Curious about how it works~!

[theominousmrv]

Hello. I have seen both Populous Reincarnated and Cncnet5, and am quite interested in how they do some of the things they do. There are many other games out there, whose community could gain a lot from having a similar client be made, and maybe one day that'll be a possibility.

 

I am mostly curious on how the client launches the game, and how it emulates the game's lobby. I know that the game is probably launch with target parameters, as many a game has one for both hosting and joining games, or they edit a config entry that would allow the online play. But then i get confused on how the lobby is simulated, and how that information is carried to the game.

 

It'd be cool to know how this stuff works. I'm not looking to see any code or anything, but a rough explanation of what it does to achieve launching the game with lobby settings.

 

Also will random map generation be something that's also simulated in the lobby later? i noticed i can generate maps in Tiberian Sun to play, so i was curious when i could not in the cncnet lobby :3

Any answers are welcome~

[FunkyFr3sh]

We were just stealing the idea from westwood chat and mplayer, those networks already did the same

 

It would be nice to support more games, but it requires a lot of modifications in the game code to skip the menus and forward all the internet traffic through our servers. Since the most games are not open source you would need to reverse engineer them to make it working

 

I doubt we will add support for random maps At least no one is working on it atm, it could be added if someone is willing to spend the time to code it

[theominousmrv]

mplayer? o3o

 

Hm i see. Though I thought cncnet didn't modify any pre-existing files? Does it use ones it is packaged with instead of ones the game usually uses? (when using a pre-installed version of the game. Or does that no longer work?)

[FunkyFr3sh]

We ship our own game executable through the updater to ensure the original game stays untouched. Our executable loads different files (some have just changed names and others are completely new files), that allows us to tweak settings and fix bugs, but also allows us to add support for new ingame theaters for example. The original game will just ignore these files since it doesn't know them

[theominousmrv]

RIGHT right right, executable is that. Interesting o3o Though also unfortunate as it probably means the community has to have some decent devs behind it to ever make a matchmaking client of similar power to cncnet. And now that i think about it, Populous Reincarnated also issues a collective patch for the game that's needed before the matchmaker can play the game. They must do the same thing,

 

Ah i was hoping it would be easier than that, but of course it isn't x3

 

Then i have another question. I know that the TS Full Installer is considered outdated. How well does it work when cncnet is installed to it? does it have any outstanding issues?

[FunkyFr3sh]

Yes it is tricky and you won't see things similar to cncnet on many places

 

You can get the new installer here: http://tore29.com/tsins/TSinstaller3-beta10r3.exe

 

The old one should be ok too, since we are using a different executable for cncnet anyways But the new installer comes with an updated config program/game launcher and map editor, it is worth downloading it

 

[theominousmrv]

Oh thanks~! Good to see an updated installer. Thanks for your time :3