[Discussion] Multiplayer features in Essentials

Luka S.J. said:

Something like the GTS (which I assume more people would be interested in) would require a globally established connection. So a dedicated server or something which will allow all games to connect to a centralised "station", rather than just a connection between two machines. The battle system is different though, since it only considers two players. But if we had some global communication with that too, you could have things like player tournaments. It depends what kind of interaction you're trying to have. I think a global one would be better, as that way you'd have a master database which would handle everything automatically, rather than users having to manually establish a connection.

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Like I said, the GTS requires a server, but normal battles and trades won't require. A lobby server for battles/trades like Pokémon Net/Shoddybattle or, at least, random battles will be nice, but a 24/7 server today isn't easy to found enough to deserves it, so, beside rare cases, no one will use it.

Isn't hard to copy/paste ip address if you can read text files, so isn't hard to combine a central message board/chat for a game. Maybe I am wrong, but a socket connection is more quick/easy to use.

Luka S.J. said:

What would be the point of that? I mean the point of hacking the transferred packets. If some "hackers" already know what they are doing, and want to edit the game, they can simply do it by decompiling the RGSSAD file, and edit the project itself. There is no point in adding in extra security measures, if the game itself can be opened and edited anyway. For the online security to make sense, the RMXP project itself first needs to be locked so it cannot be decompiled with readily available tools.

EDIT: I was once toying around with the idea of creating a PokeSav for Essentials. That wouldn't be complicated to do at all. So with respect to the hacking of obtaining "illegal" Pokemon, you can easily do it by external means (editing the game itself, or editing the save file).

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Using external patches there already strong encryptions. There also ways to hamper the savefile modification.

LHT said:

Sadly, yes.
An actual game that I'm working have this feature, and combined with 'downloads in-game', built a social environment between players of the fangame, and I wanted to see this expanded between other games, because Essentials have more users.
Sadly, PSP DS is hard to use, and seeing that this feature is not to hard to code in like you said, why no one made it yet?

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Like I said before:

FL . said:

The main problem is the lack of support of Essentials project. Besides Maruno and rares exceptions, nobody helps, aside for bug reports.

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If I was interested in online features, probably we would have, at least, a trade system today.

p.claydon said:

i know that you guys are tying to avoid the whole text file system but couldnt that be included while an online version gets developed? also i do not see anything wrong with mmo in general although i do agree it doesnt go by current pokemon mainstream games but afterall there limited by handheld devices and were limited by the pc and rpgmaker xp

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I agree with you. I wish to see MMO games, but, right now simple battles/trades goes first. Making a chat is very easy if someone have established connection.

FL . said:

Like I said, the GTS requires a server, but normal battles and trades won't require. A lobby server for battles/trades like Pokémon Net/Shoddybattle or, at least, random battles will be nice, but a 24/7 server today isn't easy to found enough to deserves it, so, beside rare cases, no one will use it.

Isn't hard to copy/paste ip address if you can read text files, so isn't hard to combine a central message board/chat for a game. Maybe I am wrong, but a socket connection is more quick/easy to use.

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I agree with you! The Kit is there to make fan-games so it is unnecessary and pointless if the developer has to use a server. You cant earn money with fan-games so it will be impossible to cover the costs. IMO a socket connection using hamachi or something similar makes much more sense.
Why? Well for what do you need online features in a pokemon game? To battle and trade right? And how long does a battle take at most? 10 or 20 min? I think for such a short connection between two people there is no need to connect yourself to a server. You guys said yourself that you don't want MMO features but that all people who want to battle or trade online have to connect to one server is an MMO feature as well. Just saying.