Just played a C64 Game

[Blitzen]

@CC

100 ms = 0.100 seconds (i.e. ms = milliseconds) 1 mille is like saying 1 1000, 1 milli is like saying 1 1000th or 1/1000

Likewise a big 2 l (litre) bottle of pop is in fact 2000 mL.  A megabyte is a fact a mille mille byte or 1000 1000 bytes.

So your 250ms ping is actually a round trip of ~1/2 seconds total. It has to be round trip since server/client need to communicate and acknowledge one another in an app like pm.

Its not great but not unreasonable imo to design an engine that meets your specs in a fair manner, and even to meet better specs when they are available... 30ms round trip pings are more than possible.  We see at 28 frames per second, thats about 1 frame every 0.036 seconds or 1 every 36 ms.

Its a tight fit but still a conservatively good ping in my experience, and of course its only by today's standards.

Now if they can design it such that 1 chunk of communication is really only necessary for every other frame, or every other 3 or 4 the min. ping for an excellent experience is greatly increased and lost communications probably wouldn't be bother anyone but the most experienced, astute and unlucky of players...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

[Blitzen]

Also @CC, as far as I know their is NO difference between the Tournament toons.

The bots and newbs got some special ed treatment BUT the tournament players all seem to play out perfectly equal in my experience.  You would think for instance that Gollumer got auctions more or preference buying or selling, or on breaks of one kind or another but that is not how the game plays out.  Similarly you would think Legite could move faster in mountains or something similar but there is no effect to my knowledge...

I think Kroah's decompile backs up that observation but I am too lazy to find the section again.

But if you want the absolutely final answer a complete decompile is the only way to go.  I expect you would find that at some point after they spent time creating and putting in the concept, they discovered they couldn't afford the memory space to implement it... now EA being who EA is still today decided why remove the notion that there is a difference since no one will ever be able to prove otherwise.  Which in a lot of ways is actually a brilliant trick, 25 years later my group of players still debate it but no one has any evidence afaik.

[mikman]

Also @CC, as far as I know their is NO difference between the Tournament toons.

Well now you are just contradicting yourself,  3 posts ago you told me that because I was playing flapper (i.e. beginner toon) I got special treatment and now you say that there is no difference between the toons in tournament mode?  I dunno man It really doesn't seem that you know what you are talking about.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Ok, you're right my math is wrong on ms, wasn't thinking right when I typed that, but, in any case, it's noticeable lag when you get over 200ms ping times.

You are very contradictory in your statement to me vs your statement to mikman though.  I haven't studied the decompilation myself, but if flapper is privileged, it would stand to reason that humanoid would be especially prone to negative events.

[poobslag]

Also @CC, as far as I know their is NO difference between the Tournament toons.

Well now you are just contradicting yourself,  3 posts ago you told me that because I was playing flapper (i.e. beginner toon) I got special treatment and now you say that there is no difference between the toons in tournament mode?  I dunno man It really doesn't seem that you know what you are talking about.

ha ha! come on man

beginner and expert races have advantages and disadvantages. all other races are equal. isn't this common sense?? why are you attacking these guys who are just trying to help you out? they know what they're talking about. be nice.

[Blitzen]

Thank you poobslag for helping to clear this up.

I think my mistake is calling the standard toons, tournament toons.  The "standard" toons are: Gollumer, Packer, Bonzoid, Spheroid and Legite.  I do not believe they have any differences although their descriptions in the original c64 version CLAIMED that they did.

The standard toons are considered tournament toons in my mind.

The beginner toons Flapper was treated differently, I know for certain he got more cash, more time during plot development, I believe he has other advantages but these are the ones I know about for a fact.  No one I know plays or played this toon much.

I know for certain the Humanoid (expert/hard) toon got 600 to start and less time for developments.  He may have also started with different amounts of goods and got a lot more bad breaks but again we almost never play or played this toon.

The Mechatron (ai) toon got 1200 (apparently only in tournament mode), if there are any other differences I don't know since no one I can speak for played or plays this toon either.

Whenever we speak of comparison to the original c64 toons we assume your are talking about tournament toons since PM only supports playing as these essential core M.U.L.E toons.

@CC and mikman

I wasn't clear but I don't think I contradicted myself.  The STANDARD toons are treated equally in my experience.

@CC

I agree the 200ms in the current PM is a huge problem, but I believe there is a better solution out there.

For my ideas on that please see this thread:

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1054.0

[WhoosThis]

Chukie,
    1000ms = 1 second not 100

[Chuckie Chuck]

Yes, I got that now Whoos, wasn't thinkin the other night when I said 100 and compared to seconds.

[mikman]

I guess what confused me is that you can play beginner, standard, and tournament mode. And you can choose any of the characters (toons) regardless of the mode.  I never made the connection that there were beginner, standard, and tournament characters. I guess I never referred to them this way.  humanoid was always expert and flapper was easy, mechtron was computer and the rest were just the rest

Thanks for clarifying.

[Blitzen]

Ya sorry I did it again there,

There are 4 types of toons or characters you can select:

- beginner
- standard
- expert
- AI

I associate standard with tournament mode, but its a completely misleading way to say tournament toons... any of them can be played by human players.

Personally, we got good at standard players and found we sucked and got beat on too badly in expert mode to have fun and compete alot.  Expert is a real grind on c64 M.U.L.E. we never liked it and never played much with the expert toon.  I think it was a lot of bad breaks and over by the 8th round when we did. Many plots undeveloped too.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Standard is the way to play in multiplayer M.U.L.E. games, but if you're going up against AI, using expert is fun because it adds just enough challenge to make beating the AI a little more difficult.  Still very doable though, you just fight your way all the way to the end before you know for sure, usually they have more land at the end than you, you have to start changing to crystite early, timing really is everything when you play expert.