Note: Having trouble typing because I had a length of stick surgically removed from my hand yesterday, so if I screw up some typing, tough it out.

Would it be totally unbearable and outrageous to have multiplayer Cortex Command which featured a version of the game that did not have destructible terrain? Sure, it would be a totally different, de facto much worse, game, but hell, it would still have some fun physics and that quirky pixel look. Mods, to some extent, as well! I love destructible terrain more than the next guy - really. It's the best. It's why I play CC. But I could totally get down without for a bit to play multiplayer. What do you say?

Dear sir. You must read this.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10846

This isn't so much a request for online play. It's a discussion.

Err, I think there was setting in the Settings.ini to make terrain not destruct.

But if you really wanted to, you could make everything (dirt-wise) have a
structural integrity of ten bajillion. (Not the civilian stuff and all that because
then you couldn't kill rockets.)

But personally, I think destructable terrain is one of those things that make CC great.
It's like Portal has a thing where you can go through portals and arrive at different places,
while CC has a thing where you can go through the Ground to arrive at different places.

Now you're thinking with grounds.

Why?
I mean, why would Data turn off the one thing that makes his game unique (the physics) to add multiplayer?

I was trying to think of an example of this, but I couldn't think of any games where removing the main element of the game would make it even possible to add a multiplayer mode.

I was thinking after seeing the remote desktop multiplayer topic and reading about that on-live game service(i think that's the name) sense every thing is calculated constantly
could online or LAN multiplayer work by the host PC doing all the calculating but sending a video feed to the other PC and it only send back control outputs? It would still lag but in theory it could work and that would also solve the whole "what if one PC doesn't have the mods the other PC has" dilemma.

Well it's food for thought at lest.

Afaik, no solution like that has ever worked. Ever. It is much much much cheaper, bandwith wise, to throw object positions, velocities, headings, and various attributes, over the wires (if they even send all of those) than anything like streaming realtime video with sound.

I'm not sure anybody touting OnLive as the solution actually realize how little information such games as UT, Halo, WH40K, etc, put over the wire.
I'm not networking expert (as in, don't quote my numbers), but I watched the creation of such a game (a clone of Liero) in progress, and what I've read hints at similar.

The host computer starts up a game, and begins sending out to any connected clients a list of objects, positions, and velocities. From there, the client sends back the position of the player's object, and velocity and so forth. This game did not contain any more MO-like bits than the characters (non-destructible terrain), so that's all that was needed. In all, a server could expect to send and receive about ten numbers per client per update (every 20ms). Less than a kilobyte per second.

Streaming video requires bandwith in the range of hundred of kilobytes per second. Depending on the quality, it could be compressed to perhaps 50kbps, but that's from the server to one client. For each client, the server would require more and more bandwith.

any sort of multiplayer requires fundamental changes to the way a game works

it's not happening, simplified or not

I'd be more than willing to give up aesthetics if it meant having multiplayer, as in:
-Terrain would be destructible, but would not generate particles when destroyed.
-Make all non-important particles/gibs collide only with the terrain (Dropship engines and doors, rocket main, and thrusters? Sure. Everything else? No), or remove them entirely.
-Remove more aesthetics such as glowing from guns and explosions.

Pretty much, strip off whatever is possible to leave only the most necessary mechanics in place.
And you know, even if it had to be done where you could only give orders to troops, I'd still rather have that option than no multiplayer at all. I think it'd actually require the player to be more strategically minded about their decisions. Though, there'd definitely need to be an improvement upon the digging AI.

It's too bad that Data doesn't agree.
If he did he would have left all of those out and added multiplayer five builds ago.

either read my previous post or go try converting a single player game to multiplayer

just try it

If you make the terrain indestructable in the INI's it'll still check all the pixels every millisecond.

So basically you are asking for a different game with CC's units.

Maybe later on, DRL will make another side-scrolling shooter that is multiplayer, and we can have multiplayer "CC". But it's not going to happen soon/with the current project.

This:

It'd have to be a different build.



I absolutely agree, and in fact said this in my OP pretty clearly I though. I still think that the game, even though it would be totally different, would be fun without it. Yes, COMPLETELY less fun, true, but if you look over your sentimental attachments I think you'd realize that there still would be fun without terrain destruction if there was multiplayer. Even without this totally defining game element, I think it would stand out as a unique multiplayer game (more care and physics than Liero).

I can not stress enough that I don't think it would be the same game. Really. But that doesn't mean that, if it were multiplayer, it still wouldn't be fun.



There are physics elements in the game that are non-terrain destruction-related, aren't there?


Finally, I'd like to post quote that is totally out of context, yes, and I don't actually believe that this is what Data meant by this or that he would ever do any of this (this whole thread is more of hypothetical "would you mind" thing), but it is conveniently on topic to what I'm trying to say:



That is to say, yet again, no it's not the same game. Could be a different game. Could still be fun.