Shadow
03-31-2009, 01:43 PM
I've been able to get a lot more done on the networking lately.
The client and server are much smarter about their current state. If they wait too long for a response now they will resend the message. They will also ignore messages they get from the wrong server or they are not expecting. Both of them will also drop a connection if they don't hear anything from the other side for too long.
The game now does some more advanced stuff like fragmenting large messages and encrypts the messages slightly.
The game itself has also gotten some attention. There is now some movement smoothing/interpolation (this also makes single player look better). Above other players you now see their health bar, their mana bar, and their name. Other players also show up on the minimap and the world map.
There is now even more sharing that goes on. I mentioned a while back that players share score since Kivi is designed to be co-op. Well now keys, secrets, and super secrets are also shared. There is no reason to have people fight over who finds the secrets and having someone leave the game with the only red key would cause slight issues.
Right now I only have a few small issues left, a bunch of playtesting to do, and I need to find a solution for a master server (I'm talking to a couple people for this though).
One of the remaining issues is what do I do about limited lives? I'm not sure the idea works in multiplayer. A client that runs out of lives can just exit and come back in again (which is just a nuisance), but the server can't without taking down the entire game with him. Right now I'm just leaning towards infinite lives but you still lose the end of adventure bonus if you die. Anyone have any thoughts?
The client and server are much smarter about their current state. If they wait too long for a response now they will resend the message. They will also ignore messages they get from the wrong server or they are not expecting. Both of them will also drop a connection if they don't hear anything from the other side for too long.
The game now does some more advanced stuff like fragmenting large messages and encrypts the messages slightly.
The game itself has also gotten some attention. There is now some movement smoothing/interpolation (this also makes single player look better). Above other players you now see their health bar, their mana bar, and their name. Other players also show up on the minimap and the world map.
There is now even more sharing that goes on. I mentioned a while back that players share score since Kivi is designed to be co-op. Well now keys, secrets, and super secrets are also shared. There is no reason to have people fight over who finds the secrets and having someone leave the game with the only red key would cause slight issues.
Right now I only have a few small issues left, a bunch of playtesting to do, and I need to find a solution for a master server (I'm talking to a couple people for this though).
One of the remaining issues is what do I do about limited lives? I'm not sure the idea works in multiplayer. A client that runs out of lives can just exit and come back in again (which is just a nuisance), but the server can't without taking down the entire game with him. Right now I'm just leaning towards infinite lives but you still lose the end of adventure bonus if you die. Anyone have any thoughts?