Multiplayer - how?

[Anduin1357]

Come on now, let's not start with the huge fonts.

You said that you don't need Tynan to say what we can and cannot do, but you keep referencing the things that Tynan explicitly says that we can do. Hear what you're saying, mon. You're just saying that you don't need Tynan to say what we cannot do.

It's still his game, though. If someday he changes his stance and explicitly says that he doesn't want his game to be made into PvP, will you back down?

No, but he will not endorse it.

[Oxidus]

How exactly is the concept of Player Vs. Player in potential multiplayer campaigns senseless? Considering the games theme, it honestly makes perfect sense, depending on how its implemented.

Irregardless; I believe if multiplayer is implemented, and PvP is not, someone out there will figure out a way to mod it to be optional. We've got some smart cookies in the modding community. :X

I dont think that modders any MODDERS (People who make MODS) can make in Multiplayer game PVP.We only can talk with Tynan about that.And im not saying our Modders are lame (Because i joined just to thank them before for cool mods ) but i dont think its modders job to do that.

[ventisgill]

I am sure these may be trying for the Player Vs Player and soon will come up with it.

[Anduin1357]

note: to any mod maker who reads this, you might notice Tynan allows for disassembly of his game so long as it's only for a mod.
Take this opportunity and learn about the game's secrets and inner workings!

From someone who is known for saying things like "that'd be easy to implement", adding netcode would be a massive job, even if you were adding only co-op LAN style connections (i.e. no central servers).

Being honest, I'm not sure what real payoff adding MP would give: although everyone loves their minecraft / Terraria servers, the entire focus of Rimworld is a timed experience (generally, 3 years). Too long to play in a day, too short to have as permanent servers.

Added to that is the mechanics - you'd have to have separate colonists / player if playing on the same map (rather than just world map), but what happens if a player wants to grief another? How would you handle build orders? e.g. you want to build a wall at point X; player two wants to build a farm - what happens when colonists try to 'over-lap'? What priority is given to zones and ownership? (and what's to stop someone laying out a 100x100 dumping zone on your base to prevent you using the real estate?). How would you prioritize resources? e.g. player 1 picks up an item; player 2 wants it - how do you set ownership?

Also, pvp would be entirely not-fun; without the dumb AI, bases are impossible to defend, and mortars would just be a griefing war.


That's just 5mins of thinking about it.

I have abandoned this thread in favor of making a more civil thread.
Here are my last 2 cents responding.
Adding netcode may be a massive job but P2P has been widely implemented for launcher update uses etc...
And netcode is hardest to optimise because of latency problems yes but this is inherent of all multiplayer ventures.
My idea is relatively easy since 1. you have a direct internet cross-download and upload
2. Anyone can play for as long as they like, since this game is Async when you are offline.
Your assets remain in the game when you are offline. They can be attacked if in Async mode but defending AI tend to be quite good at their job. This can be improved on by mods.
3. The priority goes like this, Owner, (usually the first guy to spawn in there.) Conqueror, (guy who killed more than 75% of all player structures & pawns) Allies of the Owner/Conqueror, Explorer, (First foreign player to find this area.) and then the visitors who pass by and they are not the first. If a player griefs you, your order can cancel the other player's order if you take precedence in aforementioned list.
4. Instead of a Colony (Colony), it will be Colony ([Username]). Having more than 1 of such listing is possible. The Colony prefix would be renamable for the dev, mod, owner and first explorer(for ruins) whoever takes precedence except dev and mod for admin purposes eg. offensive name. This would allow names like "City of the Ancients (Anduin1357)".
As for resource fighting, the colonists will trigger a yellow exception letter notification stating that colonist x and colonist y wants z resource. If they decide to fight over it, so be it. The colonist(s) will stand opposite each other (arguing) over the resource for a set time and then the item would be auto-forbidden until the players resolve it.
Note that if the colonists are hostile, they will automatically start a shootout for the resource.
Same for build orders. If said players are hostile, overlaps are forbidden as if you were trying to build an object into a wall.
Same with allies. If you want to overlap, ask the affected player first.
(Sorry I did not reply sooner, if only you added a new post would yours be noticed faster.)

[Oxidus]

If Tynan implents dyeing ingame then players would start in basic Sky Blue colour and to make them uniforms colour it by team colour,that would be cool

[Johnny Masters]

Not very interested about multiplayer game, but if...

I would like  to see huge map where few players simultaniously drop in (from same broken ship) with 1-3 (according choice when creating a game) characters each. After that, it would be up to them what to do: start a war, build huge colonny or build separate colonies.
- Resources like energy generators, workbench's, storage/dumping piles and fields would have option to share it with another player. If generator produce excess power it would be routed to another if there is power line (if several players then output is shared between them). Both colonies would collect from shared field to nearest shared or own pile according priority (favoring owned when same priority). Hungry person would go nearest place to snack.
- You could steal from another player, but that would be considered as stealing. Player could answer by changing hostility level when provoked, not otherwise unless agreeed otherwise when game is created. Friendly (characters help each other like own colony members by taking them medical beds and healing), neutral, hostile (they consider eachother with enemies and start fighting, turrets fire them etc).
- Difficulty level would be higher as there more players, still diffrent levels.

Besides more fancy multiplayer implementations or a more regular stronghold-like PvP match, your idea is similar to what i've been thinking about.

Except that I've been thinking of each player is only one character. There would be fog-of-war so you don't know what others are doing and the rest is pretty much what you described, with some sort of interpersonal diplomacy system. So you could the build public stuff, storage, buildings and lockers or private ones. If you build a private door  then only you can have the key, unless someone decides to bring it down while you are away.

You could play with friends, where cooperation and communication is granted, but it would shine with random people who you have no idea how they will behave. Either way, cooperating or not, you have your classical challenges of raiders and blights, eclipses and cold winter.

It's possible to even have some sort of semi-permanent hub-like server with a more permanent colony. Original players would drop (or we can even forget the crash, make it a simple frontier colony) and new players are roamers that seek refuge there. It gets to be a little roleplayish in nature, but you still get to do the same stuff you do in a normal game. Dying means just picking another fresh pawn.

The great about the system is creating tension by having every pawn (player) fight for its own survival, unlike we do in a single player, where we have our favorites and tend to prioritize them, like deciding who gets to stay on the frontline or hunt siegers.

[Anduin1357]

Nobody wants an RPG-like singleplaying multiplayer.
The premise of the game is group survival, nobody walks alone.

[Johnny Masters]

Who is this nobody? I'd like to meet him for i too would like a rpg-like singleplaying multiplayer, he doesn't need to walk alone anymore  

[Anduin1357]

Who is this nobody? I'd like to meet him for i too would like a rpg-like singleplaying multiplayer, he doesn't need to walk alone anymore  

You are kidding, right? This game's intended audience is exactly opposite of the RPG genre. You might be hard pressed to find someone else who shares your particular interest and plays this game.

[Geertje123]

This game's intended audience is exactly opposite of the RPG genre. You might be hard pressed to find someone else who shares your particular interest and plays this game.

Is this because Tynan said so? Let me quote you here:

We don't need Tynan to say what we can or cannot
Do.

[Anduin1357]

This game's intended audience is exactly opposite of the RPG genre. You might be hard pressed to find someone else who shares your particular interest and plays this game.

Is this because Tynan said so? Let me quote you here:

We don't need Tynan to say what we can or cannot
Do.

This is not what Tynan said, this is what this game can be categorised as. I am not saying that it is impossible for it to be so BUT, I said that "You might be hard pressed to find someone else who shares your particular interest and plays this game." I did not contradict myself on this point.

[Johnny Masters]

This game can be categorized as a singleplayer, yet here we are, discussing multiplayer.

It's not uncommon for RTS games to feature rpg-like situations, missions & or entire systems. There were plenty of mods and maps in games like Starcraft and Age of Empires where you control a single person, so it's not such a far-fetched mention as you might think. Sure, they were mostly mods or custom stuff, but the base game supported such thing, which is what i'm advocating.

[Anduin1357]

This game can be categorized as a singleplayer, yet here we are, discussing multiplayer.

It's not uncommon for RTS games to feature rpg-like situations, missions & or entire systems. There were plenty of mods and maps in games like Starcraft and Age of Empires where you control a single person, so it's not such a far-fetched mention as you might think. Sure, they were mostly mods or custom stuff, but the base game supported such thing, which is what i'm advocating.

I'm not saying that it is not possible but multiplayer wise, it requires a large number of players and a very bad sync rate depending on locations. When it comes to singleplayer, it is possible but there is a lot of content to make, a load of things to balance. Depending on how your RPG-like story pans out, colony generation is still in the works.
This is a largely content based mod that would need updates to no end, it could be akin to a mmorpg or a small rpg in multiplayer and a very hard singleplayer.
You would need cooperation in multiplayer to get anywhere.
Griefing would be a huge issue since you would be sent back in a new spawn even in PvP.
I do not have experience playing any of these singleplayer RPG-in-an-RTS but the big question is, how far would you go to complete a perpetually incomplete-able mod or how far would you say that it is complete?

[Johnny Masters]

No no, it is far far simpler than how you think it would work.

Remember, you're the one who said it would be rpg, I never thought of it as rpg, although i welcome the idea.

In it's simpler forms, it's just a regular game, regular biomes, regular events, buildings and enemies. The only difference is that each pawn is a player. Player population isn't such an issue nowaday with games spanning up to 64 players, albeit 12 is a good number.

You could further its complexity, by adding things like fog-of-war and diplomacy systems. Further along would be colony generation and autonomous AI...

A different road would be indeed an rpg-like approach, with custom-dependent content. But, similar as other rts, they would work with in a rather limited timespan and map. You join, play the map's challenged (a dungeon? who knows) and finish the game in a couple of hours. But that's it, a different road.

[spatula]

Here's what I'd like for multiplayer:

Each server is a planet and can have "X" number of players.
Each played lands on a square on the planet and has their own map.
Each planet is like a "round" and there's a winner to the match, but players can come and go within the limits.

Everyone builds colonies on their own map, but you can send groups to other tiles on away missions.
Trading, raiding, scavenging, etc.

Maybe you just want to scout the next adjacent tile for loose metal- you can send off with a % chance to win/lose/die on auto, or go manual, create a stockpile while there and be able to haul back your whole stockpile in a caravan.
But while you're on your away mission, your base continues and could be attacked and you have limited building options (beds, walls, doors, solars, security and stockpiles).

You could go to a friend's colony and have a trading party build a small outpost, help hauling and mining and such.
Or troll a local by building walls on their entrance until they come out and attack you and you flee home.
You would be able to group chat only in the comms console and local chat on each map, but maybe limit max of 4 players on any given map together. And maybe less tiles overall, so you might only be able to land in tundra on some planets due to crowding.

Then the next level would be claiming new tiles to expand bases... one could theoretically claim all tiles on the planet map and build a planet-wide city, dominating that server, winning the game by covering the planet. But you'd only be able to build on your original map- you could maybe generate a stock outpost on each claimed tile which could support security posts that you could "station" a couple colonists, and maybe even just reduce empty tiles to % based resource generators.. but make it about having control over portions of the map in a "round" while building your colony. You can team up with other players and form an allegiance after meeting certain conditions and take on other colonies, or attempt to join with them.

For the encounters themselves, I think if combat is initiated, it should be almost turn based in the sense that you have "15 seconds to issue orders" and then have to watch it play out for 30 seconds before all parties get another 15 seconds to issue commands.

I'd love to see a kind of civilization-esque set of end games, but with rankings based on points... kind of like you have to either:
a) Light a beacon to send in the mothership and claim the planet (100 pts)
b) expand your colony by claiming 75% of the tiles on the map (90 pts)
c) create an alliance that has 75% of the tiles on the map for shared victory (80pts)
d) create a new ship and blast off to another planet (50pts)
e) destroy the planet by creating a mega-drill to the core (60 pts)

With each victory "alerting" other players at a certain stage. Like, "oh shit, that dude in the corner is going to blow up the planet! We have to get him!"

So it's like, you log on and pick a server. You skip the new game lobby and dive onto an existing planet.
3 players are building... 1 has about 30% of the map claimed. Looks like a lot of abandoned sites- this game has been running for 3 hours. You drop in near another player.
Establishing a simple base, you send a small away part over to the nearby player on a trade mission. In local chat you discover the bigger player has been terrorizing new players to gain resources. You forge an alliance, which requires all kinds of things to complete, but return to your base to beef defenses. Sure enough the big player comes with a raid of 10 men and starts building mortars at the edge of the map. Once they start firing it will go turn based. You radio your ally on the comms and send a cry for help. They send an armed part of 4 men. You battle it out. Victory, but at a cost. The bigger player radios you on the comms and lets you know he'll be back soon. But you'll be ready. And Stomp, your level 20 researcher is working on that mothership beacon...


I think that would be fun!