ee163aca@sdccs7.UUCP (04/16/84)
[] Is anyone interested in the idea of a multiplayer rogue? Not that I want to write such a beast (I haven't any sources anyway.) , but perhaps the original authors might find my ideas interesting. I don't think that it would be as hard to program as you might think. Several players could be in the dungeon at once, and they could be treated as *Special* monsters as far as the other players are concerned. Since monsters can carry and drop items in some rudimentary fashion already, I don't think this will be a problem. Fighting between players could be handled in the same way as fighting with monsters is. Since monsters can't be on the same the same space as you are, I would think that any collisions between players could be handled without much trouble ( There is that stepping on an Orc Bug in 5.3 but bear with me). The main problem I see is maintaining a single dungeon for all players. My guess would be that each player would have his own process running rogue, and he would access a global data-structure holding the dungeon for all the players. Whenever a player makes a movement or drops an object the global dungeon would be updated. But, this leads to some interesting problems: - How often is a new dungeon generated? My guess is every day or two, otherwise players would know the dungeon too well, and take advantage. This suggests that game saving will only be allowed for the time between updates, and that only the player's position and possesions will be saved. - Won't the upperlevels of the dungeon become depleted of resources as players make their way down? This is a tricky problem, because players will arrive, die, or win at any given time. My solution would be to add items to a level as soon as a new player climbs down the stair to that level. This still leave a problem of more than one player on one level at a time. The one who was there first might take all the items before the other gets a chance. - What do you do with a player's possesions when he dies? I want to leave the possesions (including the gold) right where the player dies so other players can find them. In the lower levels, where everyone gets killed, there will be a jackpot of all the good stuff people carried down. - There is only one amulet of Yendor. This makes it even more fun, everyone will fight over it! Some interesting playing styles might be used: - Players could cooperate in killing the monsters. - Players could fight. If one guy has the amulet, the others might gang-up on him an kill him to get the amulet, and his gold. - Players could trade items between themselves. This would be implemented by having one player drop an object, and the other pick it up. You could even sell objects by having one player drop gold (or an agreed upon item) and the other dropping the item that is being sold. Of course, one guy could cheat the other by picking up the object before giving his object. These kind of disputes could be settled with a fight. I can hear it now: "Your gold (rings,wands,etc.) or your life!". - Players might be allowed to talk to one another. If they aren't in the same (physical) room, there would have to be some mechanism to talk to another player so that they could cooperate or trade. If you were in trouble (ex. dying of starvation) you could shout for help. ( This could wake up all the monsters on the level, possibly. ) This all sounds like a lot of fun to me, anyone else have any ideas? Anyone want to write it? Are you listening: Ken Arnold, et all? Paul van de Graaf U.C. San Diego sdcsvax!sdccs7!ee163aca
neves@uwvax.ARPA (04/17/84)
There was actually a multiplayer game reachable on the Arpanet a few years ago. I don't remember the details as I never played it but it was called something like (Mud?) and resided on a computer in England. Several players could be in the maze at one time and could actually talk to each other I believe. One of the problems with the game was that the only interesting thing you could do with another player was to kill him -- so much for world peace.
notes@iuvax.UUCP (04/18/84)
#R:sdccs7:-119400:iuvax:9800024:000:1273 iuvax!apratt Apr 17 13:28:00 1984 Writing a multi-player game is not as trivial as you may think. One of the things which makes Rogue a thinker's game (?) is the fact that you & the monsters take turns, rather than having the monsters move while you sit and think (like they do in warp). With several people, you would have to coordinate the moves, or else make the game "real-time". Real-time games on time-sharing computers are notoriously troublesome (check "empire" on PLATO for an example -- and ever play "aliens" on your UNIX system?), and this goes double for systems where all games are "niced" to 4 or so... Inter-terminal tic-tac-toe (a two-player game where the players take turns) is about as complex as you want to get, really. Also, there IS a multi-player dungeon game being developed. We are an alpha site for it, and I must say it's not very good... It's unreasonably slow when two people are playing at once, and unreasonably hard when you're alone (can't gang up on monsters). Of course, I said it's BEING DEVELOPED, so I expect it'll improve. Please do not mail me asking for information. The game is not ready for public consumption. Thanks. ---- "Fritz! They've killed Fritz!" -- Allan Pratt ...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!apratt (please do not respond to iuvax!notes)
obrien@randvax.ARPA (Michael O'Brien) (04/18/84)
Multi-player games involving people spread across the country have been extremely well explored on the PLATO CAI system. (Editorial comment: this is an OK CAI system, but without doubt the greatest gaming system ever conceived by the mind of man.) Consensus is that multi-player games are far, FAR better than single-player games. There are two basic types: team play, with various teams competing against each other, and "rogue"-type games, where players individually try to off each other. One exception to this rule was a game called "battin" (named after the author), a "rogue"-style game with seven 1000 x 1000 mazes arranged in levels. The "city" levels had no monsters, but shops where you could use your gold to buy enchanted armor, weapons, etc. They also had "bars", where you could meet and talk with anyone else in the game who was also in a bar. There you could barter and trade things. Every now and then you'd run into some super player who would out of the goodness of his heart just devolve about 3,000,000 gold pieces on you. Most games had the concept of an "operator", who could in some ways control the action of the game (much like the "wizard password" in rogue). This would involve creating new monsters in the database, altering a player's statistics, or editing the maze (if it were a permanent maze). I was an operator in one 20-level D&D game which installed a new maze every month: each operator got to design a level. The non-random character of the maze made mapping interesting in itself as the pattern generated by the designer gradually became clear. The main thing needed by all of these games is a common, centralized database with record-level locking. That's the "game board". It's difficult to live without this capability. PLATO was a single computer with terminal lines strung cross-country. With a decentralized, network-based game you need an expert in protocol design, as well as a crypto expert to prevent forged network packets from taking over the game. It's very hard.
mzp@uicsg.UUCP (04/20/84)
#R:sdccs7:-119400:uicsg:17100001:000:1401 uicsg!mzp Apr 19 21:26:00 1984 [----] There is a game on the CERL PLATO system here called 'avatar,' which cannot be easily described here. It is the closest thing to real D&D that I have ever seen. Inter-player communication is fully supported anywhere, and items and gold may be exchanged when both characters are in the same location. The dungeon automatically repopulates with monsters every 15 minutes or so, and there are 15 square levels 30x30 each. There are a huge number of magic items, monsters, and spells that can be cast. You can run in groups or individually, something that especially makes sense because players can have different classes and alignments. Dead players can be carried back up to the morgue, where a fee must be paid for a raise (lost of consititution stat). Stud characters can cast 'resurrect.' An interesting feature is that you can be 'quested' for a monster or item, which means that you are required to defeat that monster or find that item to make level. Unfortunately, avatar took several people (3 or 4) a few years to fully develop, and you will probably not find anyone other than students to do such a thing. Avatar also uses graphics (512x512) to display the view down the hallway and to display the monsters. It would be difficult to do something effective with 24x80 terminals. Mark Papamarcos ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsg!mzp "DING! Good answer! Show me, 'commie pinko liberal.'"
amigo@iwlc6.UUCP (John Hobson) (04/20/84)
There is one definite problem with multi-player games. A couple of years ago, I played empire. I was doing fairly well until another player on the system came in on a saturday when I wasn't there and wiped my country off the face of the map. How do you manage something like this? John Hobson AT&T Bell Labs--Naperville, IL ihnp4!iwlc6!amigo
apratt@iuvax.UUCP (04/21/84)
I kind of thought that people weren't considering the possibility of a net- wide multi-player game, but, rather, a site-wide game, using a single machine with its terminals strung all around a campus or building. This is no harder to do than PLATO's COMMON files & ECS, if all the processes cooperate properly. The existing game I made reference to uses a daemon (why aren't they DEMONs?) to act as "gamekeeper" and a process for each active player for his own character. A net-wide game would only work on direct-connect networks such as DECnet and (?) Ethernet. ---- "Fritz! They've killed Fritz!" -- Allan Pratt ...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!apratt (please do not respond to iuvax!notes)
judy@ism780.UUCP (04/26/84)
#R:randvax:-176600:ism780:13800003:000:450 ism780!judy Apr 24 14:57:00 1984 PLATO, as well as a wonderful gaming system, runs on a huge computer. In fact, when I left CDC they were talking about main framing 4 Cybers together for it. I tried writing a version of "battin" (it was called "moria" when I was there) for the 11/70 and ran into space problems immediately. It seems to me this is the biggest problem in multi-user games. But I agree multi-user games are best. I remember many late night empire parties. Judy