¿Multiplayer Patch?

[Gorlom]

The reason I said something about being forced to share squad members was referring back to an earlier post about a different method of taking part in ground combat, one I am not as keen on.

I think I originally mentioned it as a way for all players to take part in the battle by sharing control of whichever squad happened to have arrived there.

I then realised how much I would hate having to give over control of my own favourite troops to someone who may get them killed.

Yes, I agree that would be a bad solution. It would penalize the player that supplies the soldiers and possibly be hard to motivate giveing any reward to the other player not sending any of his own trops.

Maybe it would just be best to have an option for other players to send a dropship to join a ground mission a player has troops at.

If they choose to join in they can send a ship and the mission doesn't start until it arrives, if not they can carry on playing on the geoscape in real time.

You seem very insistant (or atleast brushing off my inquieries about alternatives) on haveing to send a physical chinook (from every player even) to the target site for the ground battle. Is this part really necessary? Especially in your sending multiple chinoks situation it becomes boring waiting period for the player that reaches the site first. For single player game it helps with the immersion and explaning the chinoks presence, as well as determines if it will be a day or night battle. For multiplayer I don't really see the point of it and it seems to me it could be cut out and simplified to start Ground missions.

Edited February 15, 2012 by Gorlom

[irongamer]

sending multiple chinoks situation

I had this horrible image of multiple chinoks converging at high speed on the same landing spot at the same moment, only to become a twisted metallic wrapper around a chewy human bubble gum mass.

[Gauddlike]

Surely in multiplayer games the chinook serves the same purpose?

Why remove the dropship if you don't need to?

If you reach the combat site first you carry on doing other things until the rest of the team arrives.

I imagine it could be dull if you had absolutely nothing else to do, no other intercepts to run, no research to check up on, no manufacturing to change, no recruiting to do, no one needed equipping at the base etc.

I would point out though that the physical travel time of the ship doesn't really change any of the points in other posts.

The only difference is that instead of risking your dropship against the fighter patrols that could be hunting it you have an insta battle button.

Player one sends a dropship and player two gets a message saying troops are en route to crash site-1.

2 decides to join in or not.

Or 1 clicks the fight button and 2 gets the same message and finishes what they were doing before clicking their join button.

If that was missing from the single player game I would be very disappointed with the decision to remove it, why should the multi player game need to be so different?

[Gorlom]

Surely in multiplayer games the chinook serves the same purpose?

Why remove the dropship if you don't need to?

If you reach the combat site first you carry on doing other things until the rest of the team arrives.

I imagine it could be dull if you had absolutely nothing else to do, no other intercepts to run, no research to check up on, no manufacturing to change, no recruiting to do, no one needed equipping at the base etc.

I would point out though that the physical travel time of the ship doesn't really change any of the points in other posts.

The only difference is that instead of risking your dropship against the fighter patrols that could be hunting it you have an insta battle button.

Player one sends a dropship and player two gets a message saying troops are en route to crash site-1.

2 decides to join in or not.

Or 1 clicks the fight button and 2 gets the same message and finishes what they were doing before clicking their join button.

If that was missing from the single player game I would be very disappointed with the decision to remove it, why should the multi player game need to be so different?

I'm sorry but I think that is a tremendously bad way of handeling it. Worst case scenario you're going to mess about on an alternativ screen and halfway through what you're doing the mission screen is going to pop up. Either it's going to cut what you were doing short or you are going to press some kind of wait button reverseing the problm onto other players.

Besides removeing the chinook could make deployment in multiplayer a bit easier. If you got 2 or 3 human players that would mean 2-3 Chinooks on the map according to my assumptions... (unless you have some other solution to that) That would mean you have to make different maps for every additional player. If you remove the chinook and allow for placement areas that aren't marked with a visual object like a chinook you wouldnt have the need to make different maps. And quite frankly it would also make the maps more interesting and varied if there isnt 2-4 chinooks takeing up submap spots.

EDIT:

why should the multi player game need to be so different?

I at least feel that not every feature from the single player game is suited for multiplayer, and that those can be adapted to make multiplayer much more user friendly and intuetive. Reversely the multiplayer adaptations would hardly be suited for singleplayer. Edited February 16, 2012 by Gorlom

[Gauddlike]

I'm sorry but I think that is a tremendously bad way of handeling it. Worst case scenario you're going to mess about on an alternativ screen and halfway through what you're doing the mission screen is going to pop up. Either it's going to cut what you were doing short or you are going to press some kind of wait button reverseing the problm onto other players.

I fail to see how that issue has anything at all to do with travel time of a transport.

Removing that would leave you in the same situation.

You click your fight button and the other player gets their action cut off or has to click wait.

Either that or all players are forced into a fight when one player clicks or they go into individual fights which you have argued against (and I also don't like).

I am really not following your argument I'm afraid.

In answer to the other point I just wouldn't show multiple Chinooks.

That was why I said that each player would select who to take from his squad until the total for all players was at the cap or they had taken everyone they wanted.

Your suggestion of an open spawn area would also work, you could just say the dropships landed troops and took off for a safer landing zone.

I agree that not all parts are entirely suited, I haven't seen a reason yet that travel times (which seem to be your big issue, unless I'm mistaken) need to be removed.

[Gorlom]

I fail to see how that issue has anything at all to do with travel time of a transport.

Removing that would leave you in the same situation.

You click your fight button and the other player gets their action cut off or has to click wait.

Either that or all players are forced into a fight when one player clicks or they go into individual fights which you have argued against (and I also don't like).

I am really not following your argument I'm afraid.

In answer to the other point I just wouldn't show multiple Chinooks.

That was why I said that each player would select who to take from his squad until the total for all players was at the cap or they had taken everyone they wanted.

Your suggestion of an open spawn area would also work, you could just say the dropships landed troops and took off for a safer landing zone.

I agree that not all parts are entirely suited, I haven't seen a reason yet that travel times (which seem to be your big issue, unless I'm mistaken) need to be removed.

Acctually it is just one step in what im trying to argue. Combined with a more turnbased like geoscape (emphasis on "like"), only terror missions (or ships shot down by computer controlled human forces or something, just as long as the UFOs shot down by a player doesnt spawn the crash site so it can be controlled better) spawning ground combat missions and research/manufaction progress based on events on the geoscape you can artificailly create moments where there is nothing to do. In such an event the ground mission won't interrupt anything. But I degress that's further down the line, we are not quite there yet.

I think packing everyone in the same Chinook would be slightly confusing. Why would they get in individual chinooks takeing off at different times then suddenly be cramed into the same transport? Also wouldn't the soldiers be in the way of each other?

My main greif isn't the travel time tbh. I guess you can keep it in but I would at the very least want every player to start flying to the ground missions at the same time. And possibly (unless it annoys people to the point of suspending belief) have them arrive at the same time regardless of distance. I just figured it would be simpler to "force" the mission upon the players if you removed the travel time. I'm open for discussion about it though.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Gorlom

[Ziggarius]

I haven't seen this suggested, well, not in detail. However, if a X-Com like game were to be implemented as a Multiplayer co-op. I would change the Geoscape to being turn-based and have it be one-day a turn. Everyone has their own base, separate research at first until they get an alien tech that allows them to "link" their databases together or perhaps just start research shared.

At the start of each turn, no more than one "event" will appear (at least, not until the later parts of the game). Either it's a UFO sighting which can only be intercepted by the player that detected it, or it could be a terror-mission or base event. If it is a UFO sighting, after everyone has "committed" their turn (Note: This does not mean the turn is completed, just the actions for the day has been committed to) the UFO interception happens as normal, and should it result in a crashed UFO all players can then send a chinook to it no matter the range/time difference. Once the combat is completed this would end the 'turn', and the next turn would start from there.

The importance of having multiple bases, and chinooks for each player would be more towards the mid-later stages when there could multiple events up on the geoscape at once. Since each turn, you could only assign a chinook towards one event.

Hmm, thinking a little more on it, perhaps 12-hour turns would be more in order. A 6am-6pm, and then 6pm-6am. Just thought this as I went into thinking of how to implement night/day missions, would suck to make it randomly generated for day/night. By making it 12 hour turns, it would be possible to choose whether it's a day or night mission with the possibility of the event disappearing.

[Gazz]

it's possible that we might be able to add multiplayer ground combat missions where one side controls the aliens.

Main problem with that is that the "alien player" gets to do nothing at all until the human player gets off his ass and attacks some aliens.

The game is structured for the human player to do all this base-building and stuff...

So why not use that?

Put 2 human players against the aliens.

The overall alien threat level and rate of increase must be scalable.

This allows for different play modes like co-op and pvp.

In coop mode, you have one NATO and one Warsaw Pact player working together against the aliens.

Both build bases independantly and get independant funding.

They can trade research results and equipment - if they choose to. =)

If they choose not to, well, that's a very likely cold war scenario...

The Geoscape would be realtime for both with the global timer only running as fast as the lowest common speed setting.

In ground missions or base attacks they can work together. (or against each other =)

It's "just" one more side in the battle.

That's why the alien threat must be scalable because in a coop game, you need more aliens.

The other player's bases would not automatically be visible but need to be "found" like alien bases.

If the player's agree, they can just "show" each other their base locations, using interceptors.

At the initiation of ground missions there would have to be a feature for waiting for the other player's dropship.

[danzer]

Just going to drop a line here, there's already two (although one of them is on hold) successful multi-player X-COM variants,

UFO2K

http://ufo2000.sourceforge.net/

It implements just the battlescape bit, but does it incredibly well, complete with mods and gamemodes.

UFO:TTS

http://ufotts.ninex.info/

Whilst UFO2K just implemented the battlescape, TTS does the whole thing, with aliens sending harvesting/terror/scouting/et.c missions and X-COM intercepting, researching and so forth.

TTS is currently on hold due to pending legal issues.

[Monkeyboyen]

I and a friend used to play x-com 1-2 this way.

we made our base, divided the ammount of soldiers into 2 groups ( puting a E (for me) or S (for my friend) at the end of the name of the soldiers. The whole base management we discussed and keept everything shared. At missions I toke my soldiers and moved into one direction, he toke his soldiers and moved another direction. First I moved mine, then he moved his, next turn he moved first then me and so on. When we got enough money we bought 2 new bases, one for each and transfered our soldiers to that base. At my base I still had to give room for soldiers he could use so when my base was sendt out on a mission he would still have some charatcers to controll so that each of us had something to do on the mission sites. For me and my friend this is the best way we like to play x-com. Have the option to play from 2 computers would give us the chance to play much more often and speed things up when we are playing.

I don't see why this shoudn't work as a coop option. The shared screen could act like google documents do, say im on a mission and have selected a unit, my friend on his screen would see a coloured marking on that unit indicating that I have selcted it. We both can do things in that turn when we are done we hit the turn button to indicate we are ready.

[Corporal Hicks]

I think it would be easier if the multiplayer was Human Vs. Alien instead of Co-op.

The only option would be two players playing at the same time, one controlling the humans and the other, the aliens. But I think that an Alien campaign would require a lot more of artwork, story, etc...

[Gorlom]

I and a friend used to play x-com 1-2 this way.

we made our base, divided the ammount of soldiers into 2 groups ( puting a E (for me) or S (for my friend) at the end of the name of the soldiers. The whole base management we discussed and keept everything shared. At missions I toke my soldiers and moved into one direction, he toke his soldiers and moved another direction. First I moved mine, then he moved his, next turn he moved first then me and so on. When we got enough money we bought 2 new bases, one for each and transfered our soldiers to that base. At my base I still had to give room for soldiers he could use so when my base was sendt out on a mission he would still have some charatcers to controll so that each of us had something to do on the mission sites. For me and my friend this is the best way we like to play x-com. Have the option to play from 2 computers would give us the chance to play much more often and speed things up when we are playing.

I don't see why this shoudn't work as a coop option. The shared screen could act like google documents do, say im on a mission and have selected a unit, my friend on his screen would see a coloured marking on that unit indicating that I have selcted it. We both can do things in that turn when we are done we hit the turn button to indicate we are ready.

While the premise sounds ok your way of doing it sounds very forced. Can you come up with any features to make it smoother.

Would 2 ifferent organisations that doesn't share tech be more or less fun then one that shares all resources?

Would you remove the UFO interception or keep it in?

Would just one player need to shoot down UFOs or would both be able to?

When one player sends a dropship how does the other players soldiers arrive? Shareing soldiers probably worked for you and your friend but it poses problems for others that doesn't have similar playstyles or simply don't respect the other players troops.

Who captures stunned aliens on the battlefield?

I think it would be easier if the multiplayer was Human Vs. Alien instead of Co-op.

The only option would be two players playing at the same time, one controlling the humans and the other, the aliens. But I think that an Alien campaign would require a lot more of artwork, story, etc...

The story can probably be stripped down pretty much for multiplayer, if it even needs one at all. (Modders could possibly add some along the way but I don't think it is essential considering what other X-com multiplayer games/mods looks like)

Edited May 11, 2012 by Gorlom

[DormantGames]

Hello I've quickly created this account to toss out my thoughts about multi-player after an hour or so of reading. (I'm 7 months late for this thread)

(For the following, consider the 4 players as being male)

Okay, so here's my idea on multi-player.

The option to play multi-player would be shown at the start, once pressed the player chooses how many players to invite (from 2-4), after that's been done, the player that is setting the game up invites friends. (How? I have no idea, use your imagination) After the players have been chosen and everyone is ready to start, the game continues to the Geoscape.

From here, one of the following can happen:

All players choose a base point, once all points have been chosen, the players can then decide to vote on whichever base is the best without being able to vote for their unless someone else has chosen theirs. If in the end of the voting all bases have 1 vote, then a random base is chosen amongst them.

Or

The creator of the multi-player room can choose a base without the decision of the others.

Naming the base comes down to the creator of the room or could be randomly given for laughs.

After the base has been created, the creator of the room can decide what to do without any kind of voting, however the other players can suggest what to do next by say for instance - player 2 wanted to research Alien Alloys, they could click Research and click Alien Alloys and a notification would pop up at the bottom right saying "Player 2 wants Alien Alloys to be researched." This would also be displayed in a chat box which can be expanded by clicking the notification window which displays the events like "Aircraft carries has been sunk with 69 casualties.".

The in-game time still passes normally for everyone while someone is inside the base menus. (I believe that actually already works, as I've had it happen in-game quite frequently, not sure if it's meant to happen though)

Now onto UFO interceptions - When the host decides to attack a UFO, it goes like any normal single-player interception, except that once the fight starts, the host has the decision to give control of any of the aircraft to any given player via a list of player names with drop down lists beside them with aircraft names which are in the fight to decide which player gets which aircraft. This would leave 1 player out of the fight at all times during interceptions, however this could also give each player a roll, as having the host do all the Geoscape work and have the other 1-3 players do the combat.

(worth stating - The players which have control of aircraft can do whatever they wish of them, be it to never to retreat even when facing a foe they could never hope to defeat, or flee at the sight of a fighter. Their choice, but considering these players are invited by the host and not a thrown-together-group, I'd assume that the players wouldn't do things to annoy anyone)

Okay, so now the UFO has been downed, drink down on some victory.

The host then sends the Chinook to the crash site. Once the Chinook lands, a menu pops up and a list of the soldier names with their weapon name included in brackets appear, similar to the aircraft-assigning menu which I've stated at the "UFO interception" section above except, the other way around. Each soldier in the Chinook is included in the list, with a drop down list which show the player names that they'd be assigned to, if no name is chosen, the host is given to control of said soldier.

This could be used like this: Host of a 4 player game brings 12 soldiers in the Chinook, the host gives each player, 1 soldier each, that soldier given to each player could be a soldier which is named after them and they could want to play out their soldier the way they want to and the host would have control over the remaining 9 soldiers and can decide whether or not to escort the other players or let the other 3 players to form their own group within the mission to explore the map to find the aliens.

All players can move simultaneously, once a player has used their time units up (It's called time units in Xenonauts too, right?) they must press end turn to confirm that they're ready to move on and must then wait for the remaining players to press end turn also, in the case of an AFK player, the host can press end turn twice in quick succession to force the next turn or if all 3 other players double click end turn, it will pass as a vote and will force the next turn without the host having to be ready. This allows for a player to go in-active and not hold up the entire game for everyone else. If a player has all of his soldiers killed, he must wait until the battle is finished and a notification will pop up like a "King Arthur has panicked" message, only it'd be "Player 3 has been defeated".

Once you enter another crash site, the previous soldier assignments will be used, as to remove the constant assigning of all soldiers. For the laughs, you could even add a "Random" button in there and it randomizes who each soldier is assigned to, so a player can start with a minimum of 1 and a max of 11, 10 or 9 if the Random button is used. (depending on how many players there are in the room.)

Terror missions perform the same way as crash sites.

The battle has been won, huzzah, too bad, you've drank all your victory.

All the spoils are given to the host, as he is the only one who can do anything with it.

I can't think of much more off the top of my head, recently got my hair cut you see.

My previous idea before the above was to include all the same menus above, except have all players control a part of the map:

Room has 2 players = 50/50 of map is given, if player 2 ends turn, half of the map continues like a turn had ended, while the other half does nothing until player 1 ends turn. If an alien crosses over to the other side of the map, they will reach to their target and then stop and will then only continue once the other side ends turn. If a soldier crossed over he/she will also reach their target and stop and then control of that soldier will be given to the owner of that side of the map to do as they please once the previous controller has used all time units on said soldier. Shooting over the borders of the map that each player is given would make the cost of the shot increase by 10 and place -50% chance to hit target onto the shot., making it less suited to attack from, but still possible, so if it was a snap shot, it'd miss, but if it was an aimed shot while crouched, there would be a slight chance of hitting, the same soldier cannot cross over the control border more than once within 5 rounds, to stop players from peeping in and taking a shot and then retreating back to their control border to make the alien shot have the +10 cost + the -50% chance to hit target debuff.

The problem I have with the "Map divided control" Is that, it would need to include having the soldiers given to each player to be already disembarked from the Chinook and placed at each players side, which would nullify having a Chinook soldier layout or even having the Chinook at all and would also remove the "Alien spawning incredibly close to Chinook that you are unable to see until you disembark a soldier and find out it's too late to do anything about it" moments. The only way it could be included is if HALO'ing was included in Xenonauts, which would give each player the decision of what part of the map they wanted and would click a part of the map they wanted to have their soldiers drop on to and after clicking a position, they would appear either on, or around that area of where the player wanted to land. This would give the risk of plopping down on top of a group of aliens and getting slaughtered the next round.

If the room had 2 players, the map would be split like "|1|2|"

If the room had 3 players, it would be like "|1|2|3|"

and If it had 4 players, it'd be "1|2"

random-text-here-to-allign-34"3|4"

I know that it's quite unlikely that multi-player will ever be added, however I've got a flicker of hope, mainly because of these 2 posts - http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1008-%C2%BFMultiplayer-Patch?p=12002&viewfull=1#post12002

+ http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/1500-Tactical-Multiplayer-Battles?p=17278&viewfull=1#post17278

So, yeah I've probably missed something, but I can't think of it right now, also, I'm not exactly... "Active" on forums, I tend to post a few times and then forget for a few weeks and then remember it again I'l be sure to bookmark this. "I'll be back!".

+ Do forgive the wall.

Edit + Copy pasted what I was just about to post to stop myself from double-posting.

Argh! I knew I forgot something!

If a player was to leave at any occasion, a message would appear saying "Player 4 has left the game", if a player lost connection, connection would be regained if the player was to click "Multi-player" from the main menu after having regained connection to the internet. If the player had units before hand, he will lose all control over them and control would be given to the host. If the player regained connection and rejoined the game before a battle ended, he would NOT be given control over the units back to him and must wait for the next battle or interception to occur in order to have control over anything. After rejoining, the message "Player 4 has re-connected".

If the player had left with the "Map divided control" kind that I suggested, all soldiers inside of the dis-connecting players borders would be killed instantly with the messages "Soldiername1, soldiername2, soldiername3, have been left in disarray and were wiped out" All aliens would survive and all the aliens would be pushed to the nearest border of the on-line players and that part of the map which the player controlled would be locked down until the player rejoins the game.

Once the host wishes to stop the game and go to sleep or something long-term, he can save the game, which would either force all players to save a multi-player only copy or would only save for the host and when he wishes to resume the game, he starts the game, loads up the save and invites 1-3 other players, once they have been invited, they download the save file from the host and then are registered as being ready once download is complete and can then continue. If a 4 player save was loaded, the game can still be played with just the host and 1 other player, as there are no permanent player specific things given to anyone and it is all chosen with drop down lists so that one save, can last many matches, with many players different players which all want ... Many... Different things.

I don't know how to do anything of the above at all and to me, it sounds like I've took something difficult to implement and made it impossible. I only know of 1 man that can make the impossible, possible. Perhaps you can too? (Ever heard of the term "First's the worst, second's the best, third's the one with the hairy chest"? You wanna be the very best, right ?) Great. I now have Pokémon music in my head now. Why did I have to type "You wanna be the very best" x.x

I actually feel like I've missed something else... x.x

Well, anyway, well done for reading the wall of boredom and sorry for the wall of boredom hehueha.

Edited December 27, 2012 by DormantGames
edit 2: I found a spelling mistake!