I suggest a campaign game that will be tick-based at 12 hour or even 24 hour intervals but that can be played as turn-based also. The idea is that players must accept that there are times when some players may not be available to take their turn-based turn and that is why they have entered a game where the turn can only be "forced" after 12 or 24 hours.

However there are many times when players may happen to find that they are all online and a few rounds of enjoyable gameplay might be possible. Players will tend to also plan weekend sessions when they can also get together for a few hours. Rather than try to explain this I'll just say that some players might also chose a "pass option" that will allow their turn to be forced ahead of the regular "tick-time" so that others can play through.

A "compensation turn" can be given for the "pass option" so that this player will be allowed to move again next time he takes his turn (i.e. after "X#" of other players have played their turn he would be able to move again out of the regular turn sequence).
The idea is to think "a slice of the pie is better than none at all" (i.e. it is better to have occassional enjoyable "campaign game sessions" where a few consecutive turns can be played by all than not to have the opportunity to play that way at all).

I know there would be arguments but old friends will learn that they are not deliberately trying to "delay gameplay" and will tend to get into games with people they know will try to cooperate.
If this can be done without a whole lot of extra programming I think we might like a campaign game that allows us to play turn-based or tick-based.

TR

there are 2 main issues with turn-based campaigns.

one, Campaigns are longer so they allow multiple players from different timezones to play in the one game. and by only logging in once or twice a day, no matter what time it is, you can play against anyone and not have to spend hours and hours in a row to play, while still being competitive.

secondly, you couldnt have real turn-based with so many players. having to wait for 10 or 20 other players to end their turn before it becomes your turn wouldnt work.

nor could you allow simultanous turns.
if all 10 player were moving at the same time, then chances are the combat would be a mess. you would never know which troops or buildings to attack because by the time you load the map and select which troop to attack with, the other player has already moved their army, perhaps even attacking you!
consider all 10-20 players doing this. it would be chaos.

Well I'm not going to deny that there wouldn't be disappointments or that 10 to 20 players from all over the world wouldn't have a difficult time to make a go of it but I think 6 or even 8 players might be able to get together some of the time but of course not all of the time and I am of the opinion that the occassional times even if only once a week on a weekend that players can enjoy playing for a few hours at a time in a campaign would be so enjoyable that players would be contented.

I'm not going to pursue this more because I think the idea is obviously not liked but I have played turned based games of a few of the other games in game rooms with as many as 8 players for about a 3 hour game. The difference was that these were games that were set up by a host who set the conditions of the game including the time for a turn and yes players do get impatient with each other but I did play a few games to completion.

PS:
Anyway there is another possibility. How about when the game gets down to 6 players they have the option to go turn-based mode whenever all 6 of them happen to be online but the game automatically returns to 12 or 24 hour tick-based after a complete round is played?

TR

Last Edited : Saturday, 8 January 2005 - 12:42

It sounds more like an option for those epic LMSes to me...

"Req"
Do you mean that we can't do this that follows either?
I think the random map that allows 100 players would be fine for this:

"This suggestion pertains to holding a bigger percentage of the players that come and go. I thought I made a suggestion someplace but I can't find it;
So I'm making a new suggestion now.

IMO what is needed is a "huge ongoing background campaign game" in addition to whatever other kind of games are offered. I don't know what kind of "server/bandwidth or other technical problems might be involved, but I'm speaking of a game so huge that a player's territory would appear like about (1/4 sq") on the map when fully "zoomed out".

I'm speaking of a game that can accomodate 1000 players or even more, with fairly fast turn increments, and that allows players to come and go as they please but always find something to do when they do enter the game, yet not necessarily be pressured by agressive players for various reasons like even movement restrictions beyond a certain distance from home castle.

I mean a game that allows immediate entrance, that allows a player to gain basic game skills that does allow player interaction (i.e. wars and battles) but really has no lasting "game career" record;

and I mean a game where a winner can be designated by which player holds the most territory at game end, but which game can possibly be reset every 1000 to even 10000 turns so that players are automatically restarted in the game with always a possibility of being a new winner.
The game can be given some "unique name" and as a minor reward players that win can possibly be announced as the winner with their "game achievements" in the "main game news"."

This that follows was "Req's" answer back then:

"the problem is the map.
games use a manually generated map.
the biggest map we have is 40 players.

even if we create a blank 1 color/terrain map someone would still have to go in and place castles, roads, resource buildings, etc for every single starting position.

from memory, i also maxed out the X,Y coords to 255. This was to make the flash-map compression easier and faster so that map-refreshes were faster.

so how many players can you fit into a 255x255 area?

also, what happens when a castle is removed? how does a new player join in that space?

i think in the current system, such a large game isnt really possible. perhaps in the new ver."

PS:
I think we need this. I think a game like this that runs for anywhere from 500 to 1000 turns and then gets reset with a new winner each time will cause our numbers to steadily increase. I just had another reason for a game like this (i.e. just to test my SP2 WinXP upgrade).

TR

well, with the Zone system, I have changed the way things work.

The X,Y coords can now go up to 2047,2047.
I currently have it going up to 1259,1600 in my tests, which provides 925 starting possitions.
So if I updated it to go all the way to 2000,2000 I'm sure it would go well over 1000 starting positions.

Chances are players (in ALL games) would actually start at 1000,1000 (x,y) and spread out from there. This gives plenty of space to expand in any direction.


I guess in the new version, we could just have a game that runs 1000 turns, and anyone can join at any time. On joining it just picks 1 of 4 closest available spots to 1000,1000.
So the world will just continually expand until the game is over.

Of course, 1000 turns is a VERY long time.
Even at 12hr turns, its still 1.36 years. Not many players can last that long.

Wow
This sounds like great news but maybe 500 turns would be plenty.
We can talk about the time increments later.

TR

Req - "Not many players can last that long."

Well, I see some of the female players have been telling you stories about me again.

1.36 years? Wow

I'd say that perhaps 6 months should be the target for this REALLY long game (or perhaps it would be more accurately coined as an endurance test), so around 360 or 370 turns (or if you want a number divisible by 50, 350 might work nicely--just under 6 months in a 12 hour game).

Also bear in mind that with games this long, that means your rank doesn't change until the game is over--so though you may have been defeated half-way through, you still have to wait another 3 months before you get those points (this may not be an issue to most, but I thought I'd at least raise it).

Last Edited : Thursday, 13 January 2005 - 10:33

i did a lms for 255 turns. that was a long time.