Multiplayer

[thelusiv]

This is now the largest voted for option in the next feature poll...however there are many, many ways to design multiplayer gameplay, especially for racing. What kind of suggestions and ideas does everyone have?Here's a few things i think should happen before multiplayer coding starts:* it might be best to get some kind of player profile setup, including control settings with independent options for each player and their controls.* why not have an option to have a "ghost car" that follows one lap behind? If the ghost car option is selected, wherever it ends up in the menu, a replay is recorded as the driver does the first lap. After one lap the ghost car appears, and the driver can see how much better/worse he's doing than his last lap. The reason I think this should come before multiplayer is that it would be a step in the multiplayer direction (2 cars at the same time) but with less requirements.* before starting network play coding, I think split screen, two-player multiplayer would be fine for testing and getting it all ready. Network code can be developed later.* The cars might need a slightly more detailed set of contact points to be able to realistically run into each other.I think the multiplayer function in this game should start as a simple head to head wheel to wheel race between two drivers, winner is chosen by finishing a certain (variable) number of laps.

[joevenzon]

Implicit in this is, of course, getting a real racing start into the game, instead of just "there you are on the track, ready to go."Also, I did some looking into this before the keyboard controls option won out in the poll, and it looks like the split-screen multiplayer will be no problem. The network multiplayer looks do-able but a bit of a pain. Also, I was considering using RakNet as a network library, but after the row that FMOD caused, is there an open-source solution out there that would be more to peoples' liking?? It needs to support UDP packet sending with automatic ordering and a no-loss gaurantee.

[thelusiv]

Very true, it would be needed for head to head play and a ghost car wouldn't really work right if it was not there either.

[joevenzon]

I've gotten a couple of recommendations for http://www.opentnl.org/I think I'll try SDL_net first just because it's lightweight, and then move up to opentnl for performance once multiplayer is functional.