Co-op lan multiplayer?...

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, rodr said:

You may be okay with it but in reality most people would notice > 100ms of lag to the detriment of UX which is why a 100-148ms response SLA is justified as a UX constraint.

In some games, like shooters or RTS's, yes.  That would be unacceptable.  But ONI doesn't act like those games.  If, in ONI, your system requires you as the player to have a split second reaction time, I think most people would say your system shouldn't require that.  As long as the user interface is responsive, then you should be fine (meaning when I build a tile there isn't a delay on the sound and visual of building the tile).  That can be done locally and can be a request to the host.

1 hour ago, rodr said:

This has nothing to do with difficulties of MP.  MP would be much harder than this.  Dumb terminals or KVM over IP, depending on your view, have existed for awhile. 

cpy was concerned about whether a network could handle the load of transferring the data in real time.  The fact that my network can handle building my display on one computer and sending it to another implies that it can handle the communication requirements.  In a multiplayer game, the equivalent to this would be the game on the host spins up a second display and sends it to you and you interact with that.  There is more to multiplayer than that, but it keeps the physics consistent and bypasses the data syncing issues.

1 hour ago, rodr said:

I repeat a mantra a lot to other developers at work who often say "this would be easy its just (insert something minor)" that I think applies to this thread -- when programming there's no such thing as just.

I completely agree.  I never said it would be easy.  Quite the opposite.  I'm only arguing that it is possible and I think the game could benefit from it.  I don't think the game needs it and if they decide to do it, they should hold off until the game is closer to completion.

[watermelen671]

Forgive me, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around how one would go about making a multiplayer game out of this. Like, what is it that you're hoping to achieve? Where are you going with this? I'm not even referring to the logistics of this; more so the gameplay itself, because it always seems to go back to the same thing: Local 2-Player Co-op.

Something like in Super Mario Galaxy or TBoI? Where the second player can interact with the world, but not really DO anything of consequence? Or are we talking something like Super Mario Bros? Where if one dies, the other one plays?

Spoiler

(Or I suppose after a certain time-limit, because with how long this game can go on for that'd just be boring for player 2)

If you're talking true co-op, how is it that two people can play one world with 3 dupes per each person? Are you referring to a split-screen approach? Where there are two separate colonies, each one has no direct impact on the other, but they're able to trade supplies every so often?

Or do you mean two people, sharing one world, both having to interact with each other, and both can cause trouble for the other? 

That one makes the least amount of sense for me. Why on earth would you allow two people to share one world, when sustainability is the end goal? For example, say, player 2 is a complete and utter noob; and they have a horrible run, where everything goes wrong. Well, now there's 3(+) corpses, and player 2 has wasted all of the potential finite resources and killed all the mobs that player 1 was planning on using. 

The only end result I see happening out of that is, your friend ends up resenting you over not helping them, you resenting them over blowing all of the valuable resources, and both of you having one less friend to play games with.

[Zarquan]

My thinking is that they could just play the standard single player game with two or more people.  Working together can be fun and can add challenges of its own.  I'm not certain that this kind of coop would be good, but it would allow you to be sociable while playing ONI.  I think it is worth considering and could be fun, but it could also be infuriating.  In this version, there are no changes to actual game play.  You just work together to build a base.  An extension to this could be to have assigned dupes that only follow one player's orders (or some urgent priorities).  I personally would like groups of dupes in standard ONI to better micro in certain situations.

Another option is to have multiple bases, but I fear this would require many more changes to the game.  It also makes the game somewhat competitive because there are finite resources.  Unless those two bases are working together, but then my thinking is why have two bases?

Also, having the framework for multiplayer opens more possibilities for modding or game modes in the future.