Forums » General
That's fine for a gunship with just one turret slung under the nose, but what about a turret that can only fire into your rear hemisphere and is thus never part of your forward view screen? What about a Police Cutter with a top and bottom mounted turret, or a Strike Corvette with four turrets, or any other mulitiple turret ship?
No one can control multiple turrets with different firing arcs on thier own. Most people are going to have a difficult time controling even one turret and flying thier ship at the same time.
Either you place the turret under control of a client side AI, or you put the turret in the hands of another remote player. Not only does the former make it less annoying to own a ship with a 'real' turret, but I would think it would generate less latency wierdness than having two players each with a different 'idea' about where thier ship was in the universe. If another player controls the turret, either you are going to have turret fire eminating from empty space alot or else you are going to have laser fire eminating from a turret and missing the target because the turret controling player thought he was 18 meters from where he actually was according to the pilot.
On the other hand, if a client side AI controls the turret, 4 (or 6 or 8) different turrets on your ship add no extra burden to the server and the bandwidth consumed is no worse than any ship with 4 (or 6 or 8) weapons.
No one can control multiple turrets with different firing arcs on thier own. Most people are going to have a difficult time controling even one turret and flying thier ship at the same time.
Either you place the turret under control of a client side AI, or you put the turret in the hands of another remote player. Not only does the former make it less annoying to own a ship with a 'real' turret, but I would think it would generate less latency wierdness than having two players each with a different 'idea' about where thier ship was in the universe. If another player controls the turret, either you are going to have turret fire eminating from empty space alot or else you are going to have laser fire eminating from a turret and missing the target because the turret controling player thought he was 18 meters from where he actually was according to the pilot.
On the other hand, if a client side AI controls the turret, 4 (or 6 or 8) different turrets on your ship add no extra burden to the server and the bandwidth consumed is no worse than any ship with 4 (or 6 or 8) weapons.
I think it'd be fun to just be a gunner on a ship once in awhile. Lets say you are too tired, poor, or unskilled to pilot your own ship - you could ride "shotgun". I recall that some gunners were highly sought after for their skills.
It has been done successfully in many games of the past, such as Air Warrior and Tribes. There were no serious issues that I can recall.
It has been done successfully in many games of the past, such as Air Warrior and Tribes. There were no serious issues that I can recall.
I have nothing against being able to hand off a gun to a player if one is willing and no technical barriers prevent it, I just don't want to be forced to do so.
Yeah, I think it should be an option. Sometimes the AI turret is better. Sometimes the human is better. Maybe in the station you could specify whether you'd like to allow players to hop on to your ship or not. Maybe like a lock icon with a checkbox next to it or something.
I don't like the idea of a client side AI turret. The problem with Half Life and it's ilk and cheaters came MAINLY when there was client side weapon prediction. IE attempted to "take care" of the lag issues.
ANY time you put something client side, you open the DOOR for cheaters. Right now, there are no complaints of anyone cheating. You can't!
ANY time you put something client side, you open the DOOR for cheaters. Right now, there are no complaints of anyone cheating. You can't!
good point Furball. Nothing will kill a game faster for me than cheaters. I would just abandon the game entirely. I don't have time for that stuff.
Bingo that's why I quit playing all Half Life based mods and probably will never play em again.
Err, maybe I'm just not imaginative enough but...
I don't see how you could cheat except to make the AI more accurate, and to do that you'd need some sort of predictive technique for figuring out where the target was going to dodge too. If you can write such a technique, then you need to be hired.
What I'm suggesting is essentially no different than what we have now. The only thing that would change is that the AI would decide when you would fire. Technically speaking, you could do that now by writing an 'autofire' hack that fired any time the target was 'in your sights' saving you from needing to pull the trigger, but that in itself in order to be useful would be an incredible feat. How would the AI know when you are correctly leading the target and when you weren't?
The AI would just be responcible for putting new munition objects into existance just like pulling the trigger does now.
I don't see how you could cheat except to make the AI more accurate, and to do that you'd need some sort of predictive technique for figuring out where the target was going to dodge too. If you can write such a technique, then you need to be hired.
What I'm suggesting is essentially no different than what we have now. The only thing that would change is that the AI would decide when you would fire. Technically speaking, you could do that now by writing an 'autofire' hack that fired any time the target was 'in your sights' saving you from needing to pull the trigger, but that in itself in order to be useful would be an incredible feat. How would the AI know when you are correctly leading the target and when you weren't?
The AI would just be responcible for putting new munition objects into existance just like pulling the trigger does now.
Celebrim, never under estimate what a cheater will do. If you had asked me before weapons prediction code (IE let the CLIENT determine when/if a shot hits and when/where it was fired from and where it was going to) if auto aim bots would be useful, I'dve laughed... Unfortunately, AFTER the WPC came out for Halflife, that became VERY easy to do (relatively speaking).
Ctishman points out one way how a cheater would abuse the client side AI. I know that the urge is there to move stuff to the client... but IMNSHO, that's a BAD idea. Just let the client handle the drawing of graphics and that stuff and the server handles the rest. HARD on the server yes... BUT cheating is much more difficult as the server handles the calcs for when a shot is fired, when it hits, etc.
Ctishman points out one way how a cheater would abuse the client side AI. I know that the urge is there to move stuff to the client... but IMNSHO, that's a BAD idea. Just let the client handle the drawing of graphics and that stuff and the server handles the rest. HARD on the server yes... BUT cheating is much more difficult as the server handles the calcs for when a shot is fired, when it hits, etc.
Yup - I'd agree with that statement furball. "Never underestimate what a cheater will do." sooooo true.
Gladly, mostly everything is server side, someone went pokeing around in there client to look for the hidden wormhole positions, all he found out was the likely existance of sector 16. =)
Where, may I ask, is sector 16 possibly located?
I still don't see how having an AI determine 'when the trigger' is pulled is any more abusable than what we have now. Client side code determines when buttons are pressed, triggers are pulled, and mouses are clicked already. Client side code already informs the server of updates in the production of munitions, velocity of the ship, orientation of the ship and so forth. It seems to me that ctishman's cheat could just as easily be used on the current game as the situation I'm describing.
The turret client would not determine whether the shot hit. Nothing about the traffic between the client and the server would change. Under my proposal, the client would only determine what it already determines. And unlike Halflife, Vendetta has no 'instaneous' weapons to abuse with auto-aiming techniques. So I'm not sure you understand what I'm talking about. I'm not moving _anything_.
The turret client would not determine whether the shot hit. Nothing about the traffic between the client and the server would change. Under my proposal, the client would only determine what it already determines. And unlike Halflife, Vendetta has no 'instaneous' weapons to abuse with auto-aiming techniques. So I'm not sure you understand what I'm talking about. I'm not moving _anything_.
Hmm, to this day I've never seen anyone successfully hack Vendetta. And I doubt it will change drastically enough to allow it to be hacked in the future. At least I hope it won't be.
If someone has found a way to hack Vendetta to get an unfair advantage, let the developers know ASAP. As beta testers it's our job to find any exploits before it ever reaches the shelves. With the help of guides and logs, I'm pretty sure hackers will be dealth with SEVERELY if found anyway.
If someone has found a way to hack Vendetta to get an unfair advantage, let the developers know ASAP. As beta testers it's our job to find any exploits before it ever reaches the shelves. With the help of guides and logs, I'm pretty sure hackers will be dealth with SEVERELY if found anyway.
I tend to agree with Celebrim; we added auto-aim so that people writing hacks and cheats wouldn't bother and so the playing field is a little more level. If we did add a turret, though, we would very likely make it server-side just for predictability, which in turn leads to less client traffic for everyone.
ctishman's post-timestamped packets scenario is possible right now. It isn't impossible to cheat in Vendetta Test. We have lots of checks and balances we can add, though, such as the server not accepting packets timestamped outside of a sane range of times. Part of the problem of implementing a cheatbot, though, is the client protocol is fairly complex. Trying to decode it with a packet analyzer is like trying to listen to an mp3 with a hexeditor. That isn't impossible to get around, obviously.
It hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean it won't in the future. If it does, we will combat it quickly.
ctishman's post-timestamped packets scenario is possible right now. It isn't impossible to cheat in Vendetta Test. We have lots of checks and balances we can add, though, such as the server not accepting packets timestamped outside of a sane range of times. Part of the problem of implementing a cheatbot, though, is the client protocol is fairly complex. Trying to decode it with a packet analyzer is like trying to listen to an mp3 with a hexeditor. That isn't impossible to get around, obviously.
It hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean it won't in the future. If it does, we will combat it quickly.
a1k0n, I have every faith that you guys will stop em in their steps quickly! And i'm glad to hear that the net proto is complex (even though that's gotta make YOUR life a living hell at times! LOL).
Anyway, having all the stuff handled server-side reduces the size of the clients for regular updates :)
Re: Turrets and Human Gunners
Once again, X-Wing Alliance proves its mettle....look at the Falcon in Endor for an example of turrets in action (simple yet not too helpful for the pilot).
Supposedly even multi-crew play is possible with a light modification to a single text file (though I never tried it).
As for s16, /me guesses it's off the bottom of the triangle (s11 or s13)....it would make sense in a symmetrical fashion.
Once again, X-Wing Alliance proves its mettle....look at the Falcon in Endor for an example of turrets in action (simple yet not too helpful for the pilot).
Supposedly even multi-crew play is possible with a light modification to a single text file (though I never tried it).
As for s16, /me guesses it's off the bottom of the triangle (s11 or s13)....it would make sense in a symmetrical fashion.
Does anyone else think that the standard gattling gun should be made a small weapon?
No. In my opinion, it should remain a large weapon, and a smaller version. For example, the second-level red laser weapon, what's its name. That should have excellent auto-targeting, to aid newbies with botting.