Hello Conitec,

I've put a lot of thought and time into this post... some might say 5 years worth of time.

I asked the community what they thought of your advertising this engine as MMOG capable and in general what is their opinion of GS Networking. Here are some of their replies:








And my personal quotes:

-After 5 years of dedicating myself to MMOG, I am still unable to create a product that is stable and publishable. You can blame my code all you want, but the things like "incompatible version" cropping up from who knows which server all the time is not our fault. Things like anyone being able to create a dummy program, anyone being able to connect to our system without us preventing it, and then injecting false data into our system and crashing our servers is not our fault... as a matter of fact it's not Gliders fault either and that was years ago and it's still not resolved!

-Several other members have attempted to create MP and MMP solutions with the engine and failed. Or rather, the engine failed them...

-I am not alone in my dissatisfaction with networking. At one point, network fixes on the forecast had an actual priority. Now they are lumped together with other junk (EDIT: I notice that on Aug 15, encryption and encapsultioan are RDY? I am SO confused as to what you guys are doing with Networking and it's still piecemeal changes on a sunset (DPLAY) engine! Do you think throwing us a random bone our of the blue every fews years qualifies as supporting your network engine? I don't. I suspect others won't either.)

The bottom line to this thread is the MMOG promised made on your page:



MMOG AND GS DO NOT BELONG TOGETHER UNLESS YOU, CONITEC, STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND GIVE IT SOME DEDICATED CONCERN.

Dplay is NOT MMOG friendly. If you keep trying to squeeze water out of that stone, you will merely be wasting your time for you KNOW that DPLAY cannot and will not stand the test of time. Furthermore, it's building on a house of cards... there is a reason why MS sunset DPLAY and why DPLAY has not been used on any commercial MMOG's that I know of and precious little (if any) modern MPs today.

So what am I asking for here in "ask conitec"? Well a few things:

1) Can you drop Dplay and switch to Raknet? Should not be difficult if your engine design is modular and OO.

2) Can you drop Dplay and switch to XXX? There are many other great network engines out there and in your research, you may find better than RakNet.

3) Can you drop Dplay period? MP and MMP in GS is a failure practically and commercially. You can't argue otherwise. To keep it in the engine is a disservice to those of us that bought it "thinking" that you had testing it for MMOG, believing that when you said "1000's of players", you had actually done it... two things which I and others have found out is not the case.

4) Finally, can you at least drop MMOG from your features language if you aren't going to do any of the above? It's a lie and one that many people are buying into the engine and then realizing it too late. If you can't do MMOG, which GS CAN'T in it's current state, then you should not HAVE MMOG anywhere on your features page.

I look forward to an ultimately productive discussion on this most critical of topics for me.

to 1)
Umm, RakNet just raised the engine license price to somewhat not worth the money ($50,000, from the 5,000$ before)! So I'm pretty sure that this will never happen. But what came into my mind right now:
Why drop a half-working network solution? Why should conitec not look at the RakNet source? Maybe this will transform the networkcode into something usable with SystemAddresses, Peers, Secure connections and BitStreams. I dont talk about illegal copy&past, but rather about some design ideas. And here in the community are a hand full of Cpp networking coders, so if conitec needs a helping hand...

2)
umm, TNL would be the next option (there are no better low-cost libs out there AFAIK). But compared the the advanced features of RakNet (Client Updater, DB Connection, Local DB, Lobby Server, BitStreams, Automatic compression and secure connections, just to name A FEW) the torque solution is rather small. I never worked with it, maybe someone else can state whether it's worth looking at.

Next option would be an upd-layer like
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.p...f509e6f4e2718c6
(just saw this last week)
or a selfwritten library. But do we really want this? In this case the rest of the engine would sleep for weeks for sure.

I don't want to be a prick here, but shouldn't you better send this to their support instead of openly tell this on the public community? Would sure be alot more professional. You don't need, err, you should not want other people's opinion about it at this point.

What's about GSTNet? How stable is it? Might it work as base for further development during proper MMOG support? Can missing features added to it?
(I have never used it, so I can't answer)

What does the author of GSTNet say?
Maybe make it an official part of the 3dgs package?

I believe this has the right to be public, we all know this ourselves so it isn't anything we haven't heard before. Making a big statement on their public forums where a lot of traffic visits is a good move strategically. Why email them to await no reply or no true answer to why the do this?

Like I've said - I may be a Moderator for the 3DGS Engine and Conitec but I believe the community deserves more. I've been with this engine to long to see little changes that could be made in a few months, instead it's been about a five year period to see these small tiny changes.

As for GSTNet it seems to be slightly incomplete for Lite-C, and still has some bugs and issues unfortunately.

I do not appreciate the title of this thread. We try talking to anyone in a honest, polite way, so why can't you do the same? We have never lied to any customer.

You have some points in your argument, for instance you're correct that as to my knowledge, no team so far has created or seriously attempted to create a MMOG with Gamestudio. But you're spoiling any discussion about the possible reasons when you're starting it this way.

Got your attention really quick though, didn't it?



I don't see my stating facts as being unpolite or dishonest.

But, if you don't like the title...



...then prove me wrong!

Where is the proof of 1000's of players connected to a GS game or engine, as was advertised when I bought the engine years ago?
Where is the proof that GS is MMOG capable as is advertised now!?

But until you can pony up proof for either of the above (as I have been POLITELY asking for YEARS), then I and other senior members of the community do in fact take your advertising GS as a MMOG capable engine as a lie.



I'm not serious enough for you?
5 years and 10's of thousands of dollars towards programmers and code is not serious enough for you?
Creating the only thing that slightly resembles a viable MMOG is not serious enough for you?
Creating a company literally built around your engine is not serious enough for you?
Garnering State and Federal grants IN SPITE of the "hobbyware" label that GS has is not serious enough for you?
Spending 60k USD of my own money over the last 5 years isn't serious enough for you?

Please, don't try to dismiss this issue on the idea that nobody has seriously tried...it won't fly with me or others as we are not the typical 13 year old noob you are used to dealing with. I'VE TRIED...oh LORD how I've tried... and I doubt anyone here except you would dare say I have not been deadly serious in my attempt or that I am the best, last, and only hope for GS MMOG.



Really? There are 3 users above already with a combined post total of over 10k that are contributing to this thread. Doesn't seem like my title is spoiling any discussion on this topic except maybe for the most important person here, YOU!

C'mon, JCL! Toughen up, old boy! Is your skin so thin that when a little heat comes your way you crumble? This is nothing compared to what we see daily in the showcase forums after all!

And you know I want nothing but the best for this engine (it's in my self-interest after all) and if my language is harsh, it is borne of frustration and not hate.

I do not know the details of your project, so I apologize if you've attempted an MMOG seriously. There were other serious projects, for instance the Quedlinburg simulation that run on a 16 server park. This went without any problem, but it's 8 years ago and I was not aware of multi server projects since then.

I remember that you contacted me with a problem of the traffic, but that was single-server and turned out to be caused by sending data from your database that mixed up with the data sent by A7 - or so I thought. That was causing the version incompatibility messages. The last thing I've heard from you in that regard was that you were looking into that, so I assumed that case was solved. If you have invested so much money and man power in it, you have not only the right but almost the duty to get it successfully finished.

However, can we please split the two problems? If you have a technical problem with the multiplayer mode in your own project, please open a new technical thread here.

And if you don't think our advertising is correct, please open a second thread. I'll try to help with both issues. This way we don't get different things mixed up. I'm now closing this.