Multiplayer Party: How many...

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               Hiya everyone!

Does anyone
know if there is a limit to the number of people that can join a party in
multiplayer? if there is, what is it?

Also does anyone know the
difference between:

1- GetFirstFactionMember();

and

2-
GetFactionLeader();

I'm just wondering as to me it seems to be the same
thing?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lightfoot8]

               â€Ž1) I do not know of a limit on party size

GetFirstFactionMember set up the ittorator for use with GetNextFactionMember.

GetFactionLeader Gets the leader of the party. If the party leader has changed it may not be the FirstFactionMember.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               Goody, thanks much!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               AFAIK, there is no limit available for the number of players that can party up - probably there is one, but as it is probably higher than any PW connection can support (re: over 64), so that it does not matter.

I suppose one could technically try to "test it" on a LAN system...one would have to get ALOT of players together, however...I suspect 256 or so.

I suspect the lag monster would probably "break" it before the limit, tho.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_SuperFly_2000]

               Yeah, the party system is very lagg sensitive so even though there is no theoretical party size limit in practice parties bigger than 10 often get errors...

So...what I am trying to say is...there IS actually a party size limit...only that it differs a little depending on the hardware and internetconnection used...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lightfoot8]

               After thinking a bit.  I would say the limit is the same as the number of players allowed.  It would not make since for it to be anything else since you can set an INI setting to force all players into one party.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               But perhaps there is a hardcoded limit in the engine?  Would be interesting to test it IMHO.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Failed.Bard]

               PC, plus familiar, companion, dominated NPC, and summons, could mean as many as 5 party members per PC before you start taking henchmen into consideration.  I think they would have had to set the limit fairly high considering that, if there even is one.
               
               

               
            

[Baaleos]

               A party is essentially a faction.

If you use the DM Client, you can force a player, to occupy the same faction as npcs.
Then all the enemies in the module, appear as your party members.

dm_setfactionenemy

then use on a player.

While not exactly the same, it does sort of suggest that factions/parties have no upper limit defined, other than what the server itself can support as a player limit.

eg- You can have as many party members as you want.
You just cant have as many players as you want.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               On a mostly-related note, I came across a really interesting post about just how much lag parties can generate and why.  It's from the old BioWare forums but I'm sharing it because the mechanics of the behavior (which is also related to faction behavior) were confirmed by Georg Zoeller.  You can view it HERE. 

I use the NWN Omnibus, which allows me to search through thousands and thousands of messages and BioWare documents all at once without having to be online.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               Better to copy and paste here, OTR..then we have it in these forums.

Party = Lag
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From: Seattle    Posted: Wednesday, 28 July 2004 01:00AM
If you're going to party at all, it should be small groups. As groups grow, the amount of information being transferred grows dramatically.

1 player shares info 1 way (self)
2 players share info 2 ways (each other)
3 players share info 3 * 2 ways = 6
4 players share info 4 * 3 ways = 12
5 players share info 5 * 4 ways = 20
6 players share info 6 * 5 ways = 30
7 players share info 7 * 6 ways = 42
20 players share info 20 * 19 ways = 380
45 players share info 45 * 44 ways = 1980

It should be obvious here that 2 groups of 2 players (info shared 4 ways) is better than 1 group of 4 players (info shared 12 ways).

5 groups of 2 players (info shared 10 ways) would be better than a group of 10 players (info shared 90 ways).


We have thoroughly tested this and there is a MASSIVE drop in server CPU usage and lag when people drop party.

Brynsaar ran an event with 38 players all in a single party. We spawned 3 creatures and CPU went to 98%, 60 second delays for actions.

Everyone dropped party and we had no lag.

Split into two groups in 2 areas with 10-15 creatures attacking each group and there was barely any lag. This happens nightly on Bryn, we get 40+ logged in, start to lag, I shout for everyone to leave parties and BLAM zero lag.

The lag beast has been in our face for years and no one saw it.
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Georg Zoeller
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From: Austin, TX    Posted: Wednesday, 28 July 2004 01:27AM
That is correct. The more people are in a certain faction/party, the longer operations that target the faction as whole will take. NWN's focus is the party between 1-8 players, anything above should be avoided (by activating multiple parties).

Also keep in mind that certain functions in game and scripting work based of your whole faction (a party is just a faction).

If all your monsters are in the same "hostile" faction, they might get informed of certain events by scripting or in game (i.e. Player X just changed his stance to our faction to "hostile"). If you divide your monsters into more different factions (i.e. "The swamp ogres" or "the mountain trolls"), you will save CPU time, especially if you use scripting functions like GetFactionBestAC* or other faction related information.
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From: Seattle    Posted: Wednesday, 28 July 2004 07:20AM
I've been running a server for almost a year now and had no idea about this. Is there any way this can be stickied somewhere or added to a post that is stickied?
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From: San Francisco, CA    Posted: Wednesday, 28 July 2004 11:54AM
another thought... is there any way to script in a hard limit as to how many players may be in a party?
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From: Seattle    Posted: Wednesday, 28 July 2004 03:32PM
1.63 perhaps
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Georg Zoeller
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From: Austin, TX    Posted: Wednesday, 28 July 2004 06:05PM

   Quote: Posted 07/28/04 11:54:39 (GMT) by Liberty Valance

   another thought... is there any way to script in a hard limit as to how many players may be in a party?


Can probably be scripted with existing functions (GetFirstFactionMember / GetNextFaction) etc.
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From: WA    Posted: Thursday, 29 July 2004 12:18AM
This is old info about how expensive partying can be.

Anyways you can limit party size by making a few checks in a custom script:

1) Use a pseudo-heartbeat script to check for each party leader and find the size of his party. From there you can punish or remove people from a party.

2) You can make a custom exp script (in ondeath of creature) that first checks if the number of PCs in the radius exceed some number, then if they do exceed some set party size give no loot or exp.

I think if you read my post at the top of the admin forum it has some good tips on improving performance. I really need to update it as I have a ton of new things to add to it. I can host 50/50 players with 0 lag (my only bottleneck id CPU atm), so I suggest you read it if you want to optimize your module.

Narc
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From: Illinois    Posted: Sunday, 08 August 2004 04:22AM

   Quote: Posted 07/29/04 00:18:58 (GMT) by NarcissusLair
   2) You can make a custom exp script (in ondeath of creature) that first checks if the number of PCs in the radius exceed some number, then if they do exceed some set party size give no loot or exp.


Divided kingdoms did this for three reasons; one, after HotU if you were above a certain level you got no XP (this was fixed in one of the patches), B. they set it up so that you have to be within like 4 or 5 of the average level of the party to get any XP so that way they could limit power-levelers, and 3C. they also did it in such a way that if there's more than four people in the party, your XP goes to crap. Visit the server sometime, it's pretty cool.
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From: London UK    Posted: Sunday, 08 August 2004 11:55AM

   Quote: Posted 07/28/04 01:27:28 (GMT) by Georg Zoeller

   That is correct. The more people are in a certain faction/party, the longer operations that target the faction as whole will take. NWN's focus is the party between 1-8 players, anything above should be avoided (by activating multiple parties).


How are players supposed to know this? Where are we told what "NWN's focus" is?

For that matter how are DMs supposed to know who is in what party? There is no way of telling unless you create your own widget.

If you did write a script that looked for oversize parties, what action is that script supposed to take? Who do you boot and why? There is no way of knowing who most recently joined the party and no party-change detection events.

Seems to me that since there can in theory be 64 players the game engine should have taken this into account.
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Georg Zoeller
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From: Austin, TX    Posted: Sunday, 08 August 2004 11:43PM

   Quote: Posted 08/08/04 11:55:38 (GMT) by He Who Watches

   Seems to me that since there can in theory be 64 players the game engine should have taken this into account.


That's why there is a "only one party" switch right on the server. If you switch it off, people can form parties for themselves which usually self regulates the server.
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From: Ottawa, Ontario Canada    Posted: Thursday, 12 August 2004 05:45AM
Thanks for posting the info about this but my only beef is....i come online to play with friends. To party and to slaughter bosses. On average our party sizes about about 9 to 10 people.

I'm disapointed and sad that from now on i have to leave 3 or 4 people out of the party because server can't support big parties.

After a hard day at work nothing i like more then to come online join my friends and laugh while adventuring.
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From: WA    Posted: Thursday, 12 August 2004 05:57AM

   Quote: Posted 08/12/04 05:45:14 (GMT) by Sifthor

   Thanks for posting the info about this but my only beef is....i come online to play with friends. To party and to slaughter bosses. On average our party sizes about about 9 to 10 people.

   I'm disapointed and sad that from now on i have to leave 3 or 4 people out of the party because server can't support big parties.

   After a hard day at work nothing i like more then to come online join my friends and laugh while adventuring.


Nah you can have a larger party. I have had battles with over 20 players in the same screen with 50 monsters, with only minimal lag...what it comes down to is your hardware and bandwidth...
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From: Manitoba, Canada    Posted: Thursday, 12 August 2004 01:47PM
I can't say for sure if this is correct, hopefully one of the BioWare devs will post and confirm this or not...

I would imagine that since NWN uses linked lists, that creatures returned by GetNextFactionMember() will be in the order that they joined the faction/party. If such is, in fact the case, it is possible to tell who the last/later party joiners are. It does not solve the issue of removing the party member though (aside from a boot).

I haven't done any tests to verify this myself as I don't have any interest in limiting party size in my own mod at this time. It just seems to be a logical assumption.

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Until this post this is something I had never come across and though I havent noticed it on my server, I do have a question. Would summon's and dominated creatures further affect this?
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From: WA    Posted: Thursday, 12 August 2004 08:56PM
Yes.