suggestion : CITIZEN :D

[eAi]

How can you blend into a croud when the croud is unsync'd. It'd be pretty clear it was you as you'd be walking through pedestrians and vehicles.

eAi

[Slothman]

good point.

but like i said, the peds should react to you, just you dont react to them.

i imagine you'd stick out like a sore thumb no matter what, the way people move and such (not to mention walking at a slow ped-like pace would be hard without an anolog joystick.)

[lerchiosi]

well from my humble point of view, the city feels deserted and dead, all it would take is 20-30 synced Pedestrians and 10-20 synced cars that respawn when killed.

It would make the city feel just that little bit more *ALIVE*

NOW I KNOW its not possible YET but maybe this new netcode had been optimised and maybe will let the developers squeeze these few AI's in to the network game

it wont take many AI's to improve the overall liveliness of the city

[Brophy]

nah man, peds would just be annoying after a while and get in the way in matches and shit also more bandwith and cpu usage

[MasterEvilAce]

Which is why you'd have an option to disable them.

[RA]

Although I agree that over the internet, there wouldn't be enough bandwidth for tons of peds, why not have just a few? They would not be opponents (not shoot at you, etc), but act like regular peds from GTA3. The server would, of course, have the option to set how many they want. That way, for lan parties, they could increase it to 10 or so. Also, the peds could be set up to disappear when out of range of any players and reappear closer to them.

Alternatively, if the BLUE devs decide they don't wan't to do this, I would love to see a ped-bot client. This client could connect to the server as another player. Hopefully, it would be written so that you could have one server that connects any number of ped-bots (whatever the server allows). The ped-bot would act in the same way as described above, but require one player slot per ped-bot.

[Gtatari]

Long time since I last signed in to the MTA Forums. Just to clear some stuff up:

1. Do you know how much bandiwith ONE player costs in MTA 0.4?

2. Do you know that a pedestrian would need allmost the same amount of bandwith?

It would be fun to collect a team and start killing off cops , and starting a war , but its only possible on 100Mbit LAN with a VERY powerfull server and good netcode.

Mr.Xanni

not true at all.

before i respond to that let me get some things out:

first: there have been HUGE threads of traffic syncing way before mta 0.3b came out, this is nothing new. They are all in the archived section now

second: i cant believe it took four pages to get to this: make ai \ synced traffic a SERVER option. voila now you can choose if you want peds in your game or not!

ok, back to the syncing. Everyone is quick to jump to the conclusion that to have peds they must be syncd just like every other player. There are serveral ways around this.

here is the best one I can think of: make some ped flight paths for the pedistrians (to make them walk in circles around the block) there could be junctions where flightpaths meet up, and the peds simply follow them. since flight paths are time based, all the server has to do, is make sure each game has the correct time.

Basically like way points in hl, where each pedistrian aligns with the way point on a predictable time, thus the peds are maneged on client side, NOT server side. reducing bandwith to almost 0.

some other side notes: if you kill \ run over a pedistrian it simply sends to the server something like: "PedDied 68" and the server in turn pings all the clients with the same message, and the games correspondingly remove the ped. Thus the only bandwith is if a ped dies.

of course this system has a few flaws, for example if a ped wants to randomly run away or fight back, but Im sure there are ways to tackel each one. One aspect of game development is thinking outside the box, which is required if you are going to be a successful programmer.

so in conclusion, there are definately alternatives to making synced citizens, and whether or not thats your idea of fun or not, I would think that you would want MTA to appeal to everyone NOT just you, at least I would suppose the MTA Team would.

[Si|ent]

make some ped flight paths for the pedistrians

Not quite as simple as you would presume. What happens if you park in front of one for instance? they walk/drive through your car as if it isnt there? they stop there and do nothing? What happens when u hit one with a bat? Do they respond and defend themselves (as they do in single player), if so that would need to be syncd, thier attack thier health etc.

If these basic reactions are to be ignored and peds basically 'on rails' with no reaction to the outside world then I think that would be infinately worse, and less realistic, than no peds on the streets at all.

Then there are the limits inherant in gta, specifically the model limits. Throwing 32+- players, a possible 32 to 80 (or more, depending on methods used) vehicles AND a bunch of peds unfortunately isnt feasable without a stable and legal way to break those limits.

I also feel peds would be far more suitable in a cooperative mod, allowing only 2 or 3 players but full or almost full synchronisation of all aspects of single player. Missions, kill frenzies, peds, traffic etc. Something I suggested to smithers a long time ago as a direction for his mod, and one I believe they are taking. (Although I'm not up to date by any means on thier progress or plans now)

[Gtatari]

as far as parking infront of a ped:

if your car is infront of a ped in your game, its also infront of the ped in all others, therefore the client side processing can hold that ped back (pause that peds flight path clock) in each instance of mta

if you fight a ped, then you've also attached that ped on all screens (since shooting \ punching is synced) so by removing randomization you can make each ped act predictably* (fight back, dont fight) thus the ped will also fight on each screen.

*predictable to the computer, not humans

then as last resort, if you iteract with a ped that cannot be acountable by client side processing, by last resort the ped is added in as a temporaray player with minimal syncing, until the ped is culled, or killed. Also the temporary played will only be synced for other mta players near by (not onces on the other side of the map)

this way lag will only get bad if you force mta to handle multiple temp's

otherwise the peds will go about their bussiness lag free, and if you interact with them, block, kill, fight, then there will be almost no change. If you force the ped to run some where, it becomes a temp player until no longer needed. as a matter of a fact, if the citizen runs to another flight path, it no longer even needs to be a temp player.

see, a solution for everything. it just depends how bad you want synced traffic.

as far as the 32p limit, if I remember correctly, gta can only support 32 actors at a time? Im sure there is a way to hack that, theres a way to hack anything, only time will tell on that tho.

however, if the client side handles all the peds, that doesnt mean they are all ingame, for example, as your coordinates change, mta can decide which of the peds its handling to show at a time. the only problem would be if the other 31 game players were on your screen, AS WELL as peds, which is unliklely, but none the less a possibility. in which case, mta can reduce the peds it's showing you at-a-time when other humans are on screen, understand?

basically peds are sacraficed for human players, its like a morhping ai system, as more humans appear, the less peds there are, just making sure there as 32 p or less at-a-time. (and all this is handled client side by mta)

[Si|ent]

Your missing the point, your suggestions still boil down to either peds on rails with no syncing and the lack of realism inherant with that. Or interactive peds that will need syncing regularly. 32 players, with only a bare 2 peds close to each is a massive amount of extra syncing needed should all those players do something to make the peds react. Bearing in mind sounding your horn, driving on the pavement, firing a weapon, attacking a ped, crashing into another vehicle and more ALL promote a random reaction from a ped.

As for breaking the model limits thats not as likely as you may think, so far the only way discovered involved changing the original game executable (something GTAWO did) which understandably attracted the attention of take2's legal department pretty sharpish.

Finally, sure there are 'hacky' ways to give the ilusion of peds, pseudo-peds if you will, but that is highly unlikely to be considered for the new core. Blue is moving away from mta's previous 'we can hack it to make this happen in a rather messy way' and towards 'we can do this in the manner of 'proper' multiplayer gaming'. Shooting for instance. Whilst previously syncing the position and rotation of the playeractor relatively regularly, and simply syncing the fact hes shooting. (old core), Blue syncs each bullet, its speed, its direction, its location.

[Gtatari]

A few reply's:

first, im suggesting that the peds are synced client side, on a track based system, imo its better than nothing, and in my post above I described a type of limited interaction, so that they arent complete idiots.

yes, i can easiaclly see how changing the orginal exe would be of benefit, but heres another question: why not change it AFTER its beeing loaded into ram? thats not changing the exe, thats moding the game. You could for example malloc a bigger array of the pedestrian class (assuming thats how gta was programmed), and then increase the max number it allows.

the popular game worms (not the 3d one) was hacked (in ram) so there could be 50 worms per team, the game wasnt designed to work with 50 per team (normally max of but worked fine.

As far as the new blue core, I understand that, but we are already modfing the game in such a way that it wasnt meant to, and can go further with that, just making sure not to be sloppy.

Synced ped \ cars could be done, and improved over time. I'm not suggesting that blue have the exact same peds as in gta3/vc I'm saying it could have some, which as an option is better than none, and I've proposed a possible way to do so. (not that I expect mta to use, because I'm just shooting out ideas for the sake of discussion)

[-i.Tanner]

I personally dont think peds should be enabled, the syncing would take alot out of the game engine, considering that peds use an oblique animation (Jumping out of the way of a car), but i do however think that you should be able to buy a prostitute from a certain area of the map, that'd be awesome, and it would add a whole new outlook to game modes

[Scorp]

but i do however think that you should be able to buy a prostitute from a certain area of the map, that'd be awesome, and it would add a whole new outlook to game modes

lol you pervert

[NeoNight]

lol cap the hooker

hold the slut....

[Gtatari]

I personally dont think peds should be enabled, the syncing would take alot out of the game engine, considering that peds use an oblique animation (Jumping out of the way of a car), but i do however think that you should be able to buy a prostitute from a certain area of the map, that'd be awesome, and it would add a whole new outlook to game modes

Yes! Gta PIMP.. the player (or Playa) with the most hoes wins! others can try to steal girls, or they can just use em for health, also the master pimp is invincible!

[Guest]

Nice see some people walking in the city (small servers smake it feel lonly

[Gun-Nut]

hmm maybe you chould make the prostitute work make them client side and when the players hp changes you chould make it send to the server and the prostitute whould not be synced but there should be no prob just have them at the manison or somethink