Building Robust Multiplayer Support

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Building Robust Multiplayer Support

BattleDog
Rebel Alliance
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Post by BattleDog » Sun Feb 21, 2021 5:54 pm

Hi Guys,

First of all, sorry for the extended absence, I wasn't expecting to be away for so long but real life has been stressful and I've basically been coping by getting as much stick time in Star Wars Squadrons as possible. That led to me joining the reformed Renegade Wing as Corsair 8, which has literally fulfilled a childhood dream of mine.

Star Wars Squadrons is, in many ways, a spiritual sequel to the X-wing series in much the same way Battlefront is a sequel to the original Battlefront, except much more respectful of its ancestors. This has led to a lot of the old X-wing flying community coming back together via Squadrons, clubs have reformed and begun competing on the new platform, and they've begun communicating with each other again and growing. What we've discovered over the last few months is that, actually, a lot of us aren't as rusty as we thought we were, we still want to fly our X-wings, and we want to keep doing this.

In a few weeks there will be fanfic being released on Renegadewing.com featuring your truly, which I personally find insane. Traditionally fanfics spawn Tours of Duty in one game or another and the Renegades are starting to look at how to do that for the new fics coming down the pipe. The question now is which game to use. I think it should be a version of XWA based on the XWAU because that's technically superior to XvT, and it works better in Windows 10.

Despite this, right now we have an active XvT scene but not XWA, there are a couple of reasons for this. The first is hesitation about installing the XWAU - which I think people are getting over with the 2020 patch. The second issue is that to be a practical option XWAU needs to be able to offer a "robust" multiplayer option. What that means in practice is that people download the XWAU and then even if they fiddle with the options they can "reset" to a version they know they can play with others without de-sync issues.

I was party to a conversation last night between members of Renegade Wing, The Rebel Alliance, and the Emperor's Hammer and it's clear there's some confusion about de-sync and what parts of the XWAU cause it. For example, some people seem to think that the resolution and IR/VR patches will cause de-sync, which I don't think they should.

Now, I think that it should be possible to simply get people to load a Fabu Frik preset and run it to sync up, but right now I don't think the project really foregrounds that or explains how to do that.

We're at an inflection point here, I think, we have a visibly active flying community again for the first time in a long time but the XWAU has been "on its own" for so long it's no longer geared towards actually addressing the concerns of that community. Right now, the Renegades see the project as "those guys over there". Sort of like a group of magicians who achieve unfathomable things, but not really very accessible. I was looking over the website the other day and I realised we don't even seems to have a "links" section here anymore, which would have made sense six months ago but seems crazy now.

So - yes - gearing this more towards making it easy for people to have their installs synced up so they can play together, and making it so people know what needs to be synced up, and what doesn't.
1st Lt Sigurd "BattleDog" Stormhand, Assigned Corsair Squadron, Renegade Wing, CRS Vigilant.

Corsair 8, Squadron TrO.

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Vince T
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Post by Vince T » Sat Mar 06, 2021 7:43 pm

I meant to reply to this regarding the links section: It's still there, though only accessible via the About section.
Your ship, Captain. I need a drink. - Vince Trageton
Vince T's X-Wing HQ - where the bad guys get their gear

BattleDog
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Post by BattleDog » Tue Mar 23, 2021 7:17 am

So, I was really hoping this topic would generate more discussion.

As regards the links section, although you're correct and it's still there it's really hard to find now, and not obvious even when you do find it.
1st Lt Sigurd "BattleDog" Stormhand, Assigned Corsair Squadron, Renegade Wing, CRS Vigilant.

Corsair 8, Squadron TrO.

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Vince T
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Post by Vince T » Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:47 am

I've pitched this to @Forceflow. He may not have gotten around to moving it yet.

Also if you can provide with links to those clan websites we could possibly add them.

As for the other matter: Like Ace posted in the news we have put considerable efforts into creating guides and tutorials. With the release of the Mega Patch, DTM has posted a Beginners' Guide I think the problem isn't that the information isn't there, but instead that people don't read it. From my experience at work I've come to the conclusion that the average person skip every bit of guidance that is not presented in three pictures or less.
Your ship, Captain. I need a drink. - Vince Trageton
Vince T's X-Wing HQ - where the bad guys get their gear

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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:40 pm

TrackIR/VR should not cause de-sync problems anymore. If it does, you can just disable the tracking option through the Babu Frik configurator before playing in Multiplayer mode. If you still get de-sync issues, feel free to report the problems and I'll take a look.

BattleDog
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Post by BattleDog » Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:17 am

blue_max wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:40 pm
TrackIR/VR should not cause de-sync problems anymore. If it does, you can just disable the tracking option through the Babu Frik configurator before playing in Multiplayer mode. If you still get de-sync issues, feel free to report the problems and I'll take a look.
That's good to know. Renegade Wing can certainly put together eight players with a variety of setups for XWAU to test if indeed TrackIR and VR are multiplayer-safe. I'll pitch that to the higher ups.

Technically, I think the XWAU is in a good place now in terms of avoiding accidental de-syncing, you can just go "Download the patch, download the update, don't touch anything."

It would still be good to have a clear way to load customer configs, save them and share them, though. Some kind of sanity check to make sure two installs don't de-sync would be good, but that would probably be a lot of work.

Still, Something to think about.
1st Lt Sigurd "BattleDog" Stormhand, Assigned Corsair Squadron, Renegade Wing, CRS Vigilant.

Corsair 8, Squadron TrO.

BattleDog
Rebel Alliance
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Post by BattleDog » Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:19 am

Vince T wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:47 am
I've pitched this to @Forceflow. He may not have gotten around to moving it yet.

Also if you can provide with links to those clan websites we could possibly add them.

As for the other matter: Like Ace posted in the news we have put considerable efforts into creating guides and tutorials. With the release of the Mega Patch, DTM has posted a Beginners' Guide I think the problem isn't that the information isn't there, but instead that people don't read it. From my experience at work I've come to the conclusion that the average person skip every bit of guidance that is not presented in three pictures or less.
I have noted all this, Vince, I think the issue is historical perception at this point, and that is changing. It's still worth asking what the XWAU can do to help foster that change in perception - mostly what's already being done to be fair.

I'll go through the links section and see who's missing.
1st Lt Sigurd "BattleDog" Stormhand, Assigned Corsair Squadron, Renegade Wing, CRS Vigilant.

Corsair 8, Squadron TrO.

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Haakan
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Post by Haakan » Sun Mar 28, 2021 10:37 pm

As an official representative of Emperor's Hammer I have to comment we're indeed considering the use of XWAU and we'd be interested in a standard mod for MP purposes.

I agree about sharing configs ...also I was wondering if there could be something to be done insofar as XWA's orignal code for multiplayer matches.
Lt. Colonel A. Araujo
Commander, 7th SpecOps Squadron "Alpha"
Battlegroup I
Emperor's Hammer.

CMDR/LC Alejandro Araujo/Alpha/Wing I/ISDII Hammer/BGI

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