Any plans to make a consistent coop mode?

[Sparrow]

By that i mean a mode where multiple players can play on the same shared world, and make progress at the same time together? As it is at the moment. coop is essentially just 'visiting' someone else.

I'm thinking more something where Player A plays for a bit, logs off, player B logs on, see's what player A has been up to and can add to it or just do their own thing.

Basically a persistent server i guess.

[JonathanR]

Basically you want a dedicated server.

[lotw_1]

That would be awesome, could have a family world running and can join/leave anytime.

[Erin the Angry]

Guest homes are coming. Not sure if that means something like Stardew's cabins or if it's just another building or set of buildings you will be able to make for visitors. Either way, if you got some friends you regularly play with you can set it up so they are "that player"s home based on the honor system. We'll have to see when it gets here. I play in multiplayer with "friends only" on even when I am alone so my buddy hops in and out as he pleases. Would be nice if there was a true co-op mode you could set up with a buddy or 3 where everyone can advance everything but it'd take a smarter man than me to work out the technical details of that.

[Shawn]

what you're asking for is called a "dedicated server"

[Twisted Sisler]

Not currently possible. The game would need to be redesigned from the ground up for this. The way multiplayer works in this game is pretty standard for a single player game that has a multiplayer feature. Basically the game instance is all tied to you as a character, not to a world. So all game progress is tied to your character and you can only have a visiting 2nd player that has their own progress that's tied to their own game save.

To implement what people are wanting multiplayer to be like, you would have to code the base game structure to revolve around a world instance rather than be tied to a single player game save (Think of Terraria where you create a world separately from the player). That game instance would then be able to be used similarly to a dedicated server to allow clients to join.

In short, multiplayer is one of the most complicated aspects of game development. Even ConcernedApe handed Stardew Valley off to a development team to figure out multiplayer after he released it. While not impossible to implement overall, the likelihood of that happening before the full release of the game is almost zero, if ever.

[buddy]

Dedicated Servers are the way to go. Many games are successful because of private servers. Great game but the lack of dedicated servers hurts plenty imho.

[....]

Originally posted by buddy:

Dedicated Servers are the way to go. Many games are successful because of private servers. Great game but the lack of dedicated servers hurts plenty imho.

Neither does this game want to be some MMO or MP focus game nor does every game have to.

In a game like this that would simply lead to way to fast progression and since the main point of a game like this is progression i dont really see the point in advanced coop or even dedicated servers.

As far as i can remember the DEV also said "visit" in one of the FAQs so i think this will hopefully stay the way it is witha MP similar to other similar farming games.


But to be honest - there are hundreds of games made for COOP-MP with dedicated servers with way more content for Coop and games that have progression adapted in a way fitting mp-coop - why not just play those?

[JonathanR]

Originally posted by Twisted Sisler:

Not currently possible. The game would need to be redesigned from the ground up for this. The way multiplayer works in this game is pretty standard for a single player game that has a multiplayer feature. Basically the game instance is all tied to you as a character, not to a world. So all game progress is tied to your character and you can only have a visiting 2nd player that has their own progress that's tied to their own game save.

To implement what people are wanting multiplayer to be like, you would have to code the base game structure to revolve around a world instance rather than be tied to a single player game save (Think of Terraria where you create a world separately from the player). That game instance would then be able to be used similarly to a dedicated server to allow clients to join.

In short, multiplayer is one of the most complicated aspects of game development. Even ConcernedApe handed Stardew Valley off to a development team to figure out multiplayer after he released it. While not impossible to implement overall, the likelihood of that happening before the full release of the game is almost zero, if ever.

Bit of a wild card whether or not it's really that difficult to split out the island from the characters. Most of the important structures are already going to be separate, and the character itself is mostly just a bunch of lists of things (appearance selections, inventory, equipment, licenses, character relation values, etc.) -- and an obvious way around any kind of hard ties to the player character is just to keep them loaded in and in some other way deactivated. I don't know if you are getting this from the developer himself though... he'd be privy to a likely set of impediments for getting from here to there.

[AZCards]

There is no mention from the dev that he will be changing multiplayer. I would assume that he's not going to since the system is already developed around having your own island instead of a persistent server.

As much as others would like this, the current system is great imo. I hope the dev doesn't change it.

[....]

Originally posted by Jonathan R:

Originally posted by Twisted Sisler:

Not currently possible. The game would need to be redesigned from the ground up for this. The way multiplayer works in this game is pretty standard for a single player game that has a multiplayer feature. Basically the game instance is all tied to you as a character, not to a world. So all game progress is tied to your character and you can only have a visiting 2nd player that has their own progress that's tied to their own game save.

To implement what people are wanting multiplayer to be like, you would have to code the base game structure to revolve around a world instance rather than be tied to a single player game save (Think of Terraria where you create a world separately from the player). That game instance would then be able to be used similarly to a dedicated server to allow clients to join.

In short, multiplayer is one of the most complicated aspects of game development. Even ConcernedApe handed Stardew Valley off to a development team to figure out multiplayer after he released it. While not impossible to implement overall, the likelihood of that happening before the full release of the game is almost zero, if ever.

Bit of a wild card whether or not it's really that difficult to split out the island from the characters. Most of the important structures are already going to be separate, and the character itself is mostly just a bunch of lists of things (appearance selections, inventory, equipment, licenses, character relation values, etc.) -- and an obvious way around any kind of hard ties to the player character is just to keep them loaded in and in some other way deactivated. I don't know if you are getting this from the developer himself though... he'd be privy to a likely set of impediments for getting from here to there.

Im pretty certain its way more work than you think - especially going from visit-MP from a local game to dedicated servers.

Also its not like that would be it - shared progression would instantly break the game. Everything in the game is balanced around SP with visits - just imagine 4 players ore more using the same island - they would run out of materials almost instantly - lack tools and would probably burn trough the content having nothing to do after a pretty short time.

Im sorry - but a coop-progression game and a sp-farming-sim simply are completely different games by design. There are way better coop-focus games than this - so why not play those?

If visiting others games and helping out isnt enough for you than probably its just not the game you are looking for. This is a SP-game with limited MP because it makes sense for games like this.

[Erin the Angry]

I'm happy with it as it is. I just hope we can figure out some ways to protect from griefers easier. Currently if some jackwad comes along and bombs your town to hell and steals all your stuff all you can do is alt + F4.

[Twisted Sisler]

Originally posted by Jonathan R:

Originally posted by Twisted Sisler:

Not currently possible. The game would need to be redesigned from the ground up for this. The way multiplayer works in this game is pretty standard for a single player game that has a multiplayer feature. Basically the game instance is all tied to you as a character, not to a world. So all game progress is tied to your character and you can only have a visiting 2nd player that has their own progress that's tied to their own game save.

To implement what people are wanting multiplayer to be like, you would have to code the base game structure to revolve around a world instance rather than be tied to a single player game save (Think of Terraria where you create a world separately from the player). That game instance would then be able to be used similarly to a dedicated server to allow clients to join.

In short, multiplayer is one of the most complicated aspects of game development. Even ConcernedApe handed Stardew Valley off to a development team to figure out multiplayer after he released it. While not impossible to implement overall, the likelihood of that happening before the full release of the game is almost zero, if ever.

Bit of a wild card whether or not it's really that difficult to split out the island from the characters. Most of the important structures are already going to be separate, and the character itself is mostly just a bunch of lists of things (appearance selections, inventory, equipment, licenses, character relation values, etc.) -- and an obvious way around any kind of hard ties to the player character is just to keep them loaded in and in some other way deactivated. I don't know if you are getting this from the developer himself though... he'd be privy to a likely set of impediments for getting from here to there.

I am getting this because I am a game developer myself and I know how incredibly complex and difficult it is to do what you are implying is fairly simple. It's not. Especially if you didn't code the game from the start this way. This is why it's so difficult for modders to create multiplayer mods for games like Elder Scrolls/Fallout and why When Bethesda decided to play around with the idea of adding multiplayer into Fallout 4, they changed gears because it would be simpler just to create an entirely different game that was multiplayer and that's how Fallout 76 was born. Same exact issue where the game logic centers around the player and not the world.

This is exactly how Minecraft functions as well over LAN unless you play on a dedicated server, but a dedicated Minecraft server is developed independently from the base game and they are just sort of packaged together so it appears like one single game. If you've ever modded for Minecraft, you can't just create a mod and it work in multiplayer, you have to mod the multiplayer logic in there with it. Pretty much any single player game that gets multiplayer added to it functions this same way. A LOT would have to be undone and redone to implement what you are suggesting and it would take months of development work for a whole team of people to do it, let alone one single developer. He currently has to continue the development of the core game, fix the plethora of bugs that are being thrown at him every day, and polish up the current features all by himself. There simply is not enough time for him to completely redesign the game at this point to add this unless he hires a development team, but I don't think that's an interest he currently has (and as a solo developer myself, I understand and respect that).

If people are lucky then, like Stardew, this may get added way later after release as an afterthought, but the bottom line is that this game was developed as a single player game, and it's not simple by any stretch of the imagination to change that this far into development, nor do I think he has an interest to as it doesn't fit with the core theme of the game, which is an Animal Crossing-like.

[GoldenOuroboros]

Originally posted by Twisted Sisler:

If people are lucky then, like Stardew, this may get added way later after release as an afterthought, but the bottom line is that this game was developed as a single player game, and it's not simple by any stretch of the imagination to change that this far into development, nor do I think he has an interest to as it doesn't fit with the core theme of the game, which is an Animal Crossing-like.

This is what I'm going with, if it happens then yeah, if not, then probably not, just don't hope for it any time soon.

[Rohaq]

As far as I can tell, this game uses the Mirror networking library for multiplayer, where the host runs both a client and the server component, and both the host and other players connect to the server.

It should be possible to make that server component run independently, but it's by no means a simple thing to do; I totally get the dev focusing on the main game as a priority over dedicated servers. I will remain hopeful though!