KO2 PC project

[dnielsen]

Good to see some action!

I would like to give an overview of the current situation and structure of design.

First, it may be a good idea to try out the Kaillera/WinUAE Kick Off 2 dedicated client that we currently have for playing on the PC:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15384


As far as I understand, the structure of this KO2PC thing we are working on consists of:

1) The Amiga code. Steve Camber is pretty much the only guy who can contribute here. The Amiga code is used to run the game itself (from the point where the players enter the pitch), and it runs via the

2) WinUAE application. WinUAE is used to emulate the Amiga on the PC.

3) Then we have the Kaillera application. This application is used for online p2p play. I guess it sorts of connects the two instances of WinUAE running on two different computers.

4) Finally, we are aiming for a user interface and any advanced functionality in a common Windows shell.


Ideally, we would like to "hide" WinUAE and Kaillera and have them run seamlessly in the background to serve our needs. I guess some tweaking could be required for this.

It may be a good idea to check how the Sensible Soccer have structured their client for both offline and online play. It's very lightweight and easy to use, and they have gotten rid of some bugs in Kaillera (Kaillera is not being developed anymore). It can be downloaded here (though link is currently down):

http://files.sensiblesoccer.de/Setup_ASWOS.exe


In my view, there is one target we should aim for above all:

One click to download, one click to start application. No fooling around with folders, unzips, etc. etc.


My broader vision is that KO2PC can be our way to preserve KO2, make it easier and more attractive for old-timers to get started again, and maybe even to develop new interest in the game. It can be marketed as the toughest and most intertaining footy game ever, especially if we create a "full-view" version and support it with more interesting stuff around the game (like updated teams etc.).

To serve this and other goals, one type of functionality that is crucial is:

Flawless online play functionality. A lobby and one-click-to-connect-and-play, pretty much. A lightweight server can host the lobby and detect IP addresses of players and feed them to the Kaillera part of the clients so that a "hidden" p2p connection can be established between two players.

Beyond that, we can add any number of features:

1) Convenient recording of games and replays.
2) Ranking system for online games.
3) Player Manager like functionality.
4) Bells and whisles.
5) ...

I concur that we should just throw around whatever alpha versions we already have so that we can begin to assess how and where to apply our working skills.

[baccardi]

ok, have a look: http://uploading.com/files/Y1PDJ6NY/kickoff2.rar.html
it's written with microsoft visual c++ 6.0. Do you have any irc channel, or a skype chat or smth?

[Patgom145]

Hi Baccardi,

You told me you were a beginner but I don't think a beginner can make this first version in few hours.

Good job and good pre-alpha.V0 version.

I think we can get in each menu and start to improve this version. I will look tonight at the options menu of every KO versions and I will make an exhaustive list (included KO2CV extra options). Everybody here can tell what options must remain, be removed, or be changed.

pg

[Patgom145]

Hi dnielsen,

I totally agree with what you wrote : we must create something easy to install and to use where the emulator and the Kailera must work in background. The online function must be simple too and very addictive.

Since I came back on this forum, I have read several posts of what I missed during the last years and I am very impressed of Steve Camber's work on KO internal functions. I don't even know how it is possible to do that without sources but all this work will be very useful for the next developments.

We deeply need someone in our team that can manage the network part of the game.
We will also need someone that knows enough about database.

pg

[dnielsen]

I have developed a website with the following functionality in an unrelated scheme:

Apache server with MySQL database. A website that with a PHP script that, together with the database, runs a dynamically updated ranking list.

I can probably tweak some of this to our purpose, with regard to the server stuff and scripts for registration of players, games, and rankings.

A question is how to structure this, since, instead of a PHP script contacting the server, it will be a Windows application contacting it!? (Sensiblesoccer.de do it in another way, where results are entered manually in their website, but I think it is more simple for the user to do everything within the Windows application.)

I don't know how to do this, but I could perhaps learn it along the way as also done with the website.

Nevertheless, it would probably be a good idea to dedicate a webpage to this stuff. A place to find the download with one click, and to see any relevant information about it also. I could help with this, as I know many others could also be interested.

[Steve Camber]

ok, have a look: http://uploading.com/files/Y1PDJ6NY/kickoff2.rar.html
it's written with microsoft visual c++ 6.0. Do you have any irc channel, or a skype chat or smth?

This is great! Just what I hoped for, keep going!

Glad to see VC++ 6.0, I been using use that for KO2CV.

[dnielsen]

Great work, Baccardi.

We have a Kick Off 2 IRC channel:

http://webchat.quakenet.org/?channels=kickoff

(not sure how to connect IRC to that, Rayge helped me with that).

It's mostly just populated at night with 2-3 eager KO2 players, but maybe it can be useful also for this purpose.

[baccardi]

ok, i've read all the posts in this topic and noticed that the project is going for several years already.
Steve, did i understand right: now you're using winfellow emulator? Could you show what you've already done?
Another question, we will be using emulator only for physics, but the graphics part will be done by our program? If it's so, are we going to improve how the game looks?
And how do you know amiga assembler? Were you a game developer for amiga back in the days (i'm just curious)?

[Steve Camber]

Yes, I found the winfellow source easier to work with. I cant remember the exact reasons now though!

The idea is that winfellow runs the kickoff game logic, but instead of rendering the sprites it produces, we read from it the data we need and render whatever we want.. for now that's just the same sprites, but could be a new set of "better" sprites, or 3d models. There is a complete 3d world in there just trying to get out!

I wrote AtariST games for fun from 1989 using 68000 assembler - luckily the same CPU as in the Amiga. By the time I got a job in the industry in 94, the Amiga was in decline so I never got to work on it.

[dnielsen]

I tried to google Winfellow + Kaillera. There were no obviously usable results. Anyway, Kaillera is used for p2p play on a lot of emulators, so in principle, why not also with Winfellow. To me it seems like a question of how much we would have/want to hack Kaillera/Winfellow in order to get online play. I mean, it's possible that we can even improve over normal Kaillera functionality with some mad hacking skills, in order to suit our particular needs.

So who among us is a potential Kaillera/Winfellow/p2p/network 1337 hacker?

[Patgom145]

Just to make you know, I ask Bacardi to develop a simple League Procedure that allows to create a League with 2-64 teams among international teams. I just ask to create the league with a very simple random score system and the ranking table.

The next will step will be to create the players statistics in function of the relative strengths of the teams (Spain players must be much better than Western Samoa players but one Western Samoa player can be exceptionnaly gifted).

- Have you got any idea to create randomly these teams ?

- Do you think we will use the KO2 internals calculations to make results between 2 teams played by the computer or do you want to develop a new function that calculates differently the results ?

bye,

[Steve Camber]

- Do you think we will use the KO2 internals calculations to make results between 2 teams played by the computer or do you want to develop a new function that calculates differently the results ?

KO2 already has a function to generate a CPU vs CPU result, so we should use this, unless we find we don't like the results!

[jesper]

I tried to google Winfellow + Kaillera. There were no obviously usable results. Anyway, Kaillera is used for p2p play on a lot of emulators, so in principle, why not also with Winfellow.

There is a client SDK on the Kaillera download page, so it should be pretty straight forward to interface with the kaillera client library. At every frame the joystick input values from each player it sent to the server.

To me it seems like a question of how much we would have/want to hack Kaillera/Winfellow in order to get online play. I mean, it's possible that we can even improve over normal Kaillera functionality with some mad hacking skills, in order to suit our particular needs.

Kaillera is closed source so not much hacking possible there. On our side of the fench some clever interpolation/extrapolation/delaying might help. Not sure