rejoining games after dropouts

[caldera]

would it be possible to use the upcoming desync-resync solution to rejoin games? dropping players would be one of the last problems which would ruin a game. dont know how it is in the rest of the world, but here in germany the isp often cuts connection after 24h, so you have to reconnect using a new ip.

[imbaczek]

ipconfig /renew

[caldera]

...if you dont forget it...

[Licho]

Crappy ISP, can't you switch to another one?

[imbaczek]

make a .bat that does that and start tasclient.exe. should work.

[caldera]

k that batch file seems to be a good idea, but i still would like that rejoin option

[rattle]

Or: manually reconnect your PC/router to the internet before playing.

[Crappage]

I'd like a rejoin/join in progress games feature too, so Com Shooter games can be open all the time for players to just come in and shoot crap, but someone said joining games in progress is impossible with the engine for some reason. I think it was AF, you'd have to ask him about it.

[KDR_11k]

It's because the engine never sends its full gamestate, it just sends enough data to go from one known state to another. If you don't know the initial state and all the updates in between you can't recover the current gamestate.

[caldera]

as long as its only rejoining, the data already exists on all clients, so that should not be the problem. If its a completely new player who joins into an existing game, the complete gamestate must be transferred to him, i think. Any chance to see that implemented?

[rattle]

Probably not...

[Tobi]

Actually there is a chance as I'm doing some rewriting of the netcode atm, and besides this idea I have some other good ones (like dedicated server (as in much more lightweight then current bots use), backup host).

But no promises, anything that's more interesting / RL may get in the way...

EDIT: rejoining after conn probs only ofc (not crashes probably), as KDR correctly points out

[KDR_11k]

Rejoining will happen most often after a crash which would make restoring the gamestate impossible, never mind that you missed out on the events between the disconnect and reconnect which is enough to make it impossible.

[Posts]

technical stuff:

It's not clear what the reasons for not transferring the full gamestate are (i can guess a few but it's important to know what exactly these barriers are so that the barriers can be removed)

I'm guessing that the main issue is bandwidth? terrain deformations the blocker? just units by them selfs? need to be friendly to 56k? not worth coding?

what if you didn't allow terrain to be changed by explosions/weapons/etc?

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"why it would be useful":

in starcraft there was a save/load feature that worked with multiplayer, if you were playing with friends you could coordinate the loading of a saved game, but when dealing random people on the internet it would be very rare to come across people who were willing to put up the hassle of loading a saved game. once a game was over communication with those you were communicating with would be difficult.

many custom starcraft maps didn't need players to start at the same time and continuously play to have a fun game, if there was the ability for players to join in the middle of the game i doubt there would be a problem

what if we made rejoining/joining a game in progress more transparent to the users?(in comparison to starcrafts save/load)

open source strat game where you can easily join/rejoin a game in progress: freeciv