Need ideas for how to do something.

[Kadven]

I am making an online role playing game, like everquest or whatever.

I have come across a problem in that I am not sure how to make the npc's (non player characters.

My problem is I need to have it so the npc's are similar to other players in that move and opperate on all players' computer's the same. So lets on player 1's computer, an npc is walking around at a some coordinate in a level, on player2's computer, that npc is shown walking around on his computer the same as on all other computers. So basically what I need to do is make it seem as though the npc's are real players themselves, acting the same for all players, and not unique to each player.

One idea I had was to make it so all the npc's run on game host's computer, and then their information(coordinates or whatever) is sent to everyother player, however I figured this could really lag bad if I had like thousand's of npc's information being sent repetitively.

Any Ideas?

[CornedBee]

Why are there thousands of NPCs? Do you mean enemies?

In current online-RPGs everything the NPCs do is calculated on the server(s). Doing otherwise would be insecure.

[si_the_geek]

You shouldn't send information about all NPC's anyway - you only need to send relevant information to each computer. You should know what each player can see, so only let them know what is visible in that area.

[Kadven]

Originally posted by CornedBee
Why are there thousands of NPCs? Do you mean enemies?

In current online-RPGs everything the NPCs do is calculated on the server(s). Doing otherwise would be insecure.

My game is more like diablo though where you would just host a game, and people would join, not a mmorp.

But i just reliezed that i could just make it so it only sends the npc information if that npc is in your screen.

But the problem remains with on whose computer are the Npc's actions decided on?

And what if the computer whose deciding their actions leaves the game?

I am in over my head with this.


I have another question too, if anyone here uses dx7 do they know a way of doing alpha blending effects, using dx7?

[CornedBee]

Look at Diablo 1: it constantly was hacked.

Diablo2 on the other hand was purely server based.



Anyway, in case the host leaves some other computer must take over. This should be determined beforehand so there is only little delay.
When the host leaves the vice host should get all relevant data from him. Or something like that, this particular thing would mean that if the host crashes the game goes boom.

[Machaira]

Originally posted by Kadven
But the problem remains with on whose computer are the Npc's actions decided on?

Whoever is acting as the host or server

Originally posted by Kadven
And what if the computer whose deciding their actions leaves the game?

You send a message to another player informing him he is now the server. If you use DirectPlay you can set it up so this happens automatically.

Originally posted by Kadven
I am in over my head with this.

I figured that.

Originally posted by Kadven
I have another question too, if anyone here uses dx7 do they know a way of doing alpha blending effects, using dx7?

Check Lucky's site - www.rookscape.com/vbgaming/ or here - www.directx4vb.com

[Electroman]

As far as the Alpha blending goes look into using Direct3D Sprites, even if its 2D you can have Sprites that use 4 vertices to appear on the scren as normal sprites but have features of Direct3D. Theres something about it on the Lucky's site that Machaira mentioned. Look for the hybrid engine.

[alkatran]

Technicly, if there is no random function involved, and all the players have the same data, and movement code for NPCs they should always be in the same spot anyways. At leas that's how I understand they did the StarCraft unit pathing...

Although if someone had a very slow computer.. you would have to adjust.