Multiplayer ideas, co-op like in Prison Architect (beta for now)

[max2veg]

Two ways to implement MP:

One would be that one of the clients act as the host / server when starting a game (so, client AND server).

The other way and IMO much better one, would be if Ludeon simply creates a dedicated CLI server, done as such by some of my favorite games and that I host / have been hosting, such as ARK, 7 Days to Die, Rising World, Avorion, ...

The benefits of the latter are that it'd be easier to maintain, as it'd be a single entity, secondly it can be augmented more easily and implemented in various ways - a native (compiled) program or IMO a smarter way is via a Java client (see Rising World), which then can run also not just on Windows but also on Linux (most game or otherwise hosts run Linux servers) - Java also take away having to deal with all the networking programming, plus offers a variety of DB access methods for storing, retrieving and altering of data, such as Rising World demonstrates (MariaDB / MySql vs. SQLite).

Also that way, multiple servers - each with their own server config allowing for a multitude of different play styles (difficulty, mods, scenario, stories, maps, progressions, ...) would be possible to all run 24/7 and at the same time on one computer (usually a dedicated server).

From an implementation point of view, the client would simply register commands (LMB select, RMB move to / display options, and such, just like playing the game SP), but instead of the client executing the command an encoded short data stream is sent to the server, which then accesses data from a DB (usually run locally) to calculate the response - this can be done in multiple ways, but ideally the game server should do all the calc independently from the client and compares those of the client with own data, to prevent cheating... not an issue in co-op, that's why implementing co-op should be fairly easy and straight-forward.

I hope the devs read my input and implement at least co-op - PvP would augment the game and push it to new heights, but it'd require a whole lot of additional considerations / planning and definitively development efforts, thus I suggest leave PvP for a later major version (v2.0 perhaps). That said, co-op would set the ground work for PvP, with the code base gradually changing as time progresses, not impacting co-op but setting the path for PvP and then when ready, "flipping the switch" to have that as an option also, next to co-op.

[vzoxz0]

This is about as likely as a shark growing legs and becoming a lawyer in a land-locked country.