PBW, First Impressions.. (Multiplayer discussion)

[David E. Gervais]

I just tried a TCP/IP game with rollo, and although it had a bug where the player turns were not being sent (forcing the host to process a turn and have the AI play for the second player)

It did seem to be a very good method of play. I now agree with you all,.. 'Don't touch the PBEM or PBW' just fix the TCP/IP mode of play.

I can see 10 turns/hour being easily pumped out in this tcp/mode.

Cheers!

[David E. Gervais]

Update,..

Rollo and I tried the PlayByWeb_RealtimeClient that comes on the se4:Gold CD and it works really nice. I think that if anyone wants to have another PBW-Athon that this option should be given serious consideration.

there was only one thing that needs tweaking, the rtc does not like the use of mods. the path.txt file must be edited to point to the mod dir, but even with this, the savegame folder contents must be moved to the default savegame and the mod savegame folder then deleted. Other than that, it worked like a charm.

Just thought I'd let you know how that experiment went.

Cheers!

[geoschmo]

Yes, RTC alone does not support mods. The one oddball thing is that your mods cannot have a savegame folder. They musr default to the stock savegame folder, otherwise the modpicker can't find the .plr file to upload it when you are done. It will download and let you play your turn, assuming you have changed the path.txt file, but it won't be able to upload the .plr file to PBW.

As far as changing the path.txt file, any method works for that, depending on your taste. I have a method that works fairly well for me though. I use Matryx's Mod picker.

1. Launch modpicker and click the mod in the left-hand list, and then click the "Play SEIV" button in the bottom left.

2. Once Se4 starts, click "Quit Game" in lower right hand corner of SE4 start screen. Don't close the mod picker though. This rewrites the path.txt file.

3. Launch RTC and select your modded game. Play.

4. When you are done playing, click "none" in mod picker left-hand list and click "Play SEIV" button. Quit SE4 and close modpicker. This changes your path.txt back to none.

[David E. Gervais]

Yeah, I also use the ModLauncher. but it seems a bit extreem to run a game from the ModLauncher just to have the path text edited for you. And, while playing using the RTC you would have an extra window/program running that is of no use to the RTC.

Cheers!

Edit: oh, and the RTC is basically used for when you are playing a good sized session of se4. so the having to edit the path.txt seems such a minor task if you only need to do it once at the beginning of the game session. (when finished with the RTC session and you want to play the same mod that you used in the RTC/PBW game you must recreate the savegame folder before you can play. It would be nice if the RTC had a tiny patch to fix this 'path' problem. then the world would be happy.)

[ January 27, 2004, 10:39: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]

[eddieballgame]

Played another (3rd time) TCP/IP game for approx. 6 hours. The game played error free for approx 6 hours, when "we" finally had to quit for lack of sleep!
I have a couple of questions, though. We generated some AI's because I could not figure out how to just add the AI's we wanted. Also, Is there no tactical battles in this play mode? Strategic is fine, but was just curious anyways. BTW, we used the TDM-Modpack. Very impressive mod. Wonderful program.

[ January 29, 2004, 04:08: Message edited by: eddieballgame ]

[se5a]

if aaron could build something like the RTC and the mod launcher into se5 it would totaly rock.

[freduk]

I would like to see that when you set up you race for multiplayer, you are able to use an auto message when you encounter another race.
Meaning, that when you make first contact with another player, you dont get only a first contact message and a race portrait, but also an auto message like "hello we are the alfkj empire, we will purge you from the galaxy! have a nice day."