Will be multiplayer in the future?

[Eyal19941]

Will be multiplayer in the future?

[marcjhune22]

I think not, there are games that are good with multiplayer, but sadly ONI is not one of those games

[cpy]

You ask solitaire devs for multiplayer too?

[Pyr0mrcow]

I mean, it could work. Lock dupes belonging to one player onto one color of outfit and only be controllable by that player, have multiple portals.
Would be nice for splitting up tasks. Could see competitions too, with people already making custom maps.

[Risu]

ONI is not Dungeon Keeper. Don't try to make it so.
 

[Kasuha]

Devs are currently not considering adding multiplayer to ONI. But I think it was the same with Don't Starve. I can imagine a Don't Starve Together kind of multiplayer in ONI, too, each of the players would get their own set of duplicants to command and what will happen is up to the players.

Not something I would say the game needs, but I don't see that as impossible.

[Whispershade]

I think there is a distinctive dynamic in controlling a single protagonist versus an expanding group of them that makes multiplayer with Don't Starve more conceptually practical than with ONI. Especially given the lack of personal interaction the player really has with the environment except through command priorities with their Duplicants. In Don't Starve bad decisions were generally felt by the person who made them, I don't think that would really be true in a "Co-operative" setting of ONI.

I won't say it will not happen, but I would be dubious of how well it would work.

[Pyr0mrcow]

Similar to other multiplayer games where you manage resources. Full disclosure, I love RTS's, so I'm pretty biased here.

Players could each manage what they're best at, allowing for much more successful play sessions. Faster progress due to closer management and ability to split focus. Ect.
Regular gameplay aside, it'd also allow people who aren't very good at the game to learn more directly from people who are.

I honestly don't see Klei themselves implementing multiplayer any time soon (because they probably have a development plan that focuses on other stuff), but if more extensive modding support is added, we could see a scenario similar to Don't Starve where the community implemented multiplayer on their own. Heck, it's been done again with Shipwrecked.

[Whispershade]

At the time of my original post I considered an RTS as the closest conceptually to ONI in terms of multiplayer thinking.

8 hours ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Players could each manage what they're best at, allowing for much more successful play sessions. Faster progress due to closer management and ability to split focus. Ect.
Regular gameplay aside, it'd also allow people who aren't very good at the game to learn more directly from people who are.

I don't wish to pooh-pooh you, but I would make a criticism of theses points from my perspective. This isn't an RTS and with the ability to pause the game at a moment's notice to issue instructions or read a situation makes, to me, split focus irrelevant. Right now at least, it isn't like there are fundamentally different focuses of the game like in some RTS's where you have macro and micro. Base management and Unit management. So I am unsure how player strengths and weaknesses really comes together. But this sort of leads me to the next point

The notion of allowing people who aren't very good to learn from the people who are sort of breaks the core gameplay loop that I believe ONI presents as a management sim.  It leaves no real game left for the not so great player as they're not really contributing, they're just copying. Even in the context of people cribbing designs and ideas for contraptions from here, Youtube and Reddit, they're figuring out how to implement them in their own base trying to solve their own problems. If you basically have someone there to solve their problems for them they're not getting that accomplishment of figuring out what went wrong and discovering solutions which I believe to be what makes this game work. I think this would be different if the player was in control of only a single character and they have an avatar there sort of personifies them in the world. Even in Co-Op scenarios in SC2 the player has direction intervention through their Captain powers. Or in Warcraft 3 the co-op against the evironment was sort of a diablo-esque crawl that became MOBAs. But for ONI the only limitation on simultaneous actions you can perform is dupe manpower and the overhead to support them.  That's basically identical with 1, 2, N people.

Thinking about your post and what I realized today (which should've been obvious to me sooner) is that this game is closer to Sim City than Starcraft. And I'm not really familiar with a cooperative city management game, to be honest.

But I was thinking about how the geography of our asteroid biomes suggest that we are only in a small slice of an asteroid situated above the asteroid core and that perhaps there are other slices with other colonies.  And I remembered how in one of the last Sim City games (that I played) there was a mechanism for cooperating with other cities through connecting with your boarder with roads, power, and plumbing that enabled some economy.  I wondered if a version of Multiplayer could exist there you could find some passage in the Neutronium walls that would enable some sort of economy between players.

In the end I could be all sorts of wrong though. Whatever makes the game fun for people.  No Bad Wrong Fun as they say.

[noisycat]

No need for multi now, expand the game itself first!

8 hours ago, Whispershade said:

But I was thinking about how the geography of our asteroid biomes suggest that we are only in a small slice of an asteroid situated above the asteroid core and that perhaps there are other slices with other colonies.  And I remembered how in one of the last Sim City games (that I played) there was a mechanism for cooperating with other cities through connecting with your boarder with roads, power, and plumbing that enabled some economy.  I wondered if a version of Multiplayer could exist there you could find some passage in the Neutronium walls that would enable some sort of economy between players.

I like this idea, although the amount of programming and content needed to implement this plus a fair share of testing is the roadblock here.

Well, for the current state of game (no micromanagement of dupes for example) I think it's reasonable to just allow two players control one base, same dupes, same privileges. Dupes pick work from queue so that's not a big deal.

Also, my note on the multiplayer implementation. Syncing gases and the grid in general... That's hard. I don't know if ONI simulation is deterministic or not, if it's not it would only make things worse.

[Sevio]

Have to agree with @Whispershade here and add that for me, the big fun about ONI was (and still is) discovering how to better manage and plan my colony, discovering how all the different systems work and figuring out good layouts for resource processing.

The game has a decent amount of Factorio aspect in it right now and refining and expanding this part will surely get more attention, given all the materials that exist in the game right now that are going unused or can't be produced without tepidizer trickery.

But the Don't Starve aspect of the game is still very underdeveloped. I don't just mean food production, but more serious consequences for failing to manage heat, toxic or unbreathable gases and pollution. A seasonal or other longer-term cycle that causes change in the environment around you and forces you to adapt or suffer the consequences. Random events that can shake up the comfortable balance a decently managed colony eventually achieves. This wouldn't necessarily take the form of "dump really bad condition X on the player without warning", but could give you some warning ahead of time so you can prepare for it. And as previously announced, discovery of the the game's background and lore.

[CodingKitteh]

I do hope so but multiplayer add-ons for games that were designed with heavy singleplayer aspect requires a lot of core mechanics being evaluated. That requires a lot of development time. So far, I would like it but would not prioritize it in being with the game at release. The games needs more content and fleshed out. If done right, this game has a lot of potential... I mean a lot.

 

Off the top of my head I can already think of a few multiplayer modes:

1. Co-op Play (Base Builder)
   1. PvE
   2. Single Base
   3. Each player is a dupe
   4. Players build the best most efficient base to battle dangers: heat death, limited resources, famines, invasions, decay
2. Co-op Multiplayer
   1. Faction vs Faction
   2. Single Base per Faction
   3. Each player is a dupe (a 4vs4, 2 faction/bases, is 8 players, 4 dupes per faction)
   4. Shared Map - competition for resources, geysers, void, system terrorism (usurp electricity grid/gas generators)
   5. Split Map with a no man's land in between
3. Multiplayer
   1. PvP
   2. Single Base per Player
   3. Each player controls many dupes
   4. Shared Map
   5. Split Map

 

It would seem one core programming addition would be able to have these three modes. Attacking mobs are already implemented, so basically just need to add the option for player attacking. AI is okay but can be improved to be more precise. If AI isn't used, then movement keys would need to be programmed. Then content such as weapons, monsters, armor, buildings related to the former, traps, would need to be added in to facilitate the mechanics.

Though on a second thought, Co-op player (Base builder) is already doable with the game in it's current form. 

[Sevio]

How would being in control of a single dupe work anyway in this game? All the tasks in the game are lumped into one big pile that all dupes take from. You could split building and digging tasks and maybe cooking because those tasks are created directly by a player but almost everything else generates tasks without player intervention. It doesn't really make sense to share control in a colony management sim except by giving each player their own colony to manage on one map.

[cpy]

Really you see ONI and DS as same games when it comes to multiplayer? There is 0 usefulness in multiplayer in ONI. You have problem with time warp in MP. I saw DS that this game can benefit from MP because it have all things that good MP game needs.

I want to see detailed WORKING and sensible detailed description of how you see ONI to work in MP.

COOP? No idea how would this work. Control just 1 dupe? How many player you'd need to be reasonable?

Independent bases that just trade stuff?

PVP? You can just rush dupes to dig and kill opponent.

[Pyr0mrcow]

Not the same as DS, but similar. They're both based around management of resources.

The game wouldn't actually have to change much to work in multiplayer. Basically the same process that Don't Starve went through; identify one sim as the master and transfer information that the player is meant to have access to to other players. Heavier load due to all the calculations in this game, but that's just how that is.
And yea, it might eventually need some extra features for it to be interesting, but I'm mostly thinking about mod-based multiplayer, or basic multiplayer support. The community's already coming up with mini-games and their own world designs, even with this just being single player. If Workshop support gets more extensive, it'd be pretty great for this game.

 

Competitive matches in ONI could be really fun with community maps.

As far as COOP goes, I'm thinking portals with some space between them. Players could choose whether to work with eachother or stay separate.
There're a few things that could help multiplayer as much as single player. Ability to move containers with their contents (only by sufficiently strong dupes), ability to pack gasses and liquids into containers, ability to manually tell Dupes to move specific items to specific places, generally more individual control. That'd cover trade, while also making it easier to organize single player bases, and give more (presumably slower, but more readily available) options for moving resources around.
Maybe enclosed suits, for better exploration.

For multiplayer-specific things, add a setting to door locks to prevent other players' dupes from entering them. Specific ownership to anything manually constructed (machines, tiles, doors), with the ability to make it 'public'; preferably with a brush, like the priority tool. Ability to target dupes. That's about it.

 

As far as PVP examples go...that's basically how any game works when the players get familiar enough with it. Rush and once you get a slight advantage, steamroll. Frankly, Don't Starve PVP is the same thing; if you get the Pan Flute first, you can end the game right there. Prolonged match, rush for control of the Ruins, get a Molehat and Lazy Explorer, and you're unmovable. Magic tech and Dark Sword/Night Armor spam if you really want to rub it in, but all they'll do is speed up the beat-down.
PVP takes a lot of effort to get right. Not terribly interested in that aspect TBH, with the game being so heavily PVE, but adding the option would be nice. Competitions and occasional PVP mid-competition could be neat, but I just don't see it ever being a focus unless a lot of developmental/balancing effort were put into it, which would be a long-lasting headache.
So yeah.
Direct PVP, meh.