They are apparently a small dev team and … this is their first multiplayer game, ever.
So cutting them some slack is I think warranted.
They say they are considering making matchmaking lobbies as a feature… by which they presumably mean some kind of private servers?
I really don’t know, ‘matchmaking lobby’ is an extremely broad term that could mean basically anything from self hosted servers… to rentable/configurable dedicated servers… ???
Apparently right now it is all centrally piped into their own servers, and is reliant on Steam invites to actually get people together into a session.
They say they are worries that if they add ‘matchmaking lobbies’, that introduces the problem of hackers… and to solve hackers, they would need an anticheat, which would break mods.
I… do not understand how that makes sense, there have been many multiplayer games with both mods and anticheat.
You could go with a less intrusive AC like VAC… it does work on many non source engine games, though I don’t know what the liscensing costs would be… and then just integrate mods into the steam workshop?
Or some other AC solution, and have some other method of basically submitting mods for some kind of review and standardization with the AC… and then just also have an option for AC-off servers, so you could test your wip mods?
I guess we really have gotten to the point where modern devs just actually cannot fathom how mods and AC could work together.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to do P2P multiplayer than having it run on, and then also have the need for, your own servers? I’ve never done a multiplayer thing, myself, but I would have figured direct connections between clients would be easier or at least less tedious to implement.
The easiest to get past all the NAT (or weirder networking) is to just have everyone connect to a server and pass the data through the right connection. It’s quick and dirty, but you can do your routing on the application layer
I’m not sure that’s what they are doing, but it makes sense based on the details I’ve seen
What’s weird is when you start a multiplayer game it tells you that the player with the best machine and connection should be the host. To me that doesn’t scream “runs on our own servers”.
Just have a player host their own instance, everyone connects to them, and have some kind of fallback system in place in case the host disconnects.
Then, next step, make it so that once that basic framework is setup, maybe also have a basic host migration thing within an established group of players, basically ping everyone to everyone and pick the person who has the lowest average ping to everyone else as the host.
I do not undertand at all why this game … needs a central server at all.
It is described as an ‘online only’ game.
I have not played it, but it seems like the levels are small, the default player count is 6, but a lot of the game is based on physics interactions…
Closest comparison I can think of is fucking about on GMod with 6 people, which you could probably pull off with your own self hosted instance, but a higher player count (which is apparently the main thrust of these mods that they say are anihilating their bandwidth) would need an actual dedicated server to avoid desync and lagging into oblivion.
Why are you allowing mods to pass information through your official servers to begin with? That’s private server territory.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/horror/after-repo-kinda-blew-up-its-developer-asks-the-community-for-advice-on-how-to-make-matchmaking-lobbies/
They are apparently a small dev team and … this is their first multiplayer game, ever.
So cutting them some slack is I think warranted.
They say they are considering making matchmaking lobbies as a feature… by which they presumably mean some kind of private servers?
I really don’t know, ‘matchmaking lobby’ is an extremely broad term that could mean basically anything from self hosted servers… to rentable/configurable dedicated servers… ???
Apparently right now it is all centrally piped into their own servers, and is reliant on Steam invites to actually get people together into a session.
They say they are worries that if they add ‘matchmaking lobbies’, that introduces the problem of hackers… and to solve hackers, they would need an anticheat, which would break mods.
I… do not understand how that makes sense, there have been many multiplayer games with both mods and anticheat.
You could go with a less intrusive AC like VAC… it does work on many non source engine games, though I don’t know what the liscensing costs would be… and then just integrate mods into the steam workshop?
Or some other AC solution, and have some other method of basically submitting mods for some kind of review and standardization with the AC… and then just also have an option for AC-off servers, so you could test your wip mods?
I guess we really have gotten to the point where modern devs just actually cannot fathom how mods and AC could work together.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to do P2P multiplayer than having it run on, and then also have the need for, your own servers? I’ve never done a multiplayer thing, myself, but I would have figured direct connections between clients would be easier or at least less tedious to implement.
Not really… Think networking, not gameplay
The easiest to get past all the NAT (or weirder networking) is to just have everyone connect to a server and pass the data through the right connection. It’s quick and dirty, but you can do your routing on the application layer
I’m not sure that’s what they are doing, but it makes sense based on the details I’ve seen
What’s weird is when you start a multiplayer game it tells you that the player with the best machine and connection should be the host. To me that doesn’t scream “runs on our own servers”.
I… would also have thought this as well.
Just have a player host their own instance, everyone connects to them, and have some kind of fallback system in place in case the host disconnects.
Then, next step, make it so that once that basic framework is setup, maybe also have a basic host migration thing within an established group of players, basically ping everyone to everyone and pick the person who has the lowest average ping to everyone else as the host.
I do not undertand at all why this game … needs a central server at all.
It is described as an ‘online only’ game.
I have not played it, but it seems like the levels are small, the default player count is 6, but a lot of the game is based on physics interactions…
Closest comparison I can think of is fucking about on GMod with 6 people, which you could probably pull off with your own self hosted instance, but a higher player count (which is apparently the main thrust of these mods that they say are anihilating their bandwidth) would need an actual dedicated server to avoid desync and lagging into oblivion.