News and Updates on the Rigs of Rods truck simulator, based on an advanced soft-body physics engine.

Monday, October 29, 2007

RoR 0.33, network!

The first network-able version of RoR is ready!

Apart from network, RoR 0.33 is pretty similar to 0.32, the only new feature being the new variable pressure tires (only the 6x6 DAF Paris-Dakar has it for the moment). Press the "[" and "]" keys to adjust the pressure (for non US keyboard, thats the two keys between "P" and "Enter").

About the network: you have to enable network mode into the configurator (Network tab). Click on the "Update" button to get the list of available servers. Then click on one of the server blue link. This will fill automatically the network parameters settings for you. Don't forget to choose an appropriate nickname. You are ready for network play.
Network mode is different from normal mode:
  • You can not leave or change your truck
  • There are no loads
  • There are no truck-to-truck collision, nor locking (but we are working on that one)
  • You can chat with others by pressing "Enter", typing your text, and pressing "Enter" again.
Thats pretty limited for the moment, but its already pretty fun to race. We will try to add more net game modes later...
As this is the very first real world test of the network code, which is a quite tricky code, I think it is pretty reasonable to expect many stability and availability problems. We will debug servers as you play ;-)
About bandwidth, netmode requires a good DSL line, with, depending on the number of players :
  • 4 players : at least 240kbit/s of download 60kbit/s of upload
  • 8 players : at least 480kbit/s of download 60kbit/s of upload
  • 16 players : at least 960kbit/s of download 60kbit/s of upload
Regarding the servers, we host a group of differently sized servers, with different terrains. If you know what you are doing you can deploy your own servers, registered to the repository (to help us keep up the load) or not (e.g. for LAN party) . The server binary is included into the install pack, but it will be released Open Source soon, so people can inspect and compile it on whatever platform they like.

So, I cross my fingers, I hope you will enjoy this version if the servers can keep up!

*edit* servers are currently very crash prone we are looking at the issue