Glenshadow

Since January I've been working on my online TDS.

I now have the client and server engine built around 39dll and working really well.

I've also got interpolation and prediction working quite nicely.

So far, I'm very pleased with my results, especially when tested in real world conditions.

So, I'm at a good 'breaking point', whereas I'd like to start looking at other similiar projects to see if I'm 'missing anything'... To see what everyone else has done.

So, are there currently any GM made online TDS that meet the following criteria?

1) It's finished, or near finished
2) It's has a working master server list
3) I can go download and play it online right now
4) It has support for at least 8 players

I've looked around quite a bit on the forum, but I can't seem to find a single project that meets the above critera.

Everything seems to be either not online, or if it is online the link to download the client or server is busted, or the webpage is expired, or it only runs with two people, or it's so buggy it's unplayable, etc, etc.

Does anyone have some math/example code or .gm6 file that would give me a good example of having moving enemies 'slide' around/against each other when colliding, instead of just 'stopping'?

As an example, I have an online TDS(tanks) I'm working on, and when one player hits another player, I just set the X and Y to their previous, then set the speed to zero as well. Same thing when a player hits a wall.

While this works within the context of the game, it really isn't consistent with how most commercial games handle this kind of thing... Most of them allow players to 'slide' along/against the wall when they make contact with it, or 'slide' around/against another player or object when they hit it, dependant on the angle they hit it at.

Player movement is TDS(tanks) as mentioned above, with 360' of movement.

I *think* I'm giving enough details here, if I'm not let me know.

I think a little clever math is all I need here, but I'm not sure.  

Does anyone know the 'best practice/most efficient' way to interpolate rotation on a GM object?

Assume a top-down view of a tank with a current turret direction of 15 (when I use the word 'direction' I am specifically referring to how GM uses this word in GML).

Assume that tank has recieved 'orders' to move its turret's to a new direction of 190.

How can I have turret rotate smoothly from one direction (15) to the new target direction (190)? I can't just increment or decrement blindly, because that won't always result in the turret rotating the right way (ie, the shortest way) to achieve it's new direction.

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for 'always point at the mouse code'. I hope the above is clear, I hope I'm describing the issue clearly enough - if I am not, please let me know.

I would prefer 'Code Example + Explanation' over 'here is a .gm6 file' (as I am at work and cannot run GameMaker here)... But as I am the one asking, I'll take whatever I can get.

I am looking for the 'best practice' or 'most efficient' way to do this (efficiency is important for this program), but again, I'll take and appreciate any suggestions anyone can offer.

I have a fairly high end (for the corporate world) Toshiba Laptop (my work laptop) will start GameMaker, but won't run games in the IDE (in normal or debug) and won't run any executables made with it.

The following error is always presented, even if the project/exe is simply an empty room:



Here are the laptop specs:

Toshiba Satellite P35 Series Laptop
Windows XP Professional
Version 2002
Service Pack 2

Mobile Intel®
Pentium 4 CPU 3.46 GHZ
2 Gigs of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP

It is *completely* up to date in regard to all patches at WindowsUpdate, and has the latest version of DirectX.

This machine should be able to run the hell out of GameMaker... For example I can run FEAR and other 3D games with it, no problem, even with decent detail settings.

I have already tried reducing the resolution and colors, even down to 800x600 @ the lowest color depth, and still no dice.

I can run it fine at home on my personal machine, but it would be really nice if it worked on my work laptop as well to have a second machine for testing purposes and to work on GM games during my downtime at my Job (I'm the senior software engineer for the company I'm at).

- Glenshadow

I was doing some simple math to determine how to best handle UDP sending frequency, and based on all the threads up to this point, I must be missing something... Can anyone clarify?

According to my best estimates, my connection can easily sustain an upload rate of 40/kbs (according to what I normally seed torrents at, reported by both Azureas and uTorrent).

Now, if there are 1024 bytes in a kilobytes, that means that even if all 16 players in my game are sending 12 bytes of data to the server every 60 seconds, I still have tons of bandwidth left over?

It appears to be mathematically true... But if it is, there wouldn't be so many topics about UDP optimization around here:

(12 bytes per second * 60) * 16 players = 11520 byes/second

If I have 40k upload available at any given time:

40960 * .80 (to compensate for overhead) = 32768 bytes/second realistically available.

32768 (available) - 11520 (all player bytes) = 21248

So that means even with all that I still have 21248 bytes/second for the the TCP stuff I'll occasionally be sending?

Can anyone clarify/shed some light on this?

It can't be that easy.

I was going into this assuming I'd be sending UDP packets 5 times per second and compensating with predictive algorythms for the rest... But if the math above is true that all seems pointless?