Orbiter Server

[Lunar Pilot]

What would be really cool, but amazingly complex, is if they created an internet Orbiter server. Like Runescape, and other online games. It would be a lot more interesting than flying around an empty solar system. It can get pretty lonely, even on Earth, because nothing is moving besides you, and those weird train things that go on tracks for about 500 feet and disappear. Please note that this only my opinion, and I would like to know what other people feel about it.

 

[tl8]

Use the search function for multiplayer,

 

[to be]

The main problem is that in orbiter you use a whole lot of time acceleration. How would you handle that? Orbiter can not ever be a massively multiplayer online game, as you suggest, but there have been some attempts, none terribly successful, to at least add some sort of multiplayer capability to orbiter.

 

[Lunar Pilot]

time acceleration

Maybe there could be a way of programming the server so that different players can use different speeds and yet be in the same world. I myself would have no clue how that would work.

 

[TSPenguin]

The problem with this is the world!
It is not like fastforwarding and comming out of the forrest on the other side. The whole world is literaly changing and moving around. There has not yet been a sufficiant concept of how to accomplish multiplayer for more than a few people at once.

(But we all want it as well, so you are not alone...)

 

[Lunar Pilot]

one idea

What if the server could manage to match everything up, I mean, it would be like as normal on Earth, since you don't really want to do 1000x time acceleration when your flying in the atmosphere. So, the server would try and match everyone up, in space it wouldn't really matter, since what are the odds of running into someone?

 

[to be]

There are a number of problems with that, one of the biggest being: The earth is orbiting the sun, therefore, the earth will be in different places for different people, if they aren't all synced in time. Who's earth do you use? If you use one person's earth, then anyone orbiting earth has to be orbiting it, meaning, essentially, everyone needs to be at that person's time acceleration, which we are trying to avoid. That would hold true for every single planet and moon.

 

[Xantcha]

Why don't just use realtime?

For interplanetary travel server could accelerate time at know predefined periods.
For example, extra month on monday, another two on wednesday and 3 months on friday. Every player could mark his ship as time-accel user. Each ship that was not marked so will have artificially stable orbit during time acceleration. If no ship is marked as time-accel user then no acceleration happens.
Of course, this way a launch opportunity will be only about during two weeks each simulated year, so it will difficult for most pf missions to accomplish them effectively.

 

[TSPenguin]

Why don't just use realtime?

For interplanetary travel server could accelerate time at know predefined periods.
For example, extra month on monday, another two on wednesday and 3 months on friday. Every player could mark his ship as time-accel user. Each ship that was not marked so will have artificially stable orbit during time acceleration. If no ship is marked as time-accel user then no acceleration happens.
Of course, this way a launch opportunity will be only about during two weeks each simulated year, so it will difficult for most pf missions to accomplish them effectively.

This will not work, as it generates new universes each step of the way...
And you will have a whole lot to do to compensate for the fixed accelerations with your correction burns...

 

[to be]

What if you need to stop within the time acceleration jump? Or what if you want realtime, and your destination jumps forward in position a month? i.e. you are going to the moon, realtime would take 3 days or so, within which a month jump would occur, so either you jump and miss the moon because the month jump takes you past it, or you don't and the moon moves a month past YOU. I know, the moon with its 1 month period isn't a great example, but )

 

[Xantcha]

i always though that CTRL+RIGHT ARROW will move cursor one word to the right. My browser, obviously, thinks different :-/ Have lost rather lengthy post

Yes, you are right - automatic time accles just will not work.

The possible solution could be irregular, organized time accelerations.

Another idea is just to try different genre - not free for all but a mission with common goal, this way conflict of interest in will be minimized and time acceleration used as needed.

 

[TSPenguin]

One thing that would work is to sync your time with a selected craft while you maintain your relative position the the object your partner is orbiting. You could even share control over time accel that way and interact with a lot of players. This could be done via switching OMP servers live. It would of course need some form of central database server it is doable.

Of course there are many many problems with that solution.

 

[to be]

What if you are orbiting two different bodies? Or a body moves in such a way it will influence your path? (i.e, the moon gets between you)

Edit: Not to say I don't want multiplayer, it is just that the only way I can imagine it ever working would be small scale, lowest requested speed systems, as much as I would like independent control.

 

[TSPenguin]

Exactly my point....

 

[Biscuit]

Personally, I would love to see something like this come into being ...

I just couldn't see it even being playable on any sort of large scale unless you forced it to 'real-time', and provided some sort of 'quantum-jump-handwavium-movement' to get to other planetary orbits. Like a single beacon point in each planets orbit you have to maneuver within 10km to use or something ... press the button, *BANG*, you come out at the Mars beacon ...

That would rid you of the 5+ month wait to get to Mars ... and you could make it rough on the players by only physically moving them ... their delta-v remain the same relative to the Sun on exit as they had on entry ... you don't have a ship capable of making the velocity change, well, just wave 'bye' as you watch Mars get smaller and smaller ... and only allow jumps from one planetary orbit to the next ... to get to Saturn, you'd have to go through the Mars, asteroid belt, Jupiter, then Saturn ... maneuvering to the next beacon on the way ...

This would still require a lot of the orbital maneuvering skills needed for Orbiter now ... but would let people get all over the solar system within a few days real-time and actually cooperate.

I have this vision in my head of people setting up refueling stations, asteroid mining operations, freighter services, etc .... Just an idea ....

Yeah, it wouldn't exactly be Orbiter anymore, but it would/could/should contain as much of it as possible.

(I used to be hooked on 'Eve-online' ... got disenchanted with it ... not enough realism ... been trying to think of a way for quite a while to get the economy/cooperative nature of the MMOG, and have the realism and patience required in Orbiter. Someday ... hopefully ...)

 

[TSPenguin]

You should check out jump drive addons as well as jump gate addons.
In theory they should work with OMP.
Then we could start adding some MMOG features to it.

 

[thomasantony]

How about this, each time a user time accelerates he has to set the target time beforehand. So when the time accelerates to that point, he will only see those ships which are there in that point in time. Might get pretty complex though ..

The server can maintain a list of vessels/players and send to the client only those which are in the same time-frame as the player. Users currently in time accel will not be able to communicate with others and will be placed in a separate list on the server so that during time acceleration, no other players would be visible to a player.

Of course, during login, the user should be also able to set the point in time at which he wishes to start.

A possible solution to the problem?

~
Thomas

 

[TSPenguin]

This essentialy is what I wrote earlier http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showpost.php?p=21635&postcount=12

Have infinite universes (local) and then sync time with other players on a given server.

 

[Face]

How about this, each time a user time accelerates he has to set the target time beforehand. So when the time accelerates to that point, he will only see those ships which are there in that point in time. Might get pretty complex though ..

The server can maintain a list of vessels/players and send to the client only those which are in the same time-frame as the player. Users currently in time accel will not be able to communicate with others and will be placed in a separate list on the server so that during time acceleration, no other players would be visible to a player.

Of course, during login, the user should be also able to set the point in time at which he wishes to start.

Hy there,

IMHO, synchronizing MJD of interacting clients is an important aspect of Orbiter multiplayer support.
I'd like to share my plans of implementing this in OMP with you. What follows is a reply to a question of a beta-team member:

Q: How are you going to handle various time accelerations in terms of user experience?

A: First of all, there are so-called "spacetimes". This spacetimes are time and space references for every vessel handled by the OMP server. The space reference is rather clear, it is the major GBody of the vessel. The time reference is a labeled group where users can choose to be by special commands (e.g. "time player1_ISS"). Every time reference has a leader, i.e., a user who is commanding the MJD and acceleration all other group-members need to be sync'd to. If a vessel is not in the correct spacetime (i.e., the vessel-owning user is not sync'd to his choosen time reference), it can't be seen by other vessels.

Think of it as a time-machine like in the movies. If you engage your flux-capacitor (by using the "time" command), you are *FLUP* suddenly out of view. If you enter the spacetime of someone else you are *FLUP*suddenly there. Different time-accelerations are handled like discrete time-jumps.
Administrators can add/remove spacetimes and define the leaders and labels.

The first spacetime a new user is in is the standard server spacetime. Additionally, there is a dedicated user-spacetime labelled like the user-name. The user is in command of this spacetime and can define the leader and label.

regards,
Face

 

[TSPenguin]

Amazing how this thread comes to very similar solution to what the master of the beard is implementing right now.
Thanks for posting this here.