Master of Magic - Implode's Multiplayer Edition

Hi!

Lately i had an urge to play mom once again. Somehow I found your version and let me just say two words: THANK YOU! :D
Multiplayer is the one thing to make this game even better and I'm definitely going to enjoy playing with my buddies...
One thing I didn't figure out yet however: How can you remove spells from the queue? I somehow clicked a little to often (since the was no immediate indicator of casting-start) - is there any way to remove a spell - maybe inside the Advisor screen (F3) ?

Peace!

Good point, I couldn't honestly remember if there was a way to cancel queued spells or not, but you're right, there isn't. I'll try to include it in 0.9.4 since its something you should definitely be able to do and shouldn't be too hard to write in.

Thanks for pointing it out :)

Implode.

[quote="Implode"] ... I'll try to include it in 0.9.4 since its something you should definitely be able to do and shouldn't be too hard to write in.
Thanks for pointing it out :)
[/quote]

Thanks for caring about and working on this great game! :thumbs up:

Edit:
Other things I've come across:
-the 'flee' button doesn't seem to do anything
-how does one save the game? clicking on 'game' (and armies/cities which I've never used before ^^) doesn't do much
-building trading goods/housing not working

I apologize if these are issues which have been discussed before (I did read the faq/todo though )

Yeah all those are simply not done yet :) In particular saving the game, I didn't see the point in trying to implement this until nearly at the end, otherwise the data format would be changing from version to version and it'd be a hefty extra component for me to try to keep up to date with every change I make to the data model. Also how its going to work needs some thought - how do you reload games with say 4 human players? The save game files would have to be held on the server (the client doesn't for example have all the map), so:

1) Player connects to a server, picks "Load game", picks the game to load (which could be anybody else's saved game!)
2) Game shows that there's 4 human players in the game, so asks the player which slot they wish to play in (so they could swap places with another player!)
3) Waits for other players to join and pick slots (again, they could swap places with another player!)

Its almost like a pre-requisite to this is needing to log onto the server with a user ID + password, so you can only get at your own saved games and then it would also know who was supposed to be playing in which slot.

[quote="Implode"]Yeah all those are simply not done yet :) In particular saving the game, I didn't see the point in trying to implement this until nearly at the end, otherwise the data format would be changing from version to version and it'd be a hefty extra component for me to try to keep up to date with every change I make to the data model. [/quote]

Makes sense.

[quote="Implode"] Also how its going to work needs some thought - how do you reload games with say 4 human players? The save game files would have to be held on the server (the client doesn't for example have all the map), so:[/quote]

You might be able to get some ideas from warcraft3. Each player has the savegame and therefore each player can host the game.
Also it's easier to assume that only players that participated in the game in the first place would want to resume it (they could always copy the savegame themselves if they'd want a new player to take another's place).
Then there'd be no trouble having to download or browse anything.

Are you sure there's is really no simple way to just dump the data on the hard drive ? Even if anybody can read it afterward and that they are not compatible with the next version ? I'm pretty sure it could help us to test play your game a bit more and maybe come up with new idea for improvement. Well, I really don't want you to waste too much time on this but...

Actually, I agree with Iluvalar here, Implode. Even if all you're doing is doing a straight dump of all of the data structures (or the whole RAM space if that'd be easier, I don't know how youre doing the memory management) to the server's HD then just spooling it back in to load it (maybe go ahead with the 'select who you are' bit for now and then wait for players the same as a new game waits?), that would make it much easier to test late-game problems.

I'd even be content if it just dumped in place in it's install directory and only allowed one save at a time (static save name). It'd still let us stop playing for a while if we need to then come back for more play-testing later. I would see this as an enourmous boon anyway, since java tends to leak memory like a sieve if left running too long (silly garbage collection) and you've said you're moving the server engine to java.

Virm wrote:I'd even be content if it just dumped in place in it's install directory and only allowed one save at a time (static save name)

True, I could implement loading/saving in two stages... first just get the file format sorted out and get it working, and worry about the details of making sure person A can only load in person A's saved games and can't jump into person B's slot at a later stage... I'll have a think about it.

Still don't want to include it in 0.9.4 and delay it any more, its taking me longer than I hoped to do the Java port already!

possible solution to the "which player is who?" issue with save games:

When saving the game, generate a unique hash for each player and one additional hash for the specific save game (player-specific hashes don't need to be unique between different save games, just within the specific game, the game hashes would need to be globally unique). Send to each client a packet to be saved to disk that contains the name of the game, name of the save file on the server, the hash of the game (to verify that yes, this is the game I was playing), and the hash for that player (to identify which player is trying to connect to the game and re-seat them accordingly).

The hash really doesn't need to be anything spectacular, as anyone who REALLY wants to try to hack it will find a way regardless, and nobody else will care enough to even look at the local file. The only reason I'm suggesting a hash of some sort is so that someone doesn't get a bright idea to change their player number in the file and then the server ends up trying to connect multiple clients to one player position (which provides great opportunity for server exceptions being thrown all over the place).

Doing it like this would also mean that if I've got MoM-IME installed on multiple computers, and I'm wanting to continue the game from a different computer than I was playing it from before, all I need to do is copy my save file to the correct location on the new computer.

Another possible solution is not to make it a problem in the first place. A lot of games work with that system, and yes it is possible to switch sides if you so want to. But why would you? it wouldn't make your game any more fun.

A simple username check should be enough to automatically assign players to the right slot, and if they really want to take over another side, like the above poster said, they'll find a way anyway.