[REL, Experiment] Automatic Matchmaking [DISCONTINUTED]

Discussion in 'Mod Discussions' started by cola_colin, September 17, 2013.

  1. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    So I am playing around with possibilities for an automatic matchmaking system I want to plug in the gentlements ladder.
    Basically a mod that allows you to click a button in the game "Ranked match", I guess everyone here has an idea how such a button usually acts: It throws you directly into a 1v1 if an opponent is available.

    This mod currently is not really complete as it does only provide matchmaking (using a simple first come first serves concept), so far no results are posted to the ladder. That's a todo once I have matchmaking in general working.

    The mod suffers from the same problems as normal lobby creation, so sometimes it ends up with the wrong planet (currently, if it works right, it should always place you on neptunia, but that can change in the future) or gets rejected by the server. It will automatically retry in these cases, however I do have the feeling that it sometimes gets stuck somehow. If you are waiting more than ~60s on a screen that tells you anything but "Searching 1v1" you are stuck and should click back and retry it yourself.

    Also the games hosted by the mod are basically public games telling others a game mode of "private game do not join", so it may happen that others are really quick and join. In the normal working case this is only a very small risk though, as the time the lobby is open should be less than ~10s

    If you encounter such problems I would be happy if you could tell me around what time it happend, as I am currently logging quite a lot of debug information on my server so maybe I can solve the problems with it.

    Download: http://nanodesu.info/stuff/pa/mods/ranked_matcher.zip

    To install unpack the folder in PA/media it contains a folder ui with a folder alpha and mods in it. It adds a new scene, and so far I only seem to be able to place those directly into the alpha folder. You can enable the mod using the ui mod manager as usual or with this ui_mod_list_entry:

    'start': [
    '../../mods/ranked_matcher/start/ranked_matcher.js'
    ],

    After it is installed you should see another button in the main menu called "AUTO MATCH". Click it.

    I'd be happy if some people can try this out and confirm it working before I continue evolving it to report results to the ladder. Ofc there will probably be only very few people trying it, so I'd recommend to use the irc to look for people to try it with. Or you let it keep searching for hours ;)
  2. gorerillaz

    gorerillaz Member

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    I'll check it out when I get home
  3. masterdigital

    masterdigital Uber Alumni

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    We may be able to add a game mode flag for this. If you look under the hood at normal quick match, the game mode flag is QuickMatch2. We will eventually add ranked matches, but we could probably add in the game mode descriptions before we implement the feature. So we might add RankedMatch2 mode, but not doing anything with it for a while.

    So we started out using QuickMatch4, but changed over to QuickMatch2; however, QuickMatch4 still works and is already filtered out of the server browser...
  4. oxide246

    oxide246 Active Member

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    Eventually I plan on trying something similar with a tournaments mod. I'd like to grab the online status of all the players in all the registered matches you are in on my website. If all the players are online for a match then a button will appear somewhere to join the match. It will load the planet configuration from my website and only those players on the website will be able to join the match.

    There wouldn't need to be any restrictions on the Uber end to prevent people from joining as long as it's not public. Maybe I could use the QuickMatch4 game mode too? Or might I get ladder people joining as well if Colin implements his thing there..
    zaphodx likes this.
  5. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Nice I guess I am gonna change it to use QuickMatch4 :)

    EDIT @oxide:
    No I don't identify games to join by the gamemode. The gamemode is just a random string that I set to a value meant to keep other people out of the game.
    Last edited: September 18, 2013
  6. masterdigital

    masterdigital Uber Alumni

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    Keep in mind, the matchmaking server will wait for all players to start a game. QuickMatch4 requires 4 players, so it will only work for 1v1v1v1. QuickMatch games don't allow a game config message, so it will only work for FFA and you won't be able to upload custom planets.
  7. zGeneral

    zGeneral Member

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    Thanks Cola_Colin for the great effort.
    I was thinking even when Uber releases the official quick rank ladder matchmaking we could still have a great use of your mod to have custom ranked ladders. that is a ladder with specific game rules (planets/units restrictions/clans...etc)
  8. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Oh, so the name actually does result in different behavior of the same. So far I thought it has no meaning to the server and is only used as a freetext field for the gamemode. I guess I can't use it in that case, as I want to create 1v1 on specific maps.
    While you're so happily answering: How does the game configuration actually work exactly (or even more interesting: Why does it sometimes fail)? I understand that the host sends the configuration to the server on entering it, but does that only work once? When it fails to work correctly makes it sense to retrying to send the config message to the same server or am I wasting time by doing so?
  9. masterdigital

    masterdigital Uber Alumni

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    A server can only be configured once and only if the parameters sent to the server (by ubernet) allow configs. A custom game is setup to allow a single config message from the creator; quick match games use a preset config (since no player 'owns' the game).

    It (like all the alpha systems) is still buggy. I fixed a problem here that (sometimes) prevented the config message from being sent correctly and it might also have been a problem in the wild... If you find a repro case let me know.
  10. zihuatanejo

    zihuatanejo Well-Known Member

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    What a shining example of the development team supporting a modder :)

    Cola, thanks for making this, I'll try and help test it for you. Not played PA the last few days, kinda waiting for the next patch I think, and I've recently picked up playing Minecraft again on a slightly modified Feed The Beast Unleashed server (it is frickin' awesome :p).

    Being able to start a game and tick a 'ranked match' box, and have the game automatically update the ladder, would be fantastic.
  11. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Kudos to thedbp who is the only person who actually tried to search a game for a few seconds ;)
    I guess setting up a matchmaking system isnt really possible with a mod that people need to find somewhere in the forums.
  12. zGeneral

    zGeneral Member

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    Do not get disappointed
    It is just that it seems most of us are not playing waiting for the beta
  13. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    I did expect this to not be very successful tbh, that's why I wrote experiment in the topic. The one big advantage of a automatch system, that all people have it per default, is just not doable with a mod.

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