Network version 28: the host now holds a downloading machine's players out
of the game, and keeps a multiplayer map's first scripted BSP. Dynamic lights
and the flashlight stay on past the Xbox limits, and a second weapon picked
up while firing is readied. Machines of version 27 would disagree on these.
- A large co-op game's respawn fallback no longer picks a teammate who is in
the air, outside the BSP, or riding an AI vehicle.
- A machine still downloading the map times out when it goes silent.
- Held players join through the late-join queue, so they get the same checks.
A machine with no held players is started instead of being refused.
- The co-op teleport uses world positions, which are right for seated players.
- Overshield drain no longer cuts off a hit's flash, and hits over 0.02 flash.
- The menu XML is the generator's (Custom Edition's layout) again.
- port: markers on two new declarations.
Checked: ninja linux, android and web build; tools/harness,
test_touch_menu and test_web_build pass.
AGENTS.md asks for HALO_PORT_NETWORK_VERSION to be raised with any change
to what the machines send each other; nothing checked it, and #95, #99 and
and 18 caught up after them).
tools/network_format.py takes the wire format from the sources: the game's
message numbers, sizes and fields, the distributed netcode's message kinds
and flag bits, its DISTRIBUTED_ constants and the structs it sends whole, as
hashes. port/linux/network_format.txt records them for the version, and
test_linux_port.py fails when the sources differ: an item changed or removed
asks for the version to be raised (--record refuses it until then), an item
added (a new kind or bit, which older builds may ignore) only to be recorded.
It also fails when NETCODE.md says nothing of the version.
Checked by recording each merge's parent and checking the merge: #95, #99
and #106 fail as changed structs; #91, votes to kick, voice chat and the
integrated light bits as additions; #101, which raised the version, passes
once recorded. A comment, or a struct the netcode keeps to itself, changes
nothing.
The versions' list stopped at 21. 22 to 25 as their commits give them:
Custom Edition maps named custom_maps\<name> (4e8ed2f1), their blocks kept
past the Xbox tools' limits (34e2d4fd), the gametype's PC vehicle set
(11117d7c) and a unit's integrated light in its object state (6b55f5cc).
Hosts send players who join without the game's Custom Edition map the map
and the resource maps it needs; the other players help, torrent-style.
Network version 27: new map sharing messages, and players of an internet
game now reach each other.
Opus voice chat (port/third_party/opus 1.5.2, port/linux/src/voice_audio.c, port/linux/game/network_voice.c), relayed by the host, in the lobby too. The host decides in Server Setup > Teamplay Options: lobby voice (on by default), the game's mode (off, team near, anyone near, team, team and enemies near: the default), the near distance, and the quality, 8 to 64 kbps (24). Each player picks push to talk (V), open mic or off, the voices' volume, and the output and input devices in Settings > Audio, and mutes others from the scoreboard's menu. A speaker icon marks who talks in the lobby, on the scoreboard and in a list in game. The host takes a machine's frames only with the key it gave it over its stream, within the quality's size, 50 a second and 8 talkers at once, and sends voices only to machines that asked for them, so the network version stays.
Any player of a network game can start a vote to kick another, on any team, by picking their name on the scoreboard (right-click while it is open frees the mouse) or with the console's votekick; the host's own scoreboard also has Kick and Ban (Ban picked twice). The host alone counts (port/linux/game/network_votekick.c): votes only from each voter's stream, one per real address and again per hardware id (which only removes votes), time played on the host before starting (network.votekick_minutes) and voting, more than half of everyone with the target counted and at least two, one vote at a time with cooldowns for a failed vote's starter and target, and a passed vote keeps the player out for network.votekick_ban_minutes. Builds without it drop the new messages, so the network version stays.
A client makes its copy of a unit the host spawns with object_new, and unit_new gives it the unit tag's grenades (a cyborg's four frags), where the host's game engine gives a player's unit the game's own (none on wizard slayer). The host's inventory, which corrects them, comes a tick or two later, so a client's player spawning with the throw button held began a throw with a grenade its unit did not have: the client saw it thrown and go off, and reported its hits, while the host's copy, with no grenade, never threw, and refused every report as damage the player could not deal. A client's copy of a host's unit now starts with no grenades, and takes the host's when its inventory comes.
In the network test (1v1 slayer on wizard, staged hits and the bots' own fire and grenades, with #209's shock wave fix in both builds), with no added latency over 8 games the client threw 41 grenades to the host copy's 39, and the host refused all 5 reports of the 2 explosions it never saw thrown (11 of 2959 reports refused in all); now 55 throws to 55, no explosion refused for want of a throw, and 2 of 2749 reports refused. At 50 ms a receiver (8 games before: 66 throws to 64, 7 reports of 2 explosions refused; 4 games after) 10 throws to 10 and none of 1396 reports refused. Every unseen throw was in the client's first tick or two alive, with four grenades there and none on the host. Kills and deaths stay balanced.
When the host's teleporter sent a player, a client's copy that had not stepped on the pad itself was put at the far end by the host's word, landing on the teleporter there with no note of it (the game's own teleporter notes the one it lands a player on). The client's teleporter sent it straight back, every tick the host's word put it there, until the player stepped half a world unit off: the copy stood on the pad left behind, 24 world units off, for 6 to 9 ticks after most such teleports and for as long as the player stood still (up to 143 ticks in earlier runs), and the client's hits on them there were refused. A player's unit the host's word moves further than a step at once is now on the teleporter it lands on, as one the teleporter sends is.
1v1 slayer on Wizard, two bots shooting, 16 runs of 12 minutes each way at 0 and 50 ms: the client's teleporter sending the host's player back 85 ticks in 18 episodes before, none after; the copy over 5 world units from the host's for 3 ticks or more 12 times (82 ticks, up to 9) before, none after. Hits refused 3.7% before and 4.0% after, the view error (p50 0.03, p95 0.08 world units) the same.
A frag grenade's explosion deals two damage effects, its explosion and its shock wave (a plasma grenade's too), and a client reports each hit of each. The host took the first of them against the throw it had seen and spent the throw; the explosion's other hits came with it only when they were of the same damage, so every hit of the other damage found no throw left and was refused as damage the player could not deal. An explosion of the player's this tick is now one of the grenade, of any damage its tags deal, so its other damage takes no throw of its own (and is still paid for at the grenade's rate).
In the network test (1v1 slayer on wizard, staged hits and the bots' own fire and grenades, 8 games each) the host refused 4.4% of the client's reports with no added latency (134 of 3072, 104 of them a grenade's other damage) and 4.9% at a 100 ms round trip (153 of 3107); now 0.4% (11 of 2959) and 0.8% (25 of 2986). What it still refuses it should: grenades it never saw thrown, targets gone before the report came, and hits on a player the client still had at the teleporter they had left.
EXTRA ENEMIES' PER PLAYER grew each squad by its size for every player past
the first at 100%, held back only by the actor pool: in a game of 65
players each squad of six grunts had about 378 more. The host's ticks
stalled (every client froze, then its players jumped), the clients ran out
of objects (enemies the host had and they had not, which killed players
unseen) and past their renderer's limits, and the enemies with no free
ground left were placed off the map, where the clients' copies fell. A
squad now grows to COOP_ENEMIES_MAXIMUM_GROWTH (8) times its size at most.
Any player crossing a loading zone used to pull the whole team to them, with a two-thirds vote to go back to a BSP already visited: one player running ahead or doubling back teleported everyone, and teams ended up several BSPs back. Now only the host's players switch the BSP (anyone's while none of the host's are alive), the team is brought to the host who crossed (not to a client waiting on the trigger), the stranded and the respawning come back beside the host first, and a client standing on a loading zone is told it waits for the host. Clients still never switch on their own, and the host still waits for every machine to load the new BSP.
The killing blow went once, unreliably, while the units' states, sent every tick, killed a client's copy of a player the moment they said dead, so a late or lost blow left the body to die without its death animation, push or kill message. The host now also sends each killing blow reliably (a client replays one blow of a unit only; the reliable copy is not dropped as overtaken by the damage sent since), and a client waits half a second for it before a player's unit dies without it, as an actor's already did.
The host sent an object coming to rest once, unreliably. One lost left a falling body hanging on a client until its turn in the round of objects at rest, four a tick: in a large game, many seconds. It is now sent three times over half a second. A client also takes the host's word on rest from every state, not only from one far enough off to move its copy, so a copy left at rest while the host's fell no longer hangs; a vehicle the client drives takes it only from a correction, as before, so it is not stopped as it sets off.
Fixups for #99 and #112: the version raised for the object message's
shader permutation, NETCODE.md brought up to date, a networked glass
break's sound placed where it broke, a frame scratch pool that runs out
logged once, and the new comments marked as the port's.
Fixups for #102, #103 and #105-#107: the version raised for the glass,
scenery, cutscene cluster and revert messages, NETCODE.md brought up to
date, co-op's followers' object lists freed as soon as they are used, and
extra enemies that find no free ground placed on the rings they used before
rather than left out (at 32x a quarter of them were), with the places found
taken not tried again for the rest of the squad, and the way to a place
looked along level.
Hosting a co-op level from the Map screen (CO-OP CAMPAIGN, a level and its
difficulty, then Server Setup) makes a network game on the campaign map
with no game engine, which is what co-op is. Only the host runs the
scripts and the AI; port/linux/game/network_coop.c sends clients what the
scripts do (cutscenes, camera, fades, HUD, sounds, devices, named objects,
animations), and network_actors.c drives the host's AI units on every
machine. Players spawn beside each other, respawn beside a safe teammate,
and spectate while dead or waiting. Skipping a cutscene is a vote.
Players can join a game in progress at any time.
MrBruh