Finding people to play with, in-game.

[Zulgaines]

I wasn't able to find anything on this. I understand how a server browser would lead to a lot of unfinished PUG games but what about some kind of integrated IRC type channel you can join from the main menu to find people to play with or set up games with?

With the game showing up places like Impulse you're going to have a lot of people buying the game that probably never look at forums. They'll also likely miss out on one of the games coolest features: The Coop.

[T-Bone Biggins]

An IRC lobby would be great to meet some people and plan out new games. We need something like this.

[x4000]

I'll have a look at IRC protocols, etc, and see what I can come up with.  This is likely to be fairly challenging, however.  Ideally, at some point instead it would be good to partner with someone like Gamespy Arcade or XFire or something.  I've added this to my list to look at, though, so we'll see what's possible.

[Zulgaines]

Understandable.

When I used to work on game development I noticed that no matter how obvious or self explanatory I felt something was I was always proven wrong. I would add a feature or a mechanic that I thought would be interesting, and even when mentioning it in-game a great deal of the playerbase wouldn't use it or notice it unless it was easily accessible.

Most people group players into casual or hardcore, but from my experience I'v noticed that even casual gamers can get lost for hours if they're enjoying themselves(and have the time)... but in general there's also a -huge- group that just doesn't do any out of game searching on the things they buy. They never use mods, they never go to forums, a lot of them probably never even visit the website to get updates that the game doesn't handle for them, they just use what you give them in-game.

A temperary suggestion would be to put some kind of link from the main menu that would lead people to both the forums and the IRC channel on the website, and explain that they can use those to actually hook up with people.

[x4000]

Yep, some of the easiest stuff turns out to be hard, while some of the hard-sounding stuff is actually pretty straightforward.  It's hard to predict unless you've done whatever "the stuff" is before.  And you're definitely right about people with game updates, etc -- though I think that with the RTS genre, and a game with the scope of AI War in general, most of our customers seem to be relatively hardcore by nature.

I think that's a great idea about doing a link to the forums/IRC channel from in the game, as a temporary solution at the least depending on how challenging the IRC integration would be.  I'll look at doing that at he least in the next couple of days.

Thanks for the added thoughts there!

[Zulgaines]

though I think that with the RTS genre, and a game with the scope of AI War in general, most of our customers seem to be relatively hardcore by nature.

I felt that too when I tried the demo(Pre-1.000 demo), but after buying the full game and getting to 1.005 I noticed you actually have a pretty good casual experience in the cards. You took the planet count and brought it down to a possible 40, cutting the game time into something a little more manageable and your AI can be brought down to almost anyones level.

Your game has a broader scope than you think. The actual game play is pretty easy to get into and with the right settings anyone can get a game they like going. I could even see some people who would want an even lower planet count. Something they could finnish in around 2 hours.

You're talking about Xfire or Gamespy support, I mentioned in my first post I can see how dropping out can be a problem- one of the reasons you stress matching up schedules and pre-planing games in the match making forum I'm guessing is because of how long they last and once someone drops they have to stop. A server browsing feature from either of those sources would make the 2 or so hour game an important part of everyday play for people who just want to jump in, with the long marathon games still needing to be set up and panned out... social-wise meeting people in small games will have a big impact on how friends are made and big games are set up.

The way your game plays out is beautiful in that early game ships are as viable in late-game, so even games that don't last long enough to reach into the full tech tree still have a wide range of depth and strategic possibility.

[x4000]

Thanks, Zulgaines -- you raise some interesting points there.  For doing fewer than 40 planets I think I'll need to rebalance some other aspects (how many advanced research stations and/or advanced factories there are, etc, but that could be interesting.  Might be able to get it down to 20 planets or so, doing stuff like that.  I think I would also want to ramp up the AI Progress increases on the lower maps, so that the game continues to offer an equivalent challenge (based on whatever difficulty level) to the larger maps.

I hadn't thought through the social implications of people meeting in the smaller games, but you're absolutely right that that could really lay a foundation for people being able to set up and get into the much longer games.

It's funny, you mention how the tech tree is still interesting even if you don't have as long to play with it, and I think that's a very good point since scarcity can make the "crazy wide but fairly shallow" design of it even more relevant.  Interesting ideas, interesting ideas...

[Quitch]

A game on this scale is never going to have much reach for the pub crowd, it will mainly be about playing with people you know who you can ensure will be there from session to session.

Don't fall into the indie multiplayer focus trap.

[x4000]

Yep, I know that the main draw will be playing with friends.  I'm curious what you mean about the "indie multiplayer focus trap," though.  I can guess what that means, but I have never heard of other indie projects having that issue.  I tend to play more single-player indie games, though, so it might just be that.  Anyway, I was just curious if you knew about any postmortem articles, or any forum posts or something where indie developers talked about this issue, just because (obviously) I'm interested in that sort of thing, and in this case I haven't read much about that topic.

At any rate, I'm not going to gut the game to make it work well for quick play, and pvp is unlikely to see the light of day here except possibly in an expansion, but if there are relatively lightweight things that I can do to support how people want to play, then I'm inclined to do those -- I understand that not everyone is going to want to play the same way, and I want to be supportive of that insofar as it doesn't harm the core identity of the game.

[Quitch]

A good example I like to use (which I think you've avoided, but I'm thinking of expansions now) is Land of Legends. A wonderful turn-based strategy game published by Shrapnel Games. Rather than focus on the AI the developer aimed it more at the multiplayer audience. They failed to turn up. It sank.

Breaks my heart, but if you're multiplayer you need to get a base in place fast, otherwise when new people turn up there's no one to play and they wander off and it all falls apart.

For indie games without a budget or some means to spread the word among the faithfully, multiplayer focused gaming is IMO a way to shoot yourself in the foot.

[x4000]

Ah, those are all excellent points. My focus on multiplayer has purely been for co-op among friends or acquaintances, since that's how I tend to play RTS games.  Anyway, I do view pvp, ranked matches, as something of a slippery slope with this game -- plus, that's what practically every other RTS game does, and they almost certainly can do it better than me, because of size and resources, their large existing playerbases and ability to do huge marketing campaigns, and the fact that some of their staff probably actually play those modes, and so know what the issues are (unlike me). 

My focus here on multiplayer is just going to be to augment what is already here, unless for some reason something really changes (huge expansion in playerbase with a desire for pvp, with members of that playerbase being willing to guide me on what they want in a mode like that, for instance).  But thanks for the warning -- it's a good issue to raise, and I don't think I've publicly talked about my feelings on this issue before.  So good to have this out there, so people know what to expect on that front with future development.

[Zulgaines]

Well I don't think he should shift the focus of the game, I agree with that. The game is good for what it is. However it's got everything there for multiplayer, might as well make it more easily accessible.

As for "a game with this scale"... well if he can bring the scale down a little for people who like shorter games(Which it seems he can without effecting the longer games) then I don't see a problem. Civilization is very popular and it has a huge scale, but you always had complete control over that scale.


I'v never been a huge fan of PvP myself so I don't have much to add there, i don't think I'v played many competitive games extensively at all. I do enjoy TF2 though, I wonder why that is...

[x4000]

Personally I always loved the pvp in UT and Counter-Strike, and maybe a few other games (well, Mario Kart series, that older James Bond 007 on the N64 and also Perfect Dark and such).  But mostly that's FPS and racing.

[Zulgaines]

You mentioned it in your artical, but RTS's tend to make poor games to play with family and friends(who don't already play them). That's one of the reasons I love the coop style of this.

But even then, friends can be made online as well to play with, but only if you get the chance to meet them.

[x4000]

You mentioned it in your artical, but RTS's tend to make poor games to play with family and friends(who don't already play them). That's one of the reasons I love the coop style of this.

But even then, friends can be made online as well to play with, but only if you get the chance to meet them.

Totally with you there.