We were able to get the updated network update out yesterday and we turned the Pantheon and Skirmish to try to do 3 on 3 matches. Since so many people seem anti-bot, we are looking for ways to make that happen but the problem is, if people insist on human only then we need to provide more feedback to the user. We already get complaints from people saying it takes “too long” to get into a skirmish game (a whopping 2 minutes). So for people who insist on human only, we need ways to make them aware that the system is working but it might take several minutes.
Skirmish and Pantheon games aren’t just about finding some random group to have you play against. It uses your ELO (experience) rating to help match along with your location to try to put together the best match possible.
One of our frustrations (and this is one of the reasons I’m not a fan of MP games in the first place) is how inconsiderate some people are. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out why people were getting “disconnected” right when a game starts. Well, it turns out, from looking at the logs, is that some people, having only 2 on 2 or 3 vs. 3 where an AI player had to be substituted to fill in the gap that some people just quit right at the start. I understand the rationale but it’s still objectifying other people’s time. I won’t debate people on the issue as I think it’s a matter of agreeing to disagree.
But bottom line is that if people want to have an idealized match, it’s likely going to take more than 2 minutes and the only way to make it take more than 2 minutes is to provide more feedback so that’s what the team is working on today.
Proxy tomorrow
So besides having more feedback telling you how many people are looking for games which lets us increase the time to find an ideal match, we also plan to have tomorrow’s update have the proxy server. This should eliminate the last problems for connectivity except for the case where people have multiple IP addresses which is still being worked on.
More info please
Some people have said “I used to be able to connect fine, now I can’t.” We really need data from those people in the form of their impulsereactor.log files (located in my documents\my games\gpg\demigod) which you can send to support@stardock.com with (ideally) a description of what happened and whether you used to be able to connect so we can see. At this point, people shouldn’t be having any problems connecting other than those with router issues.
The Documentary
Once we concluded that we were going to have to write our own multiplayer system for Demigod and that it would have to be done not in a matter of months but a matter of days or a week or two we knew that crazy hours were going to be involved. So we video’d it. We hope to release in the next week or so a documentary video so you can see the innards of Stardock and what was involved.
Here are some images from it:
Marketing meeting
Management meeting in late April when it was decided to assign the Impulse team to develop a new system.
My daughter Ashley visits me at work
Our chief architect, Jeff Bargmann and his Impulse team merges with the Elemental development leads to create a new network system. The application team had already gotten somewhat involved by creating the “Impulse Overlay” that allowed us to inject new screens into Demigod.
Elemental team can’t resist but show off what they’re doing.
Found a baby turtle while taking a walk outside
I think that was every guy's first thought. Followed by look at that tiny turtle.
Thanks for the update. Previously being one of the people who used be able to connect, but now can't, I wanted to say that since the last 2-3 patches things have been great!
Holy crap! How did you find a baby turtle!? That thing is no bigger than a quarder and black ( from the pic ). I want to find a baby turtle
Yes it lowers latency but it really is a terrible system for games, just saying. client/server is so much better.
wow you guys really shouldn't be calling Frogboy's daughter Ashley "hot"!
Did someone say ELO?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Ncxw1xfck
something about proxy servers and then i saw an attactive blonde
I can not agree more.
Frogboy, please FIX FAVOR!
I got no FAVOR the last 20 games....
That turtle will pobably be dead due to frogboys actions. Taken out of its environment, exposure to indoor germs, etc.... poor guy..... Yes I am a bit of a tree hugger/cow raper.
The real question here is: what's Society?
And I just had a flashback when I saw that OS/2 book. Does anyone use OS/2 these days?
Same for me, dont play any pantheon at all now, but will once this is sorted
Frog boy, really appreciate your candor and honesty. a couple concerns.
about yesterdays (?) post
Option to Concede. Would let players quit a game they feel they’re losing. Their Demigod is removed. If all players from that team concede, the game is over.
Sounds good in theory, but one main frustration i have in games is people quitting at the first sign of a loss. It's a personal game play preference, but i think it's nearly as fun to try to make a come back, as it is to really trounce someone. That being said, being on the winning side is alot less fun if once you're starting to win, everyone just quits. Thats just my personal opinion, so im wary of allowing people to conceede.
Smart Quitting. If someone exits within the first 3 minutes, there’s no harm, no foul. It counts as a disconnect but not a loss. Sometimes there’s lag or someone has a slow machine or whatever.
Understandable, yet one point i want to bring up. A big flaw of multiplayer games is the amount of time it can take to 'actually play the game'. Worst case scenario, i see this as. "oh, i don't like playing against the unclean beast, im quitting in the allotted time." Now it's a 3v2, so everyone quits, and starts from square one. I can easily envision this happening 2-3 times before you get a game going, taking 20 minutes to actually play one game. Like i said, that's worst case scenario, but i could easily see it happening.
The quality of game is FAR more important than the time it takes to find one. I'd sit in que for an hour if I was gauranteed that the game would end without anyone leaving. I host games and if people don't join with a premade team i boot them until a team joins. It really doesn't matter how long it takes because if I play vs two random noobs they are going to leave every game.
p.s. cute turtle
I still think you should get gold/exp relative to the difference in skill/elo between the two players. If a player with very high elo kills a very bad player (like a bot), he only gets little to no money. If the bad player kills the guy who is much better, he is rewarded greatly. This makes AI much less annoying and it also supports unexperienced players feel more welcome in multiplayer matches.
Maybe you would see the demigods of players with significantly higher or lower elo as larger/smaller models than your own. This way it would be intuitive and easy to understand who is difficult and profitable, and who is not.
p2p lowers lattency by not allowing other players to connect... since 70% of the isp's nowdays FILTER p2p connection allow us at least to connect via a VPN
I have not been playing Patheon, but when I did, the most common issue I ran into was that a person "left the game" right after loading into the game, or lost connection before the game launched and yet the game still started. It does not matter which team I am on, if this happens, I will just leave the game then and there. The AI is so bad that it actually feeds the other side gold (especially the melee gods - Rook is just horrendous). AI demigods should not award cash when you kill them.
In terms of a 3v3 patheon, I really like the idea. People do not have patience, though, when they do not know what is happening, and the feedback we get when we wait for a gaming is not that informative. Right now, we only get feedback when the matcher selects everyone for the game and then the connections start to be made. If that were changed so that it was more like a custom game, then we would see people connect as the matcher chose them (instead of after everyone was chosen). It would also be nice to see how many people in my ELO bracket were looking for a game (indicator of how long to hang around). Waiting could be made much more informative to keep us waiting longer. Half the time I think the game has gone into some infinite loop and cancel out and start over.
lol. no no no no nooo! I'm sure they are talking about the blonde in the blue shirt in first pic. The documentary may end up being more interesting than we originally thought.
Frogboy - do you really think that proxy servers are the solution? The problem is then just different but still it won't work out good. Think about it. The proxy servers might be overloaded with traffic they have to route through. If players have only high pings ingame, the game isn't really playable. It will be a slideshow and the problems aren't fixed, they are just a different one. gn8
More of Demigod's population might look for matches in Pantheon if Demigod gave the same options as WarCraft 3 does. Namely, to choose Random Teams of 2vs2, 3vs3, or 4vs4 (instead of being forced into a 2vs2 in Demigod most of the time, when you don't want to play a 2vs2). And with no bots. 2vs2 Pantheon is not fun, nor is Pantheon with bots. If players weren't forced to endure these things when they click on the Pantheon button, they'd probably play Pantheon more and hence increase the population looking for a game in it. I know I would.
I'm not sure how it got into Stardock's heads that putting bots in the game is good for newbies. Really, it isn't. And I've never seen any player on these boards asking for that, yet I've seen many asking for them to be removed entirely. Bottomline is that forced bots are a really bad idea, especially since their AI is really bad and they are a huge handicap to the team who has them. If you made the bots be better than the average player, then having them in the game would be fine. But with the AI they have now, it's no good having them in at all.
If someone is teamed with a computer I cant fault them for leaving. Especially on competive levels. I dont even like playing against them, its like playing against someone in soccer with a broken ancle(minus the horrible pain).. its really just an exercise in pointlessness.
For skirmish or pantheon mode it might be nice for players to see a number or even a color. Which represents about how many availble people around them are also trying to connect to games. After waiting a while people start to think that they are the only ones trying to connect to a game.
Or better yet have games pre set up in pantheon. Say 3vs3. Depending on who joins the game first thats how you decide the games ping location. Say someone joins the game in germany then the game should ping red or be un-connectable for anyone in the usa. Or maybe just label the games. North America, Europe, South East Asia ect. Anything for the player to see something tangible so they know about how many other people are trying to join games.
Demigod has multiple issues:
Overall yes Blizzard/War3 does have it easier in the fact that they do have a larger player base. Depending on the time of day DoW2 matching can and does take quite some time (longer than I'd like -- but at least they do have matching and team matching).
But if you had team match ups you could have a couple of options:
Anyway I think some of these features and forcing more people to stop using custom would not only help in matching players up via skill but get everyone using the match making process which would result in what player base you do have to not be divided. It would also set you up to be prepaired for future growth.
-Jara
Don't know possible this is, but once the game as started, it is possible (within a limited time frame) for a human to join to replace an AI. Allow the joiner to some sort of average stat/level, based in the existing progress of players so far?
I'm still getting "A player has left the game" right when a game starts. I'm not sure if a player has actually left the game or if it's just the voice over saying they have as a bug.
But if people are getting pissed that "Game is still not connecting me to other players" and they get a message that someone has left, they might just be quiting the game ASAP.
Also, having it so that when you look at scores and it list the players having all AI players listed as:
George (AI)Jaradakar
If AI players have a designation it would help to be able to quickly reconize who's who in a game.
My big problem with Pantheon and Skirmish is that I can't play with my friends. The idea of joining a side and fighting against the other one is quite nice on the paper but not in the real world in a multiplayer game. I don't know about you guys but I don't want to play solo. I have much more fun with friends even if we are loosing. I don't know why you came up with the idea of random solo joining but it's not the part why titles like warcraft3 or dota are succesful. At least that's my opinion, maybe I'm completly wrong.
Next thing is that it would be much easier for the system to find games when a team of 3 searches for a game. Do you want add this thing maybe with clans?
And what's bugging me too is that you can't rejoin a match if you get disconnected or your client crashes. It's cool that the CPU takes over your char but on the long run you can't win a game against players that are really good.
Apart from that, the connection got much better and i really like this game.
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