Co-Op Campaign?

[GSH]

I recently finished a game at work (Mercenaries 2) that had co-op. I'm speaking from experience when I say that co-op is at least a tripling of your work and test time.

- All scripts must account for what *2* players could be doing. If your script says "Do A". "Do B" "Do C", then for co-op, you've got to check if player 1 (P1) does A, and P2 goes off and does C. Or the reverse. What happens when P2 is most of the way towards an objective, then drops out? Or if P2 joins partway thru the mission? Basically, at every logic check, you've got to consider all players - joins, dropouts, and what they're doing.

- If you add co-op after scripting starts (as we did), then you have to revisit all the code, and add in checks for what all the players are doing.

- You must have a lot of testing in co-op. For Mercs2, we had a 2 dedicated testers doing co-op testing, and only co-op testing, every day, for 8+ months before we shipped. Towards the end, at least half the test team was testing co-op. If you don't have people signed up to test co-op regularly and diligently, you're going to ship with tons of bugs. Given how many BZ2 people want to test, this should be a BIG consideration.

As I've said before: figure out what resources you've got. Then scale your work to that. Not the reverse. On a free/volunteer project, NEVER set out on a goal, and then say "now we need recruit workers to do what we've planned."

(Update): after Mercs2 shipped, some surveys were done. Most people were like "co-op? You had that?" or "co-op? Tried it, didn't like it." The amount of work put in did not justify the very little reward from the general public. I know I may get flamed for this, but I feel co-op campaigns is demanded or seen as a "I'd like that" by a small minority of people, but the general public barely gives a hoot.

My bottom line: if you really want to do co-op, do a MP-only thing. Team Strat and MPI are co-op. That works. Plenty of MP games require co-op, e.g. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Team Fortress, Battlefield, etc. That works. Go do something like that in BZ2. Don't bother with campaign-coop unless you've got a TON of resources. MP-coop is a big bang-for-the-buck payoff. Campaign-coop is a really lousy bang-for-the-buck payoff, imho.

-- GSH

[Nielk1]

I perfectly agree with what GSH said.

Good god... I never even CONSIDERED drop outs. I already didn't want to do it.

[AHadley]

GSH? Flaming? Here? Never.

I know it would be difficult, but I suppose I never really considered it. I now know how much work Zeeder and TimeVirus must have put into The Journey.

[mrtwosheds]

I Imagine that some sort of system where mp maps could be forced into a sequence to create a sort of co-op campaign could be figured out. So that map2 could only be run by the server after map1 had resulted in a victory on that server...?
Not good at coding things myself, anyone else see a way to do that?

[Commando]

I believe Fishbone did just that with DuneCommand.

[GSH]

I think various people have tried to do that by writing files containing unlock keys out to the BZ2 directory. That's not compatible w/ Vista and up.

I posted some quick source code that does something similar w/ the registry (which IS vista-compatible when using HKCU) for GreenHeart a long time back.

-- GSH

[Nielk1]

I beleive you refer to that registry demo zip thing? Got that if you do.

DC never stopped me form playing whatever mission I wanted.

[TheJamsh]

Same as Nielk1, i could jump into any mission i wanted to straight away.

[bigbadbogie]

You can enter the missions, but it automatically fails you after a few seconds if the previous mission hasn't been completed.

[Nielk1]

Never did that for me. I started in the middle and played it a good 30 min before stopping.

[bigbadbogie]

Maybe it only works in pb1 or it could be one of those Vista thingos.

[TheJamsh]

I HIGHLY doubt Nielk1 uses vista like me

But yeh, when i tested on Vista it didnt work for me. I never really got 'into' Dune Command, i was kind of annoyed how i was looking at a brilliant loading screen at one minute, then when i was in game everything looked really cheap, and i kind of got bored of the look.

That said, i did enjoy what i played of it and there were definately some great ideas in there.

[Wraith]

GSH? Flaming? Here? Never.

I know it would be difficult, but I suppose I never really considered it. I now know how much work Zeeder and TimeVirus must have put into The Journey.

Link to "The Journey" if you please? Sounds nice.

[bb1]

IIRC it was part of a map pack.

[bigbadbogie]

Get ZTV: The Long Journey here:

http://www.timedisruptor.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=639