#Park beyond multiplayer how to#
#Park beyond multiplayer update#
#Park beyond multiplayer code#

AI War is enhanced by having multiple players, as none of the others hold you back at all. This is a really fun game, but if people come to it in multiplayer I can’t imagine them finding it nearly so much so. It’ the only real rat-hole that has me concerned at the moment. Or multiplayer may just be something that has to be tossed out for the foreseeable future, possibly forever. Kind of like what Don’t Starve Together (which is incredibly fun) has done for Don’t Starve.

#Park beyond multiplayer update#

It may be that multiplayer simply needs to be cut, and possibly released separately as an update or something. That’s going to create tension in the schedule and probably hurt the overall game quality.

#Park beyond multiplayer code#

I’m also not keen on the amount of time that’s likely to suck Keith away from programming work on the main game while I’m piling up bugs and other code requests for him. Except that I don’t think it would be fun. We could do Civ-style multiplayer without issue. And actually having real multiplayer isn’t a problem, per se - we’ve been designing it with that in mind from the get-go. A lot of people would chafe at that, and likely call us out for “not having REAL multiplayer” despite “advertising” it. It could be fun, but it would definitely be strange. This game could easily sustain having individual game worlds share resources or whatever but not share turn times (just like neighboring cities in SimCity don’t share time flow - it’s 1910 in one and 2005 in another and paused in 2056 in another).īut then we’re back to that whole alone together idea. The recent-SimCity approach to multiplayer is pretty fun in a lot of respects, and could work. It’s extremely appropriate…Įxcept in multiplayer. It feels very SimCity-like, and that’s how it should feel. But this game has a whole new problem that is possibly worse: the SimCity style of “leave things still for a while in order to plan, then make a bunch of decisions, then speed through the next while.” I wind up with a random turn taking me a long time, and then literally clicking through several more turns with a second or two pause on each one, max.

This game avoids the problem of too much going on with the units being moved around, which was one of the big problems with Civ. I love stick shifts now, so that analogy only goes so far, but playing multiplayer Civ with people who play at a different speed than me is like being back out there trying to learn stick shift in a traffic jam.

#Park beyond multiplayer how to#

I remember when I was first learning how to drive stick shift on a car, and I kept stalling it out in traffic on the highway. Something that had a huge “one more turn” grip on me in single player instead felt frustrating and slow in multiplayer. I’d wind up literally reading a book during a lot of turns while I was waiting for others to finish their turns. I feel that way with Civ as well, frankly, which is why we stopped playing those together. It’s really fun by myself, but I moderately dread playing with my dad or my wife. One thing that is really telling, though, is that I’m not looking forward to playing multiplayer at all.

It’s actually something that I legitimately enjoy. The diplomacy stuff, too - that’s not just throwing a certain segment of the playerbase a bone. It’s quite a fun game, really, and I’m itching to play more of it. It’s not remotely ready for other players yet, but it’s come a long way since the last time I was testing seriously, and even since last night the fun factor jumped up a ton. That will take some substantial balance work, but it’s all a numbers game at that point. But the early game is always that way even with Civ, and once diplomacy is integrated (we’re working on that now), I think that will change a lot. That’s really the biggest issue I’ve seen. The turns are a lot more granular than I expected, which is going to be a big problem for multiplayer, though. In my testing at the moment, despite all the early-alpha things that either Keith or I need to fix up before we bring in more players ( ETA still hopefully the start of March), I’m finding that quite fun as it is. Some things that I’ve been thinking about regarding Stars Beyond Reach, adapted from an email I originally sent to Keith.

Part 4: 2015-2016, Beyond Reach, Rogue, Raptor – Going 3D.

Part 3: 2013-2014, Shattered, Bionic, Skyward, Last Federation – Peak Arcen.

Part 2: 2011-2012, A Valley Without Wind, etc.

Skyward Collapse: Nihon no Mura (Expansion 1).

The Last Federation: The Lost Technologies (Expansion 2).

The Last Federation: Betrayed Hope (Expansion 1).

AI War: Destroyer Of Worlds (Expansion 6).

AI War: Vengeance of the Machine (Expansion 5).

AI War: Light of the Spire (Expansion 3).

AI War: Children of Neinzul (Expansion 2).AI War: The Zenith Remnant (Expansion 1).Indie game development studio since 2009.