Multiplayer in AGS

[Sledgy]

I mean, players via Internet play together one AGS-game and see each other (like Counter-Strike)


Is it real, or not?

I've heard about TCP/IP plugin (but old & bad). There's another decision?

[Khris]

This has been discussed numerous times already.
The TCP/IP plugin is outdated afaik, and multiplayer adventure games won't work anyway.
There's no reasonable way to make a multiplayer game out of a classical adventure game.

[Gilbert]

What about this?
Right, it's not really multiplayer, but please refrain from posting negative and seemingly impolite replies against others.

Anyway, Sledgy, AGS was never designed to create such kind of games in the first place, so there isn't any internal support for any network functions. It may not be impossible to make these games with AGS, but you certainly need a lot of effort to get stuff working. It's advised that you may try to search for another engine which is more capable in this department.

[Khris]

Right, sorry.

In theory, AGS can be used to produce games of other genres, so racing games or games like Bubble Bobble are definitely possible in theory.
I just don't see how one would go about making Monkey Island into a multiplayer game.

Here's a relatively recent thread:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35018.0

[poc301]

I for one, would rather kill myself than run around in Kyrandia, Monkey Island, Daventry or somewhere like Spielburg and hear idiots shouting "OMFG I pwned that n00b!" in a chat channel.

If it could be tastefully done, I would be all for it.

-Bill

[monkey0506]

I think the biggest actual challenge here would be creating a game that was equal parts single and multiplayer. Just as in a traditional adventure game you have to solve puzzles to advance the storyline, the MP parts could simply be written to require 2+ players for the puzzle to be solved.

For example, the game could have some type of random key generated when it first starts. This could affect certain events. Maybe on your play-through you only get the blue gate card but what you need is the green gate card. Someone else would have the green gate card, but then once you're through that gate you needed the blue gate card all along!

So in this way, a multiplayer adventure could definitely make sense IMO. It would require a reasonably good network plugin to function (as noted the TCP/IP plugin is severely outdated). So it's not "impossible" or even "unreasonable" to think of a MP adventure game, it would simply have to be written as such. I personally wouldn't want to constrict the player to only MP content which is why I suggested that it be equal parts SP and MP...the player can still have a full and enjoyable experience even without anyone else online, but when a friend gets the chance they can join each other and unlock whole new worlds...

I do understand the argument that adventure games aren't generally designed with MP in-mind, the genre strictly speaking isn't well suited to it...however it would absolutely be not only possible, but interesting as well. Given a proper design team it could be quite enjoyable.

[Crimson Wizard]

What about a head-to-head where each player has a limited number of time per turn; then see who solve the puzzle first?

[Wonkyth]

You guys seem to be assuming that it would have to be something like an MMOAG. why not just a co-operative game?

[Trent R]

Well, that's because it's been discussed multiple times and most of the time it's brought up by n00bs that have been playing MMORPs, and then stumbled across AGS and think "I wanna make RUNSCAP3 in AGS!!1 ITS TA ROXR!"
It doesn't hurt your case when you bring up the TCP/IP plugin...


As for coop games: Sure. Look at 'Two of a Kind' or the commercial 'Gobliiins' games. Those are basically coop games as a single player. If you designed something like that, I think it'd be cool to decide at the beginning if you want 1P or 2P. (However, make sure you don't require it to be coop. Myself, for example, would probably be unable to play that since my bro is the only adventure game fan I know, and he's too busy to sit down and play with me.)


~Trent

[Crimson Wizard]

Actually I think it would be cool to have an multiplayer adventure made as a story with predefined begining and some amounts of possible endings, where each important character is controlled and role-played by different player.
In fact such game could be more role-playing than many exisitng RPGs.

I have a crazy idea of a detective story where one player choses a character who will be a criminal and tries to make a crime, and another player is a detective who has to detect who's the criminal, and, along with that, does not know what character is controlled by opponent (other characters could be controlled using AI), or something like that.

[monkey0506]

Well it's certainly not unfathomable that this could be made to work properly. It would require a lot of work and dedication, careful planning, etc. There's obviously several different plausible ideas. Execution is the primary difficult it would seem. I'd be very interested to see if this is ever actually implemented into a game, but if history tells us anything, I won't be holding my breath.

[JpSoft]

Since there are no way to do nothing like this in AGS, i believe this topic must be moved from here. Maybe in the next years someone will develop a TCP/IP pluggin, but until then multiplayer games are not a technical question.

Jp

[Khris]

I believe scotch did an unofficial update that did work with 3.02.
Some months ago I tried my hand at a multi-platform solution involving AGS's File functions and a small Client-Server prog I coded in Java. I did work but was hell to set up and pretty buggy.

Like I mentioned in another thread, a feasible example of a MP game would be a Gobliiins clone where players saw a list of rooms, could join them once they solved the previous one(s) and solve them together as soon as three people have joined. With a relatively short time frame like that, online coop starts becoming realistic, IMO.

As for the technical side: it's pretty heavy to code a client that'll keep in sync and will display own actions and those by the other two players, all without any blocking code.
Coding a dialog system alone would be hell.

[Wonkyth]

Yeah, I don't think that this is an AGS thing, but I might try something like that, once I have Proper programming skills...

[Crimson Wizard]

As for the technical side: it's pretty heavy to code a client that'll keep in sync and will display own actions and those by the other two players, all without any blocking code.

I may not take into account some things, anyway I have a thought that to a first approximation this could work using event handler that gets a message about other player(s) actions. Yes, actually I believe that only player-originated actions need to be shared (sent between machines), because all other game events either depend on those actions or are independent and, since each machine has same copy of the game (that is copy of game logic), these resulting events could be processed by each machine on its own without synchronising them beyond starting point.
(I hope my thoughts are explained well.)
Ofcourse, there shouldn't be any blocking processes, as was mentioned, unless all player-controlled characters are participating in the same cutscene, for instance. Not sure yet will this cause any real difficulties. I'm afraid my AGS-scripting experience is not big enough yet to see all possible troubles here.

Coding a dialog system alone would be hell.

As a simplified version it could be made so that only 1 real player could participate in conversation with non-player character(s). Not very realistic, ofcourse. And ofcourse it should be made real-time. Uh. Yep 

I have a suggestion, this interesting idea just came to my mind. Would it be possible to make a multiplayer (or a rather 2-player) simulation, simply to uncover any potentional problems, as a game where user(s) can control 2 characters for example one by mouse and another by keyboard?

[Wonkyth]

Probably, but you'd probably have to whip up some real funky jazz to get at least the illusion of players moving between screens separately. but that's assuming it was split-screen( or the likes). you could make it so that one player could only cross onto another room if the other player was doing it at the same time, or at least on the same region, but that would be much more limiting, so unless you could find a scenario that suited this style of game-play very well, it would probably be a waste of time.

[monkey0506]

so unless you could find a scenario that suited this style of game-play very well, it would probably be a waste of time.

You must gather your party before venturing forth.

Oh how I loathe that statement! But it works!

[Trent R]

It walkable areas on-the-fly ever gets implement, including DrawingSurface commands to manipulate them, you might be able to do a 4-Swords type thing in 1027res, and implement all backgrounds as sprites.


~Trent

[Sledgy]

Hm, guys.


I created Multiplayer AGS alpha. There're 10 players for max (temporarily).

And alpha works. One problem is slowness. You see another players with some slow-mo.


I found one decision for AGS Multiplayer -> TXT-files and programm as client/server (in Delphi)


***


I tried to create only in Delphi (without AGS), but I got *similar* slow-mo...

Of course, save&load TXTs is one of causes of slowness. But I think one problem is long processing, when server has many new coordinate-lines. He hasn't time to process it all.


If you want, I can show you my alpha --- we'll see each other and can move on screen, but each of us'll see another guys with "jump animation" (skip frames)

[Snake]

I'm sorry if this causes any trouble, but I'm glad somebody had brought this subject up - a coincidence at it's finest.

I'm currently working on a non-adventure that is a simple turn-based "war" game (based on my version of that pencil and paper war game). Of course, being less complicated than an adventure game with a ton of different rooms, dialogues and what-not, I'm thinking this could be a good candidate for an online 2 player AGS-made game.

I'm thinking it would log on to it's server, look for an opponent, play and that's it. I would also like it to keep track of how many games you've won and lost.

Please, if anyone is interested, let me know. I've had plans of bringing this up later on after 2 player mode was finished (just finished 1 player mode today), but I just happened to find this thread now.

I need to say this right up front though, I know absolutely nothing about doing this so it would have to solely be up to others to program it for online play.

Thanks in advance,

Snake