Clustered AI computing using MP

[Seabiscuit]

Hi all,

I'm sorta new here, havent posted, although I've been leaching information for the past year or so and been playing Flashpoint since the first demo hit the 'net.
I've been seriously editing, missions and scripts for the past 2 years and finally grew the spheres to introduce myself as I've been in awe of most of you since I found OFPEC.
This is just sort of a 'throw it out there' sort of idea that I got during a moment of induced inspiration.
I don't have anyone in my immediate area who is savvy enough to attempt this with but here goes.

The supposition is that in MP, and SP for that matter, the CPU controls the AI.
So, lets say youve got an MP mission, your a squad leader and you die.
Your AI squad, having been dealt the good fate of having Bremmers AI imparted on them continue on in a relatively intelligent fashion.
Now your opponent, on the other PC, stil alive goes on with the mission.
Wouldn't your opponent's PC have lesser lag by not having to compute the enemy AI movements?
Wouldn't the AI in essence be faster to react and your opponents PC be able to run smoother by not having to make those calculations?
I guess my real question here is, where does the AI run?
Does the opposing PC have to only calculate the renedering of the enemy objects and not its actual 'thoughts'?
Using this notion, isnt it possible to run all enemy groups on other PC's, perhaps with all graphics turned off and sounds turned off, etc to make the AI run better?
It would be cool if you could just run the rudimentary AI code without graphics at all, maybe just a radar screen of their position, on a group of networked PC's.

Like I said, if I had someone with whom I could try this, I would.
If anyone is interested in attempting my clustering idea, let me know, there's more inspiration where that came from.
Sorry if this seems like one of those 'undoable' or 'fantasy' ideas, it's really not meant to be, I actually think its feasable.

Time for a can of inspiration,

Seabiscuit...

[Pilot]

This is very interesting.

As I am not familiar with anything that has to do with mp, I can't tell you if you are right.  However, you can probably test this idea by making an mp mission, making a civilian playable, and then assigning the host computer as the civilian.  You can then turn the graphics, sounds, and other renderings off on the host computer.  Something like this may work, and it may not, I'm just throwing stuff out there.  I'm making the assumption the host computer does all of the calculating, leaving the other computers to simply draw what's going on.  Someone correct me if my assumption is false.

[Sui]

Welcome, Seabiscuit.

As far as I know, AI is handled by whose ever computer is it's group leader.

So if you're the leader of 8 AI, the logic for those 8 units is handled by your machine. Otherwise the server takes up the load.

I think the same is true of vehicles. The driver of a vehicle computes it's clipping/position etc.

Anyway, I'm not 100% sure on that as I don't even need one hand to count the number of MP missions I've ever written. However I'm pretty sure I heard all that from a reliable source...

[benreeper]

This is what I was thinking about.  

Two servers,  the main (transaction server) handles all of the multiplayer sendin/recieving, physics etc. and the second server will control all AI.  You could then have many computers/players connected to the server and hundreds of (smart) AI connected thru one computer (server).

Probably the future of MP.
--Ben

[Seabiscuit]

Student Pilot, Sui, and benreeper thanks for your responses.
And Sui, thanks for moving this to the appropriate local.
I was beggining to wonder if I was just too far out there or what though.

One point that a friend brought up this weekend was which computer kept track of objects such as bullets.
Bullets and other fast moving items positions need to be calculated as quickly as possible so that their physics stay as true as possible.
Older games such as Quake relied on the PC who shot the bullet to calculate its trajectory for all other players, for this reason a person with a slow machine was usually outdone by players with faster machines(remember how much fun that was?).
Now I suppose that all of my ideas could be tested using an event hadler, something along the lines of a script that loops and drops a hint on whomever's pc its running on?
I've attempted to create some MP games in the past, but like Sui they are limited, and, hopefully not like Sui, never worked well.

I'm still willing/wanting/curious to collaborate with someone on this idea as I don't have the means to do this on my own.