Duck and Cover

Hello all,

Someone awhile back posted a similar question, but his question was a little different. He wanted to know if one could play mp maps against AI. I think he meant if he on his own could do this solo alone, using MP maps. My question is - Is it possible in any way to play multiplayer with two human players against AI squads or soldiers using the internet/lan option?

I have tried this in a few different ways, using the editor to turn sp maps to somewhat mp maps, or adding ai to previous mp maps, but I think I either did it incorrectly or that the engine will not allow it. This is what happens - If both human players are on the same team, the map will auto-end as soon as it starts becuase there is no opposing team alive (it does not see the added ai soldiers as a team), and on most default maps the "only one team left alive" seems to override any score or frag or time limit win conditions.

I was able to finally get it to partially work somehow awhile back so that the map did NOT auto-end, but the problem was the game went completely out of sync. I would see some ai soldiers and shoot and kill them, but the other person I was playing with saw those same ai still alive and standing in a different area completely on his computer. And as we played that game longer, that map seemed to get more and more out of sync ( he would see me shooting at nothing and vice-versa or at ai that one of us had already seen dead a few minutes earlier etc.) So it would seem in that case that the AI info was not being synced between players - the ai location and status. Again it makes me wonder if this is just a limitation of the engine and that AI will not work in mp with more than one human player, or if I did it incorrectly in the editor.

It would be appreciated that if anyone has any info on this, reply here and let us all know. I have always seen people asking this question and seeking this feature since long ago when the game first came out on tons of various messageboards, but I have never seen a clear answer or a solution on how to make this possible. If you know of some way to make it possible please be very specific in your reply and let us all know exactly how it's possible - which map specifically did you use? where did you get the map? how did you set up the game conditions in mp? or how did you make this map possible in the editor if it was a map you created yourself (what was the key to overcome the problems that I mentioned - the out of sync and victory conditions)?

Thanks to anyone who has any answers or information on this topic.

As far as I know it's not possible, multiplayer wasn't set up to support ai characters. In fact if IIRC I once read somewhere that too many non-inventory entities in a map can throw it out of sync as well.

impossible.

impossible

Strange. Why would Goldenbeast make this little tutorial here then? I have never tried it before, but maybe I'll test it soon.

Weren't Goldenbeast's tutorials written a long time ago, round the time the game first came out? The tutorial it's self is just the basic instructions for adding an computer controlled actor, that's not in question, we know you can do that. What it doesn't cover is the game going out of sync when you have npcs or even too many scenery sprites in a multiplayer map.

OK. MP is buggy.

I worked out a way to give the illusion of allying against the computer. What I did was set up two human player indices (h1 and h2) on two different teams (squad1 and squad2). The NPC opponents are on team 8, and everyone hates each other (-10). Each person has to pick one player and it's corresponding team. Then this trigger stops you from shooting each other.

CONDITION:
Always

ACTION:
Set team allignment matrix 'squad1' toward 'squad2' '10'
Set team allignment matrix 'squad2' toward 'squad1' '10'

But for victory conditions, you still count as opponents, and without putting any other triggers, the player to kill more NPCs first wins.

After testing a few times, the two PC players were badly out of sync, and I have no idea why. All I can suggest is that using TB combat might make it easier for the game to handle things and reduce the problem. But I haven't tested this theory yet.

EDIT: Putting it in TB is even worse, because both teams seem to have to wait for the other side at the same time, so the game is pretty much frozen.

You can stop it ending so soon by changing the frag limit to 100.

It currently seems unworkable, unless you don't mind people teleporting around, swapping and shooting at nothing. You could use chat and say "I'll take the invisible squad on the left, and you take the one on the right".

Yes there is a way to coop. Go to my website www.freewebs.com/hpaman and check out how i made some of the coop maps. Each entity needs a team so it has to be like 15vs1. The player with 1 controls all the entities that you make and the others go around shooting them and gaining XP.

That's coop human vs human though, this thread was about coop human vs the ai.

Ah, so your correct. My bad, but no, you cannot have COOP with humans vs AI. FOT just goes outta sync like crazy.