map with npc

[Guest]

hi, i hope i post in the right place.

but i have a question. can i play san andreas with a friend in the normal map? i mean with all npc and cars (singleplayer)????

[Strepto]

Not with MTA...

Amatuer lecture below:

NPC's and Cars etc. all have a position and vector that needs to be synchronized between you and your friend.

Also, cars and such are all generated when you come in contact with them, that is when they hit your draw distance...

So as far as you're concerned cars and people don't exist until they come inside your draw distance (correct me if i'm wrong, I just think this is how it works).

So if you two are at different locations, you have to transmit position and vector of every car and npc within your draw distance. And the other way around for your friend.

I'm not really sure how large each packet containing position and vector is in MTA, but let's say it's somewhere around 48 bits (position and vector). This data needs to be transferred every frame to be smooth. So let's multiply!

48 bits * 25 frames per second = 1200 bits/second (Per moving object/actor)

So let's say you have 20 moving objects within your draw distance, and your friend also has 20 (to keep it simple).

1200 * 20 = 24000 bits/second (24kbits/second)

That is, for each second you're downloading and uploading 24kbits/second. This might not look to be much, and is fairly doable if there's only two players in the game. But this is only if things are moving, let's say you have a gangwar going on. And your homies are shooting wildly at some other gang. Then there's even more data to synchronize, and I'm pretty sure that at one point or another this will bring your connection to it's knees.

(Come to think of it, no need to transfer data about cars and stuff the other player can't even see. As it doesn't affect him)

But hey! What do I know, I've never programmed anything like MTA.

I'm not saying it's impossible to do, in fact I think it would be possible if you spend a lot of time to work on it.

Either way, there's a lot of stuff happening in GTA:SA singleplayer, and I'm pretty sure bandwidth is the greatest issue that might hinder seamless gameplay.