technical Issues related to Online Campaign

[Bludhall]

Reposting this query to the community , its really a modders thing but here goes.

Its generally agreed that the best feature for MTW would be the online campaign. As has been discussed before CA ain't gonna be doing it so one might think from a technical standpoint that would be the end of that.

But lets examine this for a second.
The reality of an online campaign is really all about one central issue DATA.
data has to be fed into the game to create the armies for battle and data has to come out of the game to reflect the outcome of the battle to whatever application mightb e running the online campaign map.

If that data transfer is possilbe i sincerly believe that its possible, most of the the other campaign features would be possible to duplicate in an application environment.

So my question is what about this data transfer?
Can anyone who has modded theg ame much tell me if its a aq possibility to feed the game some numbers and have it determine the makeup of your army. Likewise can the results of the battle be shot out of the gamne after battle in a simple comma delimited format perhaps.?

I think actually that a online campaign would be much better than the original gamne becasue it would hold the possibility of many generals playing a campaign together to fight for a map. of course there would be no AI so it would have to be all humans, but the possibilities from that are interesting to say the least.

I would like to get the opinion of some of the more knowledgeable folks who have messed with the innards of the game.
If we can solve this one little function problem i would be more than willing to help put together a team to try and build an online multiplayer campaign application.

[Hamburglar]

The one annoying thing about the Online Campaign would be waiting for people to fight their battles.

If the English were fighting the French and they invaded 4 provinces in one turn, the Egyptian player is going to be mighty bored waiting for those battles to finish.

[The Storyteller]

It must be possible. People take a gazillion years a turn in chess, and they still play... Risk used to have 6 or more players and everyone was fine.

What's needed is a system whereby more than one person fights at any one time. For instance, during the course of a year, you wouldn't let each player take it in turn to move, right? All the players would issue their orders at the same time, and the moment the last player presses the 'end turn' button, the orders are carried out.

Same with the battles. Battles between different factions should be fought simultaneously.

The moment you have simultaneous battles, you can have TEAMS of players controlling every faction. Let's say all factions have been eliminated. Its a 3v3v3 match now, between the Peeps of Novgorod, Byzantines and English. If the Byz and English gang up on the Peeps and wage six battles in a year, then the people playing the People fight two battles each.

In general, I think it will sort itself out. In the early stages, when there are the most players, Empires are small. Its doubtful if someone will have the resources to fight 6 battles in a year. Everyone will only have to wait for one or two battles to be concluded (assuming they are fought simultaneously). To pass time, maybe they can observe the battle being fought, to get a feel of their opponent's tactics.

As time goes by, more and more players are eliminated (let's forget about faction revival for now&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif and resources increase. You now have many battles a year between a few players. While waiting for 6 English battles to be concluded, chances are that the Egyptian player is going to be fighting battles of his own.

[Bludhall]

well like i said, the real issue is whether or not its technically possible.

IMHO an online multiplayer aspect to this game would make it a truly great game.

But lets see if anyone cares enough to try to answer the technical question.

[MizuKokami]

technally, i'm not a very technical person. but if i may, the hardest issue for an on-line campaign wouldn't be the software as much as it would be the players. i know that dureing a single player campaign, it can take me weeks to complete a single campaign. since the campaign segment has a bit of turn base, it would likely take longer for a true campaign in multiplayer. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
if there is to be any hope of an on-line campaign, we who would participate, would all have to be gung-hoe about completeing it. could you imagine how many incomplete campaigns would be out there? then, when the next expansion came out, how many people would continue with the current campaign? perhaps the best bet would be a team type campaign, where fellow clansmen can pick up where the others left off. and of course, when more then one clansmen is on, the leader/king would command where the armies would go, and the other clansmen would be generals fighting in battles. this way, we wouldn't have to wait for a couple of people to fight several battles before the next turn, but could fight them respectively where they happen with each clansmen being a general of one of the king's armies. (with of course makeing allowances to play even when a clansmen is not on.)(this would also be insentive for clan recruitment)
with clan takiyama, unless there have been changes since i last met up with my brothers, tosainu is our leader, so would play the part of the king when he was on.(of which i must say i would gladly follow him into battle) but if he wasn't on, i believe yukki is second in command, so would play the part of the king. he would say....send me and the army he has put under my command to aquitane to crush a rebellion, or send orda to khazar to prepare for the oncomeing mongel horde...etc.....(we could even send dune to the desert.)
to sum up, it is in my humble opinion that the hope of multi player campaigns rest mostly in the clans, and their wish to conquer the world. tho other issues would remain with spy networks and possible civil wars, the pope's interference, etc....

[Cazbol]

You gentlemen are jumping over the main problem and going directly to lesser issues of online battles and player attendance.

The main problem is the stratetic element. Three players recently tried an MP campaign, focusing only on the stratetic movement with battles being auto-resolved. ShadesWolf impressively managed to edit the game so different players could play different countries. It quickly turned out that the AI will mess things up for you. Units that the players did not move would be moved by the AI, unused build queues would be used by the AI and huge sums of money just vanished from players' treasuries without anything being purchased for them. That MP campaign is unofficially dead but may be seen in the Throne Room.

In my view there are two solutions to this. A grand reprogramming of the game, where the game controls are pried from the AI's cold fingers. This "solution" is no doubt totally impossible in reality.

The other solution is stratetic decisions with pen and paper without any use of the game engine at all. You would necessarily have to drop concepts like valour and command stars unless one can get dozens of people to aminister the campaign full time. Should anyone be brave enough to try it, then you should stick to a small map like the VI campaign or even some submap of your own.

[Bludhall]

honestly i think you have all missed the point in a large way here.
i wouldn't even bother to suggest an online campaign concepot that was either
1: doesn't allow integration with the MTW battle sytem
2: is managed by a human.

not gonna work and not worth the effort to try.
However the effort spent towards getting data flowing seemlesly from the game to an application and vice versa would allow for a campaign map with up to 10 or 2o players and and allow them to resolve thier battles on the battlefield without relying on anyhting but the game and the campaign application.

The issue simply whether or not we can get that data in and out of the game. If its modable to be able to send the necessary data of you troop numbers to the game from and external campaiugn then we would be in business.

All this talk about would people be abler top get a game etc is neither here nor there.
The only kind of campaign worth doing is an online version of the in game camoaign, that means direct interaction between the players, anything less is not worth the effort.

If someone could simply answer that one simple technical question we will know where we stand.