Paradox next title should be proper multiplayer.
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No the reason for the checksum changing is purely a way to avoid people getting OOS from not starting from a fresh load of the game.
I've seen a lot of people ranting about this, but tbh I think Paradox should be cut a bit of slack here, as people look at the multiplayer and stuff and compare it to other games, they don't seem to appreciate that this genre is exactly the hardest in some respects to do multiplayer for. Games like Call of Duty and whatnot are, paradoxically, simpler in some regards since the pieces involved are much simpler, and OOS is not really an issue beyond hit registration issues and rubber banding as there is little 'random' element beyond smoke particles and such.
When you load the game, you see all the 'creating history' etc things, taking a while to load up? Well that is preparing the data to be just so, a perfect blank slate with the data exactly correct for a multiplayer game. It's all loaded into memory, and (I imagine) pretty sizeable when it's in memory.
You're one of two players intending to play a multiplayer match. But before that you start a single player game in 1085 as a Duchy in Russia. It then has to change all the data in memory, stepping through the history files and iteratively marrying / killing / changing every character, awarding every title of every kingdom, duchy, county and holding as per the history file, initializing all the game systems, opinions, and everything else.
This all changes massive swaths of the internal game data.
Then you immediately, without even playing a single day, go back to the main menu. What do you have now? They then have to reset the game to its original state. Imagine the other player also does this, playing in 1337 as the King of England. If one single variable isn't reset to its original state, somewhere in the depths of all that history, all the game systems, all the flags and switches, and then you start a multiplayer game in 1066. Both multiplayer games are given the same seed so when random dice rolls occur they get the same result, but are otherwise playing completely independently from eachother, simply transmitting back and forth the players commands to keep both worlds in sync.
A nightmare job in itself, if you think about it considering lag, if one player clicks to assassinate someone on their end, causing a dice roll, at the exact same moment someone on the other end clicks to assassinate someone, then on person A's machine person A would get the dice roll of 40, and on person B's pc person B would get dice roll of 40. The next generated dice roll might be 80, which from person A's perspective person B would get, and from B's perspective A would get.
Thing is there is no such thing as 'real' time when communicating between games. You can see what time you got the message, and when it was sent, but the PC from which it was sent could have a different time set to the PC its sending it to. There's no possible way to determine for sure whether a local event happened before or after a remote event, all you can do is predict from ping times and determine a kind of assumed differential time between the PCs to work out, in hindsight, that player A's assassination attempt came before person B's, so person A should get the 40 and person B should get the 80. But this is complete guesswork, in *all* multiplayer games. Random is a huge huge pain in the backside.
So back to the starting a new multiplayer game without quitting. All it takes is just that one variable buried in the depths of memory to have a different value to the other player, due to already playing a game and not having the memory state totally reset to how it is on load, and it will have a 'butterfly flaps its wings' effect that ends up causing a different event to play out on one PC to another. Both PCs have no real way to know this is happening, and so OOS.
It's a bug, and they've stated on the mp forum they are fixing it, but it could be some time because this kind of thing is a living hell to pin down, but in the meantime this changing checksum thing is great as it means those not aware of this can play the game without guaranteed month 1 OOSs, which are far more annoying than needing to restart to get into a game.
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Personally I think it'd be great if it was #1 on your list of improvements right now because I would love to be able to go into the Metaserver lobby and see loads of players there ready for pickup CK2 games.
IMHO CK2 is the best title so far for MP greatness. EU and the other titles were ok, but with CK2 it requires a lot of personal interaction with other players.
Gotta agree, out of all the paradox titles, CK II is the one i prefer. especially for MP. and considering it sold quite well. (saw on #7 on steams top ten sold). I hope they'll add muslim and pagan factions for the fun (and mp fun!). aswell as adding drop in to multiplayer.
perhaps as a expenasion pack for CK II that advances the pope system/christian system) along with other improvements.
downplaying someone's choice of SC2 as an example of good matchmaking because blizzard have more resources is so utterly fail: there are only 2-andabit million SC2 accounts worldwide, but PI games running this engine and this crunk netcode have probably sold several times that number
lemmy's memory error argument doesn't hold much water with me - it's equivalent to not just bd netcode, but all round fail code
true, an analogy to an elo-syle ranked matchmaker for 1v1 games doesn't fit with any PI game I can name
but I don't what what this is about: you're looking at the 'custom games' browser and saying that's limiting your choice? WHTF? you can search for any one of a thousand maps from a hundred different game modes and, if your choice isn't populated, you're opening a lobby where other people wanting that map and game mode can join you. shit out of luck.
lemmy's memory error argument doesn't hold much water with me - it's equivalent to not just bd netcode, but all round fail code
I just remember how Brad from Stardock stated that less then 1% of Demigod owners ever appeared in Multiplayer lobby (they had a flag for it), and that was MP-focused game. It would be interesting to know how large percentage of CK players is really interested in multiplayer (interested = regular players, not just saying "that would be cool"). I bet on less than a fraction of a single percent.
On the forum they will tell you a lot are interested in multiplayer... in reality probably only very few.
Apart from the people that lose everything because instead of requiring blood, sweat and tears to play MP it just requires the click of a button to play a never ending MP game. Can you imagine a game like CK2 with that, 20 odd players that just keeps rolling. Drop in and drop out would be something else.
Something very dangerous.
you know this how? The group I play with is quite a Group og 20-25 players and we're just one private group we use direct up. Not meta. And so does anyone of the other hosts I know about (I host daily )
In fairness CK2 with the current patch works amazing in MP.
I hosted 18 guys smoothly at speed 3 and I'm on a wireless connection to my router, which is also a wireless 3G router....
and I live in Ireland...
So I mean, that says everything doesn't it?
I hosted 18 guys smoothly at speed 3 and I'm on a wireless connection to my router, which is also a wireless 3G router....
and I live in Ireland...
So I mean, that says everything doesn't it?
Yeah playing MP in this game is AMAZING. played with over 20+ guys.
But we need the Expansion for Muslim and pagans <.< it will make things even more interesting.
But we need the Expansion for Muslim and pagans <.< it will make things even more interesting.
Ewww. Well I imagine this will require a new engine? Traditionally I believe a new engine means a new EU. My opinion is that this is a partial announcement of EU4 which is a good thing of course.
Generally I would say it works well but it could do with some work..
Making it easier to drop in and out of a game would be great! Pls add this.
Loading can be a little hap hazard still.
Please add copy and paste function for meta server and in game.
Out of sync errors still pop up every so often but not that often really.
Having to exit the game after disconnect then rejoin is a tiny bit annoying.
Generally good tho but adding any of this would help
Making it easier to drop in and out of a game would be great! Pls add this.
Loading can be a little hap hazard still.
Please add copy and paste function for meta server and in game.
Out of sync errors still pop up every so often but not that often really.
Having to exit the game after disconnect then rejoin is a tiny bit annoying.
Generally good tho but adding any of this would help
