Yahtzee released a useful game design article

[Sindwiller]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... ultiplayer

He pretty much clarifies why multiplayer isn't exactly the most important part of gaming and why targeting a MP player base is senseless.

[ghoulsblade]

oh noes, the death of nexuiz and all those cool strategy games ?

[Skorpio]

I think that article is bullshit. It sounds like a rant of a bitter noob who can't compete with other players online and therefore insults all of them and their games. There are a lot of aspects that make multiplayer games so popular: competition, socialization, teamplay and of course exploration. The exploration part loses importance after a while, unless there's steadily new content introduced. And there's a reason why people play these games again and again: because it's fun to play with other persons and because every game is different. There's a lot of freedom in these games and always new situations can occur. And why do humans play basketball, poker or chess over and over again? For me there's no big difference between online and offline games. I often play board games online which are traditionally "multiplayer" games.

To the last part I must say: there are some real assholes out there, but they are definitely a minority. The majority of players that I met online were really nice (or at least quiet ). It also depends on how you behave. If you swear and insult other people, don't be surprised that they insult you too. The author actually behaves himself like such an asshole when he says all people (multiplayers) are fuckwads.

[Sindwiller]

oh noes, the death of nexuiz and all those cool strategy games ?

Well, it might explain to some extent why those communities don't grow a lot

Imho, it might just be the time for FOSS games to refocus and deliver some Singleplayer awesomness

[Julius]

I couldn't disagree more, but I get where he is coming from.

Maybe I am not that much of a gamer at all any more... but for me single player games are just like movies and books; I try to find the time to enjoy the spectacular ones (that means the one great out of a thousand!) but I completely pass on the rest.
This is due to a lack of time, but also to a personal sense that ultimately it is a waste of time.

So this is where multi-player games come in... sometimes you just want to "waste" some time (lets say an hour or so), and getting into a single-player game for such a short time just isn't very enjoyable. Hence I stick to online mayhem

The only other time I play are those rare occasions where I meet with friend for a LAN, and that of course also means multi-player games... but often only the old tried and true classics.

[ghoulsblade]

Dunno, i think the only foss game i could get friends to really play is teewars on lan, which is fun =)
And i do play nexuiz every now and then a bit *g*

[Sindwiller]

PARPG aims on being a story-driven singleplayer game for example.

I just think that decent SP games might spawn bigger communities. And there is a lack of FOSS SP game in general.

[Skorpio]

oh noes, the death of nexuiz and all those cool strategy games ?

Well, it might explain to some extent why those communities don't grow a lot

I think the problem is that most consumers tend to pick up the newest stuff with the best graphics on the market rather than FOSS games. They want to use their high end machines to full capacity. People have too much money.

Imho, it might just be the time for FOSS games to refocus and deliver some Singleplayer awesomness

You know we are here because we can do whatever we want. We are free, and no one can tell us what we have to do or what games we should like. If you want singleplayer fine, if you want multiplayer fine. IMHO every genre or play style is of the same value, it just depends on the preferences of the player/developer.

I think we need something like a manifesto of games: "All games are equal. All games have the same rights and duties. Games have the right to contain firearms. ..."

[charlie]

I just think that decent SP games might spawn bigger communities. And there is a lack of FOSS SP game in general.

QfT

[Arthur]

Nah, that's not true! I've seen lots of single player Tetris and board games on The Linux Game Tome....

[Skorpio]

You're right Arthur. There are actually so many singleplayer games out there (free and commercial) that hardly anyone has time to play them all. I recently received Bioshock and haven't touched it yet, and there are several other games on my list that need to get played.

[Sindwiller]

Meh; I wasn't thinking of arcade games, nor incomplete stuff. I mean proper story-driven games, which are a are a PITA to actually develop and a rarity as well.

I know you're joking...

[m64]

Yahtzee might be right in one thing. For all I know great majority of people do not engage in multiplayer, at least in competetive one. I have seen some internal EA statistics that showed that only 4% of all players of Gears of War have engaged in competetive multiplayer. The rest either did not try it at all, or tried and quickly gave up. It is worth noting though that numbers for non-competetive multiplayer, like various forms of co-op and horde modes, are higher (I don't know a precise number).

Btw. is there any FOSS game with co-op mode?

[Sindwiller]

Btw. is there any FOSS game with co-op mode?

Nope. Not that I know of. At least not on a more complex level than a hotseat arcade game

Yahtzee might be right in one thing. For all I know great majority of people do not engage in multiplayer, at least in competetive one. I have seen some internal EA statistics that showed that only 4% of all players of Gears of War have engaged in competetive multiplayer. The rest either did not try it at all, or tried and quickly gave up. It is worth noting though that numbers for non-competetive multiplayer, like various forms of co-op and horde modes, are higher (I don't know a precise number).

As usual, I can confirm that, albeit without statistics. Sven Co-Op, a Half-Life Co-Op mod in which you can play SP style HL maps with friends, had a HUUUUGE community back then. There are 2-3 projects in the HL2 community to revive that but most of them failed at the Source engine's netcode. Other than that, there used to be a bunch of Quake Co-op mods. Left 4 Dead is, to some extent, a Co-op game, too.

[beltsonata]

It seems to me that if there truly is a lack of awesome single-player OS games, perhaps some of us should club together and create tools to help people build them. One of the best things about OSS in general is the sharing of little command-line (and graphical) tools that speed up dev time. It would be nice if there were some tools that could help this (and I know there are plenty of OS dev tools, but I mean purely game-focused and VERY easy to use...) Such tools may encourage people to join in all sorts of OSS projects, especially if people can use those programs for a variety of projects...

[now we just need to work out what those tools might be.... ]

[ghoulsblade]

making games > making tools to make games
There are too many frameworks and engines and too few good games.
I think the really useful tools are created and generalized during making games rather than for their own sake.

[qubodup]

There are too many frameworks and engines and too few good games.
I think the really useful tools are created and generalized during making games rather than for their own sake.

Oh yes, no more engines please. ^^
Grumbel compiled a list of tasks for game content tools, which might be a start. One thing that immediately comes to my mind which usually cause trouble and could thus use code-care is 3d format exporter and converter applications/plug-ins.

[beltsonata]

making games > making tools to make games
There are too many frameworks and engines and too few good games.
I think the really useful tools are created and generalized during making games rather than for their own sake.

You may well be right there. In which case, perhaps some guidelines/suggestions could be drawn up to help guide game devs who are creating tools in order to help make them as generic and versatile as possible...? Maybe this is too vague; I'm not entirely sure as to exactly how this could be achieved (and I'm grossly inexperienced xD).

edit: following on from the above post, perhaps a list of 'most wanted' generic game-dev tools could be drawn up, if it hasn't already been done? Then a bored coder could perhaps implement one on a rainy afternoon...

[Skorpio]

BTW are there engines that allow even non-programmers to make games? I mean something similar to the VASSAL Engine for board games. There are hundreds of VASSAL modules available and many of them were created by people without any programming skills. Even I created two modules and I know hardly anything about programming.

[Julius]

BTW are there engines that allow even non-programmers to make games? I mean something similar to the VASSAL Engine for board games. There are hundreds of VASSAL modules available and many of them were created by people without any programming skills. Even I created two modules and I know hardly anything about programming.

Try the Blender Game Engine.

[qubodup]

BTW are there engines that allow even non-programmers to make games?

There is one no-programming RPG-maker in the works: EasyRPG. It is far from working I believe.
There are more open source RPG-makers in the works (I have seen many on http://sf.net) but they are Win32-only, so I ignored them.

PS: one DirectX-dependant game-maker: http://www.scirra.com/construct/

[Sindwiller]

BTW are there engines that allow even non-programmers to make games? I mean something similar to the VASSAL Engine for board games. There are hundreds of VASSAL modules available and many of them were created by people without any programming skills. Even I created two modules and I know hardly anything about programming.

Board games are a very specific kind of game. They have a ruleset and a board that need to be defined, which makes it very easy for people without programming knowledge to edit those - if the app is doing it right, that is. Once you go in a more general direction, past the limitations of board games for example, or of simple 2D RPGs, you will demand more from the user, since it's not just "click and edit a few values here and there".

[Skorpio]

I was actually thinking about pen & paper RPGs like Shadowrun or Dark Eye, with 3d or isometric graphics and turn based or realtime combat. Those games usually have very detailed rulesets. I guess, if the people had the possibility to easily create games and adventures, there would be lots of fan made adventures available very soon.

[Sindwiller]

I was actually thinking about pen & paper RPGs like Shadowrun or Dark Eye, with 3d or isometric graphics and turn based or realtime combat. Those games usually have very detailed rulesets. I guess, if the people had the possibility to easily create games and adventures, there would be lots of fan made adventures available very soon.

3D graphics require a lot more specific knowledge than 2D would do, anyway.

But as you can see, the task becomes more and more complex and demanding as you go in a more general direction.

[ghoulsblade]

for 3d iso : closed source, but neverwinter-nights might be interesting from mapediting concept, there's also a bunch of mods and custom maps for it afaik.