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A new idea for multiplayer games?

Joel Bennett · 2001-07-03T05:25:16

Recently I have been playing a resonable amount of Counterstrike, that add-on for half-life. I get sick and tired of being kicked from servers because of my poor ping, having a poor ping, and not being able to find a half-decent server. It usually takes me 3 tries to get on a good server that is willing to let me play. I get sick of trying to find a decent server. Thats when the idea came. Why not have the server pick the player? Why couldn''t a server request a player to play on it? That way the servers would always have several people in them, and there wouldn''t be the hassle of finding a server that would allow your ping. Imagine this: You start up CS. You refresh the list of servers to look for a good one, but at that moment, a message pops up asking if you want to join this certain server. Of course you could decline if you wanted to find your favorite server, or if you didn''t want to join for one reason or another. Here''s how it could work behind the scenes: The server has a maximum number of players, and an optimim number of players. If there are fewer players on the server than the optimum, it asks the players if they want more players to join, say, every 30 minutes. When the server gets a request to get more players, it connects to a master server where there is a list of player servers. It would randomly select one of the player servers from the list, and connect to it. Once it connects, it could randomly select and ask a certain number of players on that player server if they wanted to join the server that is running the game. The player servers would be places where 32 or so people connect to get requests to join game servers. There would basically be 3 types of servers. The game servers would actually run the game, the master server would keep a list of all the player servers, and the player servers would keep lists of the players who want to join a game. The users would still be able to pick a server out of a list like they currently do (a la CS), but they could also get requests from servers who want people to join. This could also fix the ping problem (of not being allowed to play because of too high of a ping). When the game server finds players to play on it, it could have certain flags, in case the game server only wants players with high speed connections, or something of the like. So when the game server searches for a player, it would only ask a player with a high speed connection (or a ping of such and such). That way servers that only want people with low pings get people with low pings. The people with high pings would only get requests from servers that don''t care if they have a high ping. What do you people think of this idea?

Networking and Multiplayer Programming

Started by Moe June 28, 2001 09:08 PM

10 comments, last by Moe 23 years ago

TheEnderBean

122

July 03, 2001 05:12 AM

"There is already a solution to this in Tribes and Tribes 2. It''s called a "Filter"."

I''ve been using filters and favs in gamespy since it was called Qspy hahaha. First thing I thought when reading this post was: OMG.. DUDE, ITS CALLED FILTERS!

Dean makes a good poing about the PL issue, however, your fileterlist is usually small if you do it rigth, and all you need to do is utilize your filters and then when the initial full server sweep is finished, sort the filter list accoding to pings, and then individually ping them a couple times each. 3 for 4 more trys will tell you if PL is a problem, and if they are ok then add them to favs. After awhile you wont need to worry about searching for games If you notice that you have PL on most servers, then you should consider that you are the source of the PL, not some jenky link between you and a particular server.

I dont have ping/pl problems with most server cause I have 1.2Mbits/sec ADSL

I can be more picky then just silly- ole ping.

Anyway, dont just filter by ping cause your gonna get alot of low pings w/ zero player servers and such, so us a player min/max filter, as well as filter for your type of games you like, and maps you want.. Gamespy is replete w/ so many filter/fav tools/tabs that you should be complaining about finding games, unless you have a really bad 28.8 connection, which is entirely different problem and no software, or extra "player server" will help you

"The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end"

TheEnderBean

122

July 03, 2001 05:25 AM

Dean: As well, you can add a rule to your filter that contain variable values for "number of time pinged" which you can set to what you want as your filter, or "total average ping" and set that value as well. There are TONS of rules you can set so that you can specify EXACTLY what game you want.

"The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end"

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A new idea for multiplayer games?

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