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Elemental Multiplayer Revealed

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Elemental Multiplayer Revealed

from JoeUser Forums

Come Beta 2 (end of February), multiplayer should come to Elemental. 

Multiplayer in Elemental is going to be done in an unusual way for a strategy game. In fact, Elemental’s multiplayer is more akin to what you would typically see in a first person shooter.

Here’s how it works:

Option 1: Play on the Stardock servers:

Player loads up Elemental, chooses Multiplayer, selects “Host” (or Join). If they select Host, it will find the nearest (geographical) Elemental server run by Stardock and put them in the lobby. From their point of view, it’s almost exactly like any other game. But in reality, the player is now part of a client/server setup where Stardock provides the servers.

If the user chooses “Join” they instead get a list of “Worlds”. These are servers that have at least 1 human player already in them. The display will include the map name (random or a specific name), host, and ping time.

Next to each of these worlds will be a symbol. Stardock servers will have a Stardock logo. But third-party servers will have their own symbol (a checkbox at the bottom will toggle whether third-party servers are displayed or not). This brings us to Option #2…

Option 2: Play on Custom servers:

In the Elemental folder will be a program called “Elemental Server”.  Launching this will add a custom server to the list of available “worlds” for people to play on.  By default, it’ll be just like the Stardock servers.  But these servers, run on third-party machines, can be highly customized.

Players can mod their servers with custom content, custom rules, and lots of other things that we’ll get into later.  If you ever played Stellar Frontier ( a game we made a long time ago) players created all kinds of different server mods and set up entire star systems with custom planets, custom ships, etc.

The video below outlines the strategy below:

Elemental Beta 2 is due at the end of February.  The modding features won’t be supported until release (we won’t stop people from modding but we won’t support them as we’ll be constantly changing the data formats as the game progresses).

A note to people not in the beta: You’re not missing anything. The betas are NOT fun. These aren’t demo betas. These are real, painful, boring, ugly betas.  The graphics engine is disabled in both beta 1 and beta 2.

The suffering of beta testers:

105,611 views 59 replies
Reply #51 from Demigod Forums Top

another VERY IMPORTANT THING, if i will play elemental online IT WILL be with some friend, be it 1, 2 or 20 i dont care, dont make the mistake with demigod, online gaming IS team based, hope elemental multiplayer will be EXTREMELY team friendly

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

i dont get it

server running?

cant we just create a custom GAME, play it and then byebye ?

Yes. That would be option 1.

Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

Auto uploading of Modded data is truly splendid. Every MP game I have ever played, that included any modding at all, always ask for this feature but normally file size is the issue.

Can we assume that File sizes and thusly File transfer times, predicated on that fact that some game owners, always totally beyond their control of course, are still forced to use Modems as thier Data transport method, will not be a major draw back to this system?

 

So the question that arises is.

"We won't have to worry about my buddy Billy downloading 4Gb's of Mod data over his 56K modem before the game starts?"

 

 

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4
Users will likely be able to monkey around with the servers right away. But they'll probably get broken regularly. :)
Give the end user access to -anything- and you can be sure that the first thing they'll try is to throw a big ol' monkey wrench into the machinery.

Just to see if it breaks or not.

Reply #55 from Elemental Forums Top

I hope that in retail there will be a toggle icon on the UI to switch between cloth map and real map instead of having to go to the options screen everytime xD (this is but a detail, but it doesn't look confortable, especially when you intend to shift pretty often xD)

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 39
Just like in Stellar Frontier, if a given user doesn't have a particular mod or asset it would be uploaded to them.

We don't expect users to have to hunt down for mods.
that is very nice and everything, but can you make it so that those who join servers will download these mods without the host knowing this?

I am asking because on Warcraft3 it was commonpractice for a host to kick joiners who did not have their version of footywarsOMGITSANEWVERSION6.2XXXL, even though you may very well be a solid player. As soon as the host spots a progress bar they assume you do not know the mod, that you suck at it and they kick you. I would very mcuh like Elemental to set an example so that if I wanted to try a new mod I could grab it online rather than actually hunting it down. Having the facilities to download the mods from other usrs is pointless when you get kicked for doing so.

Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top

Having an option to download the mod a particular server is running without trying to join it would be very oh so cool.

 

(Also is their a running bet about how long it takes before a full LoTR mod with THAT cloth map is out?)

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

IDK if the cloth map of ME is included in the Lord of the Elements mod by Kyogre, but if its not id say about 2hours-2days after the mod comes out.

Reply #59 from Elemental Forums Top

I am not a fan of multilayer, however the way this is being stup is making me very interested in it.

 

I will try it for sure.