alliance problems and teams

[krom]

Ok, I have been checking this part of the game, and this is what found:

alliance information is stored in a matrix, for a full alliance it has to have both values set (player a is allied with player b and player b is allied with player a). But in fact netpanzer doesn't know anything about full alliances.

The alliance matrix is used when:
- draw minimap, if 'you' are allied with 'anybody else' then you will see his tanks and his color will be allied_color. This is done only on the client.
- automatic fire of tanks, if 'you' are allied with 'anybody else' then your tanks won't shoot him. This is done on the server.
- in objective game mode, if both players are allied then their outposts counts for the total needed to win. This is done on the server.

As you can see 'draw minimap' has problem, it should only draw if both players are allied, this is only one line change in the code, but needs that the clients are updated. It seems it would be possible to change the server code and don't sent some of the alliance messages until both players are allied.

But all of this is not a big problem, think about this other situation.

We have 4 players a, b, c and d.
Player a is allied with player b and c.
Player b is allied with player a but not with c.
Player c is allied with player a but not with b.
Player d is not allied with anyone.

In this scenario, the alliances are irregular. a and b are a team (more or less), a and c are a team, but b and c are not in same team. It is a strange pattern, we don't need to remove it, but I think would be better to add a "team mode" (configurable).

In team mode, the server could decide how many teams are in the game, to make things easy, the teams could be named using numbers and no checks when joining teams.

any comments/ideas?
what would be more interesting to do next?

[wile64]

In this scenario, the alliances are irregular. a and b are a team (more or less), a and c are a team, but b and c are not in same team. It is a strange pattern, we don't need to remove it, but I think would be better to add a "team mode" (configurable).

In team mode, the server could decide how many teams are in the game, to make things easy, the teams could be named using numbers and no checks when joining teams.

I think something like that, but the problem are the traitors.
if you have a server with two teams set up, must balance the server players when he enters the game, if you have a player who enters your hand, it kills your team, how?