bikerdude on 21/12/2007 at 14:25
Quote Posted by Abysmal
All I wanted to get across was that Thief 2 no longer uses copy protection. Eidos rereleased the game without it; I own a copy.
Same here, I bought the thief1/2 dvd from games agaes ago..
biker
Tos on 21/12/2007 at 20:28
Quote Posted by demagogue
If that's true and there's really no way around it, is there any way you could package it as a patch which modifies the .exe file to be multiplayer-friendly? That way a person would just have to run the patch on the executable file they already have, and it wouldn't be run-able by itself. So it itself wouldn't be pirating the game; you still need a valid .exe file to begin with. (i.e., if they have a valid .exe to begin with, that serves the very protection function it's modifying, and of course it'd be entirely unacceptable to upload the newly unprotected .exe after that, just like it's always been). Is that being too sophistic?
I don't think it'd do much good. A cracked .exe alone isn't enough to "pirate" the game, you'd still need all 600MB+ of the data files in order to do anything with it. Additionally, anyone who's downloaded the game probably already got a crack with their download, or wouldn't have any trouble finding one. I realize that it's a sensitive topic on most game forums however, so I figured it would be safer to ask first.
Quote Posted by Esme
niiiice video, I am very impressed that you got it working at all and on a standard map
one way you might deal with the "AI hosted on the other machine" type problems would be to try to set up a non playing server system that handles all the AI so effectively everyone has the same AI problem, then attack the problem from there
if that is possible
Might be possible, but I think it's better to have it at least working half of the time for some of the players rather than poorly for everyone. AI distribution can be disabled by adding "ai_no_distribution" to user.cfg however, and the host will retain control of them at all times.
Anyhow, quick progress update: synchronization issues have been mostly solved, and the host will wait for all players to finish loading before starting the game (as in SS2). This has fixed the problems I was having earlier with getting the game to work with more than two players, and I was able to join a three player game last night with no more issues than usual.
I've also come up with a temporary solution for the chat problem, and added a new key bind to bring up the DromEd console, which has been repurposed to send chat. The problem with this however is that only one chat message can be displayed onscreen at a time, and new messages received will wipe out the old one. Still, it's better than nothing, and being able to communicate with other players has made the maps much more playable.
jtr7 on 21/12/2007 at 20:32
Progress is progress, and that sounds like a major step, old issues aside.:D
sNeaksieGarrett on 3/1/2008 at 23:36
Any new progress as of late?
Tos on 4/1/2008 at 03:57
A little. I do have a chat system working now that's capable of displaying more than one line, and a few more bugs have been fixed.
I am however completely stumped by some of the remaining issues. I cannot figure out what's causing guards and other AI to lag so much for players other than the host, and many items (such as the blackjack) are still not working properly.
I'm somewhat amazed by the fact that Nameless Voice was able to get the blackjack working in System Shock, but it will not work at all for other players in Thief despite most of the network code being identical. There must be some difference between the two games that's causing things like this to happen that should work, but I haven't been able to find it yet.
Nameless Voice on 4/1/2008 at 04:11
I kind of cheated for the blackjack, since SS2 doesn't really understand the concept of knocking people out; the AIs just play a motion to fall to the floor, then pretend to be dead.
Tos on 4/1/2008 at 04:44
Ah, that clarifies things a bit then. As far as I could tell, the function responsible for knocking out AIs in Thief makes an early return if it determines that the object is being hosted remotely. Couldn't imagine why SS2 would be able to handle that if Thief couldn't. It may still be possible to fix, however.
I have a feeling some of these problems could be fixed or at least worked around through DromEd. I'm still considering just releasing what I have and letting the community have a go at fixing some of these things, though I'm not sure how much interest there would be in doing so.
Thief13x on 4/1/2008 at 05:06
wow! good work Tos, it will be interesting to see what ideas for multiplayer people come up with when some of the bugs are taken care of. Good work!
Reading your last post: has any dromed'ers stepped up to the plate? I havn't even opened it for about 4 or 5 years and don't really have the time but you might try posting an invitation in the editor's guid forum. I think you might get alot more technical support in there too, and I used to never venture outside of that forum.
Kind of a stupid question: What you said about the function's early return...is there any way to access the source code? I'm not sure if it's possible but I could definatly take a look at it and maybe be useful, i've programmed for a few years.
Tos on 4/1/2008 at 05:36
Nope, it's all compiled code. I'm using a disassembler and debugger in order to figure out how things work.
I'll give the Editor's Guild a shot if there doesn't seem to be too much interest here. Thanks for the suggestion.
Thief13x on 4/1/2008 at 05:53
np, just curious, which dissassembler and debugger are you using? and on what files? I'm a complete noob at this type of thing but i've been trying to open several of the dll's and thief2.exe in both microsoft visual studios professional 2005 and windbg. not much luck though, i'm looking on the net to try to figure out how this type of thing is usually done. I remmember once opening minesweepers source in visual studios, can't remmember how though.
