[Question] How to play online?

[Matt]

I've run a few multiplayer (G)ZDoom games before but that was a few years ago and I've kinda fallen out of contact with the people I played with - but before then we were eventually getting constant desyncs.

Is there a reasonably comprehensive guide out there to how to prep each person's computer to minimize the desync problem?


EDIT: Yup, I still desync with myself. No idea why.

[edward850]

I always run my games with (on all ends) '-noautoload -iwad <iwad>', as to make sure that no extra content is being along side and everybody is playing the same base-game. Other important things to remember is to make sure everybody is using the exact same versions of ZDoom and all wads that you are loading (ZDoom has never checked to see if all added wads are identical in multiplayer).

Dmflags, skill level and map are all synced as part of the start-up, so joining players don't need to add that info to their start-up. Demos, unlike vanilla doom, also don't change anything about the input so not everybody has to be recording.

Edit: I cannot, for the life of me, get a localhost game to desync. I'm not sure how you are managing otherwise.

[Matt]

-noautoload

where have you been all my life

...yeah that actually resolved the problem! I have no idea what I'm autoloading that would cause a localhost desync though...

EDIT: Here are all the lines that, if uncommented out, cause either desyncs or both localhost clients to freeze up with nothing but a black screen:

Code: Select all

#Path=/home/doom/lights.pk3
#Path=/home/doom/brightmaps.pk3
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/glow.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesD1.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesD2.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesTNT.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesPLUT.wad

In other words, all the GZDoom-only cosmetic stuff. o_O

...and yet if I try to autoload, say, hd.pk7 which defines its own dynamic lights, it works just fine. o_O; EDIT2: ...while Hexercise (despite the fact I'm running Doom II) being in the autoloads screws things up. o_O

[edward850]

...yeah that actually resolved the problem! I have no idea what I'm autoloading that would cause a localhost desync though...

That... Uhh... Doesn't make much sense. Are you running two different copies of ZDoom? It should be loading the exact same content, unless you have some really odd (and broken) mod running from autoload.

-noautoload

where have you been all my life

Since 14-Apr-2009, apparently.

[Matt]

See my above edit. And I'm definitely running the same copy given I'm running the same command just one with -host 2 -cvars and the other with -join 127.0.0.1.

EDIT: Okay, it's definitely if I load anything certain things* with dlights or skyboxes, don't know about 3D floors though. I'm tempted to blame NVidia because it's always NVidia's fault.

*EDIT2: So far, everything with GL stuff except Hideous Destructor**. o_O

EDIT3: Same whether I use netmode 1 or 0.

EDIT4: Not quite, I did have another doomdefs file loaded that works just fine... ::checks:: unless I load the other file that actually allows those lights to be seen right away.

EDIT5: Running in software mode with all my autoloads everything is just fine! I think I remember seeing this problem with OpenGL and desync before, something about some rendering stuff being done too early... EDIT6: here's what I was thinking about.

[Mayhem666]

-noautoload

where have you been all my life

...yeah that actually resolved the problem! I have no idea what I'm autoloading that would cause a localhost desync though...

EDIT: Here are all the lines that, if uncommented out, cause either desyncs or both localhost clients to freeze up with nothing but a black screen:

Code: Select all

#Path=/home/doom/lights.pk3
#Path=/home/doom/brightmaps.pk3
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/glow.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesD1.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesD2.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesTNT.wad
#Path=/home/doom/autoload/SkyboxesPLUT.wad

In other words, all the GZDoom-only cosmetic stuff. o_O

...and yet if I try to autoload, say, hd.pk7 which defines its own dynamic lights, it works just fine. o_O; EDIT2: ...while Hexercise (despite the fact I'm running Doom II) being in the autoloads screws things up. o_O

I wonder how do you load So many .wad and .pk3's even before the game loads
Would like to know this ^^

[Matt]

Look for [Doom.AutoLoad] in your zdoom.ini

[Mayhem666]

Oh well, then i just need to put the names of the files below?

[Matt]

It should look like

Code: Select all

[Doom.AutoLoad]
Path=c:\doom\brutalgzdoomv016b.pk3
...

or whatever the paths and files are that you actually want

[Mayhem666]

It should look like

Code: Select all

[Doom.AutoLoad]
Path=c:\doom\brutalgzdoomv016b.pk3
...

or whatever the paths and files are that you actually want

Is there a limit of file that we can load? of .pk3 and etc...

I guess the more file you load the more game will lag?

[Gez]

It depends on what you load exactly. It'll always take up more space in memory, though.

As for a limit on how many stuff you can load... Not really. You can theoretically load archives with hundreds of billions of lumps. You can certainly load more stuff than you would generally need.

[Mayhem666]

It depends on what you load exactly. It'll always take up more space in memory, though.

As for a limit on how many stuff you can load... Not really. You can theoretically load archives with hundreds of billions of lumps. You can certainly load more stuff than you would generally need.

Oh well, Because i changed the music displayed in Doom2 but music is taking too much space compared to the original songs..
I wonder if its possible to reduce size of custom music to be in .wad