Tom Proudfoot
Digital Designer
Today's update (just uploaded) is mainly an overhaul of unit movement for multiplayer, so if you've had trouble in the past, please give it another try and let me know if it works better.
Basically what it did before was optimistic. When a player clicked on a hex it would tell the other computer "ok, I'm moving these units over there, you do that too" and proceed with the move locally and the remote computer would be responsible for the whole move on its own. And when everything is the same on both computers and the world is happy and smiling, it all works out in the end. But, sadly, that seemed to often not be the case.
The new system is broken down hex by hex, and each sub-stage of movement (sliding the counters, doing opfire checks, taking control of the hex, etc.) is sent from the local computer to the remote one as they occur, and the remote one is told DO IT, I DON'T CARE IF IT'S POSSIBLE.
I expect there to be far fewer lockups this way (before, if there were conflicts between computers about, say, opfire on one but not the other, blammo, someone could get stuck). What is lost is a bit of smoothness on multi-hex non-interrupted moves, which I expect nobody to care about. The main reason I didn't do it this way before that it is a real pain.
Making a turn-based game in Unity is sort of a mess by itself, and then having to basically add a bunch of exceptions to the turn structure for the network stuff really makes quite a tangle.
Anyway, If you manage to get things out of sync, I would expect to, instead of things locking up, see units teleporting as the corrections come in from the other computer. So keep an eye out for that.
I think if you really try, it is probably still possible to pop-up one of those one-way Melees, but I will be looking at Melee tomorrow because it can happen in single-player too, and I have a couple of good saves for that now.
There is also one further way to get things out of sync in a bad way, and that is if a unit is somehow created on one computer but not the other (or created, but with a non-matching internal ID number). If that happens, all the syncing corrections in the game just plain don't work because the units don't match. Units that are created mid-game are mainly heroes generated from damage checks, crews (well, when vehicles get multiplayer-ed), and units that get reduced to half squads (the 'dead' half of the squad has to stick around offboard for VP purposes). So keep in the back of your mind if something weird happens, was a unit created recently? It's useful information for me. And if you send a multiplayer bug report, try to convince your opponent to do so too, then I can compare the logs and see where things have gone awry (and they don't need to type a bunch of information, if it's at about the same time, I can figure out they were playing with you). Thanks!
Basically what it did before was optimistic. When a player clicked on a hex it would tell the other computer "ok, I'm moving these units over there, you do that too" and proceed with the move locally and the remote computer would be responsible for the whole move on its own. And when everything is the same on both computers and the world is happy and smiling, it all works out in the end. But, sadly, that seemed to often not be the case.
The new system is broken down hex by hex, and each sub-stage of movement (sliding the counters, doing opfire checks, taking control of the hex, etc.) is sent from the local computer to the remote one as they occur, and the remote one is told DO IT, I DON'T CARE IF IT'S POSSIBLE.
I expect there to be far fewer lockups this way (before, if there were conflicts between computers about, say, opfire on one but not the other, blammo, someone could get stuck). What is lost is a bit of smoothness on multi-hex non-interrupted moves, which I expect nobody to care about. The main reason I didn't do it this way before that it is a real pain.
Making a turn-based game in Unity is sort of a mess by itself, and then having to basically add a bunch of exceptions to the turn structure for the network stuff really makes quite a tangle.Anyway, If you manage to get things out of sync, I would expect to, instead of things locking up, see units teleporting as the corrections come in from the other computer. So keep an eye out for that.
I think if you really try, it is probably still possible to pop-up one of those one-way Melees, but I will be looking at Melee tomorrow because it can happen in single-player too, and I have a couple of good saves for that now.
There is also one further way to get things out of sync in a bad way, and that is if a unit is somehow created on one computer but not the other (or created, but with a non-matching internal ID number). If that happens, all the syncing corrections in the game just plain don't work because the units don't match. Units that are created mid-game are mainly heroes generated from damage checks, crews (well, when vehicles get multiplayer-ed), and units that get reduced to half squads (the 'dead' half of the squad has to stick around offboard for VP purposes). So keep in the back of your mind if something weird happens, was a unit created recently? It's useful information for me. And if you send a multiplayer bug report, try to convince your opponent to do so too, then I can compare the logs and see where things have gone awry (and they don't need to type a bunch of information, if it's at about the same time, I can figure out they were playing with you). Thanks!
