Stk-code: More handicap options

[Alayan-stk-2]

In multiplayer (and in the latest master, also in single player iirc), it's possible to choose to have an handicap making the kart having a lower top speed and a slower acceleration. This option is meant to allow two players of different levels to enjoy playing together, by making so that the better can still try to drive as well as possible without winning easily.

There is currently only one possible level of handicap. If the level of the players are not that different, it may be too strong, so a more middle level would be useful. If, however, one of the player is a novice, it's still not enough, and an even stronger handicap would be appreciated (it's still possible to beat the AI easily when playing in intermediate with the current handicap activated, so a stronger level wouldn't make this impossible).

Some UI changes for the setting of the handicap level would also be needed ; by separating it from the player's name/profile choice.

[Benau]

Edit stk-config.xml yourself

[Alayan-stk-2]

Because of course the average STK players will go edit stk-config.xml when they need to use the handicap options.

And if there are three players of three different levels, they'll love to have only "no handicap" and "handicap" possibilities rather than the possibilities of having different settings like "no handicap", "small handicap", "medium handicap" and "large handicap"... !

[auriamg]

This is not a priority, so we are not likely to work on it, though if you are willing to make an improved UI for handicaps I'll sure consider it. It should remain simple please though, we don't want to complexify the code much for such a rarely used feature...

[hiker]

TBH, I never saw the need for adding a handicap in the first place, so making it more complex is certainly nothing I would want to do. And with complex I mean not (only) the additional code, I also mean our GUIs become unnecessary complex, the meaning of the symbols becomes more difficult, we need more things to consider and debug in networking, ...

And Benau is just about to add a ticket saying that it does not even work atm (or at least not for all karts) - considering that no one complains my feeling is that handicap is mostly dead code that was added for a very very tiny minority :)

IMHO I would close as "won't fix", since this makes an (imho) already less than ideal situation worse, but am happy for a discussion ;)

[Mrxx99]

I would suggest disabling it for network, don't see so much sense there. But it should be kept for splitscreen multiplayer and for that I think having three levels would be a good idea.

[nado]

I'd love to be able to have a nicer handicap option so that I wouldn't win 100% races with friends not used to the game.
I agree with Mrx99 it should be for split-screen only, not network.

[Benau]

make no sense in network is a lie; if network handicap is too difficult to test / fix / implement so forget about it and let me enjoy it only in splitscreen is truth

If that's the case i should get rid of this completely from stk, because you are double-standard and hypocritical

[Alayan-stk-2]

There is nothing hypocritical here. You're right that handicap can make sense in network.

However, when hiker suggests completely removing handicap because it's hard to get right with networking, he suggests downgrading the experience for those who make use of the feature in splitscreen (and who would appreciate having this feature even better).

The difference of level between a STK newbie (with still some game experience, so able to grasp the basics after a bit) and an experimented player is big enough that without handicap, local multiplayer between both is completely uninteresting.

And when trying to present STK to anyone with a local multiplayer game, you have the newbie-vs-experimented situation.

[nado]

Actually, having a slider for selecting percentage would be awesome.
Something that would move by 5% to be controller-friendly, and hidden to not bloat the UI.
It could then be brought up by pressing "Select" button and we could set up the level of handicap.

[Benau]

This will not work, not all handicapped entries are direct propartional

Keep it mind it also take a few time penalty into account

[Benau]

handicap is fixed by d17fddc, actually you can already has implicitly 3 levels of handicap by choosing easy, medium of hard difficulty, because the handicap is * the base value

[Mrxx99]

Benau, to your comment to my comment:
It's neither a lie, nor hypocritical, nor double-standard. I can't lie if I don't make a statement. I just said "I don't see so much sense". Why I see this is the same what nado explained on IRC, on network you play mostly against strangers (or friends and strangers) and those who play online have more experience than someone I play against in splitscreen, who never played it before. Maybe I should have explained it better.
Also I did not say handicap must be removed on network and neither did I say anything about "no sense". I said "I don't see so much sense". And I thougt if it causes problems on network and (in my opinion) it is not as useful on network as on splitscreen, it could be removed from network. But if it can easily made usable on network there is nothing against implementing it.

[Alayan-stk-2]

@Benau The commit improves things significantly, but I'm not sure to understand what you mean by "implicitly 3 levels of handicap" ? Sure, in easier difficulties, the AI is easier to beat and so the handicap is not as relevant against it as in higher difficulties ; but what matters here is the delta it can offer between two human players to compensate for their skill difference ; and there is still only a single possibility.

Thinking about it, it would be nice if it was possible to have the reverse of a handicap (boosts to help a newbie), but it wouldn't work well with networking (a player shouldn't be able to boost himself here).

[hiker]

OK, considering that there are more people interested than I thought, I am happy to take this on board with (very) low priority for now. My main issue is actually the GUI. We need to convey more information to the user, have more settings, ...

One option: would it help if we just left it with one 'handicap' value, but allow people to pick different kart class (atm we have 'difficulty to include both - it affects the AI and the kart specs). E.g. you could play on (what is atm) 'easy', and we could call it "50cc" ... well, whatever ;) Or maybe if we allow this we would not even need handicap?

Re handicap and networking - afaik this actually works more or less automatically (atm), it's again more of a GUI issue for me.