This is a good idea, I already proposed dedicated servers in another thread and this sounds like a feasible approach.

And he might. What I mean is that the original AI code involves giving "weights" to different goods and also having a knowledge of where crystite might be located even if it isn't directly assayed or exploited. This information must be maintained throughout the game and updated as the general player group obtains more and more info. If he starts with no knowledge of what has previously happened, he is liable to make stupid/uninformed decisions, and if that's the AI that is going to take my place while I'm in the bathroom...

Well in the context of this topic it's actually a good thing if the A.I. isn't too good - see it as a motivation to make your break as short as possible 

This map presumes a town with only east and west exits. With the addition of north-south exits, should the river valley weights be reduced (by 1, perhaps?)

As the current version is supposed to resemble the original MULE as close as possible, the north and south exits should be removed from the game.

But if there are additional exits then of course they should be considered by the A.I.

I haven't sent or received any PM's here yet. But under "My Messages" I have an "Outbox", which sounds pretty much like a "Sent Items" feature to me.

Greetings!

Captain Future ftw! 

Turrican 2 killed all platform games for me.  Since It was perfect, I see  no point to play any other platform game.  Also, Turrican 2 was Epic in scale and deep, in a time where Epic was a rarely used word.

I mostly played Turrican 2 on the AMIGA. The soundtrack is legendary, Chris Hülsbeck and Jochen Hippel created the 7-voice-routine for Turrican II, a true gaming audio milestone. I recorded it to tape and listened to it on my walkman back then, and I still like to listen to it today 

We think that most players would find it frustrating to press a button and not immediately move on screen. The price you pay for complete fairness is probably not worth it. So instead we've chosen to add some grace time to certain events, trying to make the game fair enough to users on slow connections.

Still there may be some bugs left which can make the game unfair even under reasonable conditions. Please report it if you feel badly treated by high latency.

Questions are welcomed but I'm usually busy so it may take some time to get an answer.

Did you ever think about using dedicated servers to solve these problems? Is that an future option for PlanetMULE or is it impossible without a complete netcode rewrite (which I assume is not an option  ).

From Germany here:

Turrican (1/2)
Katakis
R-Type
Giana Sisters
Archon
Arkanoid
Racing Destruction Set
Wizard of Wor
Bruce Lee
International Karate (1/2/+)
Way of the Exploding Fist (1/2/whatever)
Caveman U'gh Lympics
Impossible Mission (1/2)
Boulder Dash
Stunt Car Racer
Test Drive
Skate or Die
The Train
Ace of Aces
Winter/Summer/World/California Games
Maniac Mansion
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Ghosts'n Goblins

And many more...

As for ISPs, some in Europe give the same IP address to an entire neighborhoods. It's even more pronounced in Asia, where ISPs have even less IP addresses to distribute than we do.

I am from Germany and no German ISP I've ever come across gives the same IP to two different persons at the same time.

At universities or in companys there will be many people with the same IP adress (using NAT, Network Adress Translation), but at home that's definitely not true in Germany. And I'm 99% sure the same goes for Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, UK, Sweden, etc. There might be some exotic exceptions, but these are not the rule.

IMHO protecting the ranking system from abuse is more important than enabling ranked matches for players with the same IP, I agree with Intergalactic Mole.

Even if they were playing from separate IP's, there would still be a problem here.  If two players just play each other repeatedly there should be a penalty in ranking ability after a certain number of games, so that the Planet Mule #1 rank doesnt end up belonging to the winner of a 2-man tournament.

I agree with that too.

If the master server hosted all the games itself, it would eliminate the need for port forwarding.  However, it would probably also require a much more powerful server eventually depending on how busy it is... and then we may end up having to pay for it.  Right now Planet MULE is free so by having each game hosted by one of the players, it's a big load off the server.

Many games offer the choice to host a local game or to choose a dedicated server.

Usually I play shooters, which means that most of the time a full single machine is dedicated to run a single game session, for 32 players for example. But as PlanetMULE doesn't stress the server as badly as an online shooter does, a PlanetMULE dedicated server could be setup to support <X> game sessions simultaneously, as it would be a waste of resources to dedicate a full server to run a single PlanetMULE game session.

I am sure some free, dedicated servers would emerge from this community. If dedicated server files were available, I'd install them on my dedicated Linux server immediately. Even if they don't offer enough slots for everyone on peak times, the option to host a local game could still be used as a fallback to ensure everyone can play for free at any time.

Dedicated servers not only get rid of the port forwarding problem, they're also great if you want to play against people on other continents. For example, you could host a server in London which could have quite good pings/connections to both Europe and to America.

There are a lot of other small advantages to dedicated servers, for example it cannot happen that the "host player" has connection problems and the whole game goes down. And thinking about auctions, the advantage of the host player can be avoided by using a dedicated server.

Also, if the master server was the only way to host a game, then if the master server ever went down, so would everyones games and nobody would be able to host again until it went back up.  So its got pros and cons.

A single dedicated master server would have such drawbacks, but if everyone could setup his own dedicated server for free, there would be no problem. Also as I said above, local hosting could remain as a fallback.

The only real drawbacks I see with dedicated servers are the work for the developers to implement them and they would potentially lose some control over their game, people could modify the dedicated server files, etc.

Yup I noticed this when I watched a game as a visitor for the first time. At least you only have to do this once at the beginning and not at every round as a visitor (which would be horrible), but even just doing it once at the beginning doesn't seem necessary to me.

You've both failed to understand the fact that the plot will then be given for free in the next land grant, which in and of itself is a sacrifice.  The person who griefed the auction could have purchased the plot but instead is giving everyone the opportunity to obtain it for $0.00 in the next land grant..

I do understand, but it depends on the situation in the game. If the griefer knows that the plot will most likely be taken by the last ranked player, he can stop the second/third ranked player from getting that plot *without* any sacrifice, assuming he doesn't want that plot himself. Of course there might be other situations where not getting the plot actually *is* a real sacrifice.

Concerning land auctions, I am really torn apart between sticking with the original version 100% (which I'd usually prefer) or interpreting this behaviour as a bug or as a design oversight.

This is true indeed! I didn't really notice it, but now as you say it, I only remember land auctions on the western part of the map.

The time a player needed to claim a plot should be calculated client side. When the player hits the button not only the button hit should be transfered to the server but also the time he needed to react to the plot marking

Having mostly played online shooters in the last years, I can only say that it's a very bad idea to let the client decide anything, because it makes cheating very easy. While it might not be a problem for PlanetMULE right now because it's not the typical online shooter community here, I'd say "better safe than sorry". Especially for a Java Application, which is basically "Open Source by Design".

If we're for certain that we want to reward players quick on the draw (or that hold down their button after the cursor leaves the last plot)...what's the epsilon on this? How precise are we going to be? If someone buzzes in with a time of 386ms, and another player buzzes in with a time of 387ms, do you feel the game should give it to the first guy? Or should there be a reasonable threshold of what we consider "at the same time"? If the cursor is moving slow enough that reaction time of buzzing in on the correct plot is not an issue, what remains?

Those kinds of questions mixed in with the issue of lag just make me think that the phrase "at the same time" should refer to which plot the cursor is on in general, and not that the game tries to determine who was first to notice that cursor moved from the previous plot to the next plot...that's like having a quick draw contest when you know what the trigger motion is - if you're looking for it, how much merit is there in being quick, especially if you can hold down the button in advance of the actual event?

I personally dislike the "quick draw contest". It shouldn't matter if someone presses the button a few milliseconds later or earlier in an online game. So I think if multiple players select the same plot, their rank should decide who wins.

Does anyone know for sure how the 8-bit Versions handled this? The OP says timing did matter, but in which boundaries? If it's really a matter of a few milliseconds, I think it's a bad idea to stick too close to the original in this point.

I totally agree with this, with the caveat that if the average ping to a player is known, then some amount of leniency be given to his location with regards to the trade line - if he actually reaches the trade line on time when you add the lag back, he should be considered in the contest for who trades first. So when the server detects that someone has reached a trade line, it should wait for a period of time equal to the average ping of all players to that host, then cut-off any updates after that delay that claim to be at the trade line; those that got in before that, are considered for first-to-trade.

I think the host will still have an advantage in this scenario. Assume that player A ist host. If player B moves, then player A will see that movement and can react accordingly before players C and D can do so. And not only can the host react faster, his reactions take effect immediately. So if the ping is 100ms, players C and D recognize the situation 100ms later and then the actions they take are delayed by 100ms again.

Dedicated servers would be the perfect solution for this problem, an alternative would be to penalize the host's movement with some kind of "artificial ping".

prankster wumpas!  his revenge lol,  does it seem like its harder to catch him in the later rounds or is that just because hes harder to see with all the plots filled up in this new game

He doesn't appear at all on filled up plots. I don't think he's harder to catch in the later rounds, I think he just appears less often because of this.