Two-player 3D game demo: The Dungeon of Lamurloq (first-person POV dungeon crawler)

I had a look at the White Warlord/Black Baron pair. Wow. I thought I had it hard, with precomputing the maze but… they had to do it in paper. It would be a lot of work, but if one wanted they could redo the pictures and rebuild the rules in CS.

Is Duel Master similar? What are the codes?

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Duelmaster is kind of similar but without the visuals and the emphasis on positioning. You don’t get to change facing but whenever you enter a new area there’s a 3-letter code and you read it aloud to your opponent. If they have the same, you’ve met and can fight a battle according to the game’s combat rules. Also, you’re sometimes given a specific codeword because you’ve opened a chest, laid a trap or otherwise affected an area in a way that might later make it different for the other player. They’ll be prompted to ask if you have this codeword when they enter the relevant area.

They were great fun to play but, as @Pheriannath said, you would eventually begin to remember the layout and the codes, meaning you could get the jump on your opponent…

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Challenge of the Magi (which I played) had a particular genius in exercising these mechanics. I’m going to ramble on a little bit, because I’ve been jogged down memory lane.

Both players take on the role of sorcerers in their prime. Magic is classified into several colour types (e.g. Black for death magic, Blue for illusion magic, Red for fire magic etc); each player would choose a limited number of spells and select a colour to specialise in, which would grant them access to the ‘Ultimate Spell‘ of that colour - powerful enough to instakill if cast successfully, yet so complex that each Ultimate Spell needed a rare, unique catalyst ingredient which the sorcerer would have to find somewhere out there.

The sorcerers would free roam over the myriad realms of the Rainbow Land. Something like Planescape, where you could teleport into any realm/plane and each would be unique: maybe a bustling market, or a raging sea of fire, or a sea of glass. Each realm would be either neutral or else share an affinity with a certain colour (which would often have certain effects over the sorcerers’ spells if they did battle in such a location). This introduced a tactical element over the course of the game; if you managed to find out what your opponent’s spells and magical specialty was, you could literally attempt to corral the fight to a battlefield in your favour.

Sorcerers were free to do whatever they wished; earn money, hire allies, hunt for loot, or just try to find their opponent to beat the snot out of them if they felt strong enough.

There were many ways to win, die or otherwise harass your opponent; you could find yourself caught in your opponent’s cunningly laid trap, be attacked by mercenaries and assassins that your opponent hired, find one of your belongings stolen by your opponent’s hired cutpurse (and woe betide if it turns out to be your Ultimate Spell catalyst), be cursed, poisoned, etc etc. Many sorcerers have won without facing their opponent even once.

I really miss playing this. It’s kinda like the first ‘open world’ game I‘ve ever played, if that makes sense.

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… and all this was just in a small paperback book?

That sounds really cool. Arena of Death was fun too but seems like a step down from that. It had lots of atmosphere and a good, Colosseum-style setting, but I don’t remember there being much in the way of tactics other than setting traps for each other.

I often think it was a shame that gamebooks were more or less shunted aside by videogames in the early 90s, just when authors were starting to get really creative with the medium…

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Oh no, those books were meaty novels. Over 800 sections each, I think.

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Ok, first step toward a 2-player game. I added a small change so the map is repeatable if you specify the random seed in the URL. (You can also set the size, rows and columns, with r - c).

If you change the URL, add a seed (here, “ultima”, but could be any word or number), and share it with another person, they will get the same map. This link will give you the map below.

https://dashingdon.com/play/sciscidiego/first-person-maze/mygame/?seed=ultima&r=6&c=6

Screen Shot 2020-08-05 at 12.20.57 PM

(Note that the server seems to be very slow at the moment.)

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You should edit your ‘2-player’ post to be clearer to people that you are using the url to transfer the same game to two or more players :slight_smile: they may not have followed the other threads

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Wow, that was quick! I look forward to seeing how it develops. (Btw “ultima” was a good choice! :wink: )

Hi there. New feature: when you start a game, you’ll get a QR code and a link to share. The map will be reproducible. I still don’t know how to make it playable by two people without using a server in the middle to share state. Well, I could go “old school” and assume the two players will be at shouting distance and they will call out their location code… Ideas?

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Forum messages? Emails? Discord?

With that message frequency, maybe this should become a strategic game, like chess. Very interesting.

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I really don’t know if it is possible but I just got this idea of using the modified version that @Sargent did that outputs the text of the game as you play in real time and use that file on a sharing platform (dropbox, drive, etc) so then the other player could read the coordinates (ideally the game itself could do that) and show another dot or arrow of the second player on the map or something like that. Again, I have no idea of how or if it is even possible to do that, that’s just what I could imagine with my limited knowledge.

Yes, that’s the idea. Each player would send their status to some server, and the game would have to query back to get the other player’s info. It’s all doable with *script… How far we can push *scripting and still say we are doing Choicescript? Does CS support a GIF socket? :slight_smile: GitHub - videlalvaro/gifsockets: Real Time communication library using Animated Gifs as a transport™

I love seeing ChoiceScript get taken into new and different directions. Never thought I’d see it go into a whole new dimension, but glad it’s happening.

Hi all, I’m happy to introduce two-player gaming in Choicescript! Inspired by the old DuelMaster etc, now two people can enter the maze and challenge each other. Find the bow or the sword, and then face your opponent.

Initially, I implemented a pure CS solution, where the game was showing codes that your opponent would have to punch in their game, but this got old quickly. The current implementation shares the players’ status in the background via a third-party server (using *script).

To play a two-player game, start a new game and choose “multiplayer”. Then share the link or the QR code with another person. The map will be shared, and the game will keep track of who finds what weapon. When you meet in the maze, the duel will start!

Link in the first post: Two-player 3D game demo: The Dungeon of Lamurloq (first-person POV dungeon crawler)

This is clearly only a simple proof of concept. Let me know your ideas to improve it.
Kudos again to @Loudbeat for the artwork.

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Awesome! I’m going to cajole/bully/bribe a friend into trying this out with me ASAP. Thanks for all your hard work!

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Two-player choicescript games via third-party server? That is just so awesome! Any plans to make a waiting room/lounge, so we don’t have to bother our friends with QR codes?

Hit the "seriously?" option for maze size. Loaded it up, scrolled down, had to boggle at the sheer size of that lad. That would be my version of hell. Kilometres of identical corridors twisting up and over and back on itself. An end is possible but unlikely. You have made a wrong turn and found yourself in The Back Rooms.

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:slight_smile: On the other side I was in heaven when I saw that CS could deal with that. Now that I know recursion works, I really want to write a real AI player of Connect Four or similar.

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