was set around a gigantic, churning reactor whose center had apparently been corrupted by demons, such that falling through it would churn you through a swirling red portal and teleport you to another part of the map.

The center of the portal also housed the "berserk" power-up item, which, just like in the original Doom, lets you completely obliterate your enemies with a single punch. Considering that many of Doom 3's levels will be more tightly knit (and offer less room to run away) than the larger levels of Doom II, berserk seems much more dangerous, which is apparently why it's also so obvious. Picking up the berserk item causes your character to briefly go insane--you still have complete control of your character, but your screen flashes red, like in the original Doom games, and your character screams at the top of his lungs (which is audible from a distance) and is surrounded with glowing red rings.

Still another reason why the berserk item seemed more effective than, for instance, using the close-range gauntlet weapon with the quad damage item in Quake III Arena, is that, as id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead explained, Doom 3 features per-polygon hit detection, rather than the typical Quake II/Quake III system of using an invisible bounding box for hit detection. Though the run speed in the multiplayer games we played didn't seem especially fast, it was more than adequate to dodge incoming fire from our opponents, especially around the map's tight corners. Close-quarters battles seemed to get especially tense at times because of the game's disorientation effects, which cause your onscreen vision to blur if you take a direct hit from an enemy weapon--especially a point-blank blast from the shotgun, which not only blurs your view considerably, but also briefly jolts the screen.

In terms of weapons, the Doom 3 map we played on featured a few old standbys from the original Doom games, including the plasma rifle and the rocket launcher, as well as a combat shotgun and a new machine gun. We were able to pick up and use these weapons in addition to the default weapons we started with--the pistol, our fists, and the flashlight item, which helps you see in the dark (though it also makes you clearly visible to other players) and can also be used as a blunt weapon in a pinch. All the weapons obviously had sleek new weapon models that put the original Doom weapons to shame, but we didn't get much of a chance to try out the plasma rifle ourselves, especially since the default pistol was so underpowered that we'd often run for a shotgun or the rocket launcher, which was hidden on the second level of the reactor.



Even Doom 3's impressive real-time shadows play a role in the game's deathmatches.
The shotgun seems like an extremely effective weapon that is decent at a distance and devastating up close. Since Doom 3 uses per-polygon hit detection, we didn't fare as well with the rocket launcher, though aiming at our opponents' feet, as Hollenshead advised, netted us a few frags. In fact, getting a solid hit on an enemy caused him to be launched in the air, and if he happened to die from the damage, his body would flop down across the ground using the game's rag-doll physics. Naturally, since we were playing the game against fellow members of the press, we were all stopping frequently to note different features of the game and look at the scenery, which included an infested hallway with a human torso hanging from the ceiling (shooting it actually caused it to sway back and forth using rag-doll physics), so not everyone was trying very hard to win.

We did find that classic deathmatch skills, such as good aim, avoiding enemy fire, and controlling the most powerful weapons and armor on the map, helped us come out on top more often than not, so Doom 3 will definitely have something to offer hard-core deathmatch fans. The level even had several interactive elements, such as small crates that could be pushed or shot about, elevator lifts that could be triggered by approaching closely and pressing the fire key, and light switches that could be used in a similar fashion. Flipping switches requires you to get extremely close to the switch, which causes you to lower your weapon so you can use it safely. So, obviously, a sloppy attempt to use a switch while carrying a rocket launcher in a frantic deathmatch could result in you blowing your own head off.

The switches themselves often play a role in the gameplay. As Hollenshead explained, one of the most obvious and effective tactics in a Doom 3 deathmatch is to stake out a room with a light switch, kill the lights, and lie in wait. Then, when someone else happens to blunder into the room and hit the lights, you can blast him to bits. Even Doom 3's impressive real-time shadows play a role in deathmatches--in many corridors with sparse lighting, your shadow will either follow or precede you, and it can give away your position even if you're trying to hide. As designer Robert Duffy explained, creating Doom 3 maps is an arduous task that involves not only laying out each level's geometry, but also tweaking, twisting, and shifting objects in and around each level's light sources to create shadows that are suitably menacing.

Though it doesn't seem revolutionary at this point, Doom 3's deathmatch seems extremely playable. However, we played the game on high-end PCs equipped with Nvidia's GeForce FX 5900 cards, and the demonstration ran at 640x480 resolution with only four players. How well the game will support larger multiplayer sessions, especially at higher graphical settings, remains to be seen. And there's the matter of the single-player game, which we haven't seen much of yet outside of officially released trailers. Doom 3's release was recently delayed until 2004, but we'll have more updates on the game as soon as we can.

________________________________________________

What caught my attention was the Beserk Mode. You'll scream and other people can hear you from a distance.....

:thumbs:

 

[Zeus]

Originally posted by commando
2) hl2 GAMEPLAY, best phsics, fun, long and AI BEST BEST, plus realism.

Right, but one thing, HL2 is in no way realistic (except maybe some of the weapons), I mean c'mon it's a good fiction story, but not realistic. An alien infestation where a scientist runs around killing headcrabs with his crowbar and throwing things around with his anti-gravity machine, while a bunch of Striders march through a city.

 

[Diablo2k]

Originally posted by commando
got a point..

but i love both games

1) doom gonna be more scary, dark, blood fest hell, graphics

2) hl2 GAMEPLAY, best phsics, fun, long and AI BEST BEST, plus realism.

i am goin to buy both enjoy both, and hl2 will win but doom3 will still be there in second

cool i already see you have played both games.. else how would you know this stuff :dozey:. Or can you look in the future? :bounce:

 

[Kaban]

There's speculation, and there's fact. There's also speculation done by people who know the games well enough that it's as close to fact as we can get. Did that make sense? Doesn't really matter but I'm going to state some things that I remember directly from recent interviews:

First of all I'd like to mention that Carmack's year or more old speeches about him not wanting to focus on multiplayer shouldn't be taken as all that relevant in the discussion. Things can change, and Carmack has the opinions of many other employees to deal with. To quote an interview from GameSpy:

Tim Willits: John [Carmack] was able to implement the basic networking a few months ago, and the last couple of months we've been focusing on it.

Todd Hollenshead: … really, REALLY focusing on it the last couple of weeks. (laughs)
---

The main debate here is wether 4 players is enough. Since this is an HL2 board, some (few) users may very well have other agendas with this thread, however those extremists do not factor into any logical discussion.

Doom is a different style of deathmatch. You either enjoy that style or you don't. It's like trying to convince people that a certain color is better than another, just because they themselves like it more. There isn't any empircal way to compare fundamentally different forms of multiplayer. ID Software believes that their style and 4 players provide the best experience. Others may believe it doesn't.

It's like that Q3 vs UT debate... Many people brought up arguments about UT having more maps, models, weapons, etc. I looked past that and just played the game, and asked myself "is this fun" and the answer was yes. To both games. Gameplay is a complex thing that mixes EVERY element that a game offers, plus your own likes and dislikes. There is no way to know for sure if the game will feel right to you in the end.

It is of course possible to take fan-boy-ism to the extreme and by the time you play the games your judgement is so clouded that rational opinions just cannot be formed. However very few people fall under this category.

I don't see Doom 3 having a big online presense either. Like someone pointed out, it's just not as fun unless you have people closer in one room. I believe Doom will be the next ultimate LAN game, and the game of choice for 1v1's, due to it's lighting model, etc. It will not be the game that will hold 100,000 players online at any moment like CS does for example.

With that in mind, that it will be a LAN game, the issues of P2P are lessened. The game is synced between players 60 times a second. This allows for complex machinery and lights in levels to be manipulated and stay consistent for all players. This of course takes bandwith, but if people are playing on a 100mbit hub, that's not that big of a deal.

With that in mind, id Software commented that the only thing that's right now holding Doom 3 at 4 players are a few lines of code. One employee (I can't dig up the interview) commented that the first mod to be released for Doom 3 will probably be one to allow for eight person deathmatch.

 

[derby]

So many people fail to realise this, but there are many more people who play single-player only than play SP and multiplayer.

 

[Gunner]

Originally posted by Kaban
Doom is a different style of deathmatch. You either enjoy that style or you don't. It's like trying to convince people that a certain color is better than another, just because they themselves like it more. There isn't any empircal way to compare fundamentally different forms of multiplayer. ID Software believes that their style and 4 players provide the best experience. Others may believe it doesn't.

I don't see Doom 3 having a big online presense either. Like someone pointed out, it's just not as fun unless you have people closer in one room. I believe Doom will be the next ultimate LAN game, and the game of choice for 1v1's, due to it's lighting model, etc. It will not be the game that will hold 100,000 players online at any moment like CS does for example.

Interesting read, thanks Kaban.

 

[DeBaan]

Originally posted by nw909
Thats because leet haxorz use windows!!!

perhaps that's why windows machines get "haxor"d so often!:cheers:

 

[Yo-Han]

Originally posted by Rabid Llama
First off, Doom3 multiplayer isn't arbitrarily restricted to four players -- it's a design decision by the D3 team, and it's been said that players will be able to make maps for more than four people, if they wish.

However, D3 multiplayer is a whole different animal from HL2 multiplayer. D3 multi is the multiplayer version of Doom3. That sounds silly, but think about it -- Doom3 is based around tight corridors, cramped spaces, and dark shadows. This means a 32 player fragfest simply doesn't fit. Rather, a tight, small fight is much more appropriate.

D3 multiplayer is pretty fun. I can say this, because I played it yesterday (yay Quakecon D3 multiplayer demo ). It's currently unbalanced weapon-wise (the shotgun and plasmagun own all, the pistol is just sad), and I didn't really like the map, but it was fun. And gorgeous. And atmospheric. It was, in short, what multiplayer in a dark, gloomy game should be.

HL2 multiplayer will be more traditional run-and-gun, and it will attract the masses more than D3's multiplayer, but I forsee D3 multiplayer getting a small group of hardcore fans because it's just a little different.

For once an opinion of someone who has actually PLAYED THE GAME...


Bullocks:
-4player max?..it can be more(easely modded in) but current hardware will be to slow..
I predict the way hardware evolves we will see 8-12 people MP modes for Quake4(same engine)
-slowdowns at quakecon test?..there was later on at quakecon a second build installed wich did not lag on some places,but played smooth


As far as for HL2 MP i'm very positive,then again it could be not my taste..the only thing i'm afraid of is the large amount of immature behaving players showing up at servers(see HL,CS,i'm not judging everyone ),but thats normal in such a big community

 

[DaLys]

Originally posted by koopa
Anyone know how popular pure HL multiplayer is anyway (that is, not CS or TF2)?

400 servers last time i looked.