Cooperative Gameplay, When?.

[Yair Iny]

Steve,

IIRC I remember reading about TacOps CPXs where it looked like co-play was part of the game. Are there any lessons that can be learned from there? In terms of player adoption as a percentage of player base, or in terms of mechanics, etc.?

I'm sure you already thought about it, but just in case

[Migo441]

Interesting stuff.

Steve, what is meant by the "interruptible by game events" bit with respect to intra-team communications? Would that be a case where if a human player's forces fell out of the CMx2 C&C net then the PLAYER would similarly not be in contact with his teammates? Player communications could be restored if/when the C&C net connections were restored? If so, WAY cool.

That's too bad that CoPlay is not projected in the near future. Would you hazard a guess as to which game family it would likely first appear in? I think CoPlay is the ultimate of features which will add whole new layers of frustrations and enjoyments and give an already great game yet more greatness. Depending on typical force sizes per player, the Borg will hang on by only the slimmest of margins if not die.

That said, I think it's correct that CoPlay will only appeal to the hard core so I do understand where other features and enhancements end up as higher priorities.

It's a shock that CoPlay will only be available for TCP/IP play! I was of the mind that PBEM was a more natural fit precisely because it's more forgiving to the additional human coordination that it required.

[Redwolf]

Steve,

IIRC I remember reading about TacOps CPXs where it looked like co-play was part of the game. Are there any lessons that can be learned from there? In terms of player adoption as a percentage of player base, or in terms of mechanics, etc.?

I'm sure you already thought about it, but just in case

TacOps does this since 2003. We had a real blast with this and hosted quite a few large scenarios.

There were a lot of lessons learned about the non-technical side that are probably of no interest here (basically: make sure the people organize themselves into teams so that their individual time allotment and how much planning they want to do fit).

On the technical side it is clear:

• Don't use TCP (same reason why all the Quake clones use udp).
  
• You must use some kind of multiplexing to serve all players intersected. You cannot do all player's exchange one after another, the slowest one will blow up the games.
  
• Don't use the OpenPlay.dll piece of junk.
  

TacOps doesn't only have multiplayer per side. It has an umpire, somebody who does scenario design like activities on the fly, while the game is running. We have discovered that this is 100% required. There is no way to prepare games of this complexity and not make mistakes that can ruin the scenario.

The umpire is like the game master in a role playing game. He thought up the scenario and runs it, and he makes decisions on the fly about what happens when some unintended event brought the game off course. Then he plays god and fixes it.

Multiplayer per side on a smaller level (2 per side or so) you can play with standard scenarios but the 18 versus 7 games don't work like that. These are one-time use scenarios.

[Battlefront.com]

No idea when it might go in. If time and money were not the issues keeping it back, we'd have it in already Unfortunately, the amount of work to do this is substantial.

Agree with Redwolf about the "multiplexing" issue. That's the primary reason why PBEM might not happen. Depends on how easy it is to support. Come to think of it, probably not that hard. However, I don't want to think how long a 60 turn game with 18 people would take to do PBEM! I hate waiting around for one guy to get off his butt and email me a turn, so a dozen or so doesn't sound very appealing to me personally

I disagree that an umpire is required, other than for a military contract (which is why TacOps has that feature). If one side starts to use terrain, units, or whatever in a way that the scenario designer didn't think of... well, that's just the way it goes. I mean, we don't have umpires for games now, and yet the same sort of "risk" of a different outcome than the scenario designer intended exists. A scenario needs to be tested before general play. Plus, an umpire mode does nothing to help out a QB game since it's done on the fly.

Steve

[SlowMotion]

If this CoPlay ever gets implemented I hope it will be possible to do some game reorganising during game. Like if one player is unable to continue, his units could be reassigned to another player(s) from same team. So that for example one player's computer crashing wouldn't ruin the whole game.

Maybe something like this would make some turn based CoPlay modes possible also? If one player does not send his turn within some time limit, someone else can do his part. And if it was PBEM, if this one player is able to continue later, he could be given some units later.

[Cid250]

It's a shock that CoPlay will only be available for TCP/IP play! I was of the mind that PBEM was a more natural fit precisely because it's more forgiving to the additional human coordination that it required.

PBEM is hard to code for several players...

The only way to do it, is to build a dedicated server with your mail box...

Then if 8 players send his move by PBEM, the mail reach to the dedicated server, that does the maths to run the next 60 seconds of game, and send the results in separate mails to each one of the players.

Ofcourse, it's needed that the server removes all the mails after being procesed, to minimize the cost of space of the player mail box.

To complete the feature, will be nice to be able to enter your mail box data and the server inside of your game client, so when you send the e-mail, you can do it straight from the game. And also will be nice to be able to download the new mails hosted in the server with your game client.

This means to build a SMTP/IMAP mailing service in the game client, and also a dedicated server to host the mail comunications and run the turns in a centraliced way.

Other posibility, is avoid the PBEM concept... and use the style of data used in the TCP/IP games, split in WeGo pieces... i mean: When you send a WeGo turn, the server caches it, and store it for a unlimited time... so this allows the same fuctionality than PBEM without email traffic... the server stores the full TCP/IP "transmission" and stores it in a database on the server, so the players doesn't need to be Online... they can lauch his game client and check the new data stored in the server, to proceed to download.

In short... e-mail technology can be discarded, and replaced by a better one... but you must take the time to build that kind of dedicated server.

But if that kind of server exist, it seems reasonable to pay a monthly substription fee to pay for the cost of development and maintenance of the service... so it can be billed as an "optional" game feature, if you become a suscriber. This solves all the problems... since hard core players will pay for a different service that satisfy his more advanced needs.

If that service is built, i will sign-in as the first suscriptor, provided that there are discounts for annual subscriptions at a reasonable price.

[cabal23]

It seems that the "server" could be the host of the game, no? I mean this is how most multi-player games do this kind of thing in other non-dedicated server games. What I hear is not so much the difficulty, but the time it would take to implement such a thing. The struggle BF fights being a small developer. I also agree this should be bumped to the top of the list as far as things to implement. In my mind this gets more people playing. Multiplayer is the future. As a static single player game it is mediocre at best. Where I think most people get their enjoyment is PBEM and TCIP games. Adding more multi-player functionality only increase the scope of the game, hence more players for sure. It is clear that the AI will ever evolve in this game beyond what it has so the growth has to occur in the multiplayer realm. BF has already stated there will be no more AI orders added than what already exists so I feel the game is at a wall in regards to the single player aspect. I mean you can only do so much with the limited AI options given to you. So once again I come back to multiplayer..build it up because it is only a matter of time before another company provides that. Doing some research has lead me to believe that there are some games on the horizon that might do this a bit more effectively than CM. (although somewhat different ARMA II and Operation Flashpoint 2 have great promise) Who know we will wait and see, I am loyal as they come, but I would like to see the game grow a bit in terms of multiplayer. Tactical wargames are getting big with the success of several FPS's that have come out in the past few years and developers understand a need for team based/mulitplayer modern warfare games. People have been screaming for this for years as WWII smothered the wargame circles. I am curious to see what the future holds.

[Patrocles]

Yeah, I recall playing Age of EmpiresII/Age of Kings cooperatively (2 or more players playing 1 civ) with my friend, and using rogerwilco for voicecomms, against the AI and/or against other humans. Great fun!! And it was easy to see how this division of labor really upped the level of play and increased the effectiveness of our civ in harvesting resources and fighting!

Man, were we really doing this coop play back in the year 1998?! Wow, over 10 years ago...how time flies!!

[TempV]

The work required for that is way beyond daunting, let me tell you Massive amounts of work that will take huge amounts of time and probably produce mediocre results. It's definitely not even on our radar, though of course in theory we would love to have it.

So we won't see CoPlay in your next title. That's very sad thing to read.

[Redwolf]

In WEGO PBEM it would usally be configured to wait <x> hour or days for the moves to come in from the different player. If the player doesn't meet the deadline you just continue. There are previous orders still active so it isn't that bad. Especially if you rely more on SOPs than TacAI and explicit waypoint changes.

In TCP WEGO you would usually use a server, too.

[theFightingSeabee]

If Battlefront were ever approached by the military to give them a training tool, then I think coop play would be necessary. If that did happen, BFC would also be getting a nice chunk of change to be able to do so. Since they just have Charles (who is outstanding I must say), I don't see coop play ever really making it in. Those precious months are needed for other things. :[

[Patrocles]

If Battlefront were ever approached by the military to give them a training tool, then I think coop play would be necessary. If that did happen, BFC would also be getting a nice chunk of change to be able to do so. Since they just have Charles (who is outstanding I must say), I don't see coop play ever really making it in. Those precious months are needed for other things. :[

I thought that was one of the (now failed) goals/reasons for making CMSF?

:confused:

[Battlefront.com]

Partrocles,

I thought that was one of the (now failed) goals/reasons for making CMSF?

Not true at all, but it's a bit of fiction we can't seem to ever get rid of no matter how many times we repeat that we NEVER expected a military contract. Although the possibility of getting a military contract out of CM:SF obviously occurred to us, it didn't drive a single development decision even a tiny bit. Our attitude has always been that CM:SF is a commercial product and if a military wants to make it into a training tool then they will have to pay for those features separately. That would allow us to hire more staff to produce a military version without harming our commercial releases. Since government funding can't be counted on, we will NEVER do anything to jeopardize our commercial releases in favor of actual military contract work. Speculative military contract work is absolutely not something we will ever, ever, do.

We would have been utter fools (which we are definitely not!) to make CM:SF in hopes of getting a military contract. We have experience working with the military and that experience taught us what our friends in the industry keep telling us... we are more likely to all get struck by lightning (at the same time) than we are to get a military contract. There's too much money and politics involved for CM to have much of a chance.

A large scale COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) purchase would be nice, but it would mean them paying for licenses of the existing game and NOT for adding new features like CoPlay. So that's a different sort of thing, which in and of itself is not all that likely to happen because the game isn't well suited to training "as is".

Having said all that, I'm sure I'll see this rumor alive and well sometime in the near future. There's a couple of people in particular that love to keep it going because it suits their agenda.

Steve

[Vinnart]

Since Battlefront has already stated that the Cmx2 engine is not set up for cooperative multiplayer game play, and it would be a tremendous amount of work to add this. I think the answer is a new game entirely. Instead of making a whole new engine to accommodate this I would acquire an engine that is already available for cooperative multiplayer, but modable enough to include the depth of Combat Mission.

I would love to see Battlefront acquire the Sudden Strike 3 engine to see what they could do with it. Fireglow, the developers of Sudden Strike, I know is willing to license their engine. Graphically I would say that the SS3 engine is superior to Cmx2 in its terrain, so the eye candy is already there. The problem with Fireglow is they are like a guy who has a beautiful woman, but doesn’t know what to do with her. They have the eye candy, but Sudden Strike still plays a bit more arcadish compared to the realism of Combat Mission.

I played Sudden Strike for probably 4 years. It is rare one plays a game for that amount of time, but the game had its longevity for me for two reasons: First graphically Sudden Strike has excellent eye candy that is just fun to watch, Second, and more importantly was its MULTIPLAYER experience through the clan I belonged to. It is rare a clan lasts for years, but the clan I belonged to was well organized, and had a 24 hr private voice chat lobby. The social aspect is what can keep a game alive and give it longevity, but of course it needs to be a good fun game to start with.

Advantages of acquiring a license for the SS3 ready-made engine:

- Engine already made, don’t have to make one.

- Most of the art is already made, don’t have to make much of that either.

- Engine has capability to show air units on map, as well as airborne parachuting in.

- Engine is already designed for pure RTS play, which is what cooperative multiplayer is all about.

- Engine is already set up for cooperative multiplayer, but currently needs some work. This is one reason why I have lost interest in Sudden Strike. The multiplayer hook up currently sucks. Back in the day when I was with the clan playing SS2 one would simply post a game IP in a gamespy lobby, and folks would join from there. Once the game was full the host would start the game.

The main work would be in re-coding the engine to fit Combat Mission’s style of game play.

Not sure if Battlefront has looked at the Combat Mission prototype development concept I put together using the SS3 engine as the core graphics, but I think it is a good starting point for such a game. Here is the link to the game concept: http://www.suddenstrike.com/index.php?uid=forum_message_list&uid_forum_topic=8407880&uid_forum_section=38202&offset=0&total=15

This would be a unique game for Battlefront as they currently do not have anything out there quite like it. Jump on this! It is a good idea I just don’t have the money or the know how, or I would make it.

[cabal23]

I think your ideas sound awesome! The SS3 engine looks nice and it could possibly do the job. I agree an entire new engine would be an great way to go. It may seem easier to continue with the current engine now that all the work has been done to get the product to where it is today. But it seems like this build has been nothing but problems and limitations. I have seen almost everything we have ever asked for in this game piecemeal in other games. It is unfortunate because I feel a lot of what people have asked for could be achieved with other game engines. The problem is that I have yet to see a modern warfare game that pulls this off. Just WWII games and unrealistic RTS's. If only I had a million dollars(sigh) to help you out.

[Kwazydog]

- Engine is already designed for pure RTS play, which is what cooperative multiplayer is all about.

If you do a quick search for some of the comments from turn based fans in the past youll see why a real time only engine wouldnt be a popular option

The problem with working with 3rd party tools is that you have to design the game to fit the engine instead of the other way around. Every engine has its limitations, and if you start to move outside of those limitations you will often hit a brick wall. For instance this (or any other engine) likely wouldn't have the ability to support turn based and PBEM play. Another example is that it is unlikely to have the code and data necessary for the detailed armour penetration and hit calculations we use, etc.

Pre-made engines are great if they closely fit the product you are designing, but on the other hand they will always introduce more limitations than writing your own.

Dan

[Battlefront.com]

You guys have to remember that time is ultimately the bottleneck here. The only way to reduce that bottleneck is to hire someone else in order to increase the amount of time available to work. In order for that to happen we have to have the money for it, which is not just programming but design, art, sounds, marketing, and other things. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of Dollars even if the basic code is licensed. It would be nice if we had that sort of money lying around gathering dust, but we never have and likely never will.

The fact is retrofitting other people's code is a risky thing to do. The more you stray from the original design, the riskier it gets because you are always heading for a point where it would have been lest costly to write the code from scratch. Trying to take an RTS game engine and make it into something that resembles CM would be far more work than it would to add CoPlay code to CM. That's because we are already familiar with CMx2 code, it is fundamentally setup for CoPlay (unlike CMx1), and it already is CM What CMx2 lacks is the couple of months' worth of coding effort, plus months more if we want to have AI control of friendly forces worth a damned. Since we don't see it as being financially viable to spend the time on it YET, it's not on the table YET. As I've said for a while now, what would change that equation is a military contract because they would bring resources to the table that our customer base never could.

Cabal23,

It is unfortunate because I feel a lot of what people have asked for could be achieved with other game engines.

Wrong. And I mean that in a factual way. There's no game engine out there that we could license that would give you what you're imagining in your head except the game engine we have built. As you said, all that are out there are FPS and RTS games... they were built for what they are, not for what you want them to be. Might as well take whatever you drive for a car and ask a repair shop to turn it into a Ferrari. Even if you fond someone that said they could do it, you'd be a lot better off just buying a Ferrari. You'd get exactly what you want and you'd get it much sooner. The fact that you can't afford a Ferrari doesn't change that equation

There's absolutely nothing in the code that is limiting us one bit. Time is what is limiting us. Tossing out the CMx2 code would be one of the most idiotic things we could ever do. It wouldn't get you guys anything any sooner. In fact, it would only delay things further because trying to take an RTS or FPS game engine and turn it into something even sorta resembling CM would take a lot longer than it would to add the CoPlay functionality to CMx2 as it is.

I know it's common for customers to not understand the fundamentals of working code or with other people's code. It's routine that people think that it's "easy" to swap this or that around. It's absolutely not. Just look at us... we ditched our own CMx1 code because it was far better to write a new game engine from scratch than to continue working with the code we already had AND knew intimately. Imagine how much worse trying to turn a rock-paper-scissors RTS game into CM would be compared to making CMx1 into CMx2.

If only I had a million dollars(sigh) to help you out.

We would need a million if we were to try to retrofit someone else's game engine. To add the code to CMx2 we'd only need a couple hundred thousand. I can send you our bank account routing information if that's more within your budget

Remember... in terms of wargaming, whatever CMx2 lacks the RTS and FPS games out there lack MUCH more. So when comparing apples to oranges, remember to examine which one has the majority of the features you're looking for. I seriously doubt Sudden Strike 3 comes out ahead over CMx2 or you probably wouldn't be here

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Well said Dan. And he should know because before he became the artist powerhouse that you see before you today, he used to waste his talents being a programmer

Steve

[panzermartin]

Are there any plans for adding new features in the game through the modules? CM:WW2 is going to stay quite a long on the frontline, I expect to see more things added than just new armies in an attempt to keep the game up to date and the interest high. Can we expect modules (pathces?) to improve visuals gradually, adding new effects (visual damage on tanks/buildings) more animations, world objects, terrain making it humanly possible for BFC to be highly competitve in the graphics department through this long term strategy? Or even additions like a Meta-campaign module or a Cooplay module? If the module strategy is broaden maybe after 2-3 yrs of constant additions the game could eventually look and play like a really big budget title.

[Vinnart]

[quote=Remember... in terms of wargaming, whatever CMx2 lacks the RTS and FPS games out there lack MUCH more. So when comparing apples to oranges, remember to examine which one has the majority of the features you're looking for. I seriously doubt Sudden Strike 3 comes out ahead over CMx2 or you probably wouldn't be here

Steve

[Yair Iny]

Well, I have to say I'm not too disappointed about co-op not being in the plans. As a software developer, I can imagine it taking a good many months to code, and given that Charles has created CMSF in about 4-5 years of coding, I'd say he can do quite a bit in 6 months, and that we would enjoy that "quite a bit" a hell of a lot more than co-op multi-play. Now, if you said it would come with friendly AI and that you could play, say, a platoon in a company sized engagement, that would be more useful, but how many times are you gonna get together with 3-4 other people and play co-op?

[cabal23]

Thanks for the great response. I just too many times play a game and say to my self how cool that feature would be in this game or that. The features are out there maybe just not in the same games. But I respect the fact that the little guy makes a killer product and I am just a selfish American who wants it all. Keep doing what you are doing. If we didn't love it we wouldn't be buying it. By the way if a few million ever comes my way we will talk and I will need that routing number. Until then, keep on keeping on.

[panzermartin]

For me, it is suprising that Cooplay lies so low in the to do list. I wont say it ruins the game but thinking that the vast majority of games and maybe the 99% of those associated with war (FPS, Simulators, strategies) have multi-multi some years now, it is a bit of disappointment not to have it in the brilliant CM. I guess people who dont really care about it havent played a good online game, which is day and night compared to the solo, scripted experience. And beyond that, from a marketing perspective, a solid and rich online support with a server, stats clans etc etc can generate a lot of buzz on the internet that now isnt possible with the primitive online function and lonely single player. I could be wrong but maybe a more lively online community would help the game float longer than a module with some extra Stryker variants. CMx2 is shaping to a great game, I just think it needs a little opening up to the rest of the world and not staying "indoors" as the precious secret of the lone wargamer.

[SlowMotion]

...

Now, if you said it would come with friendly AI and that you could play, say, a platoon in a company sized engagement, that would be more useful, but how many times are you gonna get together with 3-4 other people and play co-op?

For many games there's lobby software that people use to join games. A single game could easily have not 3, but say 30 people. Hundreds of players online.

[cabal23]

I just see it as something that would make this game way more marketable. But I don't think that is high on BF's "do we really care" list. I think (correct me if I am wrong guys) that they are all doing fairly well finance wise and they aren't out to become millionaires, just make a fun product that they can make some money on. I think hiring someone to figure out coop would pay off in the end because of the number of new players that would come into the fold. Not to mention you would carry this over in all future games. I get the feeling they only want a realistic war sim and not a stunning multiplayer game(though PBEM is pretty awesome, but it is limited to two players) and that will be left to other companies to hash out and fill the void. By the way the only reason I am not plating SS3 is because it yet another WWII game and frankly I am burned out on that. But it does look beautiful. Should a company ever release a modern warfare game that doesn't suck I might just jump ship. World in Conflict was nice, but lacking in some areas of tactical decision making and realism. But the multiplayer was where it shined. Having everyone control different aspects of the battle made it exciting. Some people controlled arty, some the air, some the ground forces, and some the tanks. You had to coordinate with your teammates to be successful and that made it a step above other RTT's. The game won almost every strategic award in 2007, so they must have done something right. Take that kind of versatility and somehow factor in the elements that make this game great and you have something unstoppable.