Torchlight Multiplayer (TLMP)

[Omnifas]

Can we post videos of it in action or do you want to wait?

[drivehappy]

Does this mean you aren't going to implement the features we talked about before?

Short answer: yes. The lobby system is implemented in some form in the code at the moment, but I would not consider it for actual release - possible security issues and whatnot. The main reason is that the client is just not stable enough, and I don't have the time to make it so either (the unfortunate side of things without source code).

Wow this is looking fantastic! Your putting your development on halt for the time beeing or completly?

Afraid as it stands now, completely. More or less burnt out on it and promised my friend I would focus on our game idea development. I learned a lot though over the past year and it was fun to create all this added functionality onto Torchlight.

Can we post videos of it in action or do you want to wait?

Do what you will with it, both I and Dengus considered it to be a free/open-source project from the get-go.

BTW: The video I posted purposely displays the error at the end, it was my one of my defense videos and I wanted to point out that there were still bugs within the system. Additionally at one point characters become desync'd a little bit, I had put in strict character positioning on the client to avoid such things, however it was causing problems with (I believe) the collision system and would occasionally not allow characters to move into certain areas.

[Webbstre]

Well, I want to congratulate on getting this far. If someone else wanted to take over the project do you think you would let them try to finish it?

[gluemchen]

I don`t see why not. SVN for TLAPI and TLMP is up and running open source as far as i can see.

[Omnifas]

made this short video of simultaneous lever pulling in a quick dungeon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9KoEA0Stvw

[drivehappy]

made this short video of simultaneous lever pulling in a quick dungeon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9KoEA0Stvw

Wow, I like it

Well, I want to congratulate on getting this far. If someone else wanted to take over the project do you think you would let them try to finish it?

Most definitely. It's mainly just problems occurring on the level transfer, but since a lot happens during that time (level/item/character cleanup and then re-creating these things and syncing it all across the network at the same time) it's difficult to track down what the root cause is when it does fail.

I could probably spare time to develop the lobby system since that is away from Torchlight specific code, I will see where it stands now (since I haven't touched on it in a month), and see about getting it cleaned up for use.

[gluemchen]

That would be great! Very much appreciated if possible.

[Webbstre]

Knucklehead and I successfully (after a lot of problems) got it to work for a little while earlier. I uploaded a 1 minute 46 second video of what we managed to do before crashing a lot. It was exciting to see it working, even partially, but a bit sad to know you've pretty much given up on it. Drivehappy, would you mind if I spotlight the project on RGF and see if there are any other programmers out there who might help you finish it?

Oh, here's the Youtube video, whenever it finishes processing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nudhkMkWFes

[drivehappy]

Knucklehead and I successfully (after a lot of problems) got it to work for a little while earlier. I uploaded a 1 minute 46 second video of what we managed to do before crashing a lot. It was exciting to see it working, even partially, but a bit sad to know you've pretty much given up on it. Drivehappy, would you mind if I spotlight the project on RGF and see if there are any other programmers out there who might help you finish it?

Sure, although I would label the work as both reverse engineering and programming. I'm glad you finally got it working (and sorry for the bugs).

[Webbstre]

It's open source though right, so most people could look at what you did and work from there?

Partially working or not, the video I took is still going in the little showcase of mods from the past year I am putting together

[Zidders]

Thank you for all the work, Drive. Totally understandable that you'd want a break from this...for everyones information, he put a TON of time into this, many times I'd see him online late at night, burning the midnight oil. Hope everything works out well for you, man. ^_^

[kuinkz]

You are just a god man! That was one of the most impressive work I've seen in the games industry. Really really awesome. Port a single player game to a multiplayer game is just not everyone I'm going to read your thesis and learn from what you did. Again, congratulations!

[sbseed]

i would love to see this completed, seems you still are working on it from time to time.... at least recently. i love to see professional grade work, its very inspiring since the industry has become slightly stagnant and more often than not the basic coding for most games is sloppy. would love to hear why/how you got started on this project? only reason i started a team was because i was sick of games being done half-assed or with the buy our addons crap etc... hoping to improve as many games as we can, while working on a few projects to go pro or try to at least better tried and failed than to have never tried at all in my opinion.

are you and your friend working to develop your own games, as in creating a business? or is it more along the lines of a stand alone mod?
interested because i have a team i am trying to take public or professional (whatever you prefer) and break new ground in the gaming industry... so both professional interest and maybe a bit of recruitment interest lol. wish i could program or write code half as good, team might be finished with a few of its projects by now lol.

if you ever need help with concept art or story writing let me know...

[drivehappy]

seems you still are working on it from time to time.... at least recently. i love to see professional grade work, its very inspiring since the industry has become slightly stagnant and more often than not the basic coding for most games is sloppy. would love to hear why/how you got started on this project?

I have been working on it again recently, mostly towards Webbstre's mod contest - I might post more on what's been happening later.

As for professional grade work this project is far from it, I would consider it more along the lines of prototyping (the code is pretty "clunky").

I got started on it by writing an even more clunky form of initial networking as a proof of concept with some ugly Ogre hackery. Dengus had a better initial implementation that used the game functionality to build "real" characters. Our first version used a single source file with about 3,000 lines of test code. Eventually I redesigned this out into an object-oriented approach that mirrored Runic's class variable layout and handled events from the functions that are hooked from the game into said classes. The thesis should get into the technical details if you're interested.

Even now there is only one source file for handling hooked functions and it's grown to around 3500 lines. I think if this project were to last longer I would probably redesign it again (gotta love iterative approach to design ).

[Webbstre]

Keep in mind the contest is almost over, and there are some very good mods already submitted...

[sbseed]

seems you still are working on it from time to time.... at least recently. i love to see professional grade work, its very inspiring since the industry has become slightly stagnant and more often than not the basic coding for most games is sloppy. would love to hear why/how you got started on this project?

I have been working on it again recently, mostly towards Webbstre's mod contest - I might post more on what's been happening later.

As for professional grade work this project is far from it, I would consider it more along the lines of prototyping (the code is pretty "clunky").

I got started on it by writing an even more clunky form of initial networking as a proof of concept with some ugly Ogre hackery. Dengus had a better initial implementation that used the game functionality to build "real" characters. Our first version used a single source file with about 3,000 lines of test code. Eventually I redesigned this out into an object-oriented approach that mirrored Runic's class variable layout and handled events from the functions that are hooked from the game into said classes. The thesis should get into the technical details if you're interested.

Even now there is only one source file for handling hooked functions and it's grown to around 3500 lines. I think if this project were to last longer I would probably redesign it again (gotta love iterative approach to design ).

boy do i know how rewriting stuff goes... oye, serious pain in the butt or is that a kick to the nads.
ill read the thesis and see what i can learn there then, dont suppose you would be interested in joining a team in progress? lol ... sad fact is we need a programmer, or more like two badly to go over the torque engine with a sledge hammer and beat the damn thing into shape so to speak. if you are busy with your own stuff no big, im not really expecting to take that too seriously.

[drivehappy]

I've updated the main post to this thread to reflect the new build, in summary:

I've put a new release up, r207: http://code.google.com/p/tlmp/downloads/list.

Updates/Features:

• Majority of crashes that were occurring should be fixed - character inventory tab indexes weren't being properly transferred. Unfortunately this update doesn't fix all crashes but I hope it puts it into a playable state.
• Inventory inspection. You can now target another player and press 'I' to view their inventory instead of your own. Simply targeting a non-human player and opening the inventory will open yours again.
• Skills transferred. Graphical effects supported now when skills are cast. There are some outstanding issues with skills still: e.g. Devastate will continually shown to be cast until another skill cast stops it. In addition summoning for the Alchemist appears to be somewhat broken at the moment, summoning any creature may or may not work.
• Some visibility support for cinematic stuff - e.g. initial Syl cinematic creatures will now disappear properly, the Brink encounter is still a bit goofy on the client (they may see double Corrupted Brink / Shade).

If you find any super crazy reproducible bugs go ahead and tell me. The client is going to still see some odd stuff happen (Gold it can't pick up and chests it can't open - don't worry they aren't really there on the server). Character popping may occur too, this is just the server / client positioning stuff when the pathing differs too far for any character since I don't use a lockstep system.

[RMUK]

Hey Drivehappy, this project looks amazing - unfortunately I don't have the steam version of Torchlight, otherwise I'd be all over this. What's been done so far sounds amazing, major kudos to you for taking on such a huge project - your progress is mindblowing

Edit: Must say though, I'm tempted to grab TL on steam as well, *just* to try this out

[drivehappy]

Edit: Must say though, I'm tempted to grab TL on steam as well, *just* to try this out

The demo version should work if you want to try it out (although you'll need another to play with).

[RMUK]

Grabbing the demo to give it a go, Drive - I noticed a lobby file in the TLMP download - is this a way we can find other players, or is it just the lobby file for when two players are connected? Sorry - I didn't read up on installation & info ... Should probably go and do that now