Hey folks, I’m trying to make my solo module multiplayer-friendly and I’m running into a problem with cutscenes that trigger immediately after an area transition. As far as I can tell, loading a new area causes a delay which is different for different players, so when the first player arrives in a new area and triggers a cutscene, other players can arrive late to the party and miss the cutscene code.
I can work around this problem by moving the trigger off the arrival point, which will allow players to wait for everyone to arrive before proceeding. But that can be awkward from a story perspective and I’m wondering if there’s a better solution.
You could probably black screen of all players until the last one doesn’t trigger OnEnter of the area, then clear it.
But there is going to be a potential issue with the player crashing/quitting half the way of the area loading.
So maybe just add maximum wait time like 5 seconds. If this is not an area made in Castle Rural 1.69/Medieval or some custom tilesets, then loading shouldn’t take long anyway.
Unfortunately the MP dynamics are such that content generated OnEnter is a bad idea, because the game can’t take into account the varying network load times for actual “arrival” from the player perspective. This is why as a module author or DM you shouldn’t spawn hostiles at the arrival point.
Some design adjustment is probably inevitable, but having a small room/sub-area as the arrival point and then a trigger when the party departs it may be the easiest work-around. Occasionally people drop during transitions too, so even putting in a delay may not help, if someone has to re-log and misses the cutscene as a result.