Multiplayer FPS

MathStuf · Post by **MathStuf** » Sat 20 Aug, 2005 1:01 am

For the z80...I doubt it. The 68k calcs are fast enough to handle it though if played around with right. Texas Hold-em would be a good place to start with a big circle of calcs...

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Sat 20 Aug, 2005 6:29 am

coelurus wrote:Are there any realtime games with linkplay? I've never touched the link port and I probably won't delve deeply into it, but it'd be nice to see working routines and to expand on them. The TI83 SDK has some info, but nothing proven for realtime apps.

Yeah, there's an 83+ bomberman one(very awesome), alien breed one, falldown, chopper, etc etc. There's a bunch.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Sat 20 Aug, 2005 10:18 am

I might have a look into one of those some time... Seems like there's no source code for Bomberkids. Also, how do people have 3/4-link play?

Btw, what's up with that 3D terrain?

MathStuf · Post by **MathStuf** » Sat 20 Aug, 2005 2:02 pm

Here's a really bad ASCII diagram:

Code: Select all

      USB        I/O        USB
89Ti-------89Ti-------89Ti-------(and so on)

if the chain ends in a Titanium, that calcs can form a loop with an I/O link, otherwise it would be a chain. Also, you can start with an I/O link.

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Sat 20 Aug, 2005 8:00 pm

It would work with 83+'s too.
Also, you can make a central server calc and have a splitter.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Sat 20 Aug, 2005 10:06 pm

What's up with all these 89s, don't they already have mp FPSs? The tricky bit is to get the sluggish 83s (84s?) to do linkplay so let's concentrate on that

What's the general problem when it comes to multiplayer games? Register the number of players, await ready-signal, start main loop, wait until keypress info has been distributed through the network and let each calc compute what happens. Letting calcs compute everything individually will easen up on the link and as long as no texturing is used, there should be no problem computing everything in the "arena". If the link can xmit more data per frame than keypresses, then maybe computing could be distributed over all clients. It's a choice determined by experimentation; if the link is slow, send keypresses and compute everything per client, else split computations and send world data.

Loki · Post by **Loki** » Sun 21 Aug, 2005 4:47 am

Speaking of FPSs, you've probably seen that Heretic idea..i'd really love to see that happen..Just think, destroying D'Sparil and his minions in Geometry or other boring class. What would be better? Well, for one, if this mp FPS is a success, destroying your friend with a phoenix rod...or pwning his ass with an elven wand xD

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Sun 21 Aug, 2005 6:29 am

coelurus wrote:Btw, what's up with that 3D terrain?

Well, how I do it on the PC is I save an array to use as the heightmap and then use a formula to correctly calculate the height of the player at any given point on the map. To draw a 3D model of the terrain, I use the heightmap and draw a primitive triangle strip, and save it as a model for speed(meaning I don't have to recalculate each triangle every draw event). Somehow, though, I don't think it will be so easy on a calculator...

Which reminds me...sometime this year I should update my website.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Sun 21 Aug, 2005 10:07 am

3D terrain on a calc? Sounds like fun, although not practical. Terrains are large and enemies can be far away which means they'll become pixel blobs. Go for indoors, either raycasting or very simplistic portal-friendly environments. There must be zero overdraw and no filled faces, which means we get back to the old how-to-cleverly-clip-wireframe-worlds-problem.

I got two solutions:

A fellar from Denmark whose name I've misplaced gave me this

Anyway, his idea consisted simply of a vertical buffer holding left and right boundaries for portals between convex sectors that gets backuped and updated for every new portal. Personally, I'd prefer to do it "the portal way", which means using quad portals only and generate frusta for every new portal, because this will speed up clipping a lot and there will be no need to copy boundary-buffers. Furthermore, calculating the size of a portal will be lots easier (useful to skip out from the recursion of portals). Since there will only be quad portals, updated frusta will always have quad shapes. Moving objects will work flawlessly with this.

Another solution is to use an image-space structure, like an S-buffer, to insert the few couple of spans per row needed for one view. Clipping spans will not be necessary and since the portal-scheme will 'sort' the scene front-to-back, the largest spans will start out and smaller spans behind will be discarded early. A little tricky when it comes to moving objects, inserting them into the S-buffer is the most robust way, but it's gonna devour a lot of spans.

Beam trees? Not sure about that, would be fun to see how that performs though.

My thoughts on a truly 3D world, but raycasting seems more viable still.

EDIT: Why do a large number of my posts end threads? It's almost as if I kill the interest of some topics

This usually happens when I go ranting about various ways to solve things, I thought answers lead to action

lecks · Post by **lecks** » Sat 10 Sep, 2005 2:09 pm

hey does the ti 84 silver come with a usb and i/o link cable?

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Sat 10 Sep, 2005 3:02 pm

http://education.ti.com/us/product/tech ... tures.html

I know I can go off-topic at times, but your post must break all records

lecks · Post by **lecks** » Sat 10 Sep, 2005 3:03 pm

omg i am so stupid

lecks · Post by **lecks** » Sun 11 Sep, 2005 7:40 pm

the other day i found a multiplayer fps.. too bad i didnt add to favorites

... if i run into it ill tell u the site

katmaster · Post by **katmaster** » Mon 12 Sep, 2005 12:09 am

Spengo wrote:
coelurus wrote:Are there any realtime games with linkplay? I've never touched the link port and I probably won't delve deeply into it, but it'd be nice to see working routines and to expand on them. The TI83 SDK has some info, but nothing proven for realtime apps.
Yeah, there's an 83+ bomberman one(very awesome), alien breed one, falldown, chopper, etc etc. There's a bunch.

Bomberman is the only one that is really good. Alien Breed doesn't link right, falldown and chopper have bugs and are only on one screen, and i haven't heard of any other linking games for 83+.

DarkerLine · Post by **DarkerLine** » Mon 12 Sep, 2005 12:25 am

ZTetris?