I have just a few questions. I am planning on eventually making a commercial game. Do I need to do anything like give credit in the credits or anything like that if I use populace, you know.. after paying the 50$.

Another thing I wanted to mention was that, (and by this I mean no offense) after looking over the documentation for populace, I didn't really find anything that I couldn't do with 3dgamestudio's wdl language anyway. Now I don't know about speed, but since I do trust locoweed (lol what choice do we have, how many tutorials and other contributions has he made for us all?) I guess populace is faster. Now although faster = better 99% of the time, the lack of tutorials also hurt this maybe superior multiplayer expansion (i say maybe because I can't confirm it). One final problem is the simple fact that it's a DLL. The problem with a DLL is that when A6 updates or even when A7 comes out, it might cause problems. These are some of the reason I stopped bothering with populace at all. Although 3dgs multiplayer might suck ass... alot... badly.. (lol), it will remain to be supported and debugged throughout every update. If you bought a DLL for A5, it's now useless in A6, and sometimes even after some slight A5 updates.

Now I don't mean to bash Populace. In all honesty the people who are working to bring it to us for the small 50$ fee are great people. They really did try helping me a lot. I want to thank them 100% and I wish all service providers could be like them. Maybe now with locoweed coming out with a tutorial and my better understanding, I will use populace again, but I still fear the whole A6 upgrading and the DLL causing a headache in the long run. But then again I might be wrong with the DLL (I had a few bad experiences with A5 dlls)

The way i see it it's reliability vs performance.

GREAT!
thank you very much for that very long answer!
It helped a lot...
the system seems to be pretty well thought out, I like that...
Good to know the action is run on every computer...
It'll take some getting used to... but I think it's worth it. 32 players ... even 8 would be enough for my purposes right now^^

So... we'll give it a shot:)

Micha

Lol, as far as what I just said before, I just realized there is 1 thing about my method that I did forget to mention lol. I use skills to send the x,y,z,pan,tilt,roll, while populace doesn't. So that's another + to populace (unless I'm wrong)

This might have already been answered, but i couldnt find it

i have a6 commercial. if i buy populace can i still get 32 players online...or just the normal 4 that the commercial edition has

Daniel

the website states that populace's 32 player support works even with a6 standard.

DaBroOzar =

That is correct. The DLL will work with all version of GameStudio.

Hi!
since this thread has already been acting as a sort of populace-help thread I figured I could ask this here:
I want to use MP_EntityCreate to create my player. Now that doesn't work. As soon as it gets there, it gives me an error: "Crash in MP_EntityCreate"

here's my code:
Code:

---

function create_player()
	{
		vec_set(temp,spawn_points[(my_player_number -1)*3 + 0]);		//get station position out of array
		
		
		dll_handle = multiplayer_handle;
		player = MP_EntityCreate(player_mdl, temp, player_function, null);
		
		//		player = ent_create("mp_main.mdl",temp,player_function);
	}


var vCurrWarning;
		
		//hack to remove warnings when DLL loads, as per Conitec
		vCurrWarning = warn_level;
		warn_level = 1;
		
		multiplayer_handle = dll_open("Populace.dll");
		breakpoint;
		if ( multiplayer_handle != NULL ) //make sure the dll loaded
		{
			ifdef phost;
				//connect locally to the multiplayer server, randomly assign to one of four teams
				dll_handle = multiplayer_handle;
				if (MP_ConnectServer("Host_Player", int(random(4))) == MP_NO_ERROR)
				{
					scroll_message("                -> Connected. <-");
					
					my_player_number = 1;			//if you're host, set starting values.
					total_players = 1;
					
					
					//create_station();
					create_player();
				}		
			endif;
...
...

  

---

what reasons could there be for a "crash" in MP? usually it means the wrong amount of parameters are given etc, right? But I do give the right parameters...?

i just narrowed down the problem. It has to do with this:
vec_set(temp,spawn_points[(my_player_number -1)*3 + 0]); //get station position out of array
player = MP_EntityCreate(player_mdl, temp, player_function, null);
Apparently it cannot create an object that is far away from the origin? Why is that?
if I use
vec_set(temp,vector(0,0,0)); instead it works just fine...?

Micha

@germanunkol
I solved the problem by set the position of the created entities after the create function:

you = MP_EntityCreate("nplatt.wmb", nullvector, null,null); // create multiplayerentite
you.x=Tilegroesse * spalte; // now move its position
you.y=(Tilegroesse/2)- Tilegroesse * reihe;
you.z=0;
wait(1);// wait one frame so the position data will be send
MP_IgnoreField(you, MPUC_PAN);
MP_IgnoreField(you, MPUC_POSITION); // now disable the tracking for those entities


another question: how do I know how much latency time my game needs? on one machine, the server and client runs fine, but over a LAN, the movement is a slower then normal.
I just tested it with a very very simple code without time or anything. I have to try it with a locked framerate etc. but it woul really help if you could see how big the packages are.

that's the solution I came up with as well... thanks
Man, I'm sorry, I'm still getting used to this. This part works now, I can host and join, works just great. I really like how the dll connects after starting the engine, not while it is starting, that way you don't need to use the command line and you can have a main menu before joining up in any game, without having to restart the engine.
It does take a bunch of getting used to but I recommend it