Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

[pcwzrd13]

Here's some more info from Scott on this:

We talked about it, but performance was a big concern.

My understanding is that you can increase the number of players on the server, but the game (client) will actually boot you when it realizes that there are more than 4 players. I am pretty sure that this is something that is hard-coded in the game.

I'm guessing that even if you got it to accept 8 players, the framerate would take a significant hit.

[HuntrRose]

maybe we can find someone to port it to PC ?

[pcwzrd13]

maybe we can find someone to port it to PC ?

[moi]

I'm guessing that even if you got it to accept 8 players, the framerate would take a significant hit.

The bottleneck would be the connection speed and ping time. Q3A is already using some movement prediction algorithm in order to secure seemingly fluent gameplay.

FPS rendering wise could be optimised depending on map geometry and whether the item models are switched into sprites.
There are also some other limits such as maximum amount of entities for a map to be considered.


Imho 6 players at once could still be made playable on smaller maps.

[Xiden]

Is it possible to use code breaker to change this hardcoded value?

[moi]

Is it possible to use code breaker to change this hardcoded value?

Not with codebreaker. the codes would have to be huge. Patching the game's main binary is the only way to go.

However you could try to edit out the checks inside the algorithm responsible for whether maximum number of players has been reached in game, which might lead to unpredictable behaviour in game's stats etc.




@Mechanic: Does the DC in-game stats screen change when you're playing as 5th player? Does it show your player at all? Does it hide one of the bots then?

[Mechanic]

If I add 4 bots and dc client I get booted instantly. IF I connect 4 versions of my pc q3 and place them in the middle of the map then connect the dc . the dc will boot before u can reach the part of the map with the other 4 players. I go to the stats on dc client it only shows 4 then I get booted. If I connect to the server and type sv_maxclients with my patched iso it now says 8 instead of 4

[Mechanic]

Interesting results Mechanic, appreciate the time you're taking to test this for us.

Thankyou but I think the programmer had a hardon for 4 players lol

[Bob Dobbs]

A valiant try!

[Mechanic]

Thx bob cheers. @ moi ...give me some more ideas I'll keep testing it