~ The future of multiplayer adventure games ~

[Eggie]

Okay, if anyone can pill this off it could be one of the most important things in things community EVER.

A few random suggestions:

Maybe one of the players could be randomly selected as a butler who knows all the secret passages at the beginning of the game.

Maybe it should take a few seconds to lock, unlock a door (just like in a horror movie where a victim is fumbling with a key while being pursued).

Maybe the music could provide a sort of clue as to how much danger you're in. Nothing gets the adrenaline going like the music suddenly changing from calm and incindental to fast, loud and frightening.

Maybe there could be ways to die without being murdered. If someone finds a body in the cellar...They'll assume the killer got them rather than the player just fell down the stairs (In the 'teen party' game: It might be a bad idea to climb down stairs while drunk/stoned...It could also take longer to perfom certain actions, like the aforementioned locking of doors.)


I'd enjoy greatly helping out with...well anything non-technical.

[Layabout]

everyone always suspects the butler...

but anyway, i think alcohol would be an interesting factor, but not in a teen movie style...

[alamabad]

I think this will realy work, I'd be glad to help out with the graphics part. I'm also experienced 3dModeler/Animator, if you ever think of converting this to 3D.

[Gregjazz]

Great idea, Migs!

Having NPCs in the game is a difficult decision. You may not want to have them simply to add more human interaction (and thus more replayability). But then again, you'd have to have more people playing at a time.

What you should do is figure out basic uses for objects and sort of make a checklist. Write a list of all the objects in the game. You should probably also make the game expandable by having the object art and abilities in separate files from the game, instead of being hardcoded. Something like this:

Knife:
 Weapon: yes
 Removes fingerprints: no
 Noise level: very small

etc.

You could implement the shout command like Czar suggested (maybe by holding down shift while you press the chat key) so that people in adjacent rooms can hear you.

Remember, the murderer must have:
1. A motive
2. The means
3. The opportunity

[Moox]

A multiplayer platformer would be fun and exciting, or just using some of the elements and making a multiplayer boxing game.

[Moox]

Maybe the music could provide a sort of clue as to how much danger you're in. Nothing gets the adrenaline going like the music suddenly changing from calm and incindental to fast, loud and frightening.

That could be done with regions, If one player steps on one around the corner, then the player that steps on one on the other side, a sound effect could play




And text can be done with sprites, maybe like 30 phrases you could say by clicking on them using object on

Maybe a compass to show where the players are or a map with little moving dots. When some1 dies the dot dissapears.

Perhaps it could be team based, mafia wars, cops and robbers, cowboys and indians etc... and you can only see your own team on map.

You could have objectives for each team like for mafia wars, robbing another teams warehouse. Police might have to defend a bank. And indians could capture a forts flag

[Ghormak]

Heh. I started making a murder mystery game in AGS once. I got quite a bit of it done, before I realised how awfully boring my game was turning out to be.

Maybe it has something you could use in it. http://www.agagames.com/ghormak/murder.zip

[Migs]

Okay, if anyone can pill this off it could be one of the most important things in things community EVER.

A few random suggestions:

Maybe one of the players could be randomly selected as a butler who knows all the secret passages at the beginning of the game.

That's an interesting idea.  To implement this, perhaps all secret passages require a key, or a secret combination, and he's given these.  There could also be a safe, too, which he knows the combination to at the beginning.  However, the butler seems like a character a player would choose at the beginning, rather than a random assignment.  I think, eventually, we might want to experiment with using character classes, so when players select a character at the beginning, they know they'll be using a different strategy for that character.  The butler, like you mentioned, could have initial access to secret rooms and stuff.  There could be a thief in the game who can steal items from other players.  Another character could have exceptional hearing, knowing precisely where a victim's scream came from rather than just a general direction.

For now, though, it might be best to just keep this as bare-bones as possible...no extra goodies.  Those can be saved for later versions.

Maybe it should take a few seconds to lock, unlock a door (just like in a horror movie where a victim is fumbling with a key while being pursued).

That might be more frustrating than enjoyable.  If the killer is hot on your trail, it would be kind of discouraging to have to fumble around to lock a door, when you, as a player, are agile.  We could certainly run some tests with this idea, though, just to see how well it works.

Maybe the music could provide a sort of clue as to how much danger you're in. Nothing gets the adrenaline going like the music suddenly changing from calm and incindental to fast, loud and frightening.

Nice idea, however this could easily give away who the killer is.  I'm not sure it should be up to the computer to give clues like this to players.  A possible solution is to make it so if ANY player has a weapon like a rifle or a chainsaw drawn, the music will change.  This way, the other players still don't know for sure if it's the killer or not, but they still feel the tension of being in the same room with a possible killer.  In my opinion, the players should ultimately be in charge of creating their own clues.

Maybe there could be ways to die without being murdered. If someone finds a body in the cellar...They'll assume the killer got them rather than the player just fell down the stairs (In the 'teen party' game: It might be a bad idea to climb down stairs while drunk/stoned...It could also take longer to perfom certain actions, like the aforementioned locking of doors.)

I think in the teen party version, if/when we get around to that one, everybody could have a constantly increasing drunkenness meter or something, so it's just assumed they're getting drunk...otherwise, why would you choose to drink or get stoned in the game?  Maybe if you choose to drink with other people, they can give you clues.

Also, the killer could set traps and stuff.  This would probably have to wait until a future version of the game, since it's a little complicated for a first multiplayer murder mystery.

I think this will realy work, I'd be glad to help out with the graphics part. I'm also experienced 3dModeler/Animator, if you ever think of converting this to 3D.

I'd love to see this become a 3d game someday.  Not a first-person-shooter of course, but with 3d characters we could really be liberal with the camera perspectives and everything, giving us an edge on creating the right atmosphere (e.g., showing a top-down view of a room from some wooden rafters, limiting visibility and such).

It might be easier to use 3d pre-rendered sprites for the characters, since characters will need more than just 4 walk animations.  Some visible items may need to be added to each sprite, like certain murder weapons.  It would be much easier to just add an object to the 3d character and render separate animations than modifying each frame individually.

Great idea, Migs!

Don't be so modest.  As I mentioned earlier, you and a-v-o came up with most of the good stuff.  I just decided to make a post out of it.

Having NPCs in the game is a difficult decision. You may not want to have them simply to add more human interaction (and thus more replayability). But then again, you'd have to have more people playing at a time.

It can't hurt entertaining the possibility of NPCs, but I doubt they would be necessary to put into the first version of the game.  It's good to speculate about future possibilities, though, since this may very well determine how the game is initially coded.

What you should do is figure out basic uses for objects and sort of make a checklist. Write a list of all the objects in the game. You should probably also make the game expandable by having the object art and abilities in separate files from the game, instead of being hardcoded. Something like this:

Knife:
 Weapon: yes
 Removes fingerprints: no
 Noise level: very small

etc.

I'm already planning on that.  Objects would be much more flexible and allow for easier expansions if everything is accessed from an external file.  I'm not a huge fan of hardcoding when it isn't necessary.

You could implement the shout command like Czar suggested (maybe by holding down shift while you press the chat key) so that people in adjacent rooms can hear you.

That could definitely work.  It would still maintain the desirable sense of seclusion, while giving players the ability to challenge the actions of the killer a little better, even making the killer act a little more tactful in how he kills.

Remember, the murderer must have:
1. A motive
2. The means
3. The opportunity

The motive is the trickiest part, since the killer is just killing because he has to.  Using NPCs and such to weave a story into the game would be a useful design tool, but for beginners we might just have to leave the motive out for now.  I mentioned the idea that maybe the killer could be given a list of certain characters he would do well to eliminate first, scoring him more points or something.  Maybe a reason for killing these certain characters could be given.

A multiplayer platformer would be fun and exciting, or just using some of the elements and making a multiplayer boxing game.

Everybody loves a good multiplayer platformer.  What kind of multiplayer boxing game are you talking about, though?  To be honest, both these ideas sound more like arcade games than adventure games to me.

That could be done with regions, If one player steps on one around the corner, then the player that steps on one on the other side, a sound effect could play

Except that the killer is constantly moving.  The game has no way of predicting where the players will move.

And text can be done with sprites, maybe like 30 phrases you could say by clicking on them using object on

Why not just type it?

Maybe a compass to show where the players are or a map with little moving dots. When someone dies the dot dissapears.

Interesting idea, but it might be unrealistic to show the location of all players, not to mention this would negate the atmosphere or seclusion.

Perhaps it could be team based, mafia wars, cops and robbers, cowboys and indians etc... and you can only see your own team on map.

I'd to eventually see a game where more than one killer is involved, so the game could really get interesting and challenging for the normal players.  For now, though, the teams are basically just (1) the killer; and (2) everyone else.  Keeping it simple for now is the best bet.

You could have objectives for each team like for mafia wars, robbing another teams warehouse. Police might have to defend a bank. And indians could capture a forts flag

I'd like to see a multiplayer game like this, though this might enter the realm of RTS instead of multiplayer adventure.  Wonderful ideas, though!

[Migs]

Heh. I started making a murder mystery game in AGS once. I got quite a bit of it done, before I realised how awfully boring my game was turning out to be.

Maybe it has something you could use in it. http://www.agagames.com/ghormak/murder.zip

Thank you for this, Ghormak!  I'll be sure to check it out.  Out of curiosity, what do you think was making it boring?

[Ghormak]

The problem with my game was that there was no challenge to it. It would have just been a matter of asking everybody about everything, and then checking whose stories didn't match. I must admit I didn't spend too much time planning it, I just love murder mystery games so I wanted to start working on one as soon as possible, heh. With a little planning I'm sure your idea will turn out beautiful.

[alamabad]

Well, if anyone needs me, contact me on msn or email.

MSN:
an_an_cr@hotmail.com

E-MAIL:
alamabad@planethalflife.com

(LostTraveler, if youre intrested in robbing warehouses check out
http://www.planethalflife.com/heist but its a FPS not an adventure)

[m0ds]

Wow, that was his first post. Yeah, i'm intruiged and happy to help out. Very intriguing project.

[Gregjazz]

Got an idea for you, Migs. Instead of making a separate 'shout' command (and thus adding to the complexity), why not simply check to see if the player has an exclamation mark in his sentence?

[alamabad]

i think that people will forget to add them like this post its not very understandable but if someone needs to type something fast like a cry for help they will just foget and its easyer anyway


sorry for that, its ment to be that way.

[YOke]

This could be a whole lot of fun.

I think the Butler should be given a map as an inventory object. If the killer kills the butler he will get all his belongings, including the map. So at the beginning the butler has to be found and guarded by at least two people. (since one of them could be the killer ) Kind of like getting the fox, the hen and the bag of corn across the river.

[MrColossal]

but if you play the game and are the butler one time and then aren't the next you'll still know where all the secrets are even if you can't use them you can still avoid them.

this is a bad idea.

[Migs]

Got an idea for you, Migs. Instead of making a separate 'shout' command (and thus adding to the complexity), why not simply check to see if the player has an exclamation mark in his sentence?

It's so ridiculously simple it just might work!

i think that people will forget to add them like this post its not very understandable but if someone needs to type something fast like a cry for help they will just foget and its easyer anyway

Perhaps a player can either hold down SHIFT or press the CAPS LOCK and type everything in capital letters, or use exclamation marks (or both, obviously).  As I see it, though, implementing shouting isn't a high-priority feature, since it isn't really necessary for a bare-bones game to function.  It wouldn't hurt to add something like this, but only after other more crucial features are in there, and after we can better tell whether it would be conducive to maintaining the balance of the game.

This could be a whole lot of fun.

I think the Butler should be given a map as an inventory object. If the killer kills the butler he will get all his belongings, including the map. So at the beginning the butler has to be found and guarded by at least two people. (since one of them could be the killer ) Kind of like getting the fox, the hen and the bag of corn across the river.

but if you play the game and are the butler one time and then aren't the next you'll still know where all the secrets are even if you can't use them you can still avoid them.

this is a bad idea.

The idea doesn't make sense to me, unless the whole map was randomly generated each and every time (which is nigh impossible with 2d backgrounds).  After several times playing the game, it's expected that the players will learn all the nooks and crannies, and develop strategies.  Moreover, I don't see why the map would be such a crucial object.  It wouldn't really be that essential that you know where everything is.  The enjoyment is in discovering things for yourself, trying to find the objects which are randomly placed in the game, in most cases to gain access to certain rooms.

This makes me more certain that there should be some secondary objective, like finding a hidden treasure, because otherwise why would players even bother solving these puzzles?  The only possible reason they would want to find, e.g., a key to the garage, is to see if the killer stashed anything in there.  No, I think there should be a treasure involved, too.  Nothing major, just a randomly placed treasure that is guaranteed to require solving more than one puzzle to locate.  If a player finds it, great!  He'll be given a trophy or something at the end.

Maybe finding the treasure could let the player know precisely who the killer is.  Instead of looking for riches, they could be searching for the ultimate clue, like a written confession (heh).  Of course, this would require that other players aren't notified when someone finds the treasure, and then the treasure would disappear once it's found.  After that, the locator will have to convince everyone he actually knows who the killer is, and that he's not lying.

This could really add a great twist to the game.  Imagine being the killer, and walking in on someone blabbing to another player he found the treasure and he knows who the killer is.  You'd have to be careful not to kill him right away, because otherwise everybody would know he wasn't lying, but perhaps lay low for awhile, and try to persuade others he's lying to everyone.  Just an idea.

[InCreator]

Amazing and perhaps a bit terrifyingly big ideas here. I have about 40 years to live and If making such a game could take longer, I'm gonna live even longer until that day to see this with my own eye...

[Migs]

Amazing and perhaps a bit terrifyingly big ideas here. I have about 40 years to live and If making such a game could take longer, I'm gonna live even longer until that day to see this with my own eye...

The thing is, it's really not as complicated as it may seem.  I'm just talking about it a lot, so it probably seems more complex an idea than it really is.  When you get right down to it, it's just a matter of giving the players a bunch of items and letting them go nuts.  Once the server-client network and interface are programmed (obviously no easy feat), expansions will be comparatively simple.  At least that's how I'd like to see it programmed, so that all developers have to do is copy/paste the code and just be responsible with coming up with their own items, rooms, and characters.

[MrColossal]

but it still is a lot of work...

you can have all the code in the world but if you can't make a fun game out of it it's pointless.

trying to get the people to actually explore is a problem, trying to get them to not just run away as soon as someone else walks into the room is a problem, trying to balance the game so the killer can't just kill everyone in the first minute of game play is a problem, trying to find out how the game even works is a problem.

it's more than just giving a player a bunch of items, telling them how to use them and when and why and giving them reason to is hard.