More than 4 players

[titi]

Currently glest allows 4 players and 4 different teams.
What about the idea to extend these limits a bit?
I think 4 teams are ok, but why only 4 players?
OK 4 real players might be a limit for the network traffic, but
something like this should be possible (or not?)

team1..player1..
team2..player2
team3..player3
team4..cpu1..cpu2..cpu3..cpu4 ( probably all with different factions? )

For this we will need a new mapformat where it is possible to set several ( but a fixed number for example 4) of starting points which are numbered for one team and probably the AI must be extended a bit to handle this. This number of starting points will limit the number of players which are possible for one team. And with the limit of 4 teams we have no trouble with teamcolors and so on, because we stay with 4 teams.

What do you think of this?
How much will this effect the network code/traffic?

[hailstone]

see here https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4018.msg24249#msg24249

[titi]

Yes I know, but that's not exactly the same.
I think the idea I described is much more practicable and compatible with the current structure.
And it doesn't mean 16 teams mean 16 players. I'm only talking about 4 teams with several players.
This will make things much more easy to implement and it will probably be upward compatible with the current map format!

[hailstone]

So you want to have max of 16 players with a max of 4 teams?

[titi]

Yes, that's it. This is no big idea, but I think its much more simple to implement.
We don't have to think about a new teamcolor and old maps will be still playable.
I hope it should be possible to implement without loosing the compatibility to the current maps/data.

Also if we stay with the restriction for 4 real players, we can add more fun by adding more CPU players with this idea.
this will allow big coop multiplayer fights where 4 players fight versus 6 CPU players for example.

[hailstone]

I think the current maps have the max players in them anyway, so they would still restrict it to the specified number. We might be able to change that to max teams instead. You would still be able to have the large coops but leaves it more flexible.

Daniel might know more about it.

[daniel.santos]

I'm not terribly hip on restrictions that don't have good reasons to be there. Also, I want to make the distinction between players, factions and teams.  The player is a person (or AI) that controls a faction.  A faction has a starting point on the map, a faction color, starting units, etc. Finally, one or more factions can be on the same team, share visibility and win or loose together.  So the idea is that one or more players can control a faction (but I'm keeping a limit for one AI player per faction because allowing more than AI to control a faction wouldn't make sense at all right now).  I've proposed a maximum of 16 starting points on the new map format, and thus, a max of 16 factions. Probably, a hard limit of 16 players is reasonable, but not completely necessary.  The max number of factions is very important in a vast number of places in the code and file formats (like the saved game format).  But the max number of players doesn't really have much significance there and the max number of teams has even less significance.  Thus, I propose leaving max teams unrestricted and max players something stupidly high like 16 or 32.  Please keep in mind that the reason I like a max of 16 map slots (and thus, factions) isn't because I think I'll be playing a game with 16 factions in it, but because I can see 8 being too little and most places where the number of factions matter are bitfields, so keeping it on a 8-bit boundary makes it simpler (I'm thinking of the saved game and explored areas data right now).

As far as bandwidth, that's something we'll have to evaluate when we get there.  GAE's network protocol still uses great gobs of zlib-compressed XML (without using pre-built dictionaries) so it doesn't speak well for how much bandwidth is really needed.

However, you've helped me to capture a requirement that I've missed before and that's team/faction colors.  At current, doesn't each faction have its own color, even when on the same team?  I'm guessing there isn't a "team color" and maybe not even a need for one.  But I like the idea of being able to choose your faction's color at start up, so I'm really glad this came up.

[titi]

Yes all you wrote is right!
But the faction color is something very serious.
Its currently really hard to create good loking model textures for 4 team colors ( yellow/red/blue/green).
I don't want to imagine how it is to create textures for more than 4 teams.
In my opinon it will end up in optical undividable teams.
There are other games with team colors like ut2004/nexuiz for example. They have no small player number limits. but they all get in trouble with lots of teams. And what I have learned from many multiplayer glest games ( I think there are not so many people who play so often multiplayer glest like me!) is the fact, that team play is very attractive.
Thats the reason why I said 4 teams are good enough. It is a restriction , but it is not too ennoying.
And from what I saw in the code of original glest, its not too hard to implement a team with more than one AI controlling the same team.
In fact evey AI will thought it controlls its own team, but that doesn't matter because every AI has its own setup point( this was my idea).

But if it is possible to have more than 4 players, I will be very happy about it, but I still think 4 teams are enough.

[daniel.santos]

Cool, thanks for the info!  I meant to not allow more than AI per faction (starting point) because in 0.3, we're going to allow multiple players (humans) to have control over the same faction.  That way, one person can work on harvesting and building, while the other works on scouting, combat, harassing the enemy, etc.  You can also have up to one AI controlling your faction -- this is mostly to help new players learn to play the game because they can watch and see what the AI does and learn from it, in addition to the AI doing a lot of the work for them.

So maybe when we start working on this part of it we can consider having different color views like they do in Rise of Nations -- maybe one is where each faction is shown with their own color, then another is where units are shown with a team color?  I'm not sure, that's probably too confusing.  But mostly, to give a color scheme where you're units are all blue and all enemy units are red.

[hailstone]

Should only one player be able to control the same unit/s at any given time? So if a player has selected a unit no other players can control that unit until it is deselected.

[emscape]

hows the progress on this???

[hailstone]

I don't think there has been any progress on this.

[silnarm]

Interesting old topic this one

My take on the team colour problem is that if you managed to make your models look alright with the four stock team colours, then they'll probably look alright in other colours, the four colours provided by Glest are, of course, distinct... if your model looks ok in blue and red, I don't see why it wouldn't look alright in purple. If it looks ok in yellow and in red, it should look ok in orange... etc.

16 distinct colours would indeed be tough.  We should be able to come up with 8 though...

How about:






The Lime Green maybe isn't so good, but I think the others look Ok, and are sufficiently distinct.

[Omega]

Wow, interesting. Yeah, that's the biggest problem: team color. There's not much that I see that can be done. Many games (ie: civ 4) that use team color will have some that are quite similar, but there's not much that can be done. I've never had any trouble distinguishing my units though, even without teamcolor. 16 seems like a bit many players IMO. Perhaps 12 or even 8 is more appropriant...?

[@kukac@]

The problem is, several units have so little alpha channel. Take a look at the three green golems. Can you make a difference now? Not so hard, right? But in the middle of the fight, when you are looking them from above, from a distance?

[PolitikerNEU]

The IMHO most important thing regarding team color is that there is much space used for it - even if some "artificial" colour bands have to be used.

If the Area is large enough, maybe combinding two colors (using stripes or sth. like that) could give "better" results because then 4 different colors would be sufficent.

[Omega]

Remember the discussion a while back about using teamcolor to outline units that are hidden behind things like trees and buildings (age of empires style)? That might help, and perhaps a hot key that highlights all of your units while you are holding the key (so when in a major battle, you can press, say 's' and all your units are outlined with your team color so you can keep track when there's five factions fighting at the same time (never seen more than two fighting at the same time, that'd be sweet!).

[emscape]

maybe the health circle around the units should be the team colour. Heres intresting colour scheme:

- black
- white
- red
- yellow
- green
- orange or better, really light blue
- purple
- blue

and we have eight, and indeed I think eight should be enough. why would we even want to lag with 16 people...

[-Archmage-]

No black, it won't show well on the map.

[silnarm]

The problem is, several units have so little alpha channel. Take a look at the three green golems. Can you make a difference now? Not so hard, right? But in the middle of the fight, when you are looking them from above, from a distance?

Yes, I did say the lime green wasn't so good, and numerous models don't have a lot of team colour, which makes it difficult.  I think in the case of the golem this is a problem even with four team colours, zoomed out you don't see much colour.

The IMHO most important thing regarding team color is that there is much space used for it - even if some "artificial" colour bands have to be used.

If the Area is large enough, maybe combinding two colors (using stripes or sth. like that) could give "better" results because then 4 different colors would be sufficent.

striping colours would a potential solution, but too many models expecting a solid colour exist already, for many (if not most) of them a two colour system would require a lot of work.

Remember the discussion a while back about using teamcolor to outline units that are hidden behind things like trees and buildings (age of empires style)? That might help, and perhaps a hot key that highlights all of your units while you are holding the key...

That's a pretty cool idea. Now we just need someone to figure out how to do it!

maybe the health circle around the units should be the team colour. Heres intresting colour scheme:

white, or some kind of off-white might work. Will do some more experiments... all that screen capturing and editing isn't fun though, so I'll hack the g3d viewer to show 8 of the same model, rendered with user defined team colours, then everyone can join in on the fun

and we have eight, and indeed I think eight should be enough. why would we even want to lag with 16 people...

We want at least to raise the player limit to 8, and maybe consider 12 later... that means we naturally engineer for 16, because 12 isn't a power of two.

[emscape]

nice, if anyone tells me where the scripts can be found, ill try to script support for more players.

[Gabbe]

team colours! great idea. i have just got into this game, but one thing i realized at once was the lack of players, perhaps we want to create different banners instead of colours, like signs, following the unit from above, and then mass some units into a group, having one sign over them, i`ll get some pictures soon, cause i know it is hard to understand what i brought up.

[Loronal]

I agree with 8

[emscape]

What about team coulor in the ring which displays the health of the unit, and the player colour in the unit itself, so you can see both.

[-Archmage-]

Good point, I agree with Phoenix and Emscape.