demagogue on 8/2/2008 at 23:51

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As I understand it, some FMs change the gamesys files in limited cases for something very specific for the FM, like a few custom objects or AI, etc (more recent FMs more than earlier ones; it's very easy to tell, just open up the zip and you'll see if it's there or not) ... and even then it's just for those few changes.

If you absolutely have to have a custom gamesys to handle MP, I'd think for FMs that already have a custom gamesys, you would have to re-add the FM-specific changes to the MP-custom gamesys, save it as a new gamesys, zip it up, and now it's MP-compliant. But since in a lot of cases this only applies to a few changes, it would be very easy to add them on an FM-by-FM basis, I'd think.

Then there's a philosophical debate if you think an author should do it or sign-off, or someone could just do it for authors that don't reply, because it's effectively just updating the dark.gam core that's always there embedded in all gamesys's, so it's not actually altering the author's vision. Anyway, I think for a lot of authors it's easy enough to just do so the issue won't come up much.

Edit: You should also make some stock custom MP-compliant gamesys's ... e.g., an MP-compliant dedx.gam, and maybe even an MP-compliant .gam that covers all the big sets of custom objects out there in one fell-swoop ... So then you cover a lot of FMs right there.

Tos on 9/2/2008 at 00:37

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Unfortunately, the custom gamesys is necessary. Without it other players will appear to be textureless swordguards, voices and sounds will not work properly, and weapons will have a number of issues.

Creating other versions of the gamesys would be up to vort, as he's the one that's made the majority of the changes. I can tell you he's already not too thrilled about the rather tedious work he's doing on the gamesys to fix some sounds for clients. We should be able to provide a list of the changes that need to be made in order to make the gamesys MP compatible, though.

I'll also have change to a few things that are hard coded at the moment in order for a different gamesys to work, such as the archetype IDs for some of the new objects we had to create. Perhaps making them configurable in the .ini would work.

Benvox2 on 9/2/2008 at 01:00

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This would be great if it worked online!

demagogue on 9/2/2008 at 04:31

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Well, I did say "etc". :)
And I didn't mean a "few" custom resources out here in the real world to choose from; there's tons of those. I meant in a lot of FMs, there's only so many custom resources ... although anymore there's more and more of those, too. (It doesn't really matter, anyway.)

One plus of this in using the methods of Telliamed's ObjTree, I'd think, is that here there's a list of specific changes; it's not general purpose ... you only have to do just enough to get the list in, and can just concentrate on that, and it's done for good.

So I take it now all the gamesys changes are being done through dromed and saved? (If it were through some editor, then you could just copy/paste the new stuff into existing gamesys's.) Is it possible to create a custom command-list for dromed that can just run through a queue of operations (like how full mission processing works) after an existing custom gamesys has been loaded, adding each thing the MP gamesys needs? Then you just have to save the new gamesys.
But maybe some variation of ObjTree is better...

You guys will figure something out. Keep the faith.

Forge Of Michael on 11/2/2008 at 19:54

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Bloody Hell! Why was this just left behind when they released the game? Surely it only needed a couple of weeks tops with a whole team on it. :confused: