Dussel-3 : an Empty-Epsilon Sci-fi LARP
Hi everyone,
As I first mentioned in march when I discovered the game, we will have a sci-fi larp using Empty-Epsilon as a game platform.
The first event of Dussel-3 will be on June 25th, in the province of Quebec, Canada. The game will be in French.
It'll be a "beta" to test the technical stability of the game and our server, but also to test the first element of our activity, its scenarios and other related elements. If by any chance you are nearby, you are more than welcome to pass by !
We will be limiting the game to 6 ships and have already over 30 attending players. The activity should last 5h.
Webpage
Event page
Game document
Inscription form
Spaceship Upgrades
How to play EE (french)
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Our major concern right now is about the server and game stability. We'll most likely have around 35 computers connected on the server, disposed in different rooms for each ship.
As of now, we will have the server on our most potent computer, and everything on wifi on a 1750Mbs router not connected to internet, plus signal booster. We may use wire if a room has a bad signal.
I wondered if you had any tips, advice or warnings regarding our setting or any information you think we should have.
Many thanks
Comments
I can tell you we had a rock solid and stable run on our event (last Saturday) but this was only a 6 machine setup. However, due to technical problems, we had less "powerful" machines then we hoped. And it still ran fine. The server ran for 1 long session, with restarting the scenario, from 12 to 5. So that's the same amount of game time you are planning for. We ran the latest code that was available on that day.
On a LAN, I see no reason the game won't scale to 500 clients right now, as a single connection takes 20kb/s in heavy scenarios. (So that's about 10mb/s for 500 players. Which should saturate a 100mbit connection. But we have gigabit these days)
The server also seems to handle 100 ships quite well.
So on the performance side, I expect no problem. On the organization side. You'll have 30+ machines to connect to the server. In my experience, the biggest hurdle was updating all the machines. So we switched to a network boot (PXE) environment.
I'm planning on re-producing this environment tonight and documenting it.
(Note, we had this setup failing on some computers, due to security features in UEFI. We haven't investigated yet. As we are mainly using old machines, this isn't an issue for us right now)
You also have the hurdle of having each station hook up to the right ship and crew position. Sounds easy, but in the stress of running an event this can be quite annoying. (I wished I had arranged this better with the auto connect function on our event)
I've been planning an event similar to this myself. Right now it's just getting time to work on scenarios to prepare.
First versions of EE we ran trough WiFi it did give quite some problems. But we also had some bugs in the network code back then, where congested networks caused errors in the data. This is no longer the case, and delays on 1 client should not effect overall performance. However, short interruptions in the network connection will cause jittery results for the clients, as no advanced network synchronization on positions is done. (There are all kinds of possible tricks that some games pull to make network synchronization look smoother then it actually is. EE does none of that)
We announced the event tuesday and today we had to close the insciptions, having already over 50 players. That will be a lot for a beta!
Everyone is well aware that this is a beta and we may experience difficulties. I suppose we'll have the chance to stress the game and server quite enough.
In case the wifi do not work properly, we'll have the wires for almost everybody. If the server gets too slow, we'll divide the game in 2 groups (or more) and have distincts scenarios. Indeed this may become quite a mess ! Thanks for pointing it out. I think we'll put some responsibility to the captains of each ships to organize their crew and we'll have to be very specific on how to make everything work well without loosing too much time. We already have shceduled break times between each scenarios to ready things up.
If you had any perks you wanted to test (ship to ship docking maybe :P ) I guess it would be a good moment. I'll try to catch the review of every crew on the game also.
About the tutorial :
I am working for enhance the tutorial : each player can now choose his role, and their is a little real mission to do at the end of the tutorial.
I wrote it in french for now, and expect to translate into english and dutch. It is not finish, but I think it is enough for a first test.
If you want :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h342seo9lmpp7j5/tutorial_fr.lua?dl=0
PS : there is a command tutorial:hideMessage() wrote to hide the global message during mission. If you want, I can paste here the code to implement it in the source code. Or you can delete it.
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Help needed on coding
As I said earlier, this is mostly my first time trying to code something and I learn with a lot of tries and errors.
For our event, I made new factions, new player ships, translated the comms and created multiple scenarios. I wanted to put everything related to the event in a folder "dussel" into the "scripts" directory (scripts/dussel), so I would not have to change the game script... but I got some issues with the code. Maybe one of you could help me a bit ?
For exemple I'll have a the begining of the scenario "scenario_11_dussel" a few lines to call for other scripts, like:
require("dussel/map_dussel.lua")
to import other scenario or "maps" in the game. It does work correctly.I could also import factions :
require("dussel/factioninfo_dussel.lua")
but it wont work with ship templates (for now, I add in the script "shipTemplates.lua" the line
require("shipTemplates_Dussel.lua")
.1. Could there be a way to implement the ship template from the scenario instead ?
2. The other thing I'm still unable to do... is to "remove" or "pause" other script.
For exemple, I would like to have at the begining of the scenario a line to prompt the factions I created, and to disable the actual factions of the game for the lenght of the scenario. That way I would not have to remove the actual faction script for the game files to make It work. The same is true for comms.
Thanks for helping a newbie !
So if you would create a ship template on the server script, the clients would not know about it and actually crash. (This can also happen if you modified the ship template scripts on the server and are not the same as on the clients)
You can however, adjust a lot of ships statistics with functions after creating the ship. So as long as you do not need custom models, you can customize the ships after creation. This is supported just fine and does not cause any client/server problems:
7 crews of 6+, all eager to live the Space adventure Empty-Epsilon has to offer.
Some of them even have created their own uniforms for the occasion!
We've had the chance to get a sponsorship for ethernet cables and other electronic devices. Each room will have its projector or TV.
Players are divided in 3 factions and will have a mix of competitive and cooperative missions. I created 3 scenarios to begin with, here are de birefs :
S1:
Each faction has a different starting point. They first have to fight off "pirates (each faction has a special enemy that is neutral to other players)" attacking their convoy. Then fight back the pirates to their base. Players then track a "pirate" leader that has fled in a nearby nebulae, and follow him in a wormhole. They now are far from home, in the Dussel sector. A huge asteroid belt hide strange abandoned stations and a flock of wreckages hiding scavengers and aliens in the debrsi. In the center of this mess, the mighty Dussel-3 station, strangely intact. Players dock with it, then leave the ship for a break at the Cantina.
S2:
I've scripted some sort of "capture the flag" where the players can change the stations' faction by spending reputation, explore wrecked stations to get loot (in the larp game) and shoot down scavengers transport for ressources (they drop supplydrop when destroyed).
- I wondered if there was a way (line of code) for a supplydrop to give reputation ?
- Also, I would like to determine the setfaction() of the supplydrop relatively to the nearest playership's faction. ... I've tried a few things and couldn't get it working.
S3:
Players will have to defend their new stations against alien attacks. Mostly a variation of the "basic" scenario. Then followup to the source of the creatures. Just to realize an invasion is coming their way. -the end.
Through all the missions, players may be awarded special codes that will be exangable for Space credits during the breaks. They'll use theses credits to buy upgrades for their ships. I'll try later to add theses upgrades in a separated scripts that could be prompted in the game by any scenario. I'm still wondering how to add an amount to the existing value of a ship (something like " :setHull(+50) "...
Here's a doc with most of the upgrades we'll propose : ship upgrades
I've created a small guide to understand "how to start a game of EE" in french (skip the first page : How to start a game of EE
If such document could be welcome, I can make one clean and complete for EE in english and french.
------- Since we have to change a few things to make multiplayer playable and interesting (ships, factions, comms, scenarios, etc.) we'll give to our participant the game files with the aditing of the scripts needed for the game.
Note: we have made such changes possible on the android easily with APK Editor that allowed us to add lua scripts, sign back the app and tada!.
Finally, since our game if saturday and I know a lot was added in the last days (the top view overhaul, and new sounds effects for exemple) if possible, it would be great to have a new build before june 25. It'll be the last time I'll be asking for it .
Beamweapons, impulse engines, rotation speed all can be modified on active ships from scripts. Check the "script_reference.html" for all functions. And the "scenario_03_edgeofspace.lua" scenario for an example.
The event took place saturday as supposed. We had 40 participants (a whole team of 9 choked without any sign....) divided in 7 ships (one was manned only by 2) and were divided in 3 factions. The look of the place was amazing. We had LED light all over the place, a "space" cantina and 7 separated ships with special comfy chairs for the captains. Most of the crews had their own costume made to express the taste of their faction. I'll show you pictures as soon as our photograph finish editing em'.
Each scenario was designed to incorporate all ships in some somewhat competitive objectives. It went amazingly... until it crashed, again and again.. All 3 scenarios crashed at around 15-20min. of play. Usually when lot of fighting was happening all over the map, or when the GM would click on something. All those scenarios were custom made and I'll explain to you later in another post how they were made. As I already stated, it's the first time I'm coding something in my life... and yeah I may have fucked up here and there. Still, all scenarios worked well with 1 to 3 ships without a single bug.
At least, for the first scenario, I designed a variation that allowed me to run the scenario with only 1 faction at a time (2 to 3 ships) and It worked flawlessly. It was amazing and everybody was delighted. We offered "space" drinks to the crew that finished first and snacks of strange "space" color (thanks to the black lights) to everybody.
During the scenarios, multiple comms would offer "loot codes" when completing objectives. Those would later be traded for space credits, that would allow crews to upgrade their ships. All crews were excited by this and could complete the design of their ship in the way that suited their play style.
During the scenarios, we watched the players struggling to survive on the new Dynamic View. I don't know who added this feature but damn, it's amazing !
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Before the game I gave a little crash course on how to play each stations. In 15min or so, everybody was ready to go. We had android tablets, laptop, tower pcs and a linux laptop. The server didn't seem to have a problem, and everything was linked by either wifi or wires across a huge building divided in many rooms of concrete walls.
Thanks also for the feature showing the [occupied] stations and the number of players in each ship. It helped a lot to fill the ships and know when everybody was ready to start without having to run to every ship to check.
On this forum, we often said that the relay station was probably the most boring station... in multiplayer it is definitely not. Ships in the same faction had to keep communications with each other with relay all the time. Relay was as important, and active, as engineering. Waypoint per faction was asked for a few times tho.
We had some issues with science that went crazily laggy, except when in the middle of nebulaes, clouded in their "fog of war". I wondered if maybe, the amount of elements in the game may affect too much science. Could it be the 3waves channel recording every element around ? of maybe the fog of war from nebulae ?
Also we had complaints about the missile targeting that would sometime not work properly and not follow targeted ennemies correctly (staying in a straight line instead). Hoaming were loaded, not HVLI, and the "lock" button was placed correctly.
I'll make a complete report later of all issues or suggestions the players and us had for the game.
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We are already looking to make another event somewhere near novembre. Looking back on our experience, we decided the next event would be a succession of smaller scenarios for 2 to 4 ships. Where players will have to choose which quest to start and at what risk (mostly as in a MMORPG when you get to chose your assignments for the day). It'll be more dynamic, give more time for larp between each game, and we hope it'll be more stable. We also will open for up to 12 ships. Still, we'll try a complete multiplayer game at the end of the scenario, for testing (and fun) purpose.
I'll soon start a new topic regarding the multiplayer experience to see how we can all look to improve this part of the game. I have the feel that the game is currently mostly designed for 1 ship scenario...
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Once again, thank you for the last build. All participants had a lot of fun and were very thankful to the developers of the game !
- All the participants under the EE flag
- Part of my playtest team
- Costumes with blue light wires !
- Space smugglers
- All this ship was lighted with blue LED !
- Alex (the guy that added a few sound design for the game) and it's console. They had a bunch of ambiant sounds during the game that felt incredible for the immersion of the ship atmosphere.
- The captain addressing it's crew
- Relay at work
Did you run the 2016-06-24 or the 2016-06-23 version? The 2016-06-23 caused crashes due to a few uninitialized variables.
I've had luck with better performance on some machines for Science when setting disable_shaders=1 in options.ini.
One ship scenarios are the most tested. It's the easiest to do so & the most played.
We are in the Netherlands (Enschede) organizing a Empty-Epsilon based larp. However we made some modifications on our own with a gateway (In which Lights are controlled, external devices and minigames, like oxygen and navigation labview applications, interacting with the game), if you are interested I could tell you more.
Also, I'm planning a trip in europe this august an maybe going in the netherlands or denmark if by any chance I could meet one of you and see how you work this !
Look forward to seeing how this progresses for all.
We don't know where we will make it, maybe not far from Brussels.
Maybe 3 days / 2 nights without stop, for 4 spaceships.
Maybe next year.
But nothing is clear for now.
I will keep you posted about the project.
Hereby the gateway we use and www.sevcol.nl is our website, we play on one ship only, so not everybody is a bridge officer and we have used an old train, and an old factory as a location. There are marines too, a doctor/nurse, several passengers (like a priest and an AI professor), several people play Engineers who actually repair the ship with hull-plating. (And if this is performed the GM's influence to hull).
Hereby an old trailer (which was still made with artemis): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdMwjsPvukE
And hereby an attack of the marines in a train:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO1it92v6_w
Daid, you should just come one day, stop making excuses .
@Capt_Lapadite You can meet us, in the first weeks of august, I am in Germany at Conquest, but after that I am back in NL.
@el.tito Maybe we could work together? you can always mail me.
If any of you would like to meet a bit around a coffee or beer I can pass by!
Most interesting, we played the "basic" scenario but instead of the usual altlantis, we had a slow mothership with jump drive and 6 one-man figther (that didn't have a jump)
The experience was more than successful and fun for all players. Communication was quite difficult tho and we'll have to add a custom button to the relay officer to send messages through all its figthers or allies.
Only bug we had was one computer having problem with graphics, freezing completely at some point. It had no effect to the server and other pc.
Ah... and there was no sound. We could see an audio error in the cmd screen that open when you start the game.
Overall it was a nice experience and we'll be more than ready for our real event on july 22nd. Hoping to fill 5 ships. When our scenarios will be a little more tested we will be happy to share them to you !