SPLITCREEN :idea:

[DeVsh]

I know it's hard to get splitscreen on old 3d engines but I think that on splitscreen we could drop off some graphic luxuries that could be used in singleplayer, so the explosions or characters could have less detail/renendering. I also think about levels which I don't know if they are going to be mission like e.g. if you go past a point the door locks so you cannot go back. I am begging for some action in spaceships or earth and some effects like rain and some interactivity e.g. you can break the glass. If we can't drive vechicles can we use turrets, also Vermuelen had not been happy about cutscenes but it can be dealt by including facial expressions and in-game speech
(if i got the scenario of what happens on a the certain levels i could synthetise the sound on text-to-speech it's GPL). Also sometimes I'm bored by 1st person view could we switch between them like in battlefront II I heard that it's possible but I don't know because i never played it.

[DeVsh]

I meant 1st and 3rd person view!

[TVR]

OK, let's break down your ideas into a checklist:

[ ] Split-screen, so you've got 2 sets of input devices, and 2 chairs... and a twice as good GFX card/CPU; yet you insist on playing with 1 screen...?

[X] One time doors, one way doors.

[ ] Space ship levels.

[X] Ground levels.

[X] Rain and snow effects.

[ ] Interactivity, probably without engine modifications.

[ ] Vehicles, turrets, which are never going to be done because of the need for engine changes.

[ ] Facial expressions, unless the engine is modified, and so are the models, this will never be possible.

[X] Third person view, simply type in: <bind x "toggle chase_active 1 0"> into the console to switch between third and first person view by pressing x.

Hope this helps...

[tChr]

The way I read it he want slit-screen with 1st and 3rd persone view at the same time... for one player

[DeVsh]

I meant If you have a bot that helps you and you can go to options so someone with a second input device can take control over the bot and the screen spilts easy?

[LordHavoc]

Speaking generally about splitscreen (as I don't quite understand the question posed in this thread)...

The engine can already accommodate multiple views (using CSQC), and the cpu/gpu load increase is not that much (remember the number of pixels remains equal, only scene processing and geometry throughput are harmed by additional views).

The issues with splitscreen are input and networking, the network protocol can only send input for one player, and there are several other inherent assumptions in the network protocol about it being one player (for example the bf (bonus flash) command stuffed in the console to cause the screen to flash when an item is picked up, would affect both views, and damage events would also not be easily separable for the views, etc).

So in terms of having a singleplayer mode with AI teammates helping you out or something, only the bonus flash/damage/etc issues would apply (and could be fixed).

The main problem with splitscreen is just input - the only easy way to have multiple controllers is gamepads, and they're awful for fps gaming (the moment you see a mouse/keyboard player beside a gamepad player in an FPS Game, you notice a significant difference in aiming ability between the two).

[DeVsh]

i think zymotic should be finished for those who jjust wan'tto play it singleplayerover the net, and then apatch should be releasedfor those who would like a split screen. The problem of IP (Internet Protocol) could be solved by making the patched game send data to the server as two separate players (it's like running zymotic twice and switching it to windowed mode and put the two windows together but its not very efficient) to do that we would need to assing 2 ports for the game for example IP xxx.xx.xx.xx:3231 for the top player and xxx.xxx.xx.xx:3232 for the bottom of the screen and the problem would be solved. I've played several PC FPS like now i played SW Battlefront 2 for 5 months on a gamepad and i can aim very well not as well as on the mouse of course but i can win on multiplayer, i understand some people are not as passionate about game pads as i. When i played SW Battlefront 2 on Xbox and PS2 i noticed that if i aimed close enough to the enemy my gun would lock onto him so the aiming would be comparable to mouse. The maximum distance from the enemy for the gun to lock on was some thing about that -----------
IF the enemy's torso was that wide ----------------------- and by the way the target that was about to get locked upon was marked by four little arrows (triangular ones) from top, left, right and down you could cancel it by moving the analog towards another object, please don't tell me that needs engine modification. I don't personally know what data is shared with the server but i think that light bloom when picking up objects depends on the PC of the player not server and it could be solved by local variables or changing the script so the bloom is the size of half of the screen and depending which of the "players" (i mean which model that a player has control over) had a collision with an object will assign the bloom to the right section of the screen. For e.g. model A has been equipted with a local variable Ahealth.100 assigned to a profile on the computer called "Mark" (you know all that stuff from nexuiz like players name "player 1"), same happens to model B but it has Bhealth.100 and is assigned to profile "John". Now the computer randomly assigns input devices (keyboard+mouse and gamepad if connetcted if not an error message which asks to link up a controller but to avoid bugs you can press delete to continue, not like if you have a controller and you can map "keys" buttons on zymotic and it works but zymotic cant find it linked and you cannot run the game) randomly to models or profiles, then the screen is assigned. So model A playing on a gamepad and having aiming support because Zymotic has recognised the game pad the function is assigned, and Zymotic executes a different aiming script that allows the PC to aim PARTIALLY for player "Mark" and he/she plays on the top part of the screen and the data from the server about other players positions and fired shots is send through both models/virtual machines/player ports to the computer which replaces Model's B position and shots fired positions etc. with more accurate from that pc (not the servers) zymotic's memory and same happens for model B. The positions are of objects/players and stuff are then like normally put into place with just the matter of the point of view (you know player A "Mark" has a different perspective {"sees" from another angle} than player B "John"). The computer doesn't execute the data from the server twice (cause its sent twice remember) it just puts them together like 01010101= position of player C (another computer) 11111111= player B (same computer as A) and 00000001=position of A. The whole thing is just an example it doesn't look like that in real. So to keep low usage of bandwitch the server cuts out 00000001 for A because it knows its own position same for B.So for A it would look like that 0101010111111111 and for B 101010100000001. The Pc puts them together as 01010101[color=red]1111111100000001, but of course it isn't as easy as that and the pc cuts off the bits about its own location cause it has more accurate ones (for example 16 bit not like the ones from the server 8 bit) which won't fail even if someone cuts off ur enthernet cable. The other option is to make the PC listen only to A's port and ignore B's port. But it looks simpler from the other side the pc sends 2 sets of data for the server and the server sees it as two different machines on the same IP (phisically imposiible), the side effect of this is double the bandwich usage, but it shouldn't be a problem because most games require 56k and ISP don't sell anything below 256kb/s.

[ai]

Wow. You need to learn how to divide your posts It hurts my eyes to read something like this. I suggest you hit enter a few times here and there

[LordHavoc]

i think zymotic should be finished for those who jjust wan'tto play it singleplayerover the net, and then apatch should be releasedfor those who would like a split screen.

Your post is the worst engrish I've seen from a polish speaker so far

I do know exactly what you're saying and I was already aware of all of that, it is possible to modify the client code (quite heavily) to maintain multiple independent world simulations and each one separately networked.

What I was saying is that there are serious playability issues with splitscreen, no matter how well it is implemented, for example:
1. sharing sound - one set of speakers being used for both players simultaneously - it would be better if they had their own headphones.
2. sharing vision - all splitscreen players can see eachothers' view (which takes out any stealth in the game).
3. poor aim - gamepads are better than keyboard for moving, but much worse than a mouse, even with slight auto-aim, it takes a great deal of practice to get good enough with a gamepad to seriously compete with mouse players in teamplay games, and in a 1 on 1 duel the gamepad user will generally lose.
4. increased outgoing network bandwidth - sending additional input is a bigger problem on broadband than receiving additional updates, as many people have only 128kbit or 256kbit upstream, others have 384kbit or 512kbit.

The sharing of vision is fine for a team of players on one computer, the sharing of sound is mildly problematic for a team (confusing - they all have to check if they're about to get hit by a rocket from the back).

[DeVsh]

well i see the point here but isn't it the same on consoles? players share the sound don't they?? If i could i would do audio support for different settings of the speakers, but i can't and even if i wanted i would have find some one to teach me. Most of the people have stereo speakers which (f someone was able to do that) would like in some well recorded mp3 play different sounds each but when heard together sound same as on mono, the thing is that player A top screen would definitely hear the rocket coming towards him from the left speaker. Same as my Pc fan i can hear it with my both ears but with my eyes closed i can tell where it is. Also someone could have 5.1 support for my speakers

Anyhow i thought of double bandwitch usage so the people with version 1.0 (without splitscreen) could play with people that had actually split their screen (2.0). And there is no problem with looking on your playmates part of the screen because if you bothered to do so you would be fragged straight away.

By the way my engrish looks weird because i was typing fast and missing out spaces with my effing old keyboard!