Camobiwon
Camobiwon9mo ago

Offline Mode

This has been pitched before for sure, but I am gonna make a thread here so it's more known that it'd be a wanted feature. Basically the ability to have Normcore components still be able to function even without a connection to a server. I am not sure of the underlying technical implemenations for this, but I'd like to believe it'd be theoretically possible. Stuff like my player / interaction / world objects are so tied into network stuff that getting it working in singleplayer would be a nightmare, and ideally I'd like to be able to use these in a non-networked context, such as a main menu or something else. If this could be possible / implemented that would be awesome and save countless hours for if I ever needed this case.
7 Replies
Mechabit
Mechabit9mo ago
This would be so great I think the stumbling block was it'd be hard to sync online later but I don't need that functionality Just connect to a room called offline and the local models could behave like they were online
Camobiwon
CamobiwonOP9mo ago
I mean I already build most of my features for singleplayer first then sync them after the fact haha Yeah or just a null app key perhaps Something like that to trigger an offline join
Mechabit
Mechabit9mo ago
I do that for my mirror games, just run a local server pretend to be single player lol
Camobiwon
CamobiwonOP9mo ago
Nice lol, I imagine and hope it'd functionally work the same as joining an empty room, so if you edit any values on your models they would update and trigger any events and any respective scripts that require changes and whatnot
HaRrY
HaRrY9mo ago
yeah this is much needed specially for tutorials where you want to use all the existing prefabs / gameplay mechanics without being it online. I made a wrapper of RealtimeComponent and created a getter for model where if its null i.e. not connected with normcore then create a new() otherwise return the created one - this worked really well for me from development to early Alpha but then normcore did say its not recommended etc so I removed it once I went in production
Mechabit
Mechabit9mo ago
that's a neat trick, hopefully we get real offline mode soon
maxweisel
maxweisel9mo ago
This one is still a ways out unfortunately. Our serialization layer makes a lot of assumptions about IDs being assigned by the server that we can’t easily replicate in an offline mode. We have a plan to fix this in the newer serialization framework on our roadmap, but it’s still a ways out.