Multiplayer SC4

[citycowboy 183]

I was looking at Sabretooth's awesome new CJ, and he had mentioned breaking his region up into 2-3 pieces. I immediately thought, 'send me a chunk'. Then I began thinking about multiplayer SC4, and how it could be done. Maybe somebody else already figured it out. Everybody would have the same map, the same plugins, and then they would have to email everything to one another, and everyone could each have a tile or ten, build their best city, and then email that all together and everyone would make an awesome CJ. I think you can plug and play the cities in the region folder If I'm not mistaken. Does anybody know if this can be done? What do you guys think? Everyone would have to work together and commit to it, but I think it can be done. 

I was already thinking about (and working on) organizing all the plugins I have by date, so like all the 1850-1900 buildings in one pack, all the 1900-1950 buildings in another, etc. There would be like a rule that you can only use this plugin pack and click Chicago 1890 tileset, and only use the spam dirt roads. You can do whatever you want on your tiles, but when you get to a certain date or population, you have to stop. Then everybody would email back and forth and we'd all be synchronized and calibrated, and then we'd show the world. After that, then the different cities would be dealing with one another, so to speak, and this would effect commerce and trade, taxes, job demand, etc. Then, you would be allowed to use the next plugin pack, and click new york 1940, etc.

Of course there'd be lots of rules and stuff, but if millions of people can figure out how to make fantasy football work, this could be done too. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Some efforts have been expended in this regard, and seem to come and go with limited success.  The basic problem is that this is a single player game and does not easily allow more than one user at a time.  There is no code in the game that handles simultaneous access to the writable tables and protects them from deadly embraces.  At best you might be able to have a common region with users in different cities, but it basically means writing a queueing manager to handle the multiple users if you want concurrent access.

I've done some serious work in business transaction processing which allowed thousands of users to simultaneously access a common data base.  This is not simple and is very much like writing an operating system that allows time-sharing access.  The biggest problem is the necessary code to detect and amend multiple writers in the same resource.  This involves rollbacks, race conditions and deadly embrace avoidance.  You have to be able to get an atomic result for each action that takes place, and assure that its integrity is preserved.  To make this work without undue delays for the end users, you pretty much have to have your data base on an SSD, with full journalization on a different (rotating or tape) device.  With rotating storage you have to be able to handle journal-full spills to yet another device, usually magnetic tape.  Rather a huge can of worms unless your original intent is MMP.  Crash recovery is also a major issue, as it normally has to be done by restoring the last checkpoint then running forward from the journals.  This can take the application off the air for some time.  To make this kind of thing happen you generally have to have some very fancy servers or even a main frame.

  Edited August 28, 2015 by A Nonny Moose  
Clarification

[citycowboy 183]

Yeah, that all sounds complicated. I was thinking more plug and play where let's say we keep it simple and have two players. the region has 3 tiles:

A  B  C

Player 1 = Tile A

Player 2 = Tile C

Commissioner = Tile B

Both players have the same plugins and map, but can only play on their tile.. At the end of the week, both players email their city tile from the regions folder to the commissioner, and the commissioner emails the other city files back, with the commissioner connecting any roads, etc. through Farmville.

Is this possible?

[rsc204 21,866]

Possibly not, from what I understand it's not a good idea to edit two cities that border each other, when you compile the region once more because of the way neighbour connections/demand work that can have negative effects.

The other problem I see is regarding the plugins folder, it's against the rules to re-distribute the work of others. It's therefore not enough to simply create one set of plugins. Rather you'd need to know exactly which plugins you had considered OK for use in the region, making sure users kept these synchronised with each other.

The concept can and does work though, others have taken this path before, the most active I know of is the Noro Cooperative on SC4D right now. It does require a semblance of commitment from the other players though, I suspect that would be the largest problem more so than administrating the details.

[citycowboy 183]

yeah, long term cooperation is something I've noticed doesn't work very well. I think I'll get some more copies of the game from Amazon and try it myself first on different computers back and forth and see if it works. This will probably take a long time. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You don't need more copies of the game.  Just create multiple accounts on your machine, and if you want, allow remote logins from some other users of those accounts.  All operating systems worthy of the name these days allow multiple users, each with his own account.  A little adroit sharing of a master account and you can have a single region with one set of plugins used by everyone.  This becomes a matter of setting permissions on the city files and the region.

The main fly in this ointment is you have to be a pretty good system administrator and sysop, and you have to keep your machine up 24/7 with scheduled backups.

You may not even need a bigger machine than the one you have now.

I haven't run Windows in a long time (since XP), but it was possible even then.  On my current Linux system, it is a piece of cake.

  Edited August 28, 2015 by A Nonny Moose  
grammar fix

[citycowboy 183]

Oh awesome, I hadn't thought of that. That's easy. I haven't had to deal with shared computers since the 'computer lab' days in school. Awesome, you're a lifesaver. I literally was going to buy SC4 for like 5 different computers. Thats like $100. Awesome.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Good luck with this.  You'll really need to understand the file system and the way that sharing works.  Not many people have more than one account on a machine these days.  Probably never occurs to them.

One of the problems with systems these days that are shared by family members, for example, is that they all share one account.  This can make for a lot of acrimony about who did what to which and to whom when something gets messed up.  Every person who uses a common computer must have his own account and password.

[greyveil 37]

Yes we have done this several times in the past, there was a city journal long ago of 1 attempt, it requires everyone agree to a common plugin dir and then all you have to do is share the city files, but active participation is a must and it is best to have a 'moderator' collect all the files at an agreed upon time, load them all up in game, then send them back out to players (rinse/repeat).