The Battle for Wesnoth Forums

I've shared some of my frustrations with current Wesnoth co-op play (along with suggestions to improve it) in this other thread.

Now, I've also thought of a more radical solution to make playing Wesnoth as allies more interesting: don't have a separate turn for each (human) ally. Instead, make them all play in one collective turn, at the same time.

• This supposes allies can see everything the others are doing, including undoable moves. Whether they should be interrupted by the other allies' attack, recruit, upgrade dialogues is debatable.
• Whether turns can be combined like this should be left up to the scenario designer. Maybe she has a reason to make players play in a certain order. However in most campaigns/scenarios, it doesn't matter in which order allies play.
• This mode of play is designed to ease life for mature players who communicate (i.e. the people I play with ). If you already have problems with kill-stealing, village-stealing and blocking each other maneuvers, this mode will make it even worse.
• This nicely solves the difficulty of allied healing and using ally leadership.

Reaaaally nice. Who's gonna code this ?

Well... me actually. If the feature is popular enough, I'd be happy to code it. I'm also considering to include it as part of a summer of code proposal for summer 2010: time will tell, I have several project ideas.

EDIT: Gah! Usually I try to avoid MTR. I should've searched for "simultaneous" before posting this. Apparently it's been suggested. After reading those comments, I still think this idea would be appropriate, provided the campaign/scenario is designed with this type of gameplay in mind from the start. Basically it's giving more power to campaign designers to fine-tune their gameplay.

EDIT: Heh, Dave himself actually proposed a similar idea back then. His proposal is quite detailed, so if I ever implement this it should help.

There are some technical problems, in multi-player there lots of lags and dc problems,
if we add such an option it will most likely create even more such problems...
If it is not solved, it will be nearly impossible to play such way, unless its lan or hotseat.

There might be another problem, due to game design witch will make this feature hard to add,
but I am not a person who can answer it.

But it could be that you understand this side better than I do...

More importantly this could also cause gameplay problems:
one player checks undo-able combination of moves while another player makes an irreversible move (like attack or even shroud update)
What if the first player will consider the combination bad and eventually will find himself unable to undo half of moves?
If your solution to it is that the players will actually play non simultaneously,
but will have ability to allow another player continue his turn while stopping your one - it may cause the game to go very slowly.

P.S. wasn't it proposed before?

If you want such an option added someone will have to make a good design for it.
It is obviously true that I want something like this added to the game.
Actually I do have an idea how to make it work, but it will require a massive beforehand...
But that work will worth it self on its own. I will post that idea later...

It’s already been proposed, though it would be pretty awesome.

Devs have got their hands busy with other items at the moment. Not sure if this is high on anyone’s list.

https://gna.org/bugs/index.php?13642

How are you going to gauge whether it's "popular enough" or not? Dave did propose something like it before, so maybe that's enough.

Anyway, I just want to say that I would definitely use this if it were an option. Good luck.

What if you try to move your unit to an occupied location? Internet isn't instantaneous. Maybe it would work in local games though.

ALX23 wrote: More importantly this could also cause gameplay problems:
one player checks undo-able combination of moves while another player makes an irreversible move (like attack or even shroud update)
What if the first player will consider the combination bad and eventually will find himself unable to undo half of moves?
If your solution to it is that the players will actually play non simultaneously,
but will have ability to allow another player continue his turn while stopping your one - it may cause the game to go very slowly.

I suppose we could devise a clever and complicated system to solve this, but I have a better answer: communication. Preferably vocal communication on Skype or Teamspeak or the like. The way I envision it, it's as if units from all allies were on the same side, so players share the same undo stack, can undo each other's moves, and irreversible moves block undo for everybody. The only thing they can't do is move each other's units: this make sure everybody participates.
As I said if there's an immature moron on the team this is sure to fail in hilarious and horrible ways, but this is designed for players who know each other minimally and work together.

Ken_Oh wrote:How are you going to gauge whether it's "popular enough" or not? Dave did propose something like it before, so maybe that's enough.

Well, at least from the volume of discussion it generates in this thread. If it got completely ignored, I'd have concluded that nobody except me wants this.

someone wrote:What if you try to move your unit to an occupied location? Internet isn't instantaneous. Maybe it would work in local games though.

First request to arrive to the server wins. Further attempts to move there are blocked and the unit just moves back where it was, if it's caught mid-move. If your ally just blocked you, you can ask him and then undo his move. Or if the move wasn't undoable, you get to scream at him for not notifying you before doing a critical move.

gabba wrote:

• This nicely solves the difficulty of allied healing and using ally leadership.

Actually... it makes allied healing less effective. Normally, when a unit is surrounded by allied healers from different players, it will be healed once for every healer. If the turn is simultaneous, only one healer will actually heal, because there is a "single healing per unit per turn" cap.

I'm not sure if "healing camps" are that popular in MP; still this is a difference that might be cumbersome for some.

gabba wrote:I suppose we could devise a clever and complicated system to solve this, but I have a better answer: communication. Preferably vocal communication on Skype or Teamspeak or the like.

To be frank, I don't think this the right direction at all.

I like how the latest Heroes of Might & Magic solved it. You can play simultaneous as long as you are far enough away from the allied player to cause a conflict.

Ken_Oh already coded something similar in Wesband that you can move unlimited times as long as you aren't near an enemy.

Civ IV has simultaneous turns. How do they resolve when two people want to move to one square first? Well, first come, first serve. Whoever moves there first gets to move there. I think that’s more than fair.

gabba wrote:First request to arrive to the server wins. Further attempts to move there are blocked and the unit just moves back where it was, if it's caught mid-move. If your ally just blocked you, you can ask him and then undo his move. Or if the move wasn't undoable, you get to scream at him for not notifying you before doing a critical move.

I agree!

If an ally wants to move to a particular hex, the client game would send a request. The first request to the server would be accepted and any others would be denied. Then the server then tells all allies to make that move and the unit would then be animated on the allies' screens.

I don’t think players should be able to undo their ally’s moves however. Way too messy.

The only thing is healing would be impacted. Healing would need to occur for both allies at the beginning of the turn. Personally I like this better anyway, doing all healing at the beginning of a round.

Ken_Oh wrote:To be frank, I don't think this the right direction at all.

My ideas aren't set in stone, but overall I'd like to keep it as simple as possible. I think you'll agree requiring more communication is better than devising a complicated system that'll take a long time to make, have many initial bugs, and players probably won't like once it's coded. I still have to read Dave's full design notes on this, though, and read through all past threads on the topic.
I needed to jauge the popular interest before investing myself in this.

Rya wrote:I like how the latest Heroes of Might & Magic solved it. You can play simultaneous as long as you are far enough away from the allied player to cause a conflict.

This is a different idea, though, and actually from what I read on the HOMMV forums, that system doesn't work out too well. (Well, I tried it myself too, and unless you're on a huge map (i.e. too large for multiplayer), simulateous turns are over after a few turns.) HOMM is a very different kind of game, too, with separate strategic/tactical layers, and so on.

ancestral wrote:Civ IV has simultaneous turns. How do they resolve when two people want to move to one square first? Well, first come, first serve. Whoever moves there first gets to move there. I think that’s more than fair.

gabba wrote:I don’t think players should be able to undo their ally’s moves however. Way too messy.

The thing is, if each player has his own undo stack, it opens a whole can of worms such as: what happens when you want to undo your last move, but the spot your unit is supposed to move back to is occupied by an ally unit? Or are you suggesting that only the last player that moved can use Undo? I think it would be more confusing than allowing everybody to do it.

Edit: Oh, and about healing, here's some interesting context.

The problem with such a feature is that it actually will screw with different map balances, which is a major reason why it was never implemented. Several maps use the 1212 turn order, with others using 1221. Moreover separate turns actually encourages different types of coordination and thinking as individuals need to consider how allies will move, both on their side and on others. Having simultaneous turns gives it a different dynamic, which is not clear whether its better or not.

Having two different turn resolutions types is somewhat confusing and just starts with the proliferation of more options for gametypes. Given that a diplomacy panel will likely be added in the next few versions (Adding greater information to the start up screen) I'm not sure whether this should be included.

gabba wrote:
Edit: Oh, and about healing, here's some interesting context.

And that was rejected because of the very reasons I noted above: it would wreck several scenarios (Dungeon Crawl ones specifically) which require careful unit placement for team healing. Its not a perfect situation but its what already exists and the game has been developed according to it.

As a note, major gameplay changes like these aren't the best proposals for GSOC. Last year we didn't take any first year students submissions on AI because of its complexity and I suspect major gameplay changes are in a similar boat. They involve alot of different issues that aren't apparent to new developers: even old developers are wary of making such changes. Its much better to set your sights low and build from there.

First, let me say that I don't want to do a specific GSoC project at all costs, so hearing "this is probably too complex" from a dev is enough for me to turn to other ideas. This said, I feel this idea still has potential, so I'm interested in discussing it further. Maybe someone will pick it up, or I can keep it in mind as a future project.

Noy wrote:

gabba wrote: Edit: Oh, and about healing, here's some interesting context.

And that was rejected because of the very reasons I noted above: it would wreck several scenarios (Dungeon Crawl ones specifically) which require careful unit placement for team healing. Its not a perfect situation but its what already exists and the game has been developed according to it.

Rejected? I didn't gather that from the discussion I linked to, it sounded more like "would be nice but nobody's doing it". Also, it's still linked from the NotSoEasyCoding wiki page, which suggests its still a desirable feature. If healing is going to stay as is, maybe that link should be erased?

Noy wrote:The problem with such a feature is that it actually will screw with different map balances, which is a major reason why it was never implemented. Several maps use the 1212 turn order, with others using 1221. Moreover separate turns actually encourages different types of coordination and thinking as individuals need to consider how allies will move, both on their side and on others. Having simultaneous turns gives it a different dynamic, which is not clear whether its better or not.
Having two different turn resolutions types is somewhat confusing and just starts with the proliferation of more options for gametypes.

The only area where simultaneous turns provide a clear advantage is boredom, which is what I'm trying to reduce with the current stream of ideas.
If separate turns is a core philosophical issue, the discussion should probably stop here.
However if it's more a question of code complexity, As far as confusion goes... it's hard to tell which effect this additional option would have, but I find there are already many "alien" gametypes people have created through WML, such as the Risk game, RPG dungeon crawling, and so on, where the usual rules are bent. Personally I find this variety very interesting (even though I wouldn't want those mods to drown out the more classic Wesnoth gameplay), and I'd like to encourage more experimentation.

gabba wrote:First, let me say that I don't want to do a specific GSoC project at all costs, so hearing "this is probably too complex" from a dev is enough for me to turn to other ideas. This said, I feel this idea still has potential, so I'm interested in discussing it further. Maybe someone will pick it up, or I can keep it in mind as a future project.

Noy wrote: And that was rejected because of the very reasons I noted above: it would wreck several scenarios (Dungeon Crawl ones specifically) which require careful unit placement for team healing. Its not a perfect situation but its what already exists and the game has been developed according to it.

Rejected? I didn't gather that from the discussion I linked to, it sounded more like "would be nice but nobody's doing it". Also, it's still linked from the NotSoEasyCoding wiki page, which suggests its still a desirable feature. If healing is going to stay as is, maybe that link should be erased?

This is the problem with the forum: its not used by developers for serious policy proposals. I'd suspect that less than 40% of all coding developers actually ever even bother reading the forum. Art, music are a different area. A large portion of the discussion occurs on IRC or on the mailing list, which are the main conduits for development. For that reason this might not be the best place for you to raise your possible ideas for a GSOC project.

Rejected may have been too strong a word, but the proposal as highlighted above is unacceptable to a number of developers who design and maintain campaigns and scenarios. For that reason it didn't proceed further. A decision to implement such a feature must take into account their concerns; its not acceptable to simply alter major aspects of gameplay without considering its effect on other developers work. Thats the reason why its an area that remains fairly static.

gabba wrote:

Noy wrote:The problem with such a feature is that it actually will screw with different map balances, which is a major reason why it was never implemented. Several maps use the 1212 turn order, with others using 1221. Moreover separate turns actually encourages different types of coordination and thinking as individuals need to consider how allies will move, both on their side and on others. Having simultaneous turns gives it a different dynamic, which is not clear whether its better or not.
Having two different turn resolutions types is somewhat confusing and just starts with the proliferation of more options for gametypes.

The only area where simultaneous turns provide a clear advantage is boredom, which is what I'm trying to reduce with the current stream of ideas.

Well thats really a subjective judgement on your part, and you're suggesting a major alteration to gameplay to address it. Simultaneous turns doesn't mean it will be any faster, it may actually make things worse as you'd just extend the time between your opponents moves. After playing quite a few team games in my time, one of the main causes of delay is coordination between team mates. Since your proposal would encourage players to mix their units, that would require even greater coordination time. The current system compartmentalize decision-making, pushing individuals to organize some moves independently.

From my experience I don't see an overwhelming demand to speed wesnoth up. Its actually considered a sign of bad taste if you keep pushing people to speed up the game. Moreover there is already a simple fix for this issue: the timer.

gabba wrote: As far as confusion goes... it's hard to tell which effect this additional option would have, but I find there are already many "alien" gametypes people have created through WML, such as the Risk game, RPG dungeon crawling, and so on, where the usual rules are bent. Personally I find this variety very interesting (even though I wouldn't want those mods to drown out the more classic Wesnoth gameplay), and I'd like to encourage more experimentation.

You're right most of those gametypes were considered different at the time they were created but they utilized pre-existing opportunities within the gameplay. The only one that may have possibly contravened core principles is village building scenarios, but in retrospect that had little to do with game mechanics. What you're suggesting would alter some of the core principles of the gameplay design; thats very different. It would actually negatively affect some of those variations (like Dungeon crawling). Having this option might add a new dimension to the gameplay, but it will also create greater confusion. You couldn't use this feature with some maps, and it forces people to learn a different approach to playing with an ally.