We've been playing with Parsec, a screen-sharing client that
Badnik linked in the thread. Long story short, initial results seem to indicate that it works. I don't want to jump the gun and say it's flawless in every way without more testing, but today I played S_M across the atlantic US-UK and was very competitive with maybe a few hundred ping and the occasional lag spike that lasted a second or so. If you know how awful hamachi was, this will blow your mind how good it seems so far.
In a US-US match I imagine the lag will be low enough to have actual competitive matches. We need to test it a bit more but I'm gonna throw this post out there in the mean time.
I want to do an tournament that has live players instead of AI controlling the bots. If Parsec continues to deliver, this could work.There are a couple of drawbacks. The way Parsec works is it's basically like a screen-sharing software like teamviewer. Basically one person hosts the match and one or more people connect to the computer.
Everyone technically controls the keyboard and mouse at the same time on the host's pc - once he has enabled it.
This might scare some people and is pretty trust-based. Technically a player could screw over another by pressing his controls. Thankfully there seems to be little risk of someone actually hijacking someone else's PC since the host has key commands to enable and disable all inputs but his own. I wouldn't bother enabling inputs until the match has started, then disable them once the match ends if I was the host.
There also is a bit of a trust issue in that the host would have to have all competing robots on his PC and could theoretically tamper with them. There's not really a way around this except for just trusting the host. Then again, AI tournaments are pretty much the same thing.
That said, I am willing to give it a shot. I want to test it with some US players first to see how bad the latency is, but I really want to do a tournament with this.
It could open up a huge assortment of building techniques etc once human drivers are common like I posted in the thread.----------
Basically what I am thinking, subject to change with feedback:
8 bots, 1v1, bo3, double elimination. Let's start small & basic.
Ironforge MW/HW. Standard rules, no RA2CF, BFE, etc. Just for the competitive angle.
Octagon Arena. One of the benefits of human driving is that we aren't stupid and can dodge hazards. I'm going to take advantage of it.
US entrants only. Sorry to the others. Let's keep the lag to a minimum, at least for now.
I will host. Right now I'm located in Arkansas, which actually is a pretty good spot with how central it is in the US- should help latency ideally.
Everyone would send their robots to me, and I would of course check to make sure they're legal. Since both parties need to have controls that could be played on the same keyboard, I would make 2 copies of the robots with one controlled with WASD and one with arrow keys (and maybe one with numpad if people want it). I'd tell each player which control scheme he got before the match.
2 people would join my stream and start the 1v1 while I record the matches. Not everyone necessarily has to do their matches at the same time, a single round taking place over a few days may be the best we can do. We'll have to play it by ear. If one person begins to take an unacceptably long time to join a match, they will forfeit a round.
If I find people screwing with others controls during a match, they will forfeit a round. Once is an accident. Twice gets a forfeit.
Once I got all the bots I would make the standard splashes and brackets and such. Preferably in a PM people would tell me what days & times they would be free along with their timezone.
Any major things I missed? Suggestions are welcome. I'm pumped.
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