You said, and I quote, "write your own MP game engine, and use the Skyrim map, meshes, animations, etc to play within the engine to create your arena." I was pointing out Bethesda don't even allow this movement of assets between different Bethesda games, let alone from a Bethesda game to someone else's game engine.

Well, I did do 14 years software engineering (nothing as demanding as game development, though) and I appreciate that brilliant modding teams can achieve amazing things - but the very term 'modding team' rather suggests that they rely on someone else to have spent (often many) millions of dollars developing the game engine for which they're providing new content.

The main thing is, a modding team simply doesn't (usually) have the financial resources for middleware licenses or for development tool licenses, so they either have to re-invent the wheel for themselves or use free development tools, with all the problems of awkward workflow and compatibility issues that can bring, making otherwise simple tasks laborious, fiddly and time consuming.

Is there a single modding team that has actually written their own game and rendering engine?

I'm just now starting to learn code, and my first gaming pc is oly half built so I'm of little use to you for the time being. However, good luck. I think it'd be awesome if this actually came to fruition. If nothing else I think even a simple chat box would be nice too. Anyways, best of luck!

That's not what you posted, and anyway that's a different story

I'm always surprised at the number of software engineers in the Beth forums.
Nothing wrong with free development tools, especially with a game like Skyrim. They work just fine. Have you used any of the free tools available that can be used for something like this?

Hmmm, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=40325 so it looks like it's doable.

I wish you guys luck, but as I remember, co-op failed for Oblivion and Fallout 3 due to the engine being glitchy, yeah they got it part working, but it was not without it's problems and never caught on because of those problems.

Thanks for the suport guys

I'll pitch in, where I can fit.

Looks like that's local co-op by having 2 people share the same keyboard. Which is pretty clever (I think it's basically a remote control NPC), but not really comparable to the online co-op project these guys seem to be planning.



I'm joining the rest of the cynics, but I still wish you luck!

I'm more interested in the potential of exploiting ActionScript/Scaleform connectivity with online content, but I wish the author good luck as aCoop mod like this could be possible so long as you can shoot the packets in and out of a dedicated server.

That has been done with Fallout 3 as well. Something about using the game pad inputs to gain another set of controls.

The problem with such a project is that it should properly be labeled 'remote control companion' or 'Multiple character control' ... but not multiplayer or co-op.

I like that: Multi-character.

I've yet to see anything with true multi-player functionality based on this engine. Separate HUDS, separate screens, etc.

Hipolipolopigus, a few toughts.
Skyrim (as well as Morowind, Oblivion, Fallout), keep track of things like dropped items, moved objects, cleared/accessed areas, quests lines, killed npc's, and so on.

Wouldnt it be a titanic task, to force any system to recognize each of those variables on each of –let's say– two players?
Why not an area, like a dungeon, that could not be accessed without co-op, like an instanced dungeon (ala MMO)?

With a system similar to Oblivions arena, where a predeterminated set of armor was forced on your character, you could skip armor types/states/quality.
basing the reward on a clearance/number of enemies score, and avoid the implications of introducing external issues to normal Skyrim...

I read what some people wrote to you regarding the car/boat anology, and I agree. But I believe most of it could be circumvented by a new idea of execution.

Cheers.

How would you ensure that all players had the same version of the game? (And it would need that.) And the mods? What about ensuring that one player isn't using the console to "cheat"? How will you handle rendering the remote players? How do you handle who the mob is currently targetting? How would you implement equitable loot sharing? How much extra lag, due to the above items, would you introduce? How do you intend to have the different players know WHO (the IP address) to connect to?

Of those, the rendering of the other player is the must have thing. Oh, and make sure it's all synched..including the exact same mob on EVERY machine that is connected. You would have to account for machine A spawning a Frost Dragon while B spawns a Blood Dragon. There are many more questions that would have to be answered, but they all fall into the same general category of how will you take a single player game and transform hard coded single player logic and rendering code into multi player?

An ambitious project, to be sure. Yet you haven't shown (though you are recruiting for others to help) that you can address these issues. If I could get you to answer just ONE question, though, it would be this: How do you intend to transform the single player game mechanics into mutliplayer? And you can give me the technical answer...I can take it. I think you should start with the idea that was presented by another poster....write a mod that opens a chat window so that you can chat with others. Not even a logging feature, just straight text chat IN GAME (ala the MMO style). Once you have that accomplished, where several people can connect and chat, you might have a chance. You'll need that functionality for the rest of the idea to work, anyway, yet it appears that the idea was dismissed out of hand.

I am skeptical about your project. I wish you luck, and you may succeed, but I have my serious doubts. To be honest, I don't think this project will even be completed, regardless of whether it works right or not. But that is my opinion. Take care.

I just find it funny how all of those who are experienced and capable of asking the heavy questions, and recognizing the serious roadblocks, and even capable of imagining the solutions simply say "impossible", or dismiss the chances of it being done as very slim, without realizing the power of many capable minds dedicated to a goal. Sure each game before had capable people and didn't come to fruition, but opportunity always presents itself in the form of temporary failure, and what happened then is not what might happen now. If Bethesda were to formally shut it down, I could deal with that. But I seem no harm in trying, because that's how anything ever gets done. I don't know anything about programming, but I really have the burning desire to learn. At most, all I could provide is ideas for melee/magic gameplay and large battle combat scenarios, while figuring out how to make the changes I want to make to Skyrim gameplay (more knock downs, more impact/flash (camera shake, fireball explosions, recolored spells and other things already in the game, and overall more satisfying). I would put every effort forward to help while I learn. Count me in if it amounts to anything.

If anyone really wants to get something done, they do it. If they don't want it bad enough, it doesn't get done.

The idea is (Currently. Subject to change) to have a save that is invisible to Skyrim and that can only be loaded up with the Client (Whether via console or via some SKSE invocation). How the save is used depends on how the game is run. If it's a Client, then it's only purpose is to store Race/Gender and possibly location (Though we may decide to reset this upon entering a hosted game). If it's a Server, then all relevant data will be used and Synced to the Client worlds as necessary.

Please don't expect us to have an answer for everything. We don't know enough about the inner workings of Skyrim to be sure of our ideas, though we can easily speculate. Responding where I can (They may seem brief and somewhat cold, sorry!);

Game Version; Easy enough. Our SKSE plugin will have a set version of Skyrim that it will be compatible with. This data will be transmitted to the server when a connection is established and the connection rejected/accepted based on this.
Mods; Read sArchiveList and sArchiveList2 from Skyrim.ini. Sort by name, compress, send. If mismatch to Server, refuse connection.
Cheats; Not 100% sure, though it should be possible to maintain a list of "bad" commands on the Server, hook when a client enters a command and send the entered command to the server. Force kick if it's blacklisted.
Remote Character Representation; This is where my idea of a "Mannequin" or "Puppet" NPC comes into play. Each client will represent the other players with these. When a client successfully connects, their race/gender data is sent and then set on their Mannequin(Technically Mannequins, but let's keep it simple ). When position/orientation data is received for player [x], their "Mannequin" is set to that position/orientation (Not streamed, sent when it changes). Same for Animation data (As much as possible, not 100% sure on this...).
Mobs; Mobs should detect the Mannequin NPCs as hostile (Perhaps in the Player faction?) and attack them based on Skyrim's normal way of doing this (All handled on the server). Damage data is sent to clients as necessary calculating for active buffs/etc.
Equitable Sharing; Not at all sure at this stage. Could be hard, could be easy. We'll see.
Performance Impact; Don't see how you can expect us to have an answer to this. Don't worry, we've fully benchmarked all end-product functionality in an alternate universe /Crude Sarcasm ... Sorry
Connection; I can't believe this actually requires an answer Friendo gives you their IP address, simple. Or, alternatively, a no-ip address. Resolving these to real IPs isn't hard.
Sync; We intend for the server-client (It does need the client to run the world) to run as many processes as it can based on input from clients while the clients have their logic suspended. Could be resource-heavy, but we just don't know.
Mechanics; Put simply, we don't intend to put mechanics in as-is. Some will require some hefty core-editing to work as intended. Others are just hooks. Can't say for certain without first looking at the CK (Beta test, pretty please gamesas! ).

Happy now? This is all based on speculation of the inner workings and is subject to change.

This one! I like this one!

Thanks for the support, it means so much Any help or ideas that you can give us would be appreciated, head on over to http://skynet.hipolipolopig.us

And on a more serious note, Bethesda still haven't shut this topic down. Here I was thinking that they locked everything

Nah, the discussion is still relatively civil. It's not nearly the flaming trollfest multiplayer threads usually get. Though they may have words with you about the language in your avvy.

Anyway. multiplayer isn't something I'm really interested in for my game, but there are people who want it. Best of luck; may you'll succeed where so many have failed.

If they do, I'll be nice and comply Don't want to upset them any more than this has the potential to, right?

Thanks for the support

The site is down

SQL Server had some unscheduled maintenance, sorry >< Reporting all-okay now, though

Still wanting to hear an answer regarding implementing just a chat client .

That depends on how easy it is to implement custom dialogues. It'll either be external to the game or an item that you use to bring up the in-game form. We can't say for sure yet.

I think it'd be kind of neat just to have a simple Map Marker to show current character locations of my friends in skyrim so as we chat in SteamChat it makes more sense.

It's certainly a neat idea, but I don't see how it "makes more sense"

I just thought I'll highlight that...