Would there be interest in multiplayer CS games?

For a while I have been thinking about and playing with ideas that involve storing and extracting the current game state. I used this to build a save game module and have ideas about using it to collect metrics on player choices for use in testing.

I have had an idea of how to use this to create multiplayer CS games. Essentially they would follow the same model as old play by email games in which you exchange save game files. Using modern instant messaging platforms it should be possible to exchange this data in near real time.

So you and a friend play the game separately and regularly exchange this data. This enables your choices to jointly affect both games.

I suspect this would work best in some kind of cooperative adventure where you can jointly work on some scenes but also have independent encounters.

If you imagine that such a system exists and is reasonably easy to use. Do you think that such a game would have an audience? Do you like the idea of playing a choice based game alongside a friend which features high interactivity between you both?

Current WiP to demo what I’m thinking: https://dashingdon.com/play/sinnie/rock-paper-scissors-a-multiplayer-cs-experiment/mygame/

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I would love that! No idea how it would work or if its even feasible, but I would love it.

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You might want to ask someone who works at choice of games about this.

This is the WiP prototype that I came up with this evening: https://dashingdon.com/play/sinnie/rock-paper-scissors-a-multiplayer-cs-experiment/mygame/

This game is incredibly simple, but I think the underlying mechanism to manage the exchange of information works and can scale to manage a proper game. There is likely to be an upper limit to the complexity of the game (or at least, the number of variables you can use).

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Interesting, will play with two devices tomorrow. I do not know if it is possible but would it not be easier to send some numerical code instead of whole words to make things a bit easier (and not spoil to much yet)?

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This would be interesting. I did a few rounds as both Player 1 and Player 2 to see how that would work (Pigeon stares blankly like a zombie the entire time, which, weirdly enough, made me laugh hysterically).

I’m not entirely sure how this would work, realistically. It is an interesting idea, however.

I agree with @lisamarlin on using numerical codes or some other thing so we don’t know what the other player picks. And have it randomized when the game starts, so that it will pick what each answer’s code is so someone can’t cheat by memorizing what each code is.

Makes it fair, that way.

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Absolutely, yes. I am still thinking through the best way to implement converting text to numbers.

The problem is that you have to mask it sufficiently so that 1 doesn’t always equal rock, which suggests using a random element. But, both versions of the game have to be able to interpret that number correctly, so you’d have to share the random number as part of the code. I’d rather not implement an MD5 hash using choice script!

I’ll need to think through how you ensure each version of the game can correctly decipher the code without mistake.

It could also be that pure adversarial games don’t really work because of the open sharing of data. If I take this any further my first idea will be a cooperative game.

The idea is good but…
Well, you have to have the same reading speed and make choice quickly for the other don’t bored themselves or go through the game without you.

In a sort of pvp, it can mean that the other player can already have their gun on your head while you’re still choosing the color of your hair…

Personnaly, I love tontake my time in these rpg, so I wouldn’t made a great teammate.

But the idea is interesting. I don’t see how this can work in cog but I’m curious.

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CoG actually semi-announced a multiplayer game set in the world of Choice of Romance(?), a few years ago. Nothing seems to have come if it yet, however.

@jasonstevanhill I’m curious, is that something you’re able/willing to comment on? Is it still in production?

Reference: Name your own character in our 2016 charity auctions

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Hi! I am not Jason, but I am COG staff, and I am one of the people working on the Once and Future multiplayer game :slight_smile:

We began development on this game several years ago, but it has been on hiatus for a number of reasons. By happy coincidence, we have just started revisiting the project in the last few months.

I don’t want to get into too much depth with Q&A here, mainly because there are still a lot of uncertainties. That’s the primary reason that we haven’t made any formal announcements or started public discussions.

Here’s what I can say, though:

  • It is not in the Choice of Romance world, but in similarly pseudo-European-pseudo-medieval fantasy world. (As you can see if you look at the charity auction site, it is a world with dragons! Lots of dragons! The winner of the charity auction helped us design one of the dragons, and it’s really cool :slight_smile: ) The general story is about factions warring over the crown of a pseudo-medieval realm. I’ve got an academic background in medieval history, and I’ve been drawing heavily on that for my share of the story. I never thought I’d be using my academic work to figure out the rules of dragon jousting, but here we are.
  • The current draft of the game can support up to four players. When the hiatus started, we were working on an AI mode so that people could also play solo.
  • People who like tinkering with the more complex aspects of ChoiceScript code might remember the introduction of arrays a while back. We added that feature as part of the development of multiplayer functionality.
  • We are absolutely aware of the challenges of this style of play - for instance, as mentioned above, that one player might read a lot faster than another - and we are working on ways to deal with those difficulties. Even though you haven’t seen the work, please trust us that it has been happening, and that we’ve got it in hand! When it is time for suggestions, testing, beta, etc, we will let you know.
  • Unfortunately, we really don’t have any idea what our timeline is. Because there are so many uncertainties and so many brand-new technical issues that we’re solving, it’s very hard to guess how long the development process is going to take. We have what we think is about 2/3 of the writing done?

I’m happy to answer questions as much as I can, but should also warn that many of my answers will be “Yup, we’re working on that!” or “It’s too soon to say.”

I’m really excited to be resuming work on this project and hope that we’ll have some more definitive news soon.

(Also, dragon jousting, you all! :slight_smile: )

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I’m so glad to hear this project is still underway. Very excited to see what comes of it.

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That’s excellent to hear, thank you so much! Honestly, it’s just really good to hear whether or not you’re still working on it. I really appreciate the transparency!

But yes, for e.g. as part of this discussion it would be interesting if you’d decided that there wasn’t a market for multiplayer IF games! Obviously that isn’t the case and now I’m very excited :slight_smile:

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That’s an interesting idea, and probably worth a shot. But you will need to cooperate additionally with someone to play, which can be troublesome.

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In my honest opinion, I don’t think it’s going to work if it only contains a multiplayer mode. It must have a single player mode as well, otherwise The whole thing will be dependent on two humans being present. Luckily, the developers seem to understand this and hopefully they will come up with something good.

Please don’t randomly bump old threads.