Mod Coding Status?

[IchI]

Hey, I do not have any experiance coding myself but I do work as a modeller for a team and I have been following new code as we progress through development, I was wondering how other mods are coming along with there code and what they have done so far. This is mainly because some people are saying they can't code at the moment because they havn't got the hl2dm code and others are well on there way, can somone please clarify how youe team is doing. It would be quite ironic for me to just ask so I will explain a little bit about are situation, I can't go to much into detail but I will speak generally.

We started programming and managed to get the game running we have are own directorires and maps and have sorted out relationships between players and eneimes. Some things are still very buggy such as physics and the player in general. The win32 and Linux dedicated servers are been worked on and seem to be making progress.

(I don't have a coding background so I can't exactly get technical. I can also not mention some things because Sven would kick my ass )

But how is your team doing with coding ?

 

[Angry Lawyer]

My one-man mod team (me) is doing outstanding code-wise.

There's a simple fix to the Multiplayer physics, it's on the Coding bit on VERC's forums, although you'll need to dig a little.

The HL2DM code is probably going to be a dissapointment to many coders, who think it's going to be the majority of their mod done for them already. Alot of things you take for granted in the Singleplayer SDK, that can be ported into the bare-bones mod easily, will have great difficulty working in the heavily-changed DM code.

Code-wise, my RTS mod has close-combat NPCs enabled, NPC & player teams (NPCs will notice who can control them by team, and who's on their team), the ability to select NPCs, fixes to the physics, and in about two hours time, the ability to signal through tracelines where NPCs should go.

This should help you guys with Physics problems:

http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=viewthread&t=211,1104816723,4893&id=768355&b=4991&v=flatold

-Angry Lawyer

 

[IchI]

hmmm, we seem to be having a problem running the player animations on the well... player. Its hard to explain since I have no clue what they are talking about, but basiclly its like... we are making a coop mod and to start with we had a player which was the grey gordon model, now its a resistance fighter, but it has no animations. Do you know how to solve this problem.

NOTE: Its not the standard way or making it how u did it, infact... i think yours might have worked already... basiclly we need to get a multiplayer animation working in single player on the info_player_start/deathmatch not sure which one we use. Got any ideas?

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Are you guys using the Singleplayer source? Because I'm pretty sure having the bare-bones multiplayer mod sorts out this sorta thing. And the single-player source has all sorts of prediction problems when other players connect.

Player animations aren't really my speciality, due to the fact that my game's an RTS, and has no player models to speak of...

-Angry Lawyer

 

[IchI]

Are you guys using the Singleplayer source? Because I'm pretty sure having the bare-bones multiplayer mod sorts out this sorta thing. And the single-player source has all sorts of prediction problems when other players connect.

Player animations aren't really my speciality, due to the fact that my game's an RTS, and has no player models to speak of...

-Angry Lawyer

The multiplayer source has worse physics problems if I am correct. Infact it has worse problems all around.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

The problems are easily fixed, as shown in the link I posted.

Trust me, the single-player source might seem like an easier option to start with, but when you have to redo a load of prediction and stuff, you'll realise you've started on the wrong end.

Single-Player: Starts coding easy, ends difficult.
Multi-player: Starts quite difficult, ends much simpler.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[IchI]

The problems are easily fixed, as shown in the link I posted.

Trust me, the single-player source might seem like an easier option to start with, but when you have to redo a load of prediction and stuff, you'll realise you've started on the wrong end.

Single-Player: Starts coding easy, ends difficult.
Multi-player: Starts quite difficult, ends much simpler.

-Angry Lawyer

my coder said your an idiot LOL, sorry... it wasn't me who said it. I am just quoting him. I don't think he would have said it your face as well. I will apoliagise for him, but may be you are wrong. Take into acount we are making a coop mod, not a multiplayer team based cs mod. We will be using heavy AI and scripting and even have storylines taking place.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Well, that put me off applying to join.

Even taking into account Co-operative play, starting with no netcode is a bad idea.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Nev]

Umm.. Please note that the idiot thing was said in a "funny" way, in our irc channel, and I apologise for that.
The problems I see with using the MP sdk are basically that we have to port a huge amount of things, and if we use the SP sdk, we only really need to import player animations, player ragdolls and predicted weapons, the rest seems to work fine.
Anyway, thanks for your help, at least now I'm not so sure if we should keep coding with the SP sdk anymore.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Sorry, I'd had a bit much to drink, and I was feeling a little touchy due to a few personal problems.

The porting of files is pretty easy into the Bare-Bones mod. The majority of NPCs are up-to-scratch, netcode wise, due to Valve thinking ahead.

Include the following files into your MP mod build:

antlion_dust.cpp
antlion_dust.h
npc_antlion.cpp
npc_antlion.h

And the corresponding dust files in the client. Try building it, and it will probably have an error (due to only a few files being included), but the lines can be commented out.

Compile, with a few more includes/few more commented out bits.

Play a test map, with sv_cheats on. Type 'NPC_Create npc_antlion'.

You'll have an Antlion. It'll sit there, and not move much, due to the lack of relationship tables, but it's there. And, using the netgraph command (of course, after you get it to respond to you), and you'll see how clean it is, net-code wise.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Nev]

Thanks for that. We have decided to use the SP SDK for now, and then port things over to the hl2dm sdk when it has been released (shouldn't be too long now).
hl2dm feels like a much better base to build on anyway, because now we can focus on getting the sven co-op features done in the hl2sp sdk, and hl2dm already has all the weapon prediction, ai, etc done for us.

P.S.

No problem about that reply you made, IchI really did make me seem like an asshole

 

[RabidJester]

I'm not doing much, basically just creating some tools and automating some things, but it's working out well so far.

I know it doesn't help your problem any, but I'm just feeling proud.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Porting things into the MP code is pretty simple, I have found.

Just include something like Antlion.cpp and Antlion.h, compile it, and it'll tell you what else needs including. Eventually, you'd have included five or six files, and have an Antlion in MP. But you need a relationship table to make them respond to you - something I had to work around because, no matter how hard I tried, all the NPC's were too happy sitting together and not attacking.

Make your code modular. If you decide to switch bases, it'll make it so much more easy.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Nev]

Loading the relationship tables in multiplayer is not hard at all, just add me to msn or icq if you haven't figured it out yet.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

In the Bare-Bones thing? I tried for ages, and eventually just made the computer check the opponent's m_iConqTeam (variable I use to store teams) value, and return their relationship that way.

Still, I'd be interested to find out how it's done properly.

-Angry Lawyer