Merging DS with DST?

[XirmiX]

Having a completely different game seems a bit shabby. The only difference is that one is single player and the other is multiplayer... with a few different features here and there as well. But the scenario is the same, the same story. It's kind of as if DST is DS 2 because DST takes place after the events of DS. Merging the two games would be much more convenient as:

1) If you decided you want to play totally with the single player features or totally with multiplayer features, you wouldn't need to close one game and open the other every single time, but could just enter and exit multiplayer and single player via a single button (May be one button could be called Alone, which would open up the single player servers, the other Together, which would open up the server menu).

2) If two were merged, may be eventually you could open your single player worlds to Multiplayer in some way (of course, first the caves with ruins, functional teleportato and adventure mode would need to be implemented, but that doesn't mean it's not possible eventually).

 

What do you guys think? Do you think that both games should be merged together eventually in one way or another? What do you think about floodgates for SP servers being possible to be open for multiplayer?

[Dipps]

The reason multiplayer was implemented as a standalone game is because, as far as I know, adding networking and rewriting mechanics, variables and such makes it very difficult (if not impossible) to implement in a single game that contains not only this, but a different core for the singleplayer expansion. I don't think, at that point, LUA would be very flexible or if it could handle the events that emerge in different branches at all. I assume that's the main reason they decided to split these games up.

 

Take a wild guess what it would require to make this work, and ask yourself if it's worth it. You wouldn't be too pleased with the former, so the latter ends up being a "NO".

[RalphKastro]

Would be interesting if possible. Probably not possible. But if it is, then okay. Getting rid of the entire "interacting with people" part of DST would be interesting. Balancing and Tuning would be absolute hell, though.

[SuperPsiPower]

I think this would be great! I have many bases that I work on, and it would be great to show people how it looks in the game, because since my computer is so bad I can't stream lol

Edit: Here is my current Base http://gyazo.com/06f5ceb9b47f62c25af40e828b4bcc73 Imagine 6 players working on THIS

Thanks to @rezecib, for the Mods!

Mods to help show where everything is at a given time so it looks better

[Pyromailmann]

XirmiX, remember when Klei said it wasn't possible for them to make DST in DS?

That context, applies here.

[DarkXero]

There is no such thing as a single player server.

If DS and DST were to be merged, DST would completely override DS.

[oCrapaCreeper]

One of the reasons multiplayer wasn't a thing for a long time was because trying to get a game already designed for singleplayer to also be multiplayer is a technical challenge. Obviously they overcame it, but in a different game.

 

Merging the two would warrant a lot of hacked-up changes depending on if the player is in singleplayer or not, which just makes code messy.

 

Personally the most I want to see them do is finish DST, and then port some of the content that could work for Singleplayer to the original game (Willow's Bernie, some animations, etc).

[Rily]

sounds good but think about how the devs tried to make DST like an expansion but the code was so different that they had to make a new game, then if they won't be able to make DST like an expansion they won't be able to merge the 2 separate and different games, that was the reason that DST is a individual game. Anyway you can play alone the multiplayer, what we should do is wait until DST gets all DS content like caves and maybe an adapted adventure mode, then the original DS will be forgotten forever and DST will be awesome, but some decisions still being hard to understand,for example, the division of the online and offline worlds. I hope the devs or modders can make some little fixes to make DST the best DS experience,

[MenaAthena]

Even ignoring if it would be possible or not, I don't really see a need for it. I mean, switching between the two games is only a few clicks anyway. Sure it'd be nice to show people around your single player bases, but you could always just take a few screenshots or record it. As stated above, I'd like it if they added in some of the new features and items to the single player mode, but I wouldn't be surprised if Klei was already planning on that.

[T4T3RGR3NAD3R]

I would love to build the jury-rigged portal in my singleplayer world to convert to multiplayer.

[jbeetle]

If DS didn't exist, and there was only DST, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

 

It's fun to think about things like this as long as you realize that it'll never happen. DST exists because DS couldn't be made into a multiplayer game (among other reasons, I'm sure).

[XirmiX]

@everybody

1) Crynux at one point was attempting to make a multiplayer mod. If devs weren't working on DST, this mod being added to DS would make DS a multiplayer game without the need of something outside of it. If Crynux was able to begin on making that, how would it be a problem for devs who have access to the whole program of DS?

2) So, having servers and just your own single player non-server based worlds separate in the same game would be difficult to do? Why? Going into Alone you'd be playing without servers active and could play offline pretty simply whilst when going into Together option, you'd enter the list of servers. What is so difficult to make the two separate? If say you wanted to make a single player world a multiplayer one, you could not then be able to turn in back, so what's so hard there, I don't understand!

3) A sort of an example which I can give is of a game called Bloody trapland. There, you can play locally or online. Both options are multiplayer, however, considering that a 2 player mod for DS has been done before where two people play on the same computer, long before DST was even announced, I'm starting to think that merning two games to be one click away isn't that much of a science fiction; you keep them separate, but what links their access together is the main menu.

[DarkXero]

1)

DST isn't a mod for DS.

I don't know how the mod counterpart is, I don't know how @Crynux did it.

I haven't looked into the LuaSocket library either.

 

2)

Because data in a single player world is handled differently than in a multi player world, case in point, sessions and save data.

Your best bet to turn single player worlds into multi player worlds is by just making DST OFFLINE the Don't Starve experience.

And given the balance changes, you would be suppressing one experience in favor of another.

 

3)

I'm starting to think that merning two games to be one click away isn't that much of a science fiction; you keep them separate, but what links their access together is the main menu.

 

This is more plausible, but still, you would have two games linked by a separate menu.

NOT like the screecher and don't starve.

Two games in one.

 

Do you think you can just copy paste stuff and "IT JUST WERKS" ?

 

I have to admit I'm curious about what @Crynux did tho.

[jbeetle]

Yes, he was working on a multiplayer mod, and he's awesome for doing that. But I think even he knew it was a hacky piece of crap. I don't mean that in an insulting way. Just by comparison, if they would have released something even close to that as the real thing, it'd have been a disaster. It was barely multiplayer, and it barely worked.

 

Also, I'm pretty sure he was hired to help work on DST (or at least consult) when it was first announced 

[oCrapaCreeper]

DST exists because DS couldn't be made into a multiplayer game 

This is what it boils down to. From a technical and gameplay standpoint, it has to be a different game. 

[Crynux]

 

@everybody

1) Crynux at one point was attempting to make a multiplayer mod. If devs weren't working on DST, this mod being added to DS would make DS a multiplayer game without the need of something outside of it. If Crynux was able to begin on making that, how would it be a problem for devs who have access to the whole program of DS?
2) So, having servers and just your own single player non-server based worlds separate in the same game would be difficult to do? Why? Going into Alone you'd be playing without servers active and could play offline pretty simply whilst when going into Together option, you'd enter the list of servers. What is so difficult to make the two separate? If say you wanted to make a single player world a multiplayer one, you could not then be able to turn in back, so what's so hard there, I don't understand!
3) A sort of an example which I can give is of a game called Bloody trapland. There, you can play locally or online. Both options are multiplayer, however, considering that a 2 player mod for DS has been done before where two people play on the same computer, long before DST was even announced, I'm starting to think that merning two games to be one click away isn't that much of a science fiction; you keep them separate, but what links their access together is the main menu.

 

 

1) It would have required a server; as no client could act as the server.

2) Although it is possible to make a single player game that has multiplayer functionality built in (Minecraft, Saints Row, etc); it requires much different code. It's not as simple as flicking a switch or checking a checkbox. It requires syncing all gameplay among clients... this includes anything animated, anything event-based, and any player action, etc.

 

Given how large DS was at the time of the DST release/announcement, you can imagine the amount of things that would require sync.

 

Now think from the devs point of view.... do we create an 'add-in' for the single player game, where we have to add an exception to every portion of gameplay (to determine whether the game is multiplayer or not, and act accordingly)? Or do we create a separate game that can run on its own, where we don't have to worry about maintaining single-player functionality within it?

 

Two separate things are sometimes better and easier to create than conditioning the two to work as one. Not only that, but the conditions within the code (is multiplayer vs is singleplayer) could have a negative effect on performance (depending on implementation)... but when divided into two separate games, that problem doesn't exist.

 

3) I'd say if the devs were going to create a multiplayer version of DS from the start; chance are both the games would be more integrated (or even the same instance). But since multiplayer seems to have come more as an after-thought, I imagine they decided to give us what we wanted... yet keep the old DS experience alive and unchanged.

 

1)

DST isn't a mod for DS.

I don't know how the mod counterpart is, I don't know how @Crynux did it.

I haven't looked into the LuaSocket library either.

 

2)

Because data in a single player world is handled differently than in a multi player world, case in point, sessions and save data.

Your best bet to turn single player worlds into multi player worlds is by just making DST OFFLINE the Don't Starve experience.

And given the balance changes, you would be suppressing one experience in favor of another.

 

3)

 

 

 

This is more plausible, but still, you would have two games linked by a separate menu.

NOT like the screecher and don't starve.

Two games in one.

 

Do you think you can just copy paste stuff and "IT JUST WERKS" ?

 

I have to admit I'm curious about what @Crynux did tho.

 

All I did was send bits of data between 2 or more games, and that in effect was multiplayer. At first, I started of using HTTP requests, as the game on any platform already had such capabilities within it. Using FastCGI, we made the first version of the mod. Later I found out how to get some socket functionality into the Linux version of the game (my main OS). From that point on, it was a combination of luasockets (windows), and plain BSD sockets (Linux). Any questions, let me know; I'd be happy to answer.

 

Yes, he was working on a multiplayer mod, and he's awesome for doing that. But I think even he knew it was a hacky piece of crap. I don't mean that in an insulting way. Just by comparison, if they would have released something even close to that as the real thing, it'd have been a disaster. It was barely multiplayer, and it barely worked.

 

Also, I'm pretty sure he was hired to help work on DST (or at least consult) when it was first announced 

 

Any mod is a hack, not necessarily crap tho. It was multiplayer, and it was close to working.... it's just a lot of work for 2 people to do... so it took some time, and there were many sync issues. I don't think it was bad for two months of off-and-on-again work... I wouldn't call it crap; it was better than anything else (multiplayer-DS related) released at the time (even though I never got to the point of releasing the mod... but close).

 

I wasn't hired, they didn't consult me.

 

-Crynux

[jbeetle]

I don't think it was bad for two months of off-and-on-again work... I wouldn't call it crap; it was better than anything else (multiplayer-DS related) released at the time (even though I never got to the point of releasing the mod... but close).

I don't think it was bad for two months either. I just imagine that you would have hit a wall very quickly had you spent more time on it, or perhaps you already were starting to. Nothing against you, just the fact that DS wasn't made with multiplayer in mind so you had a steep uphill battle from the get-go. Not only that, but I feel that DS wasn't even made with mods in mind either. It seems what can be done with mods is pretty limited compared with other games.

 

Perhaps I was thinking of someone else. There was another attempt at a similar mod at one point, wasn't there?

[Crynux]

I don't think it was bad for two months either. I just imagine that you would have hit a wall very quickly had you spent more time on it, or perhaps you already were starting to. Nothing against you, just the fact that DS wasn't made with multiplayer in mind so you had a steep uphill battle from the get-go. Not only that, but I feel that DS wasn't even made with mods in mind either. It seems what can be done with mods is pretty limited compared with other games.

 

Perhaps I was thinking of someone else. There was another attempt at a similar mod at one point, wasn't there?

 

I had planned out how everything would have worked... I didn't see a problematic wall that could be hit in the near future at the time. There was even plans regarding how to handle cheating, even though the code for the mod would be completely open (given it'd all be in the lua except for the server). One kind-of major wall would have been mods.... there would be no way to support mods without some sort of consideration for them... which I didn't really care for at the time (come to think of it though... it 'would' have been possible). I just wanted to get the multiplayer bit done first.

 

It was a steep battle (not going to lie about that).... it was starting require many work-arounds just to get the setup to work properly (almost all work-arounds were for cheat prevention). Near the time when I stopped working on the mod, we were finishing up moving a lot of the game data to the standalone server. This required a lot of tedious text-file editing.... in addition to creating dumps of single player savegames, parsing all of the prefab info on the map, and reformatting that into a format usable by the server. 

 

One of the major hurdles I wanted to get to once the multiplayer bit was working well... was allowing the server to actually edit/generate bits of the map. But at the time I had no idea about how to edit tiles in the game (nor do I have now). This would have been a great improvement for the mod; as for the first release, it would require manually copying a savegame... and players could only really play on a single-player world that was prepared, then uploaded to the server. One of these world would be distributed with the mod, and I could prepare or possibly make a tool to convert/prepare a world for multiplayer gameplay.

 

Nonetheless, it was a learning experience to say the least.

 

I know there was a few multiplayer mod attempts before me... Desblat, the guy who did some of the client-side coding for the True Lan mod made a local multiplayer mod. But besides that, I don't know of any others.

 

-Crynux

[XirmiX]

@Crynux So I see how changing an existing single player world would be a hastle, and though many people, including myself would surely want to have this in place, it would be something to consider much later on if it's even possible at the end. However, I. on't seem to understand why putting the two games together with two buttons separating them; one requiring servers, and the other not being server based at all. In Bloody Trapland, this has been done, and though I think the Local option might require internet connection, it does not require a hosted or dedicated server at all.

What I was imagining was that when you enter Don't starve, on the right you have your list of buttons with options and instead of a button saying Play or Start, you'd have Alone and Together buttons. By clicking alone, you're going to open a list of your SP DS worlds, which will have no connection to servers whatsoever and will be for you to play on your own. If, on the other hand you clicked Together, you'd enter the server list of online servers/worlds for multiplayer. If this was possible for Bloody Trapland, why would it not be possible for Don't Starve?

[Pyromailmann]

1) Crynux at one point was attempting to make a multiplayer mod. If devs weren't working on DST, this mod being added to DS would make DS a multiplayer game without the need of something outside of it. If Crynux was able to begin on making that, how would it be a problem for devs who have access to the whole program of DS?

Various reasons.

[ailailou]

Totally offtopic but... I just got to get this off my chest: it's masochistically cheesy and sometimes I wonder how I am able to finish reading Xirmixs posts. 

 

Here's the thing dear @XirmiX: two users with a heck of a lot of knowledge posted above some of the reasons why making DST a different game was far more suitable. And not just any kind of knowledge, it goes to the deepest places and corners of Don't Starve files and coding and whatnot. Just because it was possible for Bloody Trapland doesn't mean it's possible for Don't Starve. You keep asking "Why is it so difficult to implement?" or "I don't understand how this or that is not possible", if you believe you have the know-how I bet no one will say no to a detailed way of merging the games together.

 

I understand what your problem is, it's not so much the choice of not merging the 2 games, but rather the inability to make other players experience your singleplayer worlds. You have a world in single player you want people to see? Screenshot. You want people to actually take a walk in that base? Recreate it in DST, or share the world file.

 

You have 2 great games from one of the BEST DEVELOPERS OUT THERE, and you still don't want to understand why it was so much better to not merge the two together. You wanted a menu in single player from where you'd access Together? Well it's not going to happen, so do continue to exit the former and just launch DST from your game library. One minute, that's all it takes. Keep enjoying the games.

 

Oh, and plox stop combat loging and take those Sleepytime Stories like a man!

 

[Crynux]

@Crynux So I see how changing an existing single player world would be a hastle, and though many people, including myself would surely want to have this in place, it would be something to consider much later on if it's even possible at the end. However, I. on't seem to understand why putting the two games together with two buttons separating them; one requiring servers, and the other not being server based at all. In Bloody Trapland, this has been done, and though I think the Local option might require internet connection, it does not require a hosted or dedicated server at all.

What I was imagining was that when you enter Don't starve, on the right you have your list of buttons with options and instead of a button saying Play or Start, you'd have Alone and Together buttons. By clicking alone, you're going to open a list of your SP DS worlds, which will have no connection to servers whatsoever and will be for you to play on your own. If, on the other hand you clicked Together, you'd enter the server list of online servers/worlds for multiplayer. If this was possible for Bloody Trapland, why would it not be possible for Don't Starve?

 

It's not impossible, maybe it just isn't feasible. Describing how something 'could' work is sometimes easier than its actual implementation. Such as in this case.

 

Lets say you were making bathtubs. After your successful line of bathtubs were released, you then decided you wanted to add water jets to it. Now, you can either just add water jets to the existing tub, and abandon the line without jets, or you can create a new line based on the bathtub that has jets.

 

Now, lets look at the situation where you merge the two; selling only a water-jet bathtub:

 

Pros:

• People can buy the one tub, and turn water jets on and off as needed.
• You only have to worry about the one product to make.

 

Cons:

• By ditching the old line of normal tubs, you no longer have a fall-back.
• The jets could cause leaks... and now you have a crappy product on your hands.
• The switching mechanism could cause issues; adding more complex functionality allows for a larger range of problems to occur.

 

Next, the option of keeping the two separate:

 

Pros:

• You have two products, each sharing similarities; due to this, you have a fall-back product.
• People can choose to have one or the other; they aren't forced into a situation.
• Each product can develop on it's own... and if needed you can share advancements between the two due to similarities.
• Each product also has its own reputation... one can be crappy, and the other can be decent.

Cons:

• It's more difficult to switch since there's two.

So, in the end, which would you pick? Honestly, it depends on what you value more. 

 

Personally, I'd rather have the option to choose which I want; it's also nice to know that both are more or less individual entities... although similar enough that they can possibly share updates among each other.

 

So anyways... the answer to your question is in the hands of the devs. Why did they choose to separate them? Because they wanted to; they probably have logical reasons for doing so. Yes, you can counter their reasons with your own... but in the end, they are the creator... let them raise their babies.

 

Anyways... I don't know why I compared DS and DST to bathtubs... but I guess it's kind-of the same concept.

 

Does this help at all? Or am I just rambling....

 

-Crynux

[Johnny5isAlive]

Merging the two games would be much more convenient

 

Pros: It would be pretty kewl.

 

Cons: It's not possible. 

[XirmiX]

@Crynux so it's not that it's impossible, but just not something that devs want to put their efforts into? I see. I wonder if, though, it would be possible to do via modding. Also, I was thinking that you could still have DS and DST on their own if you only have one of the two, but you would have them in one if you had them both.

[Dipps]

@Crynux so it's not that it's impossible, but just not something that devs want to put their efforts into? I see. I wonder if, though, it would be possible to do via modding. Also, I was thinking that you could still have DS and DST on their own if you only have one of the two, but you would have them in one if you had them both.

 

There is literally no way for it to be done through modding. Literally nada.