SBURBDEV Forum

[Legendary]

I was gonna make a thread on half of this before I got tired, and then of course immortius made another suggestion, so let's get cracking.

Entry Order:

For the humans, each house is progressively harder to navigate, with each Guardian being more controlling and the overall number of rooms increasing. If Housing becomes complex enough, immortius's proposal of a semi-random entry ordering makes a good deal of sense. The question I have here is how exactly do we quantify difficulty for server players? I don't think simply increasing Guardian hostility and house size is going to be quite enough. And of course, another important question is, "How do we stop players from going out of order?" Preventing the first client from just linking to someone willy-nilly will make some sense, but it seems pointlessly arbitrary in any other way unless we do it well.

There's also the concerns of my birfurcation scenarios for the Gates, but I'll detail that more as we get to the point of figuring out how entry will large numbers of players will work.


Entry Timing:

It's also worth considering that the humans didn't pull off a perfect chain of "Open Alchemizer X-> Form next connection in Chain -> Player X enters -> Open Alchemizer Y -> etc", and we might want to code some limitations as to how quickly people connect to each other. Or perhaps not. I dunno.

Secondly is the more obvious timer countdown. Dave's four hours and thirteen minutes set-up seems excessive and I propose that the timers an alchemizer makes should be limited to less than half an hour per person. A relatively simple solution would be to just say that every player will be 13 (deciding how many seconds they have) and that the number of players in the overall chain will be the number of minutes. To keep the timer perfectly accurate, we can code the entry items to not spawn until there's only seconds left to use them, or have them pull a Bottle and go flying out windows and off of rooftops.

[Legendary]

Something else I didn't consider. Here's a scenario: We have six players, who are in a simple, non-bifurcated set-up. Player A is the first one in, as assisted by Player B. This is normal and fine and dandy. Player C however, decides to cut around the game scenario and has Player D hook them up into the Medium first. And, just to be extra confusing, Player A immediately turns around and starts hooking up Player F. Should this be allowed? If not, how do we dissuade it? Make the meteor threat much more urgent for Player B? Pull a Homestuck and keep discs hidden until each new player is ready to go?

[AgentPaper]

Seems kinda like this thread is redundant with the gate discussion...

[Legendary]

We could combine them, sure, but they cover different topics. The gates is purely about the seven gates and how they move you about the Medium. This is about Entry, and I am specifically asking, "How should we handle an event where Dave says 'You can wait a bit Rose, Jade's gonna get me in and then John's gonna get her in and you're joining us last, okay?'"

[AgentPaper]

Er, right. Somehow I was linking the two together in some strange way in my head that doesn't make sense anymore. Uh...anyways, carry on.

[Interloper]

Order is easy enough to fix - just have each server copy only connect to one client.
But would you need to? as long as you can't connect to your own server a chain is inevitable - there really doesn't seem to be any need to force an order as long as everyone gets in. The only problem would be trying to get through gate 2 if your server wasn't there and that's as easy as having Gate 2 just not spawn until the server's in, so eventually everyone has to be in in order to progress.

[demosthenes2k8]

One thing might screw that up: they bifurcate their session.
Six people, ABCDEF
A=>B=>C
D=>E=>F
Instead of C=>D and F=>A, C=>A and F=>D. Now there are two chains. This would have to be prevented somehow. I'm thinking of a solution based on the size of a circular linked list...

[The Cool]

all we have to do is make sure that you cant close the chain unless everyones in it

[Teshik]

I don't think the entry order is going to be a large problem, as long as you are only able to connect to ONE client and ONE server, you may be able to connect to a chain, or a single player, but you will always maintain one chain.

While we know Dave connected to Jade afterwards, becoming both Roses and Jades server player, he did so after she entered the Medium - this would help the gameplay, since you could start off say a four-player session, but not everyone has to be online all the time for the game to progress. This is especially important for large sessions (more than five players), since one could always drop out (one doesn't always need a burning house for a lost connection...). Also it leaves a possible win open even if one or more players get their characters killed by their Denizen or eaten by their ogres.

Legendary: Secondly is the more obvious timer countdown. Dave's four hours and thirteen minutes set-up seems excessive and I propose that the timers an alchemizer makes should be limited to less than half an hour per person. A relatively simple solution would be to just say that every player will be 13 (deciding how many seconds they have) and that the number of players in the overall chain will be the number of minutes. To keep the timer perfectly accurate, we can code the entry items to not spawn until there's only seconds left to use them, or have them pull a Bottle and go flying out windows and off of rooftops.

The countdown won't start as long as you haven't opened the Cruxtruder - so I agree it would be excessive to multiply entry timeouts for each player. I'd say topping it off at 60 minutes would still leave you more than ample time to futz around with your items, but once you open the cruxtruder, you have to enter.

This maximum number would also apply to Grist as well. Rose hat 20, Dave 200, and Jade 2000 Build grist to start off with, which would have left John at a theoretical 20'000 - too much, since everyone would simply abandon the first player homes (or nobody would like to start off, since it's going to be lame waiting for the others to enter). Topping that one off at 1000 Grist would suffice, I'd think.

@demosthenes: if you want to avoid sessions getting bifurcated, there would be an information screen during logon - meaning: Say, you're player C in your scenario. If he wants to connect, he searches for "his" players in the overall network lounge. for Each available client player, there would be a little screen with the player chain in it, in this case, something like "Session #612413, available ClientPlayer: D, Player Chain : D --> E --> F".

[darkDetective]

I think the best way to do this would be to have the players decide the session order pregame. And having their characters slack off until it is the countdown is halfway through the player two forward. So Dave can't start until John's countdown is halfway finished. I suggest that leaving the game with no penalty would be fine until you are able to play, and also having various things around said house to fool around with. Like maybe videogames, comics, a stereo, nak nak nak. Then, once they are able to play, they will be notified with a pesterchum msg or phone call. If said player isn't logged on at said time, active players in the session will have the option to skip them and count them as dead, meaning that if the session starts and one player drops out suddenly and won't come back, they won't have to wait for them in order to play, they will just skip to the next player (if the next player is active that is, and so on and so forth).

But I mean, the trolls connected to each other rather quickly, unlike the kids, so this is something that needs to be discussed.

As far as entry timing, I would say that they shouldn't be able to spawn the item till 5 minutes, and how much time they have left is dependent on the difficulty of the quest given. We don't want players to lose when they have gotten the chance to alchemize the item already, but we do want them to give them a sense of urgency. So a 5 minute spawn would result in a quest that would take 3 or 4 minutes to complete, and a 10 second spawn would simply create something that can be used right away.