Need for speed multiplayer: Need for Speed™ on Steam

Need For Speed Unbound’s Multiplayer, Lakeshore Online, Has Its Own Separate Progression

This week’s Need For Speed Unbound info drop is likely the last, as the release date creeps on closer.

The racing game by Criterion Games have released some fresh new gameplay trailer that shows how you enter a race (by going to a meetup), and snippets of what’s called a Speed Race. Nothing too crazy.

But you know what’s crazy? The multiplayer mode. It even has its own name, Lakeshore Online.

Unlike past Need For Speed games, Need For Speed Unbound has spun off its multiplayer mode into its own separate thing. Lakeshore Online does not share the same progression from the single-player campaign. So you will start out with a starter car even if you finished the campaign already.

You’ll create an online character (which seems to also be separate from the single-player mode), a starter car and then customise your banner, which lets you snap a photo of your character posing with your car.

From there, you can join Freeroam. A Freeroam server can have 16 players at a time, and cross-play is enabled by default (but you can opt-out). You can party up as a gang of four players and take part in races together- including private races with no randos. Races can have 8 cars max.

Like in single-player, you join races by driving to meetups, and from there can select a playlist of races to compete in. There are single-tier races where you just need a car of the same tier, and there are mixed-tier races where you need to use different tiers of cars. A loaner car is available should you not have the right car for a race.

While progression is separate, there are unlocks that carry over to Lakeshore Online. Completing the Qualifiers and the Grand, completing Delivery missions and other events in the campaign will give you unlocks in Lakeshore Online. Also, collectibles can be collected in both single-player mode an multiplayer and that progress is shared. However, the bank reward will only be awarded to the account of the current mode only. So weirdly, you might want to hold of collecting collectible collectibles in single-player if you want an edge money-wise when you begin Lakeshore Online.

What’s fascinating from the blog post revealing Lakeshore Online is what’s not available at launch. Right now, the world is locked to day time in Freeroam (races can still happen at variable time and weather). Pinkslip bets or sidebets are not available yet, and so are the new Takeover events.

This implies there’s more to come via post-launch updates. Back when it was announced, NFS Unbound was mentioned to have post-launch updates, but given the track record of past games it’s hard to be excited about it. Maybe Unbound will do more than the previous titles have added after the game releases, but let’s wait and see for now.

Need For Speed Unbound will be out on December 2 on the PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, EA App) and Xbox Series X|S.

Source: Need For Speed

Criterion GamesEANeed For Speed Unbound

5 changes to drastically improve Need for Speed Unbound

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12 Dec 2022 2:49 PM +00:00 UTC

Need for Speed Unbound has the potential to be the best NFS game in years with these changes.

By
Martin Bigg

Need for Speed Unbound is proving to be divisive. The bold comic-book-style visuals are a breath of fresh air, but the core gameplay is overly familiar.

From the intense cop chases to the aforementioned art style, there’s a lot to like about NFS Unbound. Unfortunately, a few setbacks prevent it from being the true return to form it deserves to be. Worryingly slow sales also indicate NFS Unbound isn’t generating the buzz a new NFS game should.

With that in mind, here are five changes that would drastically improve Need for Speed Unbound.

Table of contents

Fast travel

NFS Unbound’s open world is set in the fictional Lakeshore City inspired by Chicago. There’s a lot of variety from twisty country roads to highways and a quarry.

Escaping the cops in narrow alleys, hunting down collectibles, and smashing billboards is brilliant fun, evoking memories of Criterion’s Burnout Paradise.

But what lets the open world down is the lack of fast travel letting you teleport to map locations.

We take this for granted in other open-world games, but NFS Unbound doesn’t let you fast-travel to Garages, Safe Houses, or Meetups. While this encourages you to explore every inch of Lakeshore City and adds tension when avoiding cops, driving to the same Meetup locations over and over to start events gets laborious quickly.

An option to skip straight to events when you aren’t being chased by police or have a heat level would save time and improve the game’s pace — particularly in the early stages when money is tight and you’re stuck with your underpowered starter car.

Charging a small fee of in-game credits would also discourage players from overusing fast travel – but only if EA doesn’t exploit this with microtransactions.

Increase the sense of speed

When we first saw the gameplay reveal, the feeling of speed when racing through Lakeshore City was noticeably lacking. Thankfully, the final game lets you apply motion blur and camera shake effects. But even with these effects turned all the way up, NFS Unbound still lacks speed.

Admittedly, the sense of speed improves when activating nitrous boosts thanks to field-of-view changes. But when you aren’t boosting, tearing up the streets at 150 mph feels like you’re cruising at 50 mph on a leisurely Sunday drive.

NFS Unbound needs more speed to make exploring the city more enthralling.

Flesh out the multiplayer

Unlike NFS Heat, single-player and multiplayer is separate in NFS Unbound. Garage cars you’ve bought in the single-player campaign aren’t transferred to the multiplayer, meaning you essentially have to start your game progress from scratch online.

Unfortunately, the current state of NFS Unbound’s online multiplayer doesn’t give you any incentive to do this.

Although crossplay is supported, several key multiplayer modes are currently missing at launch. At the time of writing, there are no online cop chases, Takeover events, or even night-time cruising in online multiplayer.

And while up to eight players can enter Race Playlist events, multiplayer parties are downgraded from eight players in NFS Heat to just four in NFS Unbound.

There is hope, however, as EA says these missing features aren’t available “at launch.” Hopefully, this means they will be added in future updates because NFS Unbound’s barebones online multiplayer desperately needs fleshing out to keep players coming back after completing the single-player campaign.

Update the car list

NFS Unbound boasts the largest car roster of any NFS game. At launch, there are over 140 cars from A$AP Rocky’s heavily modified Mercedes 190E to the legendary BMW M3 GTR from Most Wanted.

However, most cars in NFS Unbound are borrowed from NFS Heat. There are a few welcome new additions to the roster such as the electric Lotus Emira sports car and the 2020 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, but the car list otherwise feels outdated.

Audi and Toyota are also conspicuously absent. Toyota is notoriously reluctant to license cars in racing games other than Gran Turismo and Forza. Unfortunately, this means the Toyota Supra has been missing in NFS for years, despite it being one of the most iconic tuner cars of all time.

Audi, on the other hand, was in NFS Heat, so the German brand’s absence in NFS Unbound is strange.

It’s not clear if NFS Unbound will get any DLC to expand the car list either. The Aston Martin DB11 Volante and McLaren F1 were the only DLC cars added to NFS Heat after launch and EA hasn’t revealed any update plans or season passes for NFS Unbound.

Option to turn off driving effects

Driving effects are easily the most divisive feature in NFS Unbound.

Taking the series in a bold new direction, NFS Unbound’s visuals blend photorealistic car models and environments with eye-popping cartoon effects and cel-shaded characters that look like they came out of Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse.

NFS Unbound’s dazzling driving effects are integrated surprisingly well, ranging from wings superimposed onto your car when performing jumps to colourful tyre smoke when doing burnouts.

While this helps NFS Unbound stand out, the driving effects are an acquired taste. You can tone them down, but there’s no option to turn off the driving effects completely at the time of writing, much to the dismay of some players.

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Genshin Impact guide — playing with friends, loading speed, launching problem and more

Genshin Impact — an attempt by Chinese developers from miHoYo studio to create Breath of the Wild, but in an anime setting. Despite the presence of numerous online aspects, the gacha game is more like a single-player RPG, and is distributed on PC, consoles and mobile devices for free.

However, Genshin Impact is still an online game, and this is due to several problems with connecting to servers and so on. Below we will share several methods for solving technical issues for the PC version of the game.

Failed to check for updates / Failed to verify files / Genshin Impact won’t start

Unfortunately, Genshin Impact has a lot of connectivity issues at the moment. Let’s hope that they will be solved with the release of official patches. One of the most common errors is Failed to check for Updates on the game launcher. There may be several reasons, but the result is the same — the inability to start the game. Many players claim that uninstalling and reinstalling does not give the desired result. However, several fixes have been proposed on the official forums of the game.

Fix launcher

The problem may be related to the presence of multiple hard drives. If you have two or more, try installing the game on the system’s main drive. You can also try launching the game from where you installed it. For example, from the C:\Program Files\Genshin Impact\GenshinImpact.exe folder.

However, for the owners of the console and mobile versions of the game, this advice will be useless. Apparently, most of the problems are related to the large simultaneous connection to the game. So, you need to wait until miYoHo solves the problems with server capacity. If you get the Couldn’t Verify Files message, the problem is probably an unstable internet connection when downloading the game files. Please try again later.

What is causing the slow download speed?

The main problem is low server capacity. Minor — how Genshin Impact is perceived by the Windows firewall. There is a thread on the game’s official forum that suggests disabling the firewall. To do this, it is recommended to go to the Windows security settings, click on the Allow an app through firewall item and select Genshin Impact. So you can increase the speed by 1-2 Mbps.

Co-op and multiplayer with friends

Genshin Impact can be played with friends, but the multiplayer mode itself will not open immediately. To make this happen, be patient and level up to Adventure Rank 16. After doing this, you can go with your friends to the dungeons. Up to this point, take a look at Paimon’s menu and add your friends’ UIDs (the number in the bottom right corner of the screen).

Upon reaching rank 16, a cooperative game item will appear in the Paimon menu. You will be able to choose different settings, invite friends or try to join them. Don’t forget that adventure rank is a completely different parameter. It is leveled up by completing story quests, opening chests, completing investigations, and defeating mini-bosses.

How do microtransactions work?

Since the game is free to play, the developers have no choice but to try to cash in on Genshin Impact through microtransactions. The concept of the game is simple: you control a squad of four characters (if you play without friends), each of which has its own weapons and skills to control a certain element. In addition to characters and items that drop out in the story, you can perform Prayers. Prayers allow you to knock out new heroes. These can be 3, 4 or 5 star characters or items. But the chance of dropping the rarest is miserable:

Three stars — 94.3%
Four stars — 5.1%
Five stars — 0.6%

By making a wish, you can get duplicates of already available characters or items. In addition to the main item, Prayer also earns you some Stardust, which can be traded with Paimon for other items. And for duplicate characters, you will receive star shine. Wishing can be done through Fateful Encounters and Intertwined Fates, which are unlocked at Adventure Rank 5 and 10, and can also be purchased with Source Stones.

In addition, there is another currency — crystals. They can only be bought with real money, and later exchanged for characters or items that increase their level. For crystals, you can buy a blessing that will reward you daily with 90 source stones for 30 days. This requires 300 crystals (or a little over $5).

How does cross-platform communication work?

Like literally every other game (except Fortnite), cross-platform communication is supported on all platforms except PlayStation 4. Owners of Sony consoles cannot play together with owners of the PC or mobile versions of the game. But when playing on PC or mobile, you can link your account to your miYoHo profile and then transfer your saves.

Multiplayer — Factorio Wiki

The multiplayer itself appeared in the 0.11.x version of the game and until now (0.12.32) it is playable only in networks with low latency (LAN). Those. the game between a player from Moscow and a player from Vladivostok will at least not be very pleasant, because the game takes the speed (tick-time) for everyone based on the largest delay between players. In any case, since version 0.12.0, the «lag hiding» function has appeared, which allowed the game to be smoother, without strong tick-time jumps.

Currently, the multiplayer in the game works according to the p2p (client-client) scheme, which means that there is no need for a server, although there is a game assembly, without graphical functionality (headless).

For any major functions (saving, entering the game, etc.) the game stops to synchronize between all players. This means that if any of the players has the autosave setting once every 1 minute, then all players, even those who have this setting turned off, will save the game once a minute.

Any player can enter an existing game using the IP address and port known to him. When a player joins a game, the game is automatically paused and the player receives a card. In the event that the game host finishes playing, then other players can continue playing ([untested] in single player) without interrupting the game.

Sometimes the game gets out of sync. The reasons for desynchronization can be different, from packet loss in the network, to different versions of mods. Prior to 0.12.30, the game only checked mod versions and did not check their hash, and some players could change the game and mod files without telling other players, which could very likely cause desync. When an out of sync occurs, the game is paused and all players download the map from the game host again, and after that the game automatically resumes.

1 Play via LAN / Internet
2 Factorio server or why p2p
3 Dedicated/Headless server
- 3. 1 Windows/Steam version
- 3.2 Windows/Standard version
- 3.3 It doesn’t matter if you have Steam or your regular version of the game
- 3.4 Linux
- 3.5 Dedicated/Headless server for 0.11.X version
4 game modes
- 4.1 Cooperative
- 4.2 PvP
5 Groupings
6 Technical details
7 More information/tools
8 More guides
9 More tips
10 Routing software

LAN / Internet play

Internet play is not guaranteed in 0.11.x version of the game. The number of lags in the game depends on the connection speed and delays between all players. Since version 0.12.x, it has become more comfortable to play via the Internet. there was a «hide latency» feature, but it’s still not perfect due to the p2p scheme, where the worst connection of the players is accepted for all.

All players must have the same version of the game and mods.
It is advisable for all players, except for the host, to turn off autosave.
By default, factorio uses port 34197 . The port can be changed here.
Factorio uses the UDP protocol, so make sure your router is configured correctly.
- The game implements its own packet delivery protocol, built on the UDP protocol, to reduce packet loss and problems with the order of packet delivery
- Make sure you have a properly configured firewall and that your antivirus software is not blocking UDP packets.
- The game host must have a white (visible from the Internet) IP address so that other players can connect to you.
- It is also possible to use various VPN tunneling software between players. In this case, your network turns into LAN over Internet, which does not remove the problem of delays, but removes the problem with NAT’om. Unable to play with 3+ players at the same time.
Theoretical player limit is 65535. 🙂

Factorio server or why p2p

There have been quite a few discussions about why the game does not use the client-server model. It was decided to leave the client-client model.

True, since version 0.12.x, a headless assembly appeared, which emulates the behavior of the server, but still is not, but simply becomes the host of the game.

Some references:

Information from developers
Older information
Good explanation

Dedicated/Headless server

As of 0.12.0 the headless/dedicated server can be started from the command line, with the ‘—start-server WASHWORLD.zip’ option.

In this mode:

The graphical part of the game does not initialize at all (faster loading, reduced memory consumption, fully works on servers where there is no graphical shell. For example, you can run a headless server on Debian)
The game starts instantly and loads the save(world) that was passed in the launch options.
The server does not put the player in the game like a regular host does.
The game stops when there are no players on the server.
When the server is closed, the game is saved. (autosave also functions normally)

You need to create a world in a simple game, because. the server does not know how to create worlds and it needs an already created world to run.

Below is the instruction for running the server on Windows or Linux

Windows/Steam version

Create a world in a regular game if you don’t already have one. Save it and remember its name.
Open Steam and select factorio
Right-click on it and select ‘Properties’
Next select the ‘LOCAL FILES’ tab
Finally click on the button VIEW LOCAL FILES
Change to the bin/x64 or bin/x32 folder

Windows/Standard

Create a world in a normal game if you don’t already have one. Save it and remember its name.
Open factorio installation folder
For x64 systems default

 C:\Program Files\Factorio\bin\x64\

For x32 systems default

 C:\Program Files\Factorio\bin\x32\

Then it doesn’t matter if you have Steam or your regular version of the game

Create a text file and open it for editing with Notepad
Copy the following into it

 Factorio.exe --start-server YOURSAVE.zip

Replace YOUR SAVE with your world name
Save the file as server.bat. IMPORTANT: When saving, select the file type ‘All Files’.
Use server.bat to start the server.
To close the server, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C . This is the only way you will end the server normally and it will save the game before exiting.

Linux

This guide has been tested on Debian version 8.2 jessie. It also doesn’t explain the firewall setup, in Debian this is done by the good old iptables, and that’s what Google is for.
This guide also assumes that you have at least some idea of how Linux works, otherwise you are doomed;)

And so, you have decided to use a headless server on Linux, in our case on Debian, well, let’s get started:

Download the latest version of the game from here, in our case now it is Generic Linux tar package (64 bit .tar.gz) (Attention: only for authorized users)

Unpack it

 tar -xzf factorio.tar.gz

Create folders mods, saves

 mkdir factorio/mods
mkdir factorio/saves

Load pre-built world into factorio/saves
You will most likely need to install libasound2

 aptitude install libasound2

Try starting the server

 factorio/bin/x64/factorio --start-server world.zip

If the server did not start, swearing at the lack of the necessary libraries, then you can install them simply by searching the repositories from the console

 aptitude search library_name

With a high probability, this library can be found in the repositories, if not, then search on Google or write on our forum.
You can install the library with the command

 aptitude install library_name

Try to start the server again, if it does not start again, repeat the previous two steps
You can see the list of libraries used by the server

 ldd factorio/bin/x64/factorio

Dedicated/Headless server for 0.11.X version

Oddly enough, there is a way to start a server in 0.11.X version of the game, but it needs a bit of work.

What needs to be done 0.11.x:

Linux Headless server / VNC
Dedicated/Headless server guide

Game modes

Co-op

This game mode is set by default and does not require any gestures to activate it.

PvP

PvP with the ability to create your own biters (obsolete)
Now (0.12.x) you can manually change the grouping] for each of the players via the game console. For example, for a player (in a single player game), you can change the grouping to ‘neutrals’ with the following command:

 /c game. local_player.force = "neutral"

Groupings

You can also create your own groupings (there can be 64 of them in total, including 3 native player, neutral, enemy). Here are more details about it.

 /c game.create_force('force 1')

Create a group called «force 1».

«player» grouping is used for all players by default

grouping «enemy» is used for biters

«neutral» faction is special, it is not enemy, can interact with other factions and can be used by other factions as well.

 /c game.get_player('friend 1').force = game.forces['force 1']

Changes the grouping of the player named «friend 1» to «force 1»

 /c game.forces['force 1'].set_cease_fire('force 2', true)

instructs «force 1» to attack another faction named «force 2», but not vice versa.

 /c for v in pairs(game.forces) do game.local_player.print(v) end

list of all factions that exist in this world

Technical details

Article: Friday Facts #76

More info/tools

Use mods: basic planner, Planning-Tool-Mod.

On 9 апреля, 2023 By alexxlab

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