Overload multiplayer was put together in around a month, went through another month of testing, and ended up being rather underwhelming to play. Ranked multiplayer queues died out after the first couple weeks, those that remained were either gaming the system or late to the party. Mercifully, ranked multiplayer did not survive very long.
However, multiplayer soon began to thrive in the form of the Overload Teams League. I founded the OTL in 2019 for pilots who wanted to play team games. It caught on pretty quick with 6 teams by its second month. At first, we dealt with the frustrating limitations of poor server choices, shoddy networking, and always demanding to Bammer "RESTART YOUR SERVERS!!!". But shortly after Revival Productions folded in February of 2019, a glimmer of hope appeared in the form of olproxy, a piece of software that allowed Overload LAN servers to act as Internet servers. For the first time, Internet games were playable without official servers.
Over time, this expanded to olproxy being incorporated into olmod, a collection of mods for Overload with the aim to improve multiplayer game play. A large number of improvements have been included in olmod since then, including larger game sizes, reporting to a tracker, sniper packets, lag compensation, and more. What hasn't been addressed is weapon balance.
Multiplayer weapon balance has not been great since Overload launched. Ammo weapons have been shown to dominate, and the energy weapons are a mixed bag with cyclone being dominant and reflex being weak. Hunters used to be super strong until an early nerf was added to olmod. Creepers and time bombs used to be excessively out of sync between client and server. Despite this, people still played, but bigger issues existed because people couldn't understand what they were seeing. Ship positions were not consistent. People were saying that 50ms in Overload felt worse than 100ms in Descent 3. (While seemingly unbelievable, this was learned to be a true statement since Overload intentally adds a minimum of 83ms of lag to game play; 33ms for processing controls smoothly and 50ms to be able to interpolate ships smoothly.) Slowly over time, the net code was deciphered and unravelled, and we learned some shocking things about how the net code was implemented. In addition to the intentionally added lag, your entire controls are sent to the server every frame for processing server-side. Every button press, mouse movement, or swing of the joystick would be part of that send. But because client and server frames don't match up one to one, this would cause errors in position and rotation, and weapon firing that was often out of phase, meaning what you saw on your screen wasn't what was happening on the server.
First, we fixed the weapons. Sniper packets made it so that every time you fire something client-side, that is what was seen server-side. This also eliminated some super bad parts of the game, such as disagreements as to how many missiles you have, what weapon you're using, what side of the ship you're firing a missile out of, and more.
Second, we fixed most of the intentional lag and made it so that it would try to compensate for lag, predicting where ships will be in the future, making them easy to hit. Then we revisited weapons, also compensating them for lag so that they'd be easier to dodge.
I say "we" because this is a team of developers doing this. Arne de Brujin created olproxy and olmod and showed us what is possible. I've contributed a bunch of code, and Tobias, Whollycow, and derhass have been instrumental in keeping things on track. We even have occasional contributors like terminal, luponix, and D.Cent provide extra quality of life for both players and developers.
And now we're ready to tackle balance.
Players are now seeing the game closer to the truth than ever before, and as a result they have honed in their skills better than ever, showing us that, yeah, there are serious balance problems with the game. It's not like we didn't already know this. However, now that we are seeing closer to the truth, we can begin to understand exactly what these balance problems are, and hopefully start finding common ground in regards to what needs to be balanced.
This is my blog where I give my thoughts and opinions on various topics and share my creative endeavors with the world. I run two personal blogs, but combine them here for ease of access.
Blogger - My oldest blog using the Blogger platform contains posts full of opinions, gaming, and code.
Tumblr - Tumblr posts are all about my creative side, containing music, videos, writings, and updates on my web creations.
You can select a category below to view the latest post, or browse thorugh the posts using the navigation found at the top and bottom of each post.
Somehow got to Dallas on time. Now I'm on a flight that has the possibility of a dog running loose. Seriously, I've never seen a non-service pet outside a carrier on a plane before. #airporthell
I'm at the wrong airport. I have a crazy lady behind me talking to herself. I have a child crying two rows back. And I have this mountain of humanity sitting next to me who certainly didn't pay for the half of my seat that he's in. Did I mention I'm at the wrong airport? Most miserable flight I've had in years. #airporthell
i'm so sorry for being that guy but i can't overstate how reminiscent current twitter is of Portal 2 when the entire facility starts to break down because wheatley got so insecure about being called a moron he starts cobbling together abominations that don't work out of spite
Been doing Professional Game Consultation for about 2 Years now. Did a little talk about what it is and why its SOOOO important for your upcoming games #indiegames #gamedevelopment #gamedev
This is how you review an antisemitic, transphobic, piece of shit video game: you roast it in the review and turn the buy link into a donation to Trans Lifeline. https://www.wired.com/review/hogwarts-legacy-review/
So That Bird Hell Site refugees seem to be divided between here and Cohost. Seems the more technically inclined end up here. Why is beyond me, this site doesn't take any special technical skills to use.
In addition to following Twitter (for now), I feel like I'm going to eventually have to make a decision to either follow both sites, or abandon those that moved to Cohost in favor of brevity and sanity. It's not a decision I will make lightly.
This is the first step in removing chronologically ordered posts... They make the algorithm the default option and in a couple of months they will say "oh no one uses chronological posts, so we're removing it".
Some idiot signed me up for a mailing list I do not want to be on. The mailing list requires you to enter first name and email. So this idiot used my email... but for the name they included a CRYPTO 12-WORD RECOVERY KEY??????? What even the actual is this?
I don't do crypto, so if someone's trying to scam me they're wasting their time.
Chris Pronger suffered commotio cordis after taking a slap shot to the chest in 1998.
Praying for a similar recovery and outlook for Damar Hamlinβ¦Pronger was back on the ice weeks later and played 12 more seasons en route to the Hockey Hall of Fame. π https://t.co/qYfT8kv66s
I actually signed up for a nostr account. It's under @roncli. Good luck actually finding it, it seems like their website is borked AF. At least I'm verified, though!
Mulling permanently closing this account and never opening this site again. You all are wonderful people, but I question whether this place is worth it anymore. https://t.co/Pmzltt4fXn
Some time ago, I made a blog post with the sentence, "The guy is an asshole." In that sentence, I linked every word to a separate article about HOW he is an asshole.
Fast forward 2 months later, and I think I'm going to challenge myself to extend that to a link for every letter. What's scary is that it shouldn't be too hard. π
Seems like it's on the Cohost/Tumblr side of the aisle in terms of post length and content. It also has optional monetization for your posts, whatever, I won't use that but I'm sure it's a nice option for some.
Worked a bit on Descent 1 DXX-Retro's code today a bit. That code base is so icky. But, I have it compiling in Visual Studio thanks to Sirius, so at least that's a start.
As silly as this tiny font looks, it is employed in a way that makes me feel like I broke the game and did something epic. GGs to the devs on this one!
After a 110-5 score line, it became apparent change was needed in the OTL. Well, change is coming. This update should go live tomorrow. https://t.co/j8TwWzLogN
The value proposition for Mastodon, as a Twitter replacement, has flipped since the last time I tried it:
Mastodon: you might pick the wrong server and have to move away from it Twitter: you have definitely already picked the wrong service, and you have to move away from it
https://t.co/40yzlOfRR0 <-- I don't want to be on a platform run by an abusive leader and overworked staff. I'm so dependent on twitter for my work though, I've got an essential part of my contact network here, but every second I'm here I feel I'm betraying my morals.
Tumblr may become relevant again, but probably not for a while. There are a number of non-creative projects ahead of it that need doing, so it'll be a while before I regularly put out stuff again. That said, look for something new there in the next few days. π
Caveat on Tumblr: I've been there for about 9 years, back when I decided to split my blog between my creative endeavors (Tumblr) and everything else (Blogger). While I still have the account, I'm not very active on it since my creative endeavors have taken a back seat.
Being shitty to your workforce, rolling out features no one wants, not addressing PR disasters in a timely or acceptable fashion, belittling a percentage of your user base.
It occurs to me that Day of the Devs is on the same day, at about the same time, and on the same MUNI line as the League of Legends Worlds finals. That's NOT going to be fun to navigate.
Pacific Daylight Time ends November 6th, so I imagine what's happening is it's interpreting the time with daylight savings because that's what it is now, and not accounting for daylight savings ending before the date.
Long long time ago, I can still remember How that conversation used to make me smile And I knew if I had my chance That I could make those people chat And maybe they'd be happy for a while
Apps never tell you what they changed anymore. What bug fixes? What stability improvements? What did they do to space time? Knowing Google, they probably made it worse. https://t.co/b29hitjcE1