[Jonatan]

I've speculated for quite some time on wether or not two player engines can join the same train but never had the chance to try it.

Does anyone who work with the code know if it's possible to do? Would the simulation support it or would it crash the moment the trains join togeather because of an error?

Have anyone else wondered the same or tried it yet? And if so, what happened?

[Csantucci]

If I remember well, if one player attaches his loco th another player's loco, one of the locos becomes slave of the other one, and the related player can only watch the game. Maybe if later the player with the master loco detaches the two locos, the slave loco's player gets back the control of his loco.

[alifatico]

Weter, on 16 October 2022 - 06:18 PM, said:

If no one notice this question, try to ask Alifatico via PM: he says, they play MP very often.

Thanks Weter for the allusion.

Our multiplayer experience on this has always been inadvertently, two trains have been coupled or collided due to some circumstance such as failures in the paths.

When this happens, the two trains come together logically and one of the players must undock (F9) and they must retake control of the train.
In our experience, when this has happened, unfortunately the server seems to lose sync and the game becomes unmanageable and the server has to be restarted.

I hope the opinion is helpful.

On the other hand, we are now testing the multiplayer with activities and changing the train players within the session.

Best regards

Pedro.

[Jonatan]

Oh, well that's a shame. I am to asume there's also no easy, if any, way to change the code so multiple locos in one train can be controlled by individual players..?

[Csantucci]

Implementing such a feature would most likely lead to physic instability of the train, because there are delays due to the communication time between clients and server.

[Jonatan]

Sad news but I guess it's one of ORs code limitations, then.

Another multiplayer question is wether or not there could be two players co-oping on one locomotive as engineer and fireman in future? The owner of the train could delegate the firemans controls to another player coming aboard through means of a train menu of sorts?

[Weter]

Quote

players co-oping on one locomotive as engineer and fireman

Yes, it WAS declared as one of development plans for ORTS's MP concept.

Also, it would be very interesting and prototypic, as double traction by steamers was always not automatic, rather with DMU/EMU control.
Engineer of leading locomotive used special whistle sequences for letting trailing loco's crew to know, what to do. Well, both crews knew very well trck profile and maintained following strict rules about driving every type of trains (consistence, mass, etc.)

[Csantucci]

Jonatan, on 18 October 2022 - 06:06 AM, said:

Sad news but I guess it's one of ORs code limitations, then.

I see I couldn't explain well. It's not a code limitation, it's an unavoidable architecture limitation. The two players operate on two different computers, which communicate through the server. Computer communication introduces delays. So the changes in forces to the train, due to the commands of the two players, are out of phase. But I'd be happy if someone could deny what I have written, by providing working code for this feature.

[Jonatan]

It has been done in other simulators and afaik there's been no disasterous consequences of minor sync delays? Railroads Online seems to've worked fairly successfully as have Run8? But they might have a specific type of server for this that OR doesn't? My limited experience with OR multiplayer didn't rear any serious communication issues or lags that I noticed.

Only real known issues I've witnessed in those sims are graphical glitches like jittering and the like, only times something realy bad happens is if there's a serious delay or high ping but those problems are universal to all online games.

I think it should be possible...

[PerryPlatypus]

Would it be possible to implement a bit into the code where, when two players are operating different sets of locomotives in the same train, a coupler-breaking train force has to be sustained for at least 3 to 5 seconds continuously before the coupler will actually break? This is appropriate for more than just steam era. The ability to do manned helper/pusher operations (as it is called in the US and Canada respectively) via multiplayer in OR would be groundbreaking.

By the way- ideally we would have the ability to manually select which sets of locomotives in a train are controlled by which Player / "crew". For example, on Mullan Pass in the USA, the normal practice for heavy trains ascending the grade is that trains will have 3 sets of locomotives - front, middle, and rear. The rear locomotives will be DPU's controlled by the crew at the front of the train. The middle/mid-train locomotives will be operated by a separate crew. This takes lots of careful train handling, but the crews manage to do this multiple times per day, usually without issue :)