need advice on and idea!

[armanguy]

Well i was brainstorming the other night and i want to start a personal project like i do most of the work but i need to know how well does source handle vehicles? or should i try this mod out with and engine that can run it properly like ut2004 :rolling: well i look forward to your comments.

 

[NickOuellette]

From what I understand, the Buggy and Airboat from HL2 are pretty good examples of how well Source handles vehicles in single-player... ie, decently. In multiplayer though, its a whole different story. I've heard a lot of complaints about the implementation of vehicles in multiplayer, especially if the occupants are visible.

 

[armanguy]

yeah ill need to figure that out cuz i'll be having passengers in my vehicles and its a multiplayer based game. you know anything else about the vehicle code in hl2 multiplayer?

 

[Yorick]

I think it depends on what kind of game you're going for. The vehicles worked for HL2 because it was single-player, fps, and so on.

As mentioned, there are problems with them in Multiplayer.

If you're going something based heavily around vehicles, it might be better to start planning now and get things underway for the release of Unreal Tournament 2007.

I'm fairly sure it would be possible to do all of it in Source, but it might be more of a hassle than you really want to deal with.

 

[armanguy]

well i wont be using unreal 2k7 because ill have no need for that kind of power the current generation unreal engine would be perfect for my mod but i really want to use source is there anyway to get around these multiplayer prob's

 

[crackhead]

i dont think it would be such a big problem. the main issuie i see in this is that for a game to be vehicle based the maps would presumably be very big which could cause a problem in multiplayer.

 

[armanguy]

yeah the maps wont be huge but they'll be reletavly big.well what do you guys think would be a good solution to this problem?

 

[crackhead]

how many players and how many vehicles are you planning to have in one level?

 

[armanguy]

well im aiming to have 12 players in-game and and 10 vehicles. 5 for each team.

 

[Dario D.]

I don't know for certain, but I think that number of vehicles could constitute lag. Someone else may be able to confirm or elaborate better.

Edit: (quote by Ennui in another thread)

Right - I understand you want to do that, but do you think it's possible? It's better not to state things that probably are going to be highly difficult to achieve. Shit, Insurgency removed vehicles because they were too laggy, and no other mod with vehicles has been able to manage the lag they get when there's more than 16 players or so, to my knowledge.

I think UT2004/7 would make a more ideal engine as far as having lots of vehicles... but also, some important advice (from a UT2004/7 modder) is don't overestimate how much you can do by yourself, because it's a lot more work than it appears from the outside. You may find a lot more success working with a team, and if you head on to the UT2004 forums (Atari Community Forums), in the Beta Releases section, you can probably find a lot of other vehicle-makers who might be able to help. There are lots of custom vehicles for UT2004, but unfortuantely most of them are mediocre at best... but still, that would be the most reasonable route I think.

Anyway, good luck with it

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Map size isn't an issue for multiplayer, as it's not something that's part of the datastream. Vehicles tend to be an issue because of the amount of data each one requires. In addition to location, direction and velocity, the physics data is replicated to all the clients - that means all the information pertaining to suspension, friction, engine data etc has to be sent and received by all players. That's your cause of lag - it's just too much data. To counteract that, you have to move as much of it as possible to be client-side predicted. There's no other way around it.

 

[Dario D.]

Just curious: is it possible to make vehiclies (like 4-wheel tanks without suspension) that don't use physics, and move in very linear patterns, and save bandwidth?

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Yes. The HL2 airboat should, in theory, serve as an example of this (although I doubt very much that they implemented much in the way of multiplayer-specific client-side optimisation).

 

[MightyMiyagi]

Well, there is a mod right now that has been working with vehicles in very laggy situations:
http://www.incoming-source.net/

Check it out, there is an article on the main page:
www.halflife2.net

They may be able to help you with some code.