Multiplayer Game Style

[Playpalii]

It would be good if multiplayer games could be really long games, lasting several sessions of play that could be saved and loaded when desired. This way, if the map is really large, with lots of different terrain, and oil resources limited, it would require skill to plan and make use of strategy in various ways, instead of making a point and click race of each multiplayer battle.

Basically the idea would be to get the point across that a quick manufacturing of an army and an immediate attack would be useless without thought behind it. Recon should also be more valued than it is in current games.

other thoughts/ideas:

- being able to control collections of units by drawing which way they should go (on a 2d map that can be pulled up (planning))
- oil resources scattered at semi-random in a fair fashion each time a map is played
- building imitation/dummy units that the foe could sometimes mistake as an actual army to ward off attacks or take risk

[Berg]

Good Ideas

[JDW]

It would be good if multiplayer games could be really long games, lasting several sessions of play that could be saved and loaded when desired.

It would be interesting to see this sort of feature in MP. The player hosting the game would be able to save it at any time, and load it again whenever his friends are ready to continue the battle. This feature wouldn't be a necessity but a great additional feature even to shorter battles. Interesting idea there Playpalii..

Personally I prefer longer battles too. I enjoy researching the entire Tech Tree from scratch. And I get extreme pleasure in building an impenetrable base. Keeps my adrenaline rushing when the enemy can't get through

- oil resources scattered at semi-random in a fair fashion each time a map is played

This would be a lot of work as it would have to be perfectly balanced. Imagine your opponent having all the oil wells of the map exactly at his starting point.. Anyway, it would require a lot of work, that means changing the way maps are made.. I wonder what a professional mapper, not me, would say..

building imitation/dummy units that the foe could sometimes mistake as an actual army to ward off attacks or take risk

This would be cheating, wouldn't it?

P.S.: Welcome to the forum

[Rman Virgil]

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It would be good if multiplayer games could be really long games, lasting several sessions of play that could be saved and loaded when desired. This way, if the map is really large, with lots of different terrain, and oil resources limited, it would require skill to plan and make use of strategy in various ways, instead of making a point and click race of each multiplayer battle.

Basically the idea would be to get the point across that a quick manufacturing of an army and an immediate attack would be useless without thought behind it. Recon should also be more valued than it is in current games.

All done except for MP Save which has been a desire expressed since May '99 in Pumpkin's Official WZ BBs to which Pumpkin, WZ Creators, responded it was never gonna happen and peeps kept insisting and one of the Pumpkin's deleted the thread which caused an even bigger brouhaha and then after a couple weeks Pumpkin apologized for deleting the thread but still stated MP save was not gonna happen.

The other stuff refereed to as done nobody seems to be interested enough to MP Beta Test for balance tweaking.

other thoughts/ideas:

- being able to control collections of units by drawing which way they should go (on a 2d map that can be pulled up (planning))

Already proposed. Would require full dev of BetaWidget / LUA which ain't around the corner so to speak.

- oil resources scattered at semi-random in a fair fashion each time a map is played

This sort of automation will never achieve the best level results of a good map maker who has had the benefit of MP with all humans Beta Stress-testing for balance feedback. Though it might be good enough for Skirmish vs. the A.I.s

- building imitation/dummy units that the foe could sometimes mistake as an actual army to ward off attacks or take risk

This too has been proposed since way back and one approach that has issues is that you would have to invoke a mechanism for creating false electronic signatures (aka, electronic warfare) or the more practical at this point would be to have "Jammers" in play so that the electronic sensors of true signatures do not come into play in auto-counter measures (are "jammed") and you are basically fooling the Players eyeballs and the player to manually expend resources and attention on the decoys. "Jammers" are on the immediate horizon code-wise and there may even be an art asset for it but as for the "decoys", perhaps a new unit that can project Holograms of actual Units or Structs,.... I dunno really, that's just a quickie thought.

Mostly MH PoV, btw.

- RV

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[JDW]

This too has been proposed since way back and one approach that has issues is that you would have to invoke a mechanism for creating false electronic signatures (aka, electronic warfare) or the more practical at this point would be to have "Jammers" in play so that the electronic sensors of true signatures do not come into play in auto-counter measures (are "jammed") and you are basically fooling the Players eyeballs and the player to manually expend resources and attention on the decoys. "Jammers" are on the immediate horizon code-wise but there are no art assets yet for them or the "decoys", far as I'm aware.

It's going to be interesting to see how Jammers are going to be used in planning strategies.

[Saberuneko]

I haven't seen much games of this style being able to save/load multiplayer games...
I always liked that kind of idea, but I never seen it realized anywhere... I suppose there's no much possibility. :<

[JDW]

I haven't seen much games of this style being able to save/load multiplayer games...

I haven't seen any games at all, anyone know of some that do that?

[Saberuneko]

Conquest Frontier Wars (You can save and reload multiplayer games, but with some bugs)

I don't remember any other, but I'm sure some of those I have, are capable of saving multiplayer.

[JDW]

Conquest Frontier Wars (You can save and reload multiplayer games, but with some bugs)

I don't remember any other, but I'm sure some of those I have, are capable of saving multiplayer.

I see, so it is possible, and has been done to some extent.

All done except for MP Save which has been a desire expressed since May '99 in Pumpkin's Official WZ BBs to which Pumpkin, WZ Creators, responded it was never gonna happen and peeps kept insisting and one of the Pumpkin's deleted the thread which caused an even bigger brouhaha and then after a couple weeks Pumpkin apologized for deleting the thread but still stated MP save was not gonna happen.

I wonder if there are technical or design issues that make this a bad idea... Any experienced coder here care to share your thoughts? Do you code Saberuneko?

[Brisingr]

check out OpenTTD (Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe) that has a feature where you could save a single player and bring it into multiplayer and/or the other way round but of course this is a tycoon game but it works well actually.

[JDW]

check out OpenTTD (Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe) that has a feature where you could save a single player and bring it into multiplayer and/or the other way round but of course this is a tycoon game but it works well actually.

Interesting, thanks Brisingr

[Saberuneko]

I think the most likely to happen issue is the matter of re-loading the game. For example, in Conquest, when you reload the game, sometimes players appear using a different army, or player colors get changed, it's really annoying and confusing.

Do you code Saberuneko?

I code, but just very simple things, I only know some basics about how most programs work, no more.

[Zarel]

I wonder if there are technical or design issues that make this a bad idea... Any experienced coder here care to share your thoughts? Do you code Saberuneko?

There's honestly nothing that hard, from what I know. Most of the code is already there for us - we already have save/load code, we already have game setup code... We'd need some new UI for pausing in the middle of the game... It's not hard exactly, just a lot of work, and I don't have time to do it.

[JDW]

It's not hard exactly, just a lot of work, and I don't have time to do it.

That's alright Zarel, I was really only interested in knowing any technical difficulties or drawbacks that I may have overlooked. Honest to god!

Maybe I should have discussed this in the General Development section. Anyway, I wasn't pointing any fingers at the dev team.

But now that you mention that it's too much work to implement, can I assume that you would actually like to see this feature in WZ? And if you do, why not just add it to the Accepted Ideas list on the FPI, so that maybe another member, who may be a real smart cookie, might like to give it a try?

And if not, then it's really ok by me.

[cybersphinx]

I guess the easiest way would be to make only the server able to save the game, and loading would basically work like starting a normal net game. The biggest problem for that is probably to make the server gather all information (since currently no system has all information).