MP options

[ProdigyXP]

Hi there. I am just now trying out the demo and am enjoying it. I missed this one when it came out, but fortunately came by the game recently when searching for games with the "online multiplayer" tag. I really like that you added the ability for the demo version to play matches with people who have the full version... nice feature!

Due to having only the demo version right now, I was not able to see what specific MP options exist for hosting a match (besides 'up to 8 players'). So my questions are:

What options exist for hosting a MP match?

More specificly, how does the "team" aspect work (2v2, for example)? Does the MP setup option let you select teams, or is it something that each player just agrees to?

That leads to my other question. Is there a way to play the AI in these MP hosted matches? For example, if I wanted to play say 2v2 versus the AI with a friend.... could we both be on the same team, but playing 2 AI opponents?

I could see it being very enjoyable to crank the AI to the hardest level and trying (over and over) to beat the AI together with a friend.

Thanks for any info.

[Fuddleclutch]

Hi Prodigy, Great to read you're enjoying Powargrid.

When hosting a multiplayer game, you first get a menu that allows you to set the maximum number of players, as well as a password if you want to. There are two different follow-up menus; one for two players, where you can choose to either take the first turn or receive a perk, and one for more players.
In this second menu, you can pick a colour, pick a team and move your position up and down. The top player gets to start and after that, the players are put on the map clockwise at regular intervals. Where exactly depends on the map.

However, pictures say more than words :). Since Steam doesn't allow direct posting of images, I tweeted some pictures of the multipayer menu: link.

Specifically about teams: everyone can select which team they're in. We didn't build an automatic balancing feature for that, since we figured that people can decide for themselves what they want. Who are we to say that you shouldn't play 7 against 1? :)

As for the AI question: unfortunately, it's not yet possible to play a game with multiple people against one or more AIs. Making sure our AI is fun to play against with multiple players requires some non-trivial additions to the code. We do want to create a co-op mode in the future though. I can't give you a timeline for when we'll add that to the game.

I hope that answers your questions. And don't hesitate to ask if you want to know more.

[ProdigyXP]

Hi there... Thank you for the fast reply and all the info. Much appreciated. I went ahead and grabbed it. Glad to hear coop is a possibility in the future. I look forward to enjoying it with friends in the meantime! Thanks again

[Fuddleclutch]

Hi Prodigy,

Last Friday, I wrote a blog post with more information about the difficulties in adding AI to games with 3+ players. You can read it here[www.powargrid.com]. Perhaps that answers your question more fully :).