Co-op, when?

[Gared]

I know, random people don't appreciate spending hours on one game with one person, bu I've got 3 friends who love city builders. Unfortunately, 99.9% are not multiplayer in any form.

This game features such huge distances and vast territories. Surely we could fit several players there?

[Jolie Rouge]

Never.

https://trello.com/b/0haBaHmz/soviet-republic-roadmap

[Gared]

Originally posted by Jolie Rouge:

Never.

https://trello.com/b/0haBaHmz/soviet-republic-roadmap

This makes us four very sad tovarisch'es.
Tropico 6 it is, then

[Ivan Boroff]

I think coop is a waste of effort for what is probably a extremely tiny amount of people.

[Gared]

I don't know much about making multiplayer games, but from what I heard it is indeed not the simplest thing to pull off.

You kind of have to start with it, it seems.
And if you already have a certain type of architecture layed out from the beginning - it can even be next to impossible.

I just think co-op would've fitted Workers and Resources well

[CutseyBrooksey]

How would it even work tho?

[Gared]

Originally posted by NotATypicalTory:

How would it even work tho?

Instead of writing a long post describing gameplay and features, I'd rather point at Tropico 6. You want to see how multiplayer works in city builders? Check out the way it's implemented there.

We are playing it right now, 4 players, it's pretty fun and meditative - just the way we like it.

We'd rather play Workers in Resources though, because it just hits the spot much better than Tropico 6. Less satire, more city building.
W&R maps are huge, there's definitely space for additional players there.

[Lead_Hammer]

The problem is exactly that. Workers and resources is setup to be huge. This has rather dire performance implications as you scale upward, already no computer can run the game well enough to use the whole map and the people who get really large populations are always using mods with very large residential buildings to limit the actual city sizes.

If the game was multiplayer then one computer would have to be the host and the other players would just be remote terminals, and you would take a major performance hit all of the time even when the city was small because the game is bottlenecking all of its internal logic constantly to account for the unpredictable results of having multiple users sharing resource pools and modifying roads and rails and power lines all of which have pathfinding logic that constantly cycles.

So multiplayer would work out pretty badly even if the developers felt like spending a year totally rewriting the core game logic to account for it. Tropic 6 multiplayer works precisely because it's a smaller scale game with a much smaller number of AI agents actually trying to function in game.

[YouTuber Daniddr1]

If you want multiplayer, go to OPEN TTD, free game, the old transport tycoon deluxe, because now with open source, play coop or PVP, compete to grow a city before the rival, or many game modes that I do not understand, there are many servers or play games with your friends, the game is very old but it is great

[Cosmadox]

Originally posted by Lead_Hammer:

The problem is exactly that. Workers and resources is setup to be huge. This has rather dire performance implications as you scale upward, already no computer can run the game well enough to use the whole map and the people who get really large populations are always using mods with very large residential buildings to limit the actual city sizes.

If the game was multiplayer then one computer would have to be the host and the other players would just be remote terminals, and you would take a major performance hit all of the time even when the city was small because the game is bottlenecking all of its internal logic constantly to account for the unpredictable results of having multiple users sharing resource pools and modifying roads and rails and power lines all of which have pathfinding logic that constantly cycles.

So multiplayer would work out pretty badly even if the developers felt like spending a year totally rewriting the core game logic to account for it. Tropic 6 multiplayer works precisely because it's a smaller scale game with a much smaller number of AI agents actually trying to function in game.

Personally I think the best way would be a system of 'seperate but connected' republics. You have an option to connect with another user, and it creates a border with that country, you can export/import from them as opposed to using others, as well as maybe being able to click view over their world, without really being able to change anything. Then you can coordinate industry, and have the feeling of a connected world while skipping the hoops of host machines & single-world multiplayer.

[WASP]

Originally posted by Boris Jenkov:

I think coop is a waste of effort for what is probably a extremely tiny amount of people.

That was literally first question from one of my friends

[MG83]

Well coop would be fun but as far as i see performance issues comes first. :>

[Comrade Sky]

I will never understand why people use "performance" as an excuse. Perhaps not everyone could really take advantage of it, but many of us have computers that will run it, so why limit out games?

[MG83]

Originally posted by Comrade Sky:

I will never understand why people use "performance" as an excuse. Perhaps not everyone could really take advantage of it, but many of us have computers that will run it, so why limit out games?

its not excuse its fact. When you want to make a game co op it is necessary to have a server. which require hardware or rental . Thefore performance issue. :> it is not just about your pc :)

[ChalwaBechatex]

Originally posted by Cosmadox:

Personally I think the best way would be a system of 'seperate but connected' republics. You have an option to connect with another user, and it creates a border with that country, you can export/import from them as opposed to using others, as well as maybe being able to click view over their world, without really being able to change anything. Then you can coordinate industry, and have the feeling of a connected world while skipping the hoops of host machines & single-world multiplayer.

It's a nice idea for mod. I saw this in factorio: some maps were for resource harvesting(senders) and others for massive rocket building (recipents).

You just need modded harbour or airfield and script that will add/substract resources from server when vehicles arrive at "server destination" similar to foreign country.

I can even write this server and share on github but I'm not familiar with modding to write client and embeed in game ;P

This kind of server is really CPU cheap and you can host it on your computer.

I agree that this shouldn't be vanilla ;P

[Mandii-_]

Though it would take too much work to implement co-op in a single republic, I think there still should be an easier route to multiplayer experience by making it possible for players to interact with other player-republics (even if on LAN only). This can be through trade, tourism, military actions, etc. The core logic behind co-op multiplayer is that close friends want to have a feeling of "we are in this together", and adding simplistic interaction options is already enough for that.