It's coming! A step-by-step, detailed current multiplayer tutorial that my mother, who is totally analog by the way, could grasp.

I will release it very shortly after the A6.23 public beta release. It will require A6.23 Commercial or Pro.

I am getting the Chapters in order now. You can check out current documentation at Locoweed's Multiplayer Tutorial PDF.

As usual, I am user-friendly, so now is the time to make any request. Please check out the Chapters in the above link, and if you have suggestions or would like to see something else added, please post, and I will consider it.

Sincerely,
Locoweed

You may want to change the un/reliable part.
TCP is no longer used for reliable transport in the currently used DirectX implementation.

unreliable means - send UDP and forget about it
reliable means - resend UDP several times until the client confirms the package or the client is dropped because of too much lag.

-- slacer

Hi locoweed,
looking forward to see it finished!
Especialy chapter 15 seams interesting!

old_bill

Wow, I'm looking forward to this! Its been so long since there has been a multiplayer tutorial, and while fastlane is also making one his won't be out until later. Thanks Locoweed!

@ Slacer, Roger that. So does Dplay_Unreliable still work even? But is now this?
0 - UDP guaranteed protocol (default)
1 - UDP non guaranteed protocol
I think I remember reading one of your post somewhere on that subject, but forget where it was. I know how the new Send_Unreliable mode works, but is Dplay_Unreliable even an option anymore?


@ Old Bill, I was just thinking, Chapter 15 should probably be Chapter 1. We have to get our priorities straight don't we?

@ William, .

Looks like it may rain tonight. If it does there should be alot more documentation done tommorrow night around this time.

Locoweed's Multiplayer Tutorial PDF #4 (about 1mb) is now uploaded. I think by now you should be able to get a feel for what it will be covering and the amount of detail it will get into.

Not real sure if it's really a tutorial on multiplayer or a book on total game design, but I am having fun a lot of fun writing it. There will be a lot of changes to come, but it is all coming together even better than I expected.

I have named the multiplayer tutorial game Biosphere IV - Lunar Mania. Details in pdf.

Later,
Loco

Edit: I calmed down and edited this out.

Multiplayer Tutorial still moving along and I should have next update on PDF done tonight. Will be getting into building the actual tutorial level and some scripting.

EDIT: Locoweed's Multiplayer Tutorial PDF Publish #5 (about 1.5mb) is now uploaded. I am not including bookmarks in PDF for now, it takes too long to set up. The completed documentation will have bookmarks though. If you have any suggestions or desires, now is the time to post them before I get heavy into scripting and the tutorial documentation. I am faily lazy at times and don't want to have to re-write the documention because of adding suggestions later in gamdev.

Loco

After an overflight I have to say: "Great pleasure to read!! Great work!!"

Some comments:

p. 21: another command to add: -sn (as you noted in App 1)

My last personal experience was, that 'client side movement' improves the lag to zero for the player and decreases the amount of data sending to a phantastic, stupid minimum: After generating the player on all maschines by the server, the player moves his entity on client side. The player position will only be updated every 3 seconds (in my case) to the server and to all other clients from the server. If the position is not accurate, it will be corrected while the next 3 seconds on the server and all the other clients. The player send only changes of key status to the server and all the other clients. It's some more complicated than 'server side movement', but if you check it, it's a much more sophisticated player entity handling. Did you have experience with that and will you explain it in your tutorial? If you don't know what I mean and you're interested, I can send you an example with some explanations. I think this is not easy, but real important stuff, specially for internet games (bigger lag) to get a "smooth" stearing.

Hi DocJoe,

Yeah, send me examples and explanations. I wrote some client movement code a while back because it was the only way I could get anything to move over the net prior to A6.2 on slower connections. My code got a bit too complicated on that for a tutorial, but it was my first attempt and I would code it differently now if I wrote client-side movement code again.

I think I will keep this first tutorial using server-side movement. Then possibly make a second tutorial later on client-side movement, since it is quite a bit more complex. If you could send me what you have I can look it over and play around with it, then possibly implement it into a client-side tutorial after this one is done. The good news on making a second tutorial, would be, I could make the exact same game, thus half of the documentation would already be done, so it would take alot less time to produce, and people could run the server-side movement tutorial and then the client-side movement tutorial on the same game and they could see first hand what the difference in speed, etc would be.

Thanks,
Loco

The basic level is complete and I will be getting into Starting a Multiplayer Game now. I will not be posting every update here anymore, but will post after major updates.

The most current documentation and current tutorial progress zips will now be located at My3DGS Link below. The level source for Chapter3 - Building a Simple Level is now available for download there. I will be putting zips out when I think there is enough information covered to warrant it. Also useful for if you mess things up, you can get to some kind of recovery point or if you want to skip things like building the level, but want to go through scripting, etc. The PDF will be updated quite often (every time I have time to work on it). Decided to add Brain Teasers to help users understand more difficult coding and why it was done that way.

Later,
Loco