RacerX Connections

August 25, 2008

(Historic Post: August 25th 2008)

Over the weekend some extensive testing was done on the network and the next step towards multi-player game was to create the connection list and move some of the connection things to a different place.  The current goals for the week is to get an entry into the multiplayer race state where people can move their cars around.  This will not include any type of collision, but should include the ability for the host to supply all the clients with the track so that custom track sharing is supported from the start of this process.  Once all the clients have the track the game should start the race, possibly getting the 3… 2… 1… countdown to start displaying correctly.  Also once that is done it will be required to balance the faked physics temporarily, this will be done by slowing down the current acceleration rates and turning rates and also making the generator slower and the engine turbo use more power from the battery.  This needs to be tweaked to make it actually fun to go around the track although the current physics will be rewritten in time since there is no collisions, and it is totally 100% faked…  The car is in space, although there is friction with the ground….


RacerX Voice Chat Progress

August 20, 2008

(Historic Post: August 20th 2008)

Well, progress has leaped forward over the last week.  I actually didn’t do too much development wise, as I have been racing Live For Speed (LFS) far more often than developing RacerX, however that may soon start to change.  Going back and looking at some of this code is quite confusing to me, but it also reminds me where my old coding standards were, high.  I used to comment about everything, which is very helpful in continuing the development about a year later.  Last night I added a small configuration file for the user to use for their name and such – currently it doesn’t save anything however it does load a user-name and uses it.  Which eliminates the need to go into the options to type a new user-name each time.  Last night also made a gigantic climb with the proof that the voice-over-net system is coming together.  Karel and I had an extended conversation back and forth for quite some time.  It was due to the TCP connection disconnecting that the sound stopped transmitting before, and also even on TCP connection I did hear Karel last night, however very quite, very brief and not anything spectacular until I changed the voice-over-net to utilize the UDP connection instead of the TCP connection, however I will keep my eye on it.  I am starting to trust UDP a bit more as the quality was quite well.

Still a few small issues with the sound though, small sounds may be getting cut off at the end of the sound / not sent altogether or even some long sounds can get cut of at the ends, however Karel mentioned that this could be caused by himself since he is not quite use to using a Push-to-Talk key.  Maybe in the future open microphone support could be added, although that could get quite interesting.  The current plans are to keep going on the networking base and such.  At the moment there are some issues with disconnecting a server once a client has connected to it, also there are some issues with disconnecting in the first place, a disconnection should bring the user back to the Multiplayer Setup state, where they have the option of reconnecting and such.  The ability to see a connection list is crucial, as well as the ability to see from whom sound data is being received from.  When the Multiplayer Lobby state has the abilities to safely disconnect, show an accurate connection list, chat, voice chat and can handle re-connecting/disconnecting then the focus will become to create the Multiplayer Game state, where the players will simply be placed on a track and hopefully accurately move around, however that is some time from now so development on the connection list and other connection issues must be resolved first.


RacerX Restarted

August 13, 2008

(Historic Post: August 13th 2008)

Beep beep!

Well, after nearly a year break it is time to start working on the old RacerX project again.  Last night, August 12th 2008, Karel and I successfully got RacerX to connect, VPN to connect and use SVN to allow him to become an official RacerX tester, and also transmitted voice over the internet using RacerX.  The current plans are to sort out some other small issues and get more logging information going as well as the user config file which is highly needed.  A small console system may prove useful for testing and such although at the moment we will live without it.  User config will grow over time but currently it will store the last connected IP, the users name – which also needs to be increased as I noticed I can’t even use blackbird.  Eventually I may make a user-name and player-name for the players so that the user-name can never change yet the player-name can.  This won’t be for quite some time as I would need a database, and other things for each use and this will only happen if the project is to go somewhere.

As of now  there are no plans to keep it strictly the Arcade style combat racer that it was once designed to be.  Currently the original RacerX code base will serve as the starting point for testing network programming, both voice and text chat, and moving the “tanks” around.  A rudimentary collision system will be added and tested over the internet to see how the game will withstand.  Once the project is working over the internet I will make a decision whether or not to keep the original RacerX idea and keep small RC cars in mind as a combat racer, however other thoughts have developed into a more simulation like environment going for realistic physics over anything else.