Multiplayer Campaign in the works!

[Myrddraal]

Patience

If you want a taster, check out the beta hot seat mod thread...

[Iron-Chef]

Man this is looking awesom, I havnt been around these parts for a while so its great to see that quality development is still going on... my only coplaint is that it all seems too complex to be able to play out any significant part of a campaign at any one time, all this sending of files etc, there has to be a simpler way... just my view but other than that the idea of multiplayer campaign is GREAT, hope to see it woking out in the near future! Keep up the good work

[Myrddraal]

We're hoping to automate as much of it as possible, but we'll have to wait and see how much we can do.

[von Gompolz]

Personally, I am not worried about automating all the things. I dont mind e.g. sending save games via e-mail. In fact I would welcome it, for I would appreciate playing my turns off line(i am a dial-up). I know instantly that I received e-mail no matter where I am. I receive message to my cell phone from which I can see who sends it and what it is about. I am used to PBM games and see no problem in it.

I would appreciate if you were able to incorporate AI factions in proper manner, so that when AI faction attacks or diplomatically interacts with any human player the game would stop and get saved so that battles can be played not just auto-calc. It would be also nice to be able to incorporate real-time battles without compromises as to the battlefield locations, general's traits etc...

I wish you all the luck, it is the greatest RTW project ever.
Greetings from Czechia-home of Galic Boii in RTW

[Myrddraal]

Hi, and welcome to the forums, thanks for your support

[Swoosh So]

von gom battles will be fought vs the ai in the normal way and vs the human opponents online, the turn script is now working, were hoping to automate mst of the game. the camapaign is fully playable in rtw version 1.0, using console commands have a look here to find out the times that this basic version takes for turns, the descriptions of turns were posted during player 2s turns although we were discussing rules and stuff in between http://forums.grey-wolves.net/viewtopic.php?t=1621. getting the whole ting running in 1.2 is a different kettle of fish and its going to take time guys because ca took out the use of console commands unless you use scripts :\

[Wishazu]

bummer :( but im willing to wait for it. theres plenty of sp mods knocking about to keep me occupied untill this baby is ready :)

[Drake22]

did this project move to another site? or did it encounter a problem that it cant get around?

[Myrddraal]

No, its just that progress has been slow recently, mainly through lack of effort on my part I'm ashamed to say....

[MajorFreak]

hell, i've been waiting YEARS for something like this. *puts a few more incense sticks on the totalwar.org shrine*


query: is there a way to modify the campaign files to update what happened in the multiplayer battle for logview stuff like unit experience and losses?

query: how do you folks keep the AI consistency between players, especially with the load/savegame bug?

funn3h observation: Oh, and wouldn't it be hilarious to have diplomatic wars where you'd be involved in mad espionage intrigues revolving around the bribing of juicy generals. even funnier if the dude switched allegiance every few turns. lol. jeeeeeezz...i wonder what the family tree would look like? lol

unfunn3h observation: what's to prevent someone saving/loading a naval battle till it came out in their favour?

[Swoosh So]

1. no you must develop a system for this which involves disbanding units and using the kill_character command to kill of any heirs lost.

2. not looked into yet.

3. Play a campaign with people u know is the easy answer most players distain cheating, i know many players i could trust not to cheat in a mp campaign. For a compeditive campaign a referee or gamamaster would be needed.

TBH ive stopped work on the campaign for now with the removal of the console commands (thanks ca :\) its alot of work to do something that was so simple in 1.0 im considering stopping the project untill the expansion pack where im praying that ca leave the campaign console commands in.

of course anyone is welcome to continue the work using what we hve worked out so far, ill make a decision soon, but unless god comes down and cracks the rome exe to flag the console commands active (in which case we would have a working mp campaign in a day or two) then it looks like the projext is at an end for me.

I never intended for this to be a time consuming project i saw the simplicity of how the mp campaign could work in 1.0 but the patch took away these possibilities.

[Duke John]

You could try using the show_me scripts. It's all new for me too, but look at the Beginners Guide covering scripts:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=46738

Therein is an example of how the perfect_spy command works with the show_me script. Since perfect_spy doesn't work when you just use the cheatconsole there might be hope that the other commands are working if you use the show_me scripts and that might save the MP campaign.

[Swoosh So]

Thanks for the link duke john never sw that one before, myradrall has made a script to change turns in the campaign, i guess the only other one really needed is the kill_character command but i dont know how this script would be made as the name of the character would change every time. If we can get that command in somehow then we would be ready to release in a few days... :)

[Duke John]

Am I right to say that battles are fought seperately from the campaign? So while playing the campaign the engine has no idea whatsoever how a battle ended?

I think your idea was to get of units by expecting to have the player disband units who were killed during combat, right? Since you cannot disband characters you have the problem of unable to get rid of them, right?

Perhaps you could let the player edit the show_me script, which if you seperate it is only 3 lines and thus easily understandable. It would be something like:

script
	console_command kill_character KILLED_CHARACTER
end_script

Which the player edits into for example:

script
	console_command kill_character Julius Ceaser
end_script

If I understand the show_script concept then the player then loads his game disbands his killed units and presses the Show Me button in the Advisor interface part (you know the woman with the black hair) and voila, the character is killed.

So the process would be something like this:
1. [campaign] Player comes into contact with army
2. [campaign] player writes down character name and army composition
3. [mp battle] player plays mp battle with the right army and loses his entire army
4. [windows] player edits script so that the right name is used
5. [campaign] player disbands units and presses Show Me button.

I'm no expert on this so I'm not sure how to code, but it might work.

[SigniferOne]

By the way, MikeB at the .com (Cap'n Fishpants here, I think) said that no one at CA sent any threatening letters to anyone working on the multiplayer campaign, and that it was a malicious hoax (my wording) by some idiots (my wording) to upset the community and put a black mark on CA (again, all my wording).

[Drake22]

Am I right to say that battles are fought seperately from the campaign? So while playing the campaign the engine has no idea whatsoever how a battle ended?

I think your idea was to get of units by expecting to have the player disband units who were killed during combat, right? Since you cannot disband characters you have the problem of unable to get rid of them, right?

Perhaps you could let the player edit the show_me script, which if you seperate it is only 3 lines and thus easily understandable. It would be something like:

script
	console_command kill_character KILLED_CHARACTER
end_script

Which the player edits into for example:

script
	console_command kill_character Julius Ceaser
end_script

If I understand the show_script concept then the player then loads his game disbands his killed units and presses the Show Me button in the Advisor interface part (you know the woman with the black hair) and voila, the character is killed.

So the process would be something like this:
1. [campaign] Player comes into contact with army
2. [campaign] player writes down character name and army composition
3. [mp battle] player plays mp battle with the right army and loses his entire army
4. [windows] player edits script so that the right name is used
5. [campaign] player disbands units and presses Show Me button.

I'm no expert on this so I'm not sure how to code, but it might work.

i think that that would solve it, but then again with the units disbanding how do you deal with the not completely destroyed units? do you just count that you "merged" the weakened ones together and disband the completly destroyed ones?

[Nigel]

Hey, all this sounds like very good progress.

As for killing off characters with the show_me command, even if you can't get this one to work, it should not be a show stopper. I myself could easily live with piling all my supposed-to-be-killed characters into one army stack and sending them off into the desert somewhere.

[Drake22]

I could live with a system where human vs. human battles where all auto, i just wanna have a multi game :)

[Swoosh So]

Ok ill explain the battle losses when a battle is fought after the battle is finished you count up the casualties of each unit type so say u lose 300 egyptian archers in total in the battle, their unit size is 120 so u lose immediatly 2 units thats 240 men now u have 60 dead left over thats a 50% or above loss in unit strength so you would use the 3rd unit also. Eradosan was working on a logfile calculator that would tell u which units had to be disbanded automatically so that the players wouldent have to do any admin. but hes been inactive and i havent heard from him and i dont have the basic programming skills needed to make such a program.

The campaign needs 3 things to work smoothly in 1.2

1 a turn script (to change factions) already made by myradraal.
2 a kill_character (program?) script to kill of any heirs lost online.
3 a logfile calculator (optional to reduce any player admin).

The biggest problem facing people making a mp campaign for totalwar was always the inability to transfer results from online battle to the campaign, although this is still not possible if we work on a unit loss basis as oppoesed to a man loss basis we can disband the lost UNITS and suddenly this all becomes possible.

I cannot bring the above 3 things to the table so i must ask others to do that and wait.

There are other rules the players must follow pretty simple ones to be honest i should get them down on paper beore i end up forgetting them.

for example when i move my army piece to attack yours i would attack it in the normal way then the ATTACKER takes a screenshot of both armies involved to send to the other player, no battles pvp actually ever take place on the campaign map, the attacking army clicks withdraw on the campaign map their army wont move the battle is played then the players disband lost units and heirs using the kill character command.

Unit weapons valour and armour are not tranferred to the mp battle these will only have use in the battles vs the ai, the system we worked out was that mp units get 1 valour per 2 general stars, at least then we can use the good attacker virtues as these will show on the battle screen before battle and the good defender virtue good seige commander etc.

Mercenary units cannot be used in the basic campaign pvp unless we make a simple modification to add all mercenary units to the player factions army list to make them available online, the player could however use merc units v the ai no problems there....

Players will always control the first army on the battle screen with second or third arriving armies given control over to ai commanders or friends who may want to help you in your battle clan members etc.

So as u see its all fairly simple, CA could probably knock up a working MP campaign in a day by giving battle input and output files from the campaign map to the mp battles, but they havent :) despite us asking so this is the best i can come up with, if ANYONE feels they can contribute to the 3 things i said i need above then please feel free to contact me on msn and lets see what we can do...

SWOOSH

[Swoosh So]

Btw i apologise for making people think this was almost ready for release on a few occasions, but at 1 stage i thought that the exe file for 1.2 was going to be cracked and the console commands activated, then all that would have been needed was the logfile calculator a pretty simple programming feat.

I think the logfile calulator is essentail i always disliked campaigns where u have lots of admin posting attacks on foums etc, if we have a logfile calculator which i believe is easy to make for anyone with programming skills then we have no admin whatsoever outside the game EVERYTHING runs in the game except the players writing down the involved forces before a battle.

[von Gompolz]

Anyway, I would be satisfied with 1.0 with realism 5.1, in case you were not successful with 1.2. It is still better than 1.2 singleplayer. When I have time I will start playing. Thanks guys

[Kraxis]

Your work is very much in my good graces! I'm impressed.

I remember the trouble Shadewolf and I had with our MTW MP campaign, and it was never as good.
The simple fact that you have managed to get a transfer from the moves each player makes to the other faction, that is impressive.
And I agree that CA undoubtedly could make an MP campaign, if 'we' can do this they could do far better and far faster. That is if they wanted to. And yet I think they do want to but something holds them back.

But it looks so promising that I can sit still really.

[Cealin]

Same like von Gompolz, I don't really mind to play with 1.1/1.0 patch.

Any place to download the files that are needed to play Swoosh So's MP campaign with 1.1/1.0?

Would be great :)

[Drake22]

yeah, if you can make a 1.1 version one i'd still give it a go :)

[von Gompolz]

How do I use kill_character command for multiplayer campaign battles?
I tried it in 1.0 and it seems not to work. when I put ? before the command, the romeshell does not reckognize the command and doesn't give me any help. The other cheats work properly. I don't know where I do a mistake.

[von Gompolz]

I forgot to add, I write in romeshell kill_character "name". it doesn't work for me

[Myrddraal]

Lots of romeshell commands were disables in 1.2 for some reason.

[Cealin]

You can also just suicide your familiy member right? Why not just send him alone to a big army of the enemy. He'll die :P

[Scorpion]

I´m going to voice my support and anticipation for the success of this project as well.

Even if it´s not 1.2, I´d still play it.

[Cealin]

Everyone please note there is already a downloadable and working script so that you can play the campaign with 2 players.

Go over here.