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Would be nice to allow more than 16 players on a host. perhaps allow 24?

Peoples and Devs thoughts?

Respectfully submitted.

It's not a simple change. Part of the problem is being compatible with old films and versions as well as requiring changes by the metaserver.

Havent films been broken before in the name of progress?

P.S. breaking down limits like units on one map at a time would be well worth the film breakage, with respect to the game's original system requirements.

The upshot is this: the argument against such a change before, as I understood it, was that it would be past the minimum requirements set forth when myth was released, however the system requirements do NOT cover things done with the editors - so technically all NORMAL myth maps such as Willow Creek or Redemption or If I Had A Trow would play normally because there is nothing extra to bog older computers down - it would be something like carlinho's ww2 project or some other graphic intensive thing that is possible WITHOUT limit increases right this second that bog down slower computers and "require" a better system to play.

I would also like to note that this is respectfully submitted and although its been discussed before I would be interested in hearing counterpoints to the things ive suggested, just to get an idea of the reasoning against it. If its mostly film breakage and system requirements I think we're at a point in myth's life where it could be justified and even rejuvenating.

my 2 cents

logic might be in your favor, but note the 'it's not a simple change' and 'would require changes to the metaserver'.

i translate that as "It's a pretty complicated change" and "we can't make that change unless mariusnet makes the necessary changes to the metaserver".

the former is the dev's call - if they have the time and want to tackle it, but the latter i am guessing would be a tougher obstacle. players have asked for lots of enhancements to the mariusnet server which have gone unfulfilled, and i get the impression the owner/programmer of mariusnet isn't really active on myth related projects these days.

Another valid question imo: How often is 16 players max a problem?

well, i think the problem is that there are so few players left that no one wants to be excluded from the 'one good game', so sometimes a popular game fills up with 16 players and then there are 3 or 4 more players stuck in the lobby stuck with no games to join because none of whom want to host or play FFA, so if the # of players were expanded up to 20 or 32 then ALL the players active on the gameserver at any one time (other than MWC season) could play in the same game.


[only half kidding]

I do not support raising the 16 player limit. At least for current Myth.

1. 16 works. It has worked, for a long time. It worked when there thousands of players at once.

• Most maps can barely hold 16 players and/or were specifically made to suit that many or even less both in terms of units and size. I can't imagine 95% of them working well with more than 16 without some significant redesigning.

• Have you seen the current community? It's hard to get 16 people to work well together as it is. Most people do their own thing. There's a lack of leadership. There's lots of jackasses too.

• For coops, 16 is more than enough. You can't even find 16 players to play a coop together.

If a person wanted the option on purely new maps that were made from the beginning to support it, that might be okay. I know people would find a way around the "new maps only" limit, sadly..

I think you misunderstand - i dont care about the 16 player limit, I was talking about raising other limits, not hardcoded in marius. Im fine with 16 players max, what I was suggesting was raising other more archaic unnecessary limits, like only 400 units being allowed on the map at once.

I was just pointing out that films have been broken before in the name of progress, and for outcomes a lot less awesome/useful than what im suggesting.

So anyways, I should have made it clear I was talking about other limits. If the player cap gets raised thats cool but I dont see it being anywhere near as useful as being able to have two 500 (or more) unit armies clash at the same time on a team game. Or fending off 1500 enemies at once in coop. That kind of epicness. Getting rid of the projectile limit. That kind of significant and worthwhile change would be worth breaking films for me, and just like everyone was told for 1.4:

"You can still watch your old films with the old version".

The changes done from 1.4.x to 1.5 are different from what you suggest. Back then none of the versions were compatible with each other, except for maybe 1.3 film replay I think. When 1.5 was made it was like a fresh start from 1.3. They started with 1.3 and got parts from 1.4.x, so the code needed to run 1.4.x films was no longer part of the source.

Then starting with 1.6 the new compatible mode was introduced to go as far back as 1.5.1. The devs have always been against undoing such a thing eventhough it tends to make more work for them on certain changes.

I'd only support raising the player limit for more spectators, not more players (and only if and when we have more robust spectator support). Raising the limit also isn't the only way to accomplish that goal.

I think gameplay-wise 16 is a good number already.

Starting fresh for 1.8 would be the best solution, considering the changes proposed. If youre going to go all-out for myth's final update (or so I can only assume) you might as well unlock myth's full potential, that has been bottled up this whole time and never fully realized.

Basically, raising the limits of object, projectile, monster, unit, and other tags would turn myth into a whole new beast. I would personally launch a viral ad campaign with some truly epic-scope videos if I could get a few thousand guys onscreen at once.

For a demonstration we've already used scenery units mixed in with real ones to flesh out the army, and it's far more amazing and breathtaking than you could ever imagine. You havent lived until you've strafe-run an army of thousands with a dwarven balloon, dropping satchels and rhi barrels and cluster bombs on hapless scenery and non-scenery victims. We even have a spot on the demonstration map where the camera follows the terrain far past the maximum zoom out distance, so you can see what myth would look like with a taller camera limit and a kajillion units.

There have been no indication that any update will be the final one. What is more likely to happen is that the final update will be the one released before the magma devs lose complete interest in coding another. The changes proposed don't even require losing compatibility mode.

Indication/Intent or not, IF I as a developer knew that I was losing interest and will probably not be up for another version (hopefully this doesn't apply to any or 'our' erstwhile coding geniuses) I'd give serious thought to making the next release a real show-stopper and implementing the kinds of changes ooga is advocating.

of course if those changes were implemented it would be nice if mapmakers would indicate that a map with 1000 units was a Myth+ map, so players with older less powerful hardware could steer clear of the map rather than fire it up and get frustrated, or have someone come back after an absence, try out a new mega map and just assume Myth doesn't work on their computer any longer. Of course since maps get made without complete readmes (which is still at least better than maps NOT getting made at all) there's probably little hope of that happening. Heh, maybe devs could incorporate a slightly modified plugin icon with a '+' on it into Fear(or some other indicator), so Fear could check when you turn your map into a plugin and if your map exceeds the current/old limits in _any_ way (including number of units, number of projectiles, size of sprites - in either actual dimensions or Bytes, etc) it would get the slightly different icon.

Pyro wrote:There have been no indication that any update will be the final one

Speak for yourself. Ive seen plenty of signs.

Pyro wrote:What is more likely to happen is that the final update will be the one released before the magma devs lose complete interest in coding another.

...which is what I was saying.

Pyro wrote:The changes proposed don't even require losing compatibility mode.

So? I'm not sure where you're going with this. Kind of non-sequitur to what I said.

There are bigger problems with increasing limits than just changing a number and compatibility. Many of these things don't scale well in the Myth engine... i.e. if you want thousands of units on the screen at once, you probably need to consider redesigning how Myth handles units entirely, not just increase the limit to 1000.