With the release of version 1.4 of ECWolf, the engine now provides multiplayer! This is a collection of questions covering common issues specific to this feature of ECWolf.
For more information or to see how to get started, there is a collection of official Multiplayer Notes on the ECWolf website, worth reading.
ECWolf 1.4 applies the limitations of Rise of the Triad: Dark War, supporting up to 11 players (Including the host).
With some tweaking or use of third party software like Hamachi, it is possible to play ECWolf 1.4 over an Internet connection.
Caution should be advised though; ECWolf expects latency between players to be *at worst* 1/70th of a second, and will compensate for higher latencies by dropping frames to keep up. In situations of poor connection this can lead to an unplayable experience.
Most mods that work on ECWolf 1.4 are multiplayer-compatible. Support will vary however, as limitations will be down to what an author includes in their files.
As an example, this screenshot of multiplayer from AstroCreep's "Nitemare: HUGO'S REVENGE" shows a player character with it's own custom sprites, but the shooting sprites are only from the front (Like an enemy), which could be confusing if you need to know what direction a player is firing at.
By default, ECWolf doesn't come with sprites for the player character. For Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny and many mapsets and mods, you can use the Multiplayer Patch For ECWolf to add player sprites as well as most enemy rotations.
While enemies will shoot in all directions in co-operative multiplayer, the game doesn't have the sprites to show this, defaulting to the original shooting sprite.
For Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny and many mapsets and mods, you can use the Multiplayer Patch For ECWolf to add player sprites as well as most enemy rotations.
In projects with custom enemy sprites, it will be up to the author to provide the rotation sprites.
Multiplayer support is currently focussed on co-operative experience, but very basic groundwork for deathmatch exists.
To start a deathmatch game, the Host needs to add the
--battle
parameter when starting the game. Enemies will be removed from the game, and players will be able to shoot and damage each other, with a point going to whomever successfully kills another player.
However as player lives are currently infinite in multiplayer, and there is no victory condition, these games are endless until players exit.
While there are no explicit plans, ECWolf may receive updates expanding options for multiplayer in the future.
LZWolf was forked from ECWolf 1.3 to enhance the suite of modding features available to creators, and Linuxwolf has no current plans to rebuild the engine for multiplayer.
This may be subject to change.