How will the new multiplayer system work?

MikeMasters

Really excited to get some multiplayer action going for BG:EE but have a few questions

Will you have to join a game at the very start or is it possible to join mid-game?
If the host has SCS installed, does that mean everyone else must have it or it goes on the host mod?
If the host leaves the game, will it migrate to a new host?
Will there be some type of in-game chat?

Dee

MikeMasters said:

Will you have to join a game at the very start or is it possible to join mid-game?

Yes, it's possible to join mid-game.

If the host has SCS installed, does that mean everyone else must have it or it goes on the host mod?

Everyone will have to have the same mod setup in order to guarantee the connection is stable.

If the host leaves the game, will it migrate to a new host?

At the moment, if the host gets disconnected (intentionally or otherwise), the game session ends. There are some technical limitations to this, but that's not to say that it won't be changed down the line.

Will there be some type of in-game chat?

There's a text-based chat window in-game that players can use to communicate. At the moment there's no voice support; when I play multiplayer, my friends and I typically hop on Skype for voice.

MikeMasters

@dee thanks, had great fun in the beta and excited to get the multiplayer going.

AendaeronBluescale

Dee said:

At the moment there's no voice support;

@Dee please don't make voicechat mandatory. Voicechat costs about hundred times more bandwidth than text. Also, high quality VC will make the game unplayable for low-bandwidth (<256kbit/s upstream) connections due to insufficient upstream.

Besides that, there are still some mobile connection ISPs that ban VoIP and that would indirectly ban BG(2):EE for players who have to rely on such ISPs.

Dee

Well, I say "at the moment" because I don't know what we might do in the future. But if we do add voice support, we'll do our best to make sure it doesn't interfere with existing connections.