Co-Op Not Multiplayer (And Cottages!)

[The_Dizzie]

I've seen a few things about 'multiplayer' but that would mean a major change to the game, like instead of islands just a giant map. If we did just Co-Op our friends could basically visit our map.

How it would work is that there would be a new build item that would cost a good deal of items to make, it would be a sort of cottage and this cottage would allow friends to visit your map. The character you bring is a secondary character, not the same character from your current map, so it would play like 2 different maps. Your Co-Op character would have an inventory of its own and save when goes in or out of the cottage, or when it dies. You could have up to 4-5 cottages and 4-5 people playing co-op with you at one time.

When you log into your Co-Op character you are in an empty house, over time you can add a fireplace, a cooking pot, a science machine etc. You'd be unable to make farms, or plant resources in it, you'd have to visit maps. When you go to the door a friend list would pop up with a list of friends and who ever has cottages up you can prompt them to visit (they could kick you at any time)

If someone visits you you'd get a pause prompt asking if you'd like someone to visit you, if you click yes the game will save and reboot the map as a co-op version of your map with a chat function.

Note:

Cottages could also work like permanent sleeping bags that you go into at night to sleep and pop out of at night, for Single Player characters. With this option and the fact your friends can visit you through them would make them very expensive to make.

[Toaster Fu]

The Devs have said that making it so that two characters can be in the same world at the same time would take a whole lot of tweaks to the engine.

And I'm not getting what makes co-op so much deferent then multiplayer, could someone explain this to me?

[The_Dizzie]

Co-Op is basically 2-5 people on a single player world, while multiplayer means a large amount of people on a shared world.

Co-Op is you and friends playing like a 2-4 player console game, while multiplayer is like world of warcraft. So Co-Op would be easier to do and just as satisfying I think.

[Toaster Fu]

So you basically mean multiplayer = MMO.

[Luna Lovecraft]

No, multiplayer means more than one player simultaneously.

The reason that this is not happening is because that requires a massive amount of work to accomplish. Granted, an MMO IS a massive amount of work, much more than just multiplayer between 5 players, but that's not what they mean when I say a lot of work. Synchronizing gameplay between 5 computers in real time is incredibly difficult and would probably require a re-write of a lot of the game's code at this point. It's definitely possible, just would require a full time effort to accomplish.

Now, a potential co-op that would work could be something like being able to share a world with a friend. You save in a cottage and send the map over to a friend. They play in it, and then you play in it. As long as you don't have more than one character on the map at the same time, the coding is significantly simpler.

I personally think multiplayer shouldn't be a part of this game as it takes away the intention of loneliness.

[Toaster Fu]

If I could rep you I would, A wonderful way of explaining it Luna. But the Devs do have plans for a asynchronous multiplayer thingy 'ma bob.

[Luna Lovecraft]

Ah, I could not recall whether they did or not, thanks much for clarifying that for me.

[dra6o0n]

The OP is probably saying 'Local' for the split screen possibility.

Local multiplayer is very possible since it's just you wiring up some more gamepads and the game coded to show multiple characters on one screen.

The problem is that the devs made this game as it's intended for Chrome, a browser, so it's not very easy to incorporate local multiplayer onto a browser component.

[dra6o0n]

No, multiplayer means more than one player simultaneously.

The reason that this is not happening is because that requires a massive amount of work to accomplish. Granted, an MMO IS a massive amount of work, much more than just multiplayer between 5 players, but that's not what they mean when I say a lot of work. Synchronizing gameplay between 5 computers in real time is incredibly difficult and would probably require a re-write of a lot of the game's code at this point. It's definitely possible, just would require a full time effort to accomplish.

Now, a potential co-op that would work could be something like being able to share a world with a friend. You save in a cottage and send the map over to a friend. They play in it, and then you play in it. As long as you don't have more than one character on the map at the same time, the coding is significantly simpler.

I personally think multiplayer shouldn't be a part of this game as it takes away the intention of loneliness.

There could be a asynchronous idea that you can maintain a friends list of the world, and when you both play, you affect each other's worlds at the same time.

Other than user created stuff, map created stuff will change and is visibly seen on both player's world.

Cut that tree down, and it'll vanish for the other player. Since map data is the same, it could be manipulated in that way.

[501105]

Not to mention that implementing multiplayer in whatever form takes a lot of time and money. Klei is a fairly small studio, so that would be a big undertaking for them.

[dra6o0n]

Not to mention that implementing multiplayer in whatever form takes a lot of time and money. Klei is a fairly small studio, so that would be a big undertaking for them.

I really doubt that multiplayer coding itself costs them that much money if you consider it from a independent standpoint.

The only thing that costs a ton of money is from the time it takes to code, as most programmers seems to work on a hourly wage or something, but some in projects work under contracts.

To design a framework, code it, debug it, and finalize it, means the programmer is doing most of the grunt work to process it through, hence the higher cost.

The best way to handle this is to give a fixed contract price whenever they reach stages of development, as it actually encourages them to get off their lazy butts (some can be lazy and push for more hours for more money) and work faster to get the contracted funds.

Here's the bit:

- Spend 10 hours just to code and debug the same type of content over and over again. But the programmer may double that duration for the wages.

or

- Put a 100 dollar contract when they implement the basics amount of stuff in it, which is released as Soon as they complete it. Then as the project progresses, the funding gets higher to reward them.

Personally, if they are professional level programmers, the basics to intermediate level of coding for small to independent scale programming would take them less than a week to complete (considering that they work on average of 6 hours a day of their free time, not treating them as employed 'hourly workers' btw). This is only if you consider implementing content, and not bug fixing and stuff btw. It's feasible to code without causing much bugs in the first place unless the development progression isn't fairly thought out, which results in 'holes' being made because of ideas being thrown around. This is why a game concept which is kept from the beginning to end, will likely end up almost bug free, for simplicity's sake.

Edited November 26, 2012 by dra6o0n