Feature Request: Add/Remove player to NetworkedObject

[angusmf]

My project doesn't spawn player objects as controllable objects because the player is supposed to be able to switch their control to any networked object that has player controls available. This means I need the ability to turn on player position synchronization for any object, as well as remove it. In the HLAPI this translates to:

• registering all prefabs I will use (by registering the SpawnHandler and UnSpawnHandler hooks,) spawning some objects
• spawning one permanent player object that serves as a persistent object for communicating with the server, such as to request a new netobject be spawned, or to request control of an existing netobject.
• once the server has been asked to spawn a player or grant control to a player, it can do appropriate checks, then add/replace that object in player control

I believe the only thing currently missing from MLAPI for this are signatures like:

NetworkedObject.AddControl(NetworkConnectionObject conn, bool replace)

NetworkedObject.RemoveControl(NetworkConnectionObject conn)

[TwoTenPvP]

You cannot change the player object. I.E the isLocalPlayer object. However, you can change the OwnedObjects.
NetworkedObject.RemoveOwnership & NetworkedObject.ChangeOwnership

This should be enough. Reopen if not.

[angusmf]

That should be fine. If not already there, a flag that indicates ownership would be nice so you don't have to track that yourself when calling those methods.

Out of curiosity, what is the functional difference between a player and something that has ownership? Just the isLocalPlayer flag?

[TwoTenPvP]

Yes, no difference. one of them has isLocalPlayer the other one has IsOwner. And owner objects can already be identified. Currently, they are not in the NetworkedBehaviour tho. You need to do networkedObject.IsOwner right now. Will be fixed shortly.

[TwoTenPvP]

isOwner has been added to NetworkedBehaviour.

[angusmf]

That's great, thank you. Is there a reasonable way to call a hook when these changes occur? HLAPI has methods OnStopAuthority and OnStartAuthority which are fired on classes derived from NetorkBehaviour, if present. This makes the change of ownership very easy to deal because I don't then need to send a second message to the client telling it what has changed. The HLAPI itself uses these methods internally, so you might find it useful anyway.

[TwoTenPvP]

Added two virtual functions to NetworkedBehaviour:
OnGainedOwnership and OnLostOwnership. Simply override them.

[angusmf]

Rad, thank you.