Experiences with multiplayer

[chainedlupine]

Initial setup was a bit of a choir, but once past that point the game worked smoothly.

Problems encountered:

* I have a set of specific game-related ports that I open up through my router. So all of my games need to use one of these ports. Factorio was happy using a new port, but you had to modify config.ini in order to change it. Would be nice if setting a port was exposed in the UI!

* Setting the port to one that was currently in use resulted in the game hard-crashing when it tried to bind to that port. (I forgot I had BTsync running on one of the ports normally reserved for gaming. So my fault, but still it shouldn't hard-crash.)

* I ran a stock game, but my friends were kicked out due to not running the same mods. I scratched my head a moment until my friend said the mod was named "Scenerio Pack." Aha, I had forgotten I had that enabled. Fortunately, the error message received by my friends was clear enough for that to only take seconds to fix.

* Once we started the game, I had my friend (friend A) join who is in the US (same as me). I had set the latency to around 200ms, and he was able to run around and build just fine.

* My second friend joined the game (friend B) for Norway (average 180ms ping, hence why I set the latency so high). It kicked friend B out of the game due to desync, but I think that was because friend A was moving around at the exact moment that the map send was occurring and maybe the game missed the movement command.

* We couldn't re-test the three person game, as friend A had to leave for work. Friend B tried to reconnect but got another desync error and the game hung right when friend A disconnected. So we killed our copies of the game and restarted.

* I loaded the map and friend B reconnects. Fast forward six hours later, and not a single hitch!

I'm really impressed! The game obviously needs some kind of connection manager for people joining and disconnecting, but the actual multiplayer game itself runs smooth as silk. I expected real trouble playing with friend B and our 180ms average ping, but everything worked great. Our factory is big and sprawling and everything that we tested out, worked flawlessly.

Kudos for a great job, Factorio team! Going from a single-player only game to MP in just one major revision -- That took a lot of work and it really shows. I'm so excited for the future of this game!

[tecxx]

not to clutter the forum with the same topics, i take the freedom to post here in this one.

our experience yesterday night has been incredible. we played a two player game for roughly 5 hours, on one pc using softxpand (one pc + 2 monitors + 2 mice + 2 keyboards)

only one crash happened, with a gui related message after trying to edit a train station name. probably not even network code related.

saving/loading works well.

we had zero gameplay issues.

we had zero performance issues.

only the initial setup was a bit tricky, because factorio just crashes when the port is already occupied. a descriptive message / try/catch in the code would be helpful.

(improvement whish) the connection window should remember the last used address, and the default port / configured port should be shown in the text box, i find the port number quite hard to remember maybe even display the local ip address in the textbox, so we dont have to cmd/ipconfig first.

(future whish) a marker system would be nice, to mark the map so we can coordinate and plan what should be built where more easily

enough chatter, i'm back in the game. awesome work guys!!!!

[JamesOFarrell]

not to clutter the forum with the same topics, i take the freedom to post here in this one.

I will do the same. We started a game just after 0.11.1 was released and played though 6 hours of in-game time (about 8 or 9 real time). During the session we had people from the UK, Holland and Australia (4 players in total, though only ever 3 at a time). We played a death world and worked our way though to blue sciences with almost no plan, the factory was a mess but with jeroon running around cleaning up after me we managed to get the wall up in time and the turrets pumping out before we were overcome. We managed to get purple science going before we took a break dues to technical issues.

Lots of issues to start with dealing with connection but once the game was running it stayed solid for the entire time. When people join the game desync can happen over and over again with no fix except restarting the session. We called it when someone form the US tried to join us and we couldn't manage to get it re-connected after it crashed. Even with these issues lots of fun was had.

Here is the map we were playing, an image of the mess and the map.

[chainedlupine]

(future whish) a marker system would be nice, to mark the map so we can coordinate and plan what should be built where more easily

I agree! A marker system would be excellent. I also suggested an ability to add a layer to the main map (and maybe even the minimap) that acted like a "drawing board." ie: Just have a simple series of vector art tools, like boxes, lines, circles and let us draw on the map using these. Adding text labels would be great, too.

Markers would get it done in a pinch but it would be great to be able to, say, draw out a box and say "This will be the future blue goo production line."

(Goo is what we call the science bottles.)

[Kirk]

I had the same experience, the initial setup took a bit of time (people were stuck in each other, disconnects, desyncs, etc.) but once we got going we got going. We played for 2.5 hours, then the game crashed because the host kept screwing around with the /c option

We played at work in the same office, but technically over the internet.

[chainedlupine]

Oh wow! Player death needs to be addressed.

It's really expensive to die in this game, particularly in the later levels and with more numerous biters.

Losing all of your inventory with no item drop just really sucks! Plus losing all of your hotbar slots, too. Ugggh!

[slpwnd]

Oh wow! Player death needs to be addressed.

It's really expensive to die in this game, particularly in the later levels and with more numerous biters.

Losing all of your inventory with no item drop just really sucks! Plus losing all of your hotbar slots, too. Ugggh!

Try not to die

[slpwnd]

only the initial setup was a bit tricky, because factorio just crashes when the port is already occupied. a descriptive message / try/catch in the code would be helpful.

(improvement whish) the connection window should remember the last used address, and the default port / configured port should be shown in the text box, i find the port number quite hard to remember maybe even display the local ip address in the textbox, so we dont have to cmd/ipconfig first.

Making the initial connection less PITA is our plan for 0.11.

(future whish) a marker system would be nice, to mark the map so we can coordinate and plan what should be built where more

We came across this one as well during our testing games with kovarex. So it is also on the TODO list (though will less prio).

[Nighteyes]

We really need dedicated servers. Having to upload 100 meg maps with my piss slow connection is annoying. Also, people disconnecting due to the server being based off our home connection is not a viable method.

[cpy]

Oh wow! Player death needs to be addressed.

It's really expensive to die in this game, particularly in the later levels and with more numerous biters.

Losing all of your inventory with no item drop just really sucks! Plus losing all of your hotbar slots, too. Ugggh!

In single player you lose whole game, i say this is cheaper.

[icecube45]

We really need dedicated servers. Having to upload 100 meg maps with my piss slow connection is annoying. Also, people disconnecting due to the server being based off our home connection is not a viable method.

I've been working on a dedicated server solution with what is currently available, so far it looks good

[tecxx]

i'm ok with losing everything when dying, except one thing: the settings of the player logistics request slots are reset. this is a very annoying.

[slpwnd]

i'm ok with losing everything when dying, except one thing: the settings of the player logistics request slots are reset. this is a very annoying.

This is a good point. Put it on our TODO list.

[GewaltSam]

How about difficulties for dying just like Terraria got it?

Softcore - If you die, you only lose some gold (for Factorio, maybe lose some resources, or maybe simply nothing at all. Maybe leave a corpse with all the stuff you just have lost, to recollect it? I would like that pretty much ).
Mediumcore - If you die, you lose your whole inventory (much like it is at the moment).
Hardcore - You die, you are gone. Simple as that.

[chainedlupine]

How about difficulties for dying just like Terraria got it?

I agree with this. I don't particularly agree with the "well, in SP you just die completely, the end" argument.

Because if I die in SP, I just reload a save and keep playing. I've effectively lost nothing but some time.

In SP, I can choose not to do that. I could act like a total hardcore player and delete my save if I happened to die.

I think we should have the same choice for multiplayer. Give us a way to decide how punishing the game will be. (And don't just say "reload your last MP save" because that's way too cumbersome.)

The game already gives us the option for a peaceful mode just for base building. It would be nice to have more options on how brutal we want the game to be in multiplayer*, other than just save scumming.

*And I would argue, these same options (such as "drop inv into chest on death") could apply to singleplayer as well, later on if something like a respawn chamber were added to the game.