Multiplayer??

[duxdarius (OP)]

Is there a good way to make Aurora multiplayer?

I Have SM ed many games or Starfire, VBAM, fed and empire etc, Wondering how it is done with this? I have a bunch of players who may be interested

[Steve Walmsley]

Is there a good way to make Aurora multiplayer?

I Have SM ed many games or Starfire, VBAM, fed and empire etc, Wondering how it is done with this? I have a bunch of players who may be interested

To SM an Aurora game, setup an SM password for yourself so the players don't have access to the SM functions. Setup the player homeworlds, tech and starting forces yourself. To do this you will have to create an 'SM Empire', which is really just a race that you use to generate systems until you find one you like. Then create a player race in that system. You can use SM Mode to modify atmospheres so you don't need a perfect planet to start with. Also, the race will have environmental tolerances based on the planet on which they are created. So if it is a cold, low gravity world then that race will prefer cold, low gravity worlds. Once this is all setup, you will have to email the Stevefire.mdb file to each player at the start for ship design, etc. and during the game when they need to setup orders etc.. The most important thing is that only you advance time. Each player will need to tell you what type of events will require them to make changes to their setup so you can send them the database as appropriate.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Hi Steve,

  I'm pretty sure this falls into the category of "Steve isn't interested in making this change", but I thought I'd mention it.

  Have you tried porting your VB6 code to Visual Studio 2008 (or 2010)?  The reason I ask is that the .NET framework has a lot of utility classes in it that could make your life easier, and I just realized that they'd be available to you if VS2008 is able to build VB6.

  The particular item that tweaked this idea is WCF - "Windows Communication Framework".  This makes interprocess communication easy, and so could be used to write a multi-client wrapper on top of Aurora that could be used for multi-player games.  I realize you almost certainly have no interest in doing this - it was just the thing that tweaked the thought of trying to port to a version of VB that can access .NET.

John

[Steve Walmsley]

Hi Steve,

  I'm pretty sure this falls into the category of "Steve isn't interested in making this change", but I thought I'd mention it.

  Have you tried porting your VB6 code to Visual Studio 2008 (or 2010)?  The reason I ask is that the .NET framework has a lot of utility classes in it that could make your life easier, and I just realized that they'd be available to you if VS2008 is able to build VB6.

  The particular item that tweaked this idea is WCF - "Windows Communication Framework".  This makes interprocess communication easy, and so could be used to write a multi-client wrapper on top of Aurora that could be used for multi-player games.  I realize you almost certainly have no interest in doing this - it was just the thing that tweaked the thought of trying to port to a version of VB that can access .NET.

John

I haven't looked at .NET yet, although I am sure I will eventually. SA gradually made it from VB3/Windows 3.1 to VB6/XP so Aurora will progress eventually. I have just heard some horror stories about trying to port VB6 into .NET and with the complexity of Aurora I am not looking forward to trying.

Steve

[VariousArtist]

Sending a 20-30mb database back and forth over the net and the horror it will bring when it comes to combat and 5sec intervals does hardly make look like a solution. First I thought about a modified frontend that makes it possible to transfer data between a server and client but I guess the sheer complexity of Aurora makes it very hard to design a good solution. Well, but I dont know how much data needs to be transfered and what could be calculated on the clients side (e.g. planetary movement).