The world according to Sven-S. Porst
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Claus and Gandalf convinced me to try out playing some Quake with them tonight. I'm not a big gamer and it's been years since I played my last FPS – Marathon II – but I thought I'd give it a try. – It was a complete mess.
First of all, no matter which cable we tried, my Powerbook (that works perfectly connecting at home, at my office and directly to any other computer) wasn't able to connect to Gandalf's DSL Router/Hub thingy (D-Link 604 or something). The little light on the hub just wouldn't light and the Powerbook wouldn't even acknowledge any connection at all.
Second, I learned that Quake III is such high quality software that you have to run the same point release on all computers for them to work well together. That's even true for the demo which had to be 'updated'. Also, it liked crashing and I won't start talking about the crappy UI and the fact that it didn't make use of the Powerbook's wide screen. No fun to be had there – saving me the embarrassment of being shot all the time because I can't coordinate all those hands, mice and keys quickly enough.
Third, Claus' Windows laptop got a physical connection to the network but didn't connect logically. Subsequently we discovered about a hundred different ways to reach some network related settings in said 'operating system', not a single of of which made clear what it was good for. In addition we discovered many 'assistants' asking multiple-choice questions none of whose choices we could interpret at being what we wanted to do. I also note constant lack of 'fuck off and die' or, more politely 'go away and never ask again' buttons or a simple 'connect those friggin machines' button. The bottom line was that the machine wouldn't connect to anything after a few attempts. It did frantically try to dial somewhere, though.
Fourthly, we ordered really bad pizza to enrich the experience.
Fifthly, we finally enjoyed ourselves nonetheless by playing what must have been a couple of hundred games of good old GLTron.
December 12, 2003, 1:56
I understand your pain about point releases, but they break network compatibility for good reasons - since the game is a client and a server, the network protocol has to be in sync between them.
A game’s multiplayer protocol is massively complex, with server-side movement prediction, anti-cheating measures and so on, so it’s just much easier to ask people to upgrade than to try to preserve compatibility with buggier old clients.
December 12, 2003, 2:24
I accept that designing these protocols is hard. I still believe, though, that this can be done well and in a way that it doesn’t break all the time.
The main point of having a protocol in the first place seems to be that you don’t have to upgrade things all the time.
Like my MacSE which still happily exchanges files with my Powerbook without a problem.
December 12, 2003, 18:24
You’re thinking from the standpoint of business applications. This is a game, where the first thing that happens after release is people attempting to find cheats :-)
December 13, 2003, 11:09
I’d say that I’m thinking from a standpoint where I play games to enjoy and entertain myself rather viewing them as fierce competition where I have to cheat to prove myself. I don’t see the point of that (although I am aware that people won’t stop doing things just because they’re silly).
In addition, if there are people around who want to cheat, changing protocols will only slow them down a little but not prevent them from doing so in principle. Like this, everyone in inconvenienced by the counter-actions against those who want to cheat.
To me this looks like people are trying to solve a social problem using technology.
December 15, 2003, 16:10
