multiplayer online

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zeal23
Space Krill
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2015 6:15 pm

multiplayer online

#1 Post by zeal23 »

hey, i like to play the game a lot but the ai is too weak after a certain point of time so i am looking for actual ppl. i would love to try the multiplayer mode online. if anybody wants to have a game let me know! or if you know ppl who are playing already (the irc seems to be pretty dead)

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Swallow
Space Krill
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 3:58 pm

Re: multiplayer online

#2 Post by Swallow »

Have you tried recruiting any Stars! players for FreeOrion? I still play Stars! but don't have the time to play it on line anymore as the games take too long but there are still a few Stars! players around who might be persuaded to give the game a go. Their forum is here: http://starsautohost.org/sahforum2/

Afdal
Space Krill
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Joined: Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:16 pm

Re: multiplayer online

#3 Post by Afdal »

I have been hanging out on the IRC hoping to get some multiplayer games going for ages now. Please ask me!

Bluehand
Space Floater
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2015 7:47 pm

Re: multiplayer online

#4 Post by Bluehand »

I'd love to play multiplayer but I can't reliably commit to a certain amount of time or schedule. If some people were into a "we'll get to it when we get to it" kind of pace, probably 1-5 turns a day, and we could set up a system of notifying players when we were all ready for the next turn, lets do it.
Code or patches I post are released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

o01eg
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Re: multiplayer online

#5 Post by o01eg »

I took part in Longturn and Greatturn multiplayer games of Freeciv. They have daylong turn and it was enough convenient. But I dropped it because freeciv doesn't have real simultaneous turn. Freeorion is more suitable for such games but I don't see one.
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Vezzra
Release Manager, Design
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Re: multiplayer online

#6 Post by Vezzra »

It's simply beyond our capacity to provide a platform for organizing/managing multiplayer games at this stage. That's something that requires some kind of "critical mass" of players wanting that thing and getting together to set up such a platform. Our fanbase probably isn't large enough yet to provide that "critical mass"...

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Dilvish
AI Lead and Programmer Emeritus
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Re: multiplayer online

#7 Post by Dilvish »

I'll go ahead and mention a related long term idea, probably not anything new to gaming in general but I don't think it's yet been part of the related discussions here at FO-- that is the potential role of auto-managers for assisting multiplayer play. Once in a while people have asked about having auto-managers to help with various aspects of regular FO gameplay, and our standard (and well reasoned I think) response is that we want to minimize micromanagement enough that an auto-manager is really not needed. But I think that casual multiplayer is a place where it really could be helpful. A big problem with multiplayer in a game like this is that it currently requires a big chunk of time with everyone at their keyboards simultaneously, and if someone has to step away for a while for some chore or whatever, then it brings everything to a halt until they can get back. Playing a handful of turns a day like someone mentioned above is manageable, but then it takes a month or two or more to finish a game.

So, there would be a few parts to this, with some degree of independence-- the first would be a multiplayer timer, like for a timed chess game. At game start you set it for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10, 20, whatever, per turn and the server enforces that, sending out a 'last call' message when there is a minute to spare, and if an empire doesn't submit their orders in time then they just don't have any orders for that turn.

The second part would be to have an AI shadowing the player, coming up with it's proposed set of orders for each turn. It could be set up so that the AI shadow automatically submits its orders as a special 'backup' submission, that would only get used if the player doesn't submit a primary set of orders by clicking the 'Turn' button in time.

So that way if one of the players has to go AFK for a while, it doesn't stop the entire game for everyone and hopefully the automanager can at least do well enough so that it's not just effectively equivalent to just resigning. I think just those two parts like that would go a long ways towards making enjoyable multiplayer much more viable.

A third component that I think would make it even better is an interface for the AI backup order set to be reviewed by the player and individual orders could be rejected. So if you're having to mostly focus on cooking dinner, doing your homework, helping your kid with their homework, or whatever, you could mostly focus on those things while still being able to step in for a minute, do a quick review and steer your empire at least some. I would also find something like that pretty interesting and useful for helping improve the AI. Right now I can kind of monitor an AI and its decisions by reviewing the AI log file, but that's got way more info than is needed for this basic oversight and is a rather inefficient review process. It would be pretty neat to be able to play a game and see what the AI would do in my shoes, periodically saying "OMG, what in the world is that AI thinking?! I've got to change that code!"

Anyway, that's just some musings I wanted to toss out. I actually kind of think the first two pieces would not be too terribly tough to implement, though I'm still not about to volunteer for it. The third one would be much more challenging, I think, to come up with an effective UI component for that.
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