Irrlicht Engine

strong99 wrote:vertex heights

Not heights but normals

This means if it is steep then it is one texture and if it is shallow ground then it is another texture.

ah yes,

somehow this is useable for us gives us somewhat more time to do other things instead drawing the hills sides

but we are searching for a splat with 3 or 4 textures.

your project seems to be coming along nicely, strong99!

True, I'm helping with the RB3D one, but I'm a bit of a sucker for RPGs of any kind, and yours is different beast altogether.

Keep up the good work!

After reading through 6 pages of posts, I am amazed. Keep up the good work

haha thanks all,
we now have a water shader coming up and splat for 3 or 4 textures, as the examples look it will be a nice improvement to the game

We decided to make the AI for a part client side to reduce cpu usage. This is possible due to the fact the network is P2P now, 1 master server to make sure everything is going the right way and to manage database and saves.

The client wich is under attack by an npc will calculate the AI for that npc and maybe some more. We tested the idea on some simple things and it seemed to work. Only problem is when the client illegal disconnects the AI will be offline for that npc for some miliseconds before another client can take over the AI but if this is a problem we don't know yet.

well the issue with that is that someone could hack the game and make the enemy really weak, really strong, not attack, or anything like that.

yes thats the issues we need some more time on, but we're thinking to use keys wich expire every session. So the calculations are made with that key.

But reading your post let me think about another solution,

if we have 2 clients, John and Charles. John is under attack by an npc and Charles is calculating the npc for John the hacker needs more to hack the npc values, maybe thats an better solution.

I'm very very sorry this movie is not from Mythorgia due to the fact i'm having some trouble at the Mythorgia team. But this is from TheGateway, SciFi MMORPG on the same engine. The AI is totally balanced on the clients, the server doesn't do anything anymore except managing the NPCs so that we know wich npc is calculated on wich client.

demo movie:
http://gateway.4vandorp.eu/media/GatewayAIDemo.wmv

Basic AI works now AI can follow players or just walk paths,
well its very very basic but the ,managing of the AI over the clients seems to work so thats real progress

http://forum.4vandorp.eu/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=324

Things needed to add:
- Better network balancing for playrs and AI, players with better CPU's need to get more AI to calculate than people with bad pc's
- NPC Rotation, The npc need to rotate in the direction he's walking to (doesn't work (bug))
- Better speed control for NPC
- States in wich the AI is currently can be: Attacking, Sleeping, Normal, Patrol
- Factions, so they attack hostile factions and players
- Squad based NPC movement for soldiers

Just want to add one quick (and imo very important) statement to this one:

"The client is in the hands of the enemy."

Think a little bit about it regarding cheating, manipulations and multiplayer gameplay. If you just don't "get it", ask, write a PM or whatever.

well the AI isn't in hands like : you got killed by a bot you're pc calculated, we made it that way the AI of a NPC wich is attacking you never is calculated at your pc, so if yuo want to change AI in your favor you need to hack several clients,

You could still try to manipulate it in a way causing others to suffer from it.

Btw is there even some speed improvement doing it that way? Always consider it takes some time to deliver the package(s) and receive the answers too. I'd first try to write the server multithreaded so different tasks may run in different threads (on different cores/cpus). Also you shouldnt update waypoints etc./AI that often.

Yes, the Servers don't need huge amounts of netwerk size, the clients thought use more bandwidth,

The servers also need less CPU wich uses in the advantage of the clients. The major improvement is that the clients check each other on hacks and such making it harder to change things in your advantage.

If you do it right you can overlap AI processes by clients to check data, if its 20% different? You can take actions

Would you leave your doors and windows unlocked just because you have a burglar alarm and CCTV cameras?

No but thats somewhat different, in the game network we can disconnect the cheater / hacker So that means we can lock parts of the house.

But still not everything is done by the clients, the server still needs to get data from the npcs. Though the npcs are calculated by random clients meaning that the hacker has to know wich clients he needs to hack, and then when he hacked the client the npcs calculated in that one are maybe moved over 4 other clients. SO the hacker needs to be very fast and hack the other clients before the npcs calculation are set to another client.