Multiplayer

[asaph]

Hello,

I know Cap2 had this option, but I think maybe it's time CapLab starts planning in this direction? I think it can be rather splendid to play this game multiplayer and compete with strangers.

[baz]

Hi Asaph,

I'm currently chatting with David about new game ideas and having multi player, and was wondering if you had any thoughts as to how Caplab or a future Caplab game could use the Multi player.
My experiences with multi player games online hasn't been brilliant. Either someone gets the hump and ends there game, or you could have a disconnection and sometimes the game is played at the hours your not available.
I'm purposing for example that the CPU takes charge of your company whilst your not online to allow the game to continue, rather than having an online game and an offline game, if that makes sense.
In Civ 3 when you ended the game, your Civ lost despite been the most powerful.
I do have Cap 2, but I never played it as multi player, How did that work? I know that Harvard Used cap 2 and set a 4 hour rule and it was played on a local network, for there study.
How would Caplab work with multi play, if I played you, How does the game end. A Football game is 90 mins and so can be broken easily down to 5 mins or 90 mins, but Caplab is different and doesn't have a time limit, and gets more interesting the further into the game you go. How can we have a multiplayer that allows you to invest your time without it been an issue, where others now don't play or refuse to play.
I found that on the PS3, If I was leading, others just turned off there game, and other times you would get a disconnection or lag, that massively effected the game you were playing, leading to you crashing your car or allowing an easy goal for example. Other multi player games i've played had no save option, so your game ended when you went offline. I'm not aware of a multiplayer system currently that would work without the scenarios mentioned.
In my proposal, your companies would keep trading as they were, when you were online, allowing me to play the game whilst your offline. The current issue I have, is that what if your company is failing, you could get back to the game to find that your company went bankrupt. It could work opposite as well but would you find it as interesting if you went back online to find that you made billions and could buy anything. There are other area's which are problematic as well, IE your online for 4 hours, as was I, But then I played for another 10 hours and dominated all of the industries that you were trying to get into. So it's still WIP at the moment, as i'm thinking that a multi play and single play could be the same game, or a new game would just be a multi play allowing you just to play and other players pop in and out as they choose, and still would work as a single play if you had no internet for example. It also can't be based on, he who spends most time online will win, basically turning a caplab muti play into game of stamina and fatigue and who manages those the best, will win.
I thought I would put some things out there and I encourage anyone and everyone to make there point, anything that helps create a multi play system that works is valid.

[choum]

Hello,

mmm i think an always-on online model is not good for capitalism. Just an classic online game or even LAN multiplayer is very good. Maybe look at Europa universalis 4 multiplayer engine, it works fine for us
Of course out of synch should be address: if a player lost connection, stop the game and autosave on server host. Keep game frozen/wainting for some minutes to allow player to reconnect. Allow player to make a save to be able to restart the game there is it need to be postpone to anoter day would be good too.

My best regards

[jacobops]

In my opinion, one of the weakness of capitalism Lab is the multiplayer option. I will be so happy to play on lan mode (which hamachi allows it to be full online) rather than the current "multiplayer" option which only allows competing without being in the same scenario.

Doing a multiplayer option similar to the one of CAPITALISM II, but a bit more stable is more than enough rather than increasing the design of the mansions or the buildings.

The best thing about gaming is sharing and competing.

I think that the initial idea of Capitalism Lab did not require an Online mod, as, as the name says, it was intended to be an experimental mode of capitalism II where new mods and characteristics could be added. Currently, Capitalism Lab has way surpassed the original aim and can be considered as Capitalism III with stable mods that have completely changed the interface.

For this reason, I beg and pray for a Multiplayer Lan possibility where I can share compete with this amazing community.

[choum]

Would it be an idea to start a kickstarter to fund this multiplayer engine?
Yes local LAN is more than enough, a cap2 engine refresh can be a good start

[jacobops]

Not sure who is the responsible guy but i am more than willing to donate

[choum]

a small up for a big topic

[dmsenar]

Hi Asaph,

I'm currently chatting with David about new game ideas and having multi player, and was wondering if you had any thoughts as to how Caplab or a future Caplab game could use the Multi player.
My experiences with multi player games online hasn't been brilliant. Either someone gets the hump and ends there game, or you could have a disconnection and sometimes the game is played at the hours your not available.
I'm purposing for example that the CPU takes charge of your company whilst your not online to allow the game to continue, rather than having an online game and an offline game, if that makes sense.
In Civ 3 when you ended the game, your Civ lost despite been the most powerful.
I do have Cap 2, but I never played it as multi player, How did that work? I know that Harvard Used cap 2 and set a 4 hour rule and it was played on a local network, for there study.
How would Caplab work with multi play, if I played you, How does the game end. A Football game is 90 mins and so can be broken easily down to 5 mins or 90 mins, but Caplab is different and doesn't have a time limit, and gets more interesting the further into the game you go. How can we have a multiplayer that allows you to invest your time without it been an issue, where others now don't play or refuse to play.
I found that on the PS3, If I was leading, others just turned off there game, and other times you would get a disconnection or lag, that massively effected the game you were playing, leading to you crashing your car or allowing an easy goal for example. Other multi player games i've played had no save option, so your game ended when you went offline. I'm not aware of a multiplayer system currently that would work without the scenarios mentioned.
In my proposal, your companies would keep trading as they were, when you were online, allowing me to play the game whilst your offline. The current issue I have, is that what if your company is failing, you could get back to the game to find that your company went bankrupt. It could work opposite as well but would you find it as interesting if you went back online to find that you made billions and could buy anything. There are other area's which are problematic as well, IE your online for 4 hours, as was I, But then I played for another 10 hours and dominated all of the industries that you were trying to get into. So it's still WIP at the moment, as i'm thinking that a multi play and single play could be the same game, or a new game would just be a multi play allowing you just to play and other players pop in and out as they choose, and still would work as a single play if you had no internet for example. It also can't be based on, he who spends most time online will win, basically turning a caplab muti play into game of stamina and fatigue and who manages those the best, will win.
I thought I would put some things out there and I encourage anyone and everyone to make there point, anything that helps create a multi play system that works is valid.

how about setting different options on how the game can be played multiplayer online?
-> we can have an option where the game will run at a constant pace for a period of time. the player with highest score at end of the defined period wins the game. (e.g. games will be played for 4 hours straight at game speed #2)
-> we can also have an option where the game will run only at a certain period of the day and be continued the next day and will go on until the specified date ended. This way, players won't be exhausted and have time to review the game before starting again the next day. (e.g. games can be played for 30 mins while at pause then 3 hours straight at constant game speed, then halt all activity once the period ends, resume the next day)

I definitely enjoyed playing the game in single-player challenging the advanced AIs hard-core, but having this multiplayer feature would make the game even better since there will be other ways how you can challenge yourself aside from playing against AIs.

[mdemircan2]

Hi Asaph,

I'm currently chatting with David about new game ideas and having multi player, and was wondering if you had any thoughts as to how Caplab or a future Caplab game could use the Multi player.
My experiences with multi player games online hasn't been brilliant. Either someone gets the hump and ends there game, or you could have a disconnection and sometimes the game is played at the hours your not available.
I'm purposing for example that the CPU takes charge of your company whilst your not online to allow the game to continue, rather than having an online game and an offline game, if that makes sense.
In Civ 3 when you ended the game, your Civ lost despite been the most powerful.
I do have Cap 2, but I never played it as multi player, How did that work? I know that Harvard Used cap 2 and set a 4 hour rule and it was played on a local network, for there study.
How would Caplab work with multi play, if I played you, How does the game end. A Football game is 90 mins and so can be broken easily down to 5 mins or 90 mins, but Caplab is different and doesn't have a time limit, and gets more interesting the further into the game you go. How can we have a multiplayer that allows you to invest your time without it been an issue, where others now don't play or refuse to play.
I found that on the PS3, If I was leading, others just turned off there game, and other times you would get a disconnection or lag, that massively effected the game you were playing, leading to you crashing your car or allowing an easy goal for example. Other multi player games i've played had no save option, so your game ended when you went offline. I'm not aware of a multiplayer system currently that would work without the scenarios mentioned.
In my proposal, your companies would keep trading as they were, when you were online, allowing me to play the game whilst your offline. The current issue I have, is that what if your company is failing, you could get back to the game to find that your company went bankrupt. It could work opposite as well but would you find it as interesting if you went back online to find that you made billions and could buy anything. There are other area's which are problematic as well, IE your online for 4 hours, as was I, But then I played for another 10 hours and dominated all of the industries that you were trying to get into. So it's still WIP at the moment, as i'm thinking that a multi play and single play could be the same game, or a new game would just be a multi play allowing you just to play and other players pop in and out as they choose, and still would work as a single play if you had no internet for example. It also can't be based on, he who spends most time online will win, basically turning a caplab muti play into game of stamina and fatigue and who manages those the best, will win.
I thought I would put some things out there and I encourage anyone and everyone to make there point, anything that helps create a multi play system that works is valid.

how about setting different options on how the game can be played multiplayer online?
-> we can have an option where the game will run at a constant pace for a period of time. the player with highest score at end of the defined period wins the game. (e.g. games will be played for 4 hours straight at game speed #2)
-> we can also have an option where the game will run only at a certain period of the day and be continued the next day and will go on until the specified date ended. This way, players won't be exhausted and have time to review the game before starting again the next day. (e.g. games can be played for 30 mins while at pause then 3 hours straight at constant game speed, then halt all activity once the period ends, resume the next day)

I definitely enjoyed playing the game in single-player challenging the advanced AIs hard-core, but having this multiplayer feature would make the game even better since there will be other ways how you can challenge yourself aside from playing against AIs.

The subject is a difficult one.
but we have to keep thinking...

[choum]

for me running the game when my friends are here is good enough like Europa universalis 4, mad game tycoon 2, stellaris, capitalism2, etc.
A good synchro and/or the option to reconnect a game (autopauze when a player lost conenction to avoid IA doing stupid things). Allow host to savegame if we lost a player to allow everybody to continue without loss of the last hours of gameplay (stellaris do it fine where mad game tycoon 2 can't).

4 or 8 player should be good enough, it's hard to find more motivated players on same timeslots. (if you can allow more it's good too of course)
Allow mods in multiplayers would be great.
To make it easy server/host is the only one that setup the party and then synch with opther players, this same machine can do all the computations during time. It would be great to have a very slow timespeed to avoid players to request to pause the game all the time.

There are already a lot of features ingame that can be used with AI or players, even if an option that allow to sell to only one or 2 players and not everybody would be great. Give supply priority to good partners, allow to pay more to get supply priority (ex : i buy flour a 115% of your price but i want to have top priority of delivery). we can discuss lot of ideas but first step is to get an engine that allow to play same game with players and AIs