LÖVE multiplayer

[clickrush]

I'am a huge multiplayer fan, comming from a competitive gaming background (broodwar, wc3, sc2 dota). Most lovers and probably also most hobby-gamedesigners / indy-gamedesigners in general tend to make mostly singleplayer (or rather player vs designer) games.

I believe this stems from the obvious problem that if you create a game based mostly on real-time interaction (I don't really count highscores or features like spore and inside a star filled sky implemented as multiplayer), then you probably won't have enough poeple at the same time to play with eachother, whereas a AAA blockbuster title or one of the few successfull community projects (dota, CS...) don't have these problems because of their huge distribution.

So I'am not even yet understanding the technical side of a real-time multiplayer interaction but I wonder if the problem I described above could be solved by having a structure where all LÖVE multiplayer games would be merged on kind of a communication plattform? To give a practical example: I download a LÖVE multiplayer game and I don't find anyone who plays it right now, but I find some people who play another multiplayer LÖVE creation and decide to play it with them for a round. We have some good fun and decide to try out this other game I wanted to play in the first place.

Multiplayer also doesn't allways have to mean that it is competitive. It could be solving a puzzle together or trying work around a restricted communication channel and whatnot.

As I don't understand the technical side at all, I'am just throwing this outthere. The solution might be very simple, like just a convention or even just a suggestion like "try all to use XY plattform/tool to get your gamers connected".

[Robin]

I like the idea, but I don't think it should be LÖVE-centric. This thing is better focussed around you and your friends, no matter what game engine is used for the game. You will want to do these kind of things with your friends, not with strangers.

[tentus]

I don't have anything to say about the tech you're proposing, but I can say from personal experience:

The reason a lot of indie developers do not make multiplayer games is because it requires at least twice as many beta testers, with twice the as much coordination on your part.

In a singleplayer game you can test pretty much everything yourself without asking for help. That ceases to be true with multiplayer. The effort required just to see if something is even fun skyrockets.

[clickrush]

I like the idea, but I don't think it should be LÖVE-centric. This thing is better focussed around you and your friends, no matter what game engine is used for the game. You will want to do these kind of things with your friends, not with strangers.

yeah but communicating with your friends and get them to play a game with you should be a non-issue anyways. from my gaming background: playing games with strangers is not uncommon or weird or anything like that. competitive gamers tend to build large communities just based on the game they play together while they have nothing to do with eachother in any other aspect of their life. this is partly because not all friends like the same games or maybe they dont even like computer games at all (never met somebody who doesn't like games in general though).

a multiplayer game doesn't have to be huge to be worthwhile IMO. You should check out "soldat" or "teeworlds" as examples. Those games are more like snacks compared to CS, SC2 or DotA but they are fun to play.

but what tentus is saying seems to be very reasonable.

EDIT: for an example check out "Between" from jason rohrer (whom I have been becomming a huge fan of lately). It is a pure multiplayer game, where you have the option to play it with a friend/stranger. Problem is: To actually be able to try it out you have to be either very, very lucky to find a stranger who wants to play it at the same moment or you have to convince a friend who might not even be interested in such a thing at all.

[slime]

Another reason why multiplayer is less common in indie and hobby games is because good multiplayer is fucking hard, both in terms of getting gameplay right and in terms of code and understanding how to solve the problems latency and packetloss present. There's a reason even small teams often have a dedicated multiplayer developer.

[Lafolie]

In-game multiplayer aspect aside, the social platform is pretty simple; just slinging messages to/from a server that logs when X person is playing Y game. That hard part there is continuity and ensuring that players are given a simple, quick, standardised interface that will probably be butchered in many cases by the implementation of it via different development teams. For a diverse example of this I refer you to Xbox LIVE.

I don't think it's necessary though. I mean, Löve (and by that I generally mean 'small-time') games are either going to be really underground and relatively unknown - so much so that if you do play multiplayer it's most likely going to be with your friends or a community that you are part of - OR the game is an overnight sensation and suddenly lots of people are playing it so there's always someone to play with/against, most likely including your friends of similar taste.

Good luck getting a hang of multiplayer though. It's a long, hard road but if you can get it right there's a lot to be said for fun, unique multiplayer and any game that pulls this off is well worth the effort and hard work.

Also, I really hate DotA. "Worst WC3 map everrrr"

[clickrush]

I find the design aspect of multiplayer very compelling. If you look at singleplayer gamedesign as a multiplayer experience where the designer has infite tools of creating a challenge for the player then designing a multiplayer game would be creating tools for the players with which they can challenge eachother. In other words the players will design new patterns within your game. Creating such a ruleset would be amazing because you'd have to find one that almost can't be mastered (unlike tic tac toe). This is why my thoughts gravitate around multiplayer lately. But I think you are very right in your answer that the game itself has to be reason enough for the players to be willing to connect with eachother.

[Affi]

We're utilizing multiplayer and chat services in an upcoming title of ours that we're porting from mobile to PC (with the lovely LÖVE). I'm in the middle of making some simple multiplayer tutorials as a part of http://play.affinity.so and will throw you a .love when I'm done.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to create a multiplayer game, even if it's just a social/chat based aspect.