Demigod: Battle plan for the week

By Frogboy on April 27, 2009 12:19:58 PM from

Last week we saw some more reviews of Demigod. G4’s Xplay gave us 4 out of 5. Gamervision gave us a 9.5 out of 10, GameZone gave us an 8.7 ouf of 10 and a number of other positive reviews that I don’t have handy also came out.

Despite that, the custom game experience of Demigod has remained an exercise in frustration. The skirmish games seem to be working better but largely because it’s picking 2 on 2 games with only occasionally 3 on 3 games.

So why is this so hard to nail down? And what is being done to solve it?

Some people are blaming Peer to Peer as the source of the pain. But most RTS’s use some form of P2P. What makes Demigod different?

The biggest difference is the form in which Demigod takes its P2P. In a game like Warcraft 3, the players route their traffic through the host. Hence, some people can join Warcraft games but can’t host them. Now you know why.

Supreme Commander is the same P2P model as Demigod and it works pretty well. The difference, however, is that most SupCom games are duels (1 vs. 1) and when they’re teams they’re 2 on 2. This tends to hide the complexity of the system. By contrast, in Demigod, people expect to do 4 on 4 games or 5 on 5 games and it’s a significant challenge to connect them all reliably.

From Friday

On Friday, the team implemented a new system to try to make setting up the connections more orderly. After 3 days of working on it internally with great results, it was released and promptly blew up requiring us to replace it with an alternative update we had “just in case”.

I read a lot of the comments on the forums and I can say we share the frustration others have. Developer Gas Powered Games is working hard on their end and we are working hard on our end to resolve the issues.

This week

Monday:

Start the next pantheon tournament and continue to tweak how it works to satisfy the largest % of players.

Tuesday:

Found and fixed the cause of negative favor points. Favor points should now work though we need another client update to store purchased favor items.

Wednesday:

We got a new build of Demigod from Gas Powered Games that aims to address:

· Eradicates once and for all the problem where one person disconnecting or lagging would cause the peer-to-peer networking to unravel, collapse, and spawn multiple games. This is cross-functional for all matchmaking setups (LAN, Skirmish, Pantheon, Custom).

· Introduces a cumulative tolerance timer of 30 seconds for each player, which gives shaky connections better opportunities to stay connected, and eventually culls serious problem connections.

· Reintroduces an informational UI for players that lets them know who is having a connection problem, and what their cumulative timer is up to. It is important to note that this UI is NOT Interactive, merely informative. It is also a bit ugly, but compared to not giving players information, this is the much lesser evil. If need be we can revisit later for UI improvements as that is much lower priority than the information it presents.

Meanwhile, Stardock worked with the developer of the network library it uses (Raknet) to find a way to make connecting players not be flakey. The bad news is that it increasingly looks like problems are resulting from timing issues in the complex system of handing off sockets between Raknet to Impulse/Demigod.

UDP Proxy server code implemented internally with testing expected to begin on Thursday.

In the forums

We are also going to start some pinned topics on things we to expand the game with (for free) as the connectivity mess gets sorted out.

Topics will be:

New Demigod #1
New Demigod #2
How do you want Clans to work
Group Joins

+912 Karma | 102 Replies

If favor points are totally buggy, then take them out until you can figure it out.

I hate to see people put the favor issue above others... here's an idea: play with favor turned off!

(where's the delete button anyway?)

Favor Points cannot be removed on Pantheon games:(

Glad to hear things are still moving forward, however I've all but stopped playing Demigod online now until the online issues are fixed, I simply don't have time to sit and attempt to play for several hours a night in the hopes of getting a game working, and praying to the (demi)Gods that other players or myself aren't disconnected before the game is finished.

things we to expand the game with (for free)

I liked that part a LOT , free DLC is the best support any game can get!

Quoting a9bejo,

reply 21

I hope next Pantheon is 2v2

god, I hope it's not.

Being able to select/interact with minions and allied DGs via UI icons is WAY more important to me than new Demigods.

+1 . As is surrender, replay or map creation.

Why would you need a surrender in Demigod? If you wish to end the game early its easy enough to sacrifice for the good of the enemy. I can understand if you just get into a game and suddenly something in the real world comes up, but beyond that I see a great potential for some to simply utilize this button/feature at the first sign of loss instead of playing it out satisfactorily...

A fix of the proximity/ability bug would be grand. I can`t count how many times I`ve lost a melee or failed to slay a fleeing foe because my Demigod was too close/in the wrong position to the target when I tried to utilize an ability (causing my character to just stand there...).

Favour points ought to be specific to skirmish single, skirmish multi, Pantheon single, and Pantheon multi. That is, no matter what character you pick, seperate favour point records should be kept for each character in each play mode. If I play a thousand singleplayer games on Normal to gain a gazillion items, I ought not then be able to apply those to my play in multiplayer. Pantheon games especially ought to be distinct contests in that regard, to remain fair to all participating.

It can't possibly be a good sign if Frogboy is calling it a battle plan .

As other have asked, what about the proxy servers and the fix for the DSL stuff?

And the new NAT facilitator you were talking about, how's it going with that?

Is it all included in some way, in the public beta version on wednesday?

Just throwing an idea out in the open; $1 a month for those wanting to play online. We'd get better DLC faster this way. Wouldn't you pay this low fee for better content? I would. This game has so much potential, and I think using a payment method like this would make the updates come out faster and expand upon this whole concept.

You mentioned more Demigods, but to be honest I think you should add new maps first. It's much easier to get tired of the maps than the Demigods.

Quoting Hilving,

reply 10

There are many people who refuse to pay ANY monthly fee for a game they've already bought, so this would probably have a negative outcome.

on networking issues, a uPnP option in game would be a great savior in my opinion. yes there are some historic security issues around it, however its certainly no worse than say running IE. if players could simply say "yes use uPnP to sort out my ports" since its enabled by default on most modems / routers then any changes to portmappings etc can just be done via a game update or in game if needed.

if you want proof of how well uPnP works for p2p just look at uTorrents success, it basicly did away with the need for people to set up any sort of NAT forwarding with the result of pretty much every single person using it being able to connect to both peers and seeds with ease.

another option i would love to see is a "yes i want to host a custom game, and make my machine act as a server" option. since many modern pc's and net connections are defenitely capable of handling this (im running 2x quad core xeons with 4gb of ram on a 24/2mb dsl line), this would allow people who have manualy opened a range of ports to run a "garunteed" server.

as far as UI goes fixing the attack / do something bugs takes highest priority, however i would love a "Rally point Flag" so you can indicate your intent to your allies by placing it on the path you wish to attack / capture. the falg would be your char colour so you can stick yours somewhere to lead an attack or place it beside another persons to indicate you are supporting them.

I was actually surprised "standard" features such as rally flags and teammates health- and manastatus were not included in the final game. It seems kind of rushed, in a way. We'll have to wait for updates like these, and for me, I was expecting these features already were in the game, thus I thought the post-release updates would include all-new maps and Demigods instead of features we've seen in games years ago.

Quoting novex,

reply 12

lastly a resume connection option would seem like a realy obvious feature to be working on, since the games replace you with an AI if you DC, you shouldbe able to reconnect and replace the AI within say 5mins of being DC'd the names / IP's of your peers from the game will be in the log files anyhow and could just as easily be cached somewhere else just for this purpose.

as far as UI goes fixing the attack / do something bugs takes highest priority, however i would love a "Rally point Flag" so you can indicate your intent to your allies by placing it on the path you wish to attack / capture. the falg would be your char colour so you can stick yours somewhere to lead an attack or place it beside another persons to indicate you are supporting them.

This guy has nice ideas.

I love the idea of a Rally flag for each God.

Good Job to all!

But my biggest Problem is, that I always loose all my favorpoints after a match.

A fix would be great!

Thank you for reading.

I don`t need to behold additional readouts in Demigod for things such as Fortress hits, or fellow Demigod status. If I want to know such things, I can ably scroll over across these finite maps and hold my cursor over the characters/assets. Not a big deal (!).

Such screen clutter would not offset the loss of aesthetics, in my opinion.

Novex, yes - interesting ideas. And I`ll trade you PCs, by the way (!).

This is more complicated than you think. It's not trivial to connect to a running game and synchronize it again between all players.

Quoting Spooky,

reply 18

This is more complicated than you think. It's not trivial to connect to a running game and synchronize it again between all players.

and how complicated do i think it is?

im aware its not just click some buttons add feature done, however im also aware that a lot of data is exchanged between players once the fight is started. there is no reason that each client can not listen on a port during fight (either all the fight or just for a set period after a player dc's) for a handshake containing a key that is generated at the lobby point of the match.

once the person has handshaked with each peer in the match (just like they have to to get into the lobby) they synchronise just like they would during the game. short of one larger sync upon 1st few seconds of reconnect which would probly halt the game for a second (just like when someone DC's or lags atm) there wouldnt be any large noticable effect.

Quoting WarlokLord,

reply 17

For teamwork purposes, you do want to know your fellow Demigod's status (i.e. do they need to be healed/protected in some way). So for me, it is a big deal, if you want the whole teamwork idea to work better.

Actually this would be like transferring a savegame to that player and that can take longer than a second.

Quoting WarlokLord,

reply 6

+1 . As is surrender, replay or map creation.

Why would you need a surrender in Demigod? If you wish to end the game early its easy enough to sacrifice for the good of the enemy. I can understand if you just get into a game and suddenly something in the real world comes up, but beyond that I see a great potential for some to simply utilize this button/feature at the first sign of loss instead of playing it out satisfactorily...

If I already know that I'm going to lose, it would be nice to have the option to forfeit gracefully rather than either dropping or getting my face ground into the dirt for the next 20 minutes. In some games it's actually considered impolite not to resign, since you're basically wasting time on both sides of the board when everyone knows what the outcome will be.

IMO, the current system in Demigod is particularly unfair, since only the loser gets to quit the game and go do something better: the winner still has to go through the pointless motions of beating the AI that was left behind.

Quoting lambdaman,

reply 22

Quoting WarlokLord, reply 6+1 . As is surrender, replay or map creation.

Why would you need a surrender in Demigod? If you wish to end the game early its easy enough to sacrifice for the good of the enemy. I can understand if you just get into a game and suddenly something in the real world comes up, but beyond that I see a great potential for some to simply utilize this button/feature at the first sign of loss instead of playing it out satisfactorily...

If I already know that I'm going to lose, it would be nice to have the option to forfeit gracefully rather than either dropping or getting my face ground into the dirt for the next 20 minutes. In some games it's actually considered impolite not to resign, since you're basically wasting time on both sides of the board when everyone knows what the outcome will be.

I have to agree with you lambdaman. Especially in games that can take up to 40 minutes I want my match to end if all my opponents quit so I can get on with my day instead of fighting mindless comps. I mean, if you make your opponents forfeit, doesn't that mean you win?

Quoting Spooky,

reply 21

Actually this would be like transferring a savegame to that player and that can take longer than a second.

very well, ask for a community vote.

a: im happy with AI taking over and dont want DC'd people coming back into game.

b: im happy waiting up to 30 seconds to re-sync when a DC'd player manages to come back.

Not really. You only want to know the status of the Demigod that's nearby, which means your camera is already centered there and you can see how much, if anything, is hitting it and you can either toggle health bars or hover the mouse over him.

You don't need the status of demigods across the map since there's nothing you can do about them. You only need to know if they're alive or dead, which the minimap already tells you. Most of the UI clutter a lot of people are proposing is a poor substitute for situational awareness. The health bars could be better, and it should remember your preference so you don't have to toggle them each time, but the UI doesn't need more random clutter.

The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Demigod: Battle plan for the week