Progress Update 2018-06-24
Hi all, I’ve been quite bad at doing updates recently, so I’ll try and cover everything in this one.
Since last time, network support has been merged into RWE master. This means that network play is now possible, albeit only by using the correct, undocumented command-line options to set up the instances of RWE between players. Since network support is now officially integrated in some form, I declare RWE to have reached the title of Multiplayer Commander Laser Battle Arena.
The network code has seen some improvements since the last update. It now attempts to estimate the game time on each peer and keeps all the simulations running at roughly the same rate. It also estimates the round-trip time between peers and adjust input latency accordingly. These improvements should hopefully mean that the experience playing RWE over a network is tolerable to the point where it might one day actually be fun.
I’ve also been working on the RWE launcher. Last time I wrote about this I was still struggling with the choice of which platform/libraries to use. After a couple of false starts I have now settled on Electron and it’s gradually coming together.
There have also been a couple of bugfixes, most notably one that prevented RWE from working with the GOG version of TA, and some fixes for issues on Linux.
The next goal is to complete the first version of the launcher so that it can be used to play network games.
The picture this week is a very early preview of the launcher in development.
