multiplayer feature requests

[mobius]

These are mostly issues which I've experienced for a long time now; But some of which were particularly problematic on Sunday;

--It would be very nice if stats like; number of lixes, spawn interval, skills were displayed when a level is selected.

--display a message "xxxx is selecting a level". Even if xxx closes the window and doesn't pick anything this lets everyone in the room know what's happening so you don't have someone pick a level and another person unknowingly swap out their pick.

--time outs; This is a major features I've noticed almost all multiplayer games of any kind have. Someone (usually the host, not sure if that's applicable here) "starts" the game and then the game will begin as decided in 10 seconds or something.
One way of dealing with this issue, I think I've proposed before;

Once someone presses "ready to play" a countdown starts. Then, whoever has not pressed ready to play by the time the countdown begins is either entered or ejected or made spectator. I don't know which I'd prefer but I'd lean toward enter.

--changing color disables all ready's. ;;; while I can see why this happens; I can see the abuse that could happen without it; someone changes teams last minute to screw with another player then they can't do anything about it cause the game begins... It causes major issues sometimes with people constantly changing colors and the game can't begin. Admittedly part of the problem here is when some people are voice chatting and others aren't. Still feels like there might be another way to handle this.

--Include two more colors/players. The most people I've ever seen play is I *think* 9? 10 sounds like a good limit. Although I can see arguments for *decreasing* # of players (perhaps see below?). A party could always make another room to split it up...

--Limit overall map size a bit? With very large maps there's almost always lots of lag and crashing. These are unplayable. Maybe just limit the overall size and lix count for multiplayer levels.

[Forestidia86]

--Limit overall map size a bit? With very large maps there's almost always lots of lag and crashing. These are unplayable. Maybe just limit the overall size and lix count for multiplayer levels.

Just out of interest to the players who had crashes: Which versions were you playing with (which version number and 32bit or 64bit)?

Edit: This thread was about afk problem prevention as well.

[geoo]

I think we've never had such a large number of people in a room (we were 11 at some point).
The list of players only displays 8 at a time, so one challenge with more than that is that you don't really see what's going on. Icho's suggestion of indicating, for each color, if it's already taken (or how many players have already picked it) probably alleviates that to some extent (still helpful even if there are <= 8 players).
In general, a clear indication of how many players the map requires, and whether the number of colors matches that, might be helpful.

--time outs; This is a major features I've noticed almost all multiplayer games of any kind have. Someone (usually the host, not sure if that's applicable here) "starts" the game and then the game will begin as decided in 10 seconds or something.
One way of dealing with this issue, I think I've proposed before;

Once someone presses "ready to play" a countdown starts. Then, whoever has not pressed ready to play by the time the countdown begins is either entered or ejected or made spectator. I don't know which I'd prefer but I'd lean toward enter.

One issue I see with that is that most of the time you don't want to start a level with the wrong amount of players, which would happen in that case. Many maps have versions for different amounts of players. If the game was aware of that it could pick the correct one maybe, but it won't work all the time.

Another idea that has been floating around is that someone in the room (e.g. first one to join) is the boss, and they could, say, disallow changing of colors and maps, and manually assign players to colors or spectator. Most of the time it's probably not necessary, but if you have someone afk or some rogue player who's doing random stuff it could be useful.


(If we're talking about multiplayer features already, one thing I've really felt I wanted in the most recent maps I made is individual pre-placed lix. And of course neutral lixes also have huge gameplay potential, both in single and multiplayer. I think in MP by default only neutrals should count towards your score.)

[Dullstar]

I would suggest a short (perhaps 3 seconds or so?) countdown after the last person hits ready, so the transition is less abrupt.

[Simon]

Good suggestions for larger groups. Both games in early 2021 had large groups. Free-for-all map selection becomes nasty. Telling people to press ready is annoying.

Maps already know their intended number of players, it's reasonable to support that more in the lobby.

-- Simon