Ping categories, persistent markers, selection UI, and per-player/faction visibility filters by LumiLunaLuma · Pull Request #927 · rwmt/Multiplayer

LumiLunaLuma · 2026-05-19T19:31:46Z

Summary

Adds typed pings and persistent on-map markers. Players hold to open a radial wheel, pick a category, and release to send a ping or place a marker. Markers can be renamed or deleted by their owner or by the host, and each client can adjust marker opacity locally. A per-client filter hides markers by faction or by player. The host has a per-player marker cap and clear-all controls.

What changed

Six ping categories: Default, Attack, Defend, Help, Loot, Rally
Radial selection wheel on hold; release sends a ping or places a marker depending on the per-client place mode
Draggable menu window with the wheel on the left and a markers list on the right; click a row to jump to that marker
On-map click selects a ping or marker and opens an inspect pane
Marker rename and delete (owner or host), with per-client opacity
Per-client visibility filters by faction and by player, plus a master toggle for spectator markers
Host settings dialog with a per-player marker cap (synced via MultiplayerGameComp) and clear-all controls
New keybind MpTogglePingMenu with no default key, to avoid colliding with mod-added bindings

Wire and protocol

MpVersion.Protocol bumped from 55 to 56
PingLocationPacket carries a PingCategory byte and a UTF-8 label of up to 64 chars
New paired client/server packets: ClearMarkers, DeleteMarker, RenameMarker

Persistence

Markers are scribed on MultiplayerGameComp, so they're included in every save and in replay sections
ConvertToSp drops MP-only state (including markers); the pre-conversion replay preserves it for re-hosting
New MpSettings fields cover the wheel toggle, hold delay, place mode, last-used category memory, three window rects, the spectator-marker toggle, hidden factions and players, and per-marker opacity and visibility overrides. New scribe entries use an mp* XML prefix.

…tion visibility filters Adds typed pings and persistent on-map markers. Players hold to open a radial wheel, pick a category, and release to send a ping or place a marker. Six categories: Default, Attack, Defend, Help, Loot, Rally. Markers can be renamed or deleted by their owner or by the host. Each client can adjust marker opacity locally. A per-client filter hides markers by faction or by player, with a master toggle for spectator markers. The host has a settings dialog with a per-player marker cap and clear-all controls. Wire protocol bumps from 55 to 63. PingLocationPacket now carries a PingCategory byte and a UTF-8 label of up to 64 chars. New paired client/server packets: ClearMarkers, DeleteMarker, RenameMarker. Markers are scribed on MultiplayerGameComp, so they're included in every save and in replay sections. ConvertToSp drops MP-only state (including markers) on the way out; the pre-conversion replay preserves it for re-hosting. Per-client preferences (wheel toggle, hold delay, place mode, last-used category memory, window rects, hidden factions and players, spectator-marker toggle, and per-marker opacity and visibility overrides) live in MpSettings under an mp* XML prefix. New keybind MpTogglePingMenu with no default key, to avoid colliding with mod-added bindings.

notfood

From a cursory glance, it's looking good.

Instead of hardcoding the categories, it'd be nice to have it available in XML to allow more freedom for other mods to add stuff. Shouldn't be too complicated to make it dynamic. Just have PingCategoryExtensions read some <MultiplayerPingDef>.

Is the protocol leap necessary? Could be just +1.

LumiLunaLuma · 2026-05-20T05:40:32Z

From a cursory glance, it's looking good.

Instead of hardcoding the categories, it'd be nice to have it available in XML to allow more freedom for other mods to add stuff. Shouldn't be too complicated to make it dynamic. Just have PingCategoryExtensions read some <MultiplayerPingDef>.

Is the protocol leap necessary? Could be just +1.

Apologies with the protocol leap, you are correct it needs to just be +1, during dev I bumped each time I made a wire-incompatible change so that I could make sure I never connected with a test client on an older build, I'll bring it down to 56.

Will start working on a follow-up commit with the fix for the protocol leap and also implement the dynamic categories, should be a fairly simple update for it, just going to need to play around with the wheel but have a neat idea that I'm going to try out for the UI 😁

notfood · 2026-05-20T07:52:47Z

 using Verse;

-namespace Multiplayer.Client
+namespace Multiplayer.Client;


Please revert to block-scoped namespace for consistency across the project. File-scoped namespaces should be introduced in a separate, project-wide PR if we decide to go that route.

notfood · 2026-05-20T07:57:48Z

            var diffAt = FindTraceHashesDiffTick(local, remote, out var found);
            Multiplayer.Client.Send(new ClientDesyncedPacket(local.startTick, diffAt));

+            var snapshotInfo = TryRefreshSnapshotForDesync();


Any more details about this feature?

Sure no problem. I primarily used this on my side to get quicker debug info on desyncs I was hitting during dev. Essentially it gives you a quick snap point to when the desync got detected which is usually a few ticks after the actual divergence, but there's a Snapshot Lag Ticks field in the desync_info that tells you relatively how far behind it ended up. So you can load up the replay and look at what the world state was around the bad tick, instead of from the last cached snapshot.

Regarding what info it actually gives you, you can extract the replay.rwmts from the desync zip and use dev tools to inspect what was happening at that moment. For the marker work that was mostly visually checking which markers each client actually had on the map at a bad tick, combined with the stack traces in local_traces.txt that gave me a quick way to spot something like "client 1 has marker X but client 2 doesn't" without having to manually step to get there.

Implementation wise it's basically wrapping SaveLoad.SaveGameData + CreateGameDataSnapshot to grab the current state locally, without sending anything to the server or triggering a join point for other players. Runs on the main thread since I believe Scribe and Find.Maps aren't thread-safe.

Probably should've taken this out of the PR though, it was actually just a quick thing I added to get more debug info on my side and isn't really related to the category-pings PR. The other thing is, the way it's done currently means the embedded replay in the desync zip starts at the desync tick instead of the earlier cached snapshot, so you lose the ability to forward-sim from that earlier point and see the points leading up to the bad ticks, which is most probably more useful than the snapshot of information I was using. I was actually thinking of doing this as a separate PR where we maybe expand the desync zip to include both the snap-to-the-point snapshot for quick debugging of the divergence itself and then the full replay version for seeing what led up to it. Would you like me to remove this from the current PR and possibly create a new PR for it or just scrap it fully?

It's a nice idea, but let's break this out into a separate PR, it's out of scope here and could use some refinement.

Noted, will be pushing a commit soon with updates for all of your comments 😁

notfood · 2026-05-20T08:01:34Z

+    private const float ChevronTabGapY   = 4f;
+
+    // Clockwise from the top.
+    private static readonly PingCategory[] WheelOptions =


Duplicate from PingCategoryExtensions?

Resolved duplications in XML category restructure commit.

notfood · 2026-05-20T08:02:45Z

+
+namespace Multiplayer.Client;
+
+public static class PingCategoryExtensions


Would be nice to load by XML to allow modding and extension.

Categories now defined as XML, added pagination to the radial picker when more than 6 categories present.

notfood · 2026-05-20T08:05:40Z

+namespace Multiplayer.Client.Util
+{
+    // English fallback for keys not yet shipped in rwmt/Multiplayer-Locale.
+    public static class MpTranslate


Ideally, we don't need this. Allow it to fail, it should be shipped with the right Multiplayer-Locale.

notfood · 2026-05-20T08:07:52Z

+// English string and dev-mode pseudo-localization mangles the result. Inject the value into the
+// active language so the normal Translate() path resolves cleanly until the keys land in the
+// Languages submodule.
+public static class PingRuntimeTranslations


Assume it runs with the right Multiplayer-Locale, the only scenario where it fails is between commits until it's merged and that shouldn't reach the user. This isn't needed.

Removed fallbacks, will get a PR ready for Multiplayer-Locale with translations.

notfood · 2026-05-20T08:11:54Z

 using Multiplayer.Common.Networking.Packet;

-namespace Multiplayer.Common
+namespace Multiplayer.Common;


Revert to block-scoped namespace

notfood · 2026-05-20T08:13:25Z

-        public const int Protocol = 55;
+
+        // Wire-compatibility protocol version; intentionally distinct from Packets.Max.
+        public const int Protocol = 63;


Protocol 56

Moved ping categories into XML and added pagination to the radial wheel. Categories now live in Defs/MultiplayerPingDefs.xml as MultiplayerPingDef defs with label, description, order, tint, icon, and sound. The six vanilla categories reacreated in XML format. The wheel pages when more than six categories are present. Back and More chevron slices sit at the upper-left and upper-right of the wheel, with dots above the wheel for page indication. Wire protocol bumps from 55 to 56. PingLocationPacket now carries a ushort def short-hash instead of a byte enum. Markers scribe by defName, so save/load survives categories being added or removed. Namespaces in every new file this PR introduced are reverted to block-scoped. Drops the in-code English-fallback helper and the runtime keyed-replacement injection. The desync-snapshot diagnostic in SyncCoordinator removed.

mibac138

This is a big PR and these are the things that stood out the most to me. I did not yet review it fully. As a side note, it'd be nice to have some images or a simple demo video with the new features showcased :)

mibac138 · 2026-05-20T08:21:37Z

+        var comp = Multiplayer.game?.gameComp;
+        var markerCount = comp?.AllMarkers.Count.ToStringSafe() ?? "n/a";
+        var nextMarkerId = comp?.nextMarkerId.ToStringSafe() ?? "n/a";
+        var markerCap = comp?.markerCapPerPlayer.ToStringSafe() ?? "n/a";


Do we even want to add this info to the desync report? Not sure how this is useful

I originally added these for debugging marker specific desyncs during dev. The idea was that if you have two players with different Marker Count or Next Marker Id in the desync report, you immediately know the divergence happened somewhere in the marker path. The "markerCap" was mainly just there for me to make sure that the marker cap set by the host is properly syncing to all clients. The info doesn't really provide any other info regarding desyncs so I fully understand if you'd prefer it removed.

mibac138 · 2026-05-20T20:36:22Z

What's the point of the midjoin packet code? You are sending the packets as reliable, so if you send it to joining players too, then once the loading has finished, they should just normally receive the packet. This approach works fine for SyncMethods which are critical to keep the game in-sync, so it should work fine here too

mibac138 · 2026-05-20T20:38:34Z

+        public int lastPingTick = -1;
+        public int lastMarkerClearTick = -1;
+        public int lastMarkerDeleteTick = -1;
+        public int lastMarkerRenameTick = -1;


mibac138 · 2026-05-20T20:41:32Z

Why is the markerCap added here? I couldn't find any uses of it

mibac138 · 2026-05-20T20:42:54Z

+        public int playerId = playerId;
+        public int factionId = factionId;
+        public string username = username;


Why are you sending both the playerId and username? Player id should be enough. This also applies to the other new packets

notfood added enhancement New feature or request. 1.6 Fixes or bugs relating to 1.6 (Not Odyssey). labels May 19, 2026

notfood added this to 1.6 and Odyssey May 19, 2026

notfood moved this to In review in 1.6 and Odyssey May 19, 2026

notfood reviewed May 19, 2026

View reviewed changes

LumiLunaLuma force-pushed the ping-marker-expansion branch from 7371f30 to 7f3c427 Compare May 20, 2026 07:06

notfood requested changes May 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

mibac138 reviewed May 20, 2026

View reviewed changes


		namespace Multiplayer.Client;

		public static class PingCategoryExtensions

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LumiLunaLuma commented May 19, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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Summary

What changed

Wire and protocol

Persistence

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LumiLunaLuma commented May 20, 2026

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LumiLunaLuma commented May 19, 2026 •

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