Player Interaction and Communication
Posted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:38 pm
Well first let me say that multiplayer is awesome, I have been playing on LAN with my two brothers and have a great time with almost 30 hours played. Multiplayer raises some interesting new bottlenecks - you now are not only optimizing the factory, as you would in single player, but now you must optimize your workers! (other people in the game)
Our biggest issue so far is player visibility. Often someone say "hey guys check this out" and I am literally standing next to him in-game but I cannot distinguish his avatar visually. Even if he is running around, with so many belts and moving eye-candy, it is hard to see him.
> My suggestion would be to make the player more visible. That could be done by adding some brighter colors. Or maybe if there were a way to see what the other player was selecting. Maybe some sort of "ping" on the map, which others can see, or to keep it realistic, maybe add new sort of "flare" which is a cheap level research that you throw like a grenade but it just creates temporary light. Or some other visual indicator.
One other big issue is letting others know where you are going to build. The problem usually happens like this: you need to build something and reserve some room. You could be building something big like a train station, or something small but in a confined space - in either case it may take some time. For example, you might need some time to re-arrange the layout, or maybe you don't have all the materials yet, or the research is not quite done yet, or you just need to leave it unfinished to defend the base, or you simply want to leave room for expansion. In all cases, you do not want some annoying person to build in your spot and screw up your plans! So how do you communicate that? Turns out, even on LAN, that is difficult. Usually I gather people up, we all walk over in-game and I try to explain the plan, but it is difficult to communicate because the locations are imprecise, and even if people understand, they will forget in a few hours.
> My recommendation is to add some way for players to mark or designate area on the ground. One idea would be to add a fence because that is usually how you section of property (could be a cheap low level research), but fence might need a door or gate which would be complicated to code, so perhaps just fence posts which you could pass through without a door (post is like a like mini power pole) with colored wire going between them (wire would also be cool to use because wire has color). Another even simpler option is to let people "draw a line in the sand" literally just draw a line on the ground, which, like the fence, would let people know where the boundaries of an area are.
I am very curious, what other problems people have encountered in multiplayer related to communication and player interaction? Are you using text or voice communication? How many people were there, and how did you organize yourselves?
Our biggest issue so far is player visibility. Often someone say "hey guys check this out" and I am literally standing next to him in-game but I cannot distinguish his avatar visually. Even if he is running around, with so many belts and moving eye-candy, it is hard to see him.
> My suggestion would be to make the player more visible. That could be done by adding some brighter colors. Or maybe if there were a way to see what the other player was selecting. Maybe some sort of "ping" on the map, which others can see, or to keep it realistic, maybe add new sort of "flare" which is a cheap level research that you throw like a grenade but it just creates temporary light. Or some other visual indicator.
One other big issue is letting others know where you are going to build. The problem usually happens like this: you need to build something and reserve some room. You could be building something big like a train station, or something small but in a confined space - in either case it may take some time. For example, you might need some time to re-arrange the layout, or maybe you don't have all the materials yet, or the research is not quite done yet, or you just need to leave it unfinished to defend the base, or you simply want to leave room for expansion. In all cases, you do not want some annoying person to build in your spot and screw up your plans! So how do you communicate that? Turns out, even on LAN, that is difficult. Usually I gather people up, we all walk over in-game and I try to explain the plan, but it is difficult to communicate because the locations are imprecise, and even if people understand, they will forget in a few hours.
> My recommendation is to add some way for players to mark or designate area on the ground. One idea would be to add a fence because that is usually how you section of property (could be a cheap low level research), but fence might need a door or gate which would be complicated to code, so perhaps just fence posts which you could pass through without a door (post is like a like mini power pole) with colored wire going between them (wire would also be cool to use because wire has color). Another even simpler option is to let people "draw a line in the sand" literally just draw a line on the ground, which, like the fence, would let people know where the boundaries of an area are.
I am very curious, what other problems people have encountered in multiplayer related to communication and player interaction? Are you using text or voice communication? How many people were there, and how did you organize yourselves?