I have to say I''m defantly not a major game designer, but I really don''t see why it''d be that hard. Games that go to a cut scene.. well heck who cares if there is more than one. MOH Rising Sun was great.. a little easy but great.. but it ends at a certain point earlier than the single player. HL2 is all in game scenes, I don''t see the problem there.. Split the screen like they will for the xbox multi player modes and let them play it out. The story line and the details don''t have to be exact.. its just a fun mode to play in. And it won''t be used all the time.. To say that another mod designer will make co-op play to me sounds like a cheap crappy way out. Valve could make it an awsome mode with little extras. Now I''m not bitching about the game being delayed (and don''t start discussing that please) but even without the delay it seems that they''d have enough time and resources to add a comprehensive co-op mode to the game. And no matter what happened or whatever, they''ve got time now.. I think I''d be trying to spice it up, write the fixes, and create better game play with this time (reglardless if it is done or not (for all those people that this it wasn''t)) But in reality I think that more games, even games like Hitman 2, etc...

Also gost recon was really cool watching people communicate to achieve a task.. I mean if thats not real then hell what is? Even though you do communicate when you co-op with someone right next to you.

It just seems like a really cool ''feature'' to add on to a game.. even if it isn''t the 100% perfect, or if it doens''t let u completely beat the game....

Heck, HL2 could add the feature adn design one map for it. In a matter of days there''d be more for co-op mode.. thats just as cheap and cuts down half the time if they wanted to go in a different direction...

anyway it was just one of my design issues.. I''m enjoying hearing peoples thoughts and hopefully this will continue to be about the co-op modes and not about other issues.

Thanks,
David

Co-Op isn''t included into game design as a whole that much. Your right, however, in many cases there are good reasons. Such as being on a computer.

Half-Life 2 is already delayed, thanks to the theft of the source code. Being on a PC, you can''t just plug in another controller, and hope for split-screen. Especially for hardcore Keyboard/Mouse Devouts. That means network Co-Op. I don''t know if any of you have actually thought about network Co-op, but it''s hard. It requires sync with randomizers, and tons of other little choices that usually an indiviual computer makes. Trying to sync these, while still running a normal game, is hard and resource tasking. Not just on the computer, but to develop also.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Best co-op game ever is NES''s Chip n'' Dale.

Wow! I loved that game!!!! I second this opinion ... it rocked

Joel Martinez
http://www.codecube.net/

Games that avoid coop generally don''t avoid it for coop reason; they avoid it for technical reasons.

For instance, trigger based puzzles that work for a single player may be impossible (or trivial) with more.

Many events in games destroy the players ability to backtrack (blowing up bridges and such). If a player is on the wrong side, there may be no way to get back together.

In game scripted events generally require that the player be in a general location; best case, other players will miss them. Worst case, other players being in unexpected locations will cause them to blow up completely.

If a game isn''t designed for coop play from the beginning, adding it in later can be extremely difficult. It also tends to restrict the core single player experience for level design.

Unfortunately, there isn''t a huge market for coop at this point, so justifying the cost in time/etc can be difficult.

Ooooooh one-way-to-solve-trigger-puzzles and cutscene problems? If co-op play means none of those, I will be so disapointed. If those are the best aspect of a game and its gameplay, its a sorry game that isn''t worth playing in SINGLE player (unless the player really likes the cutscenes or the trigger-puzzles). Not to mention that trigger tiles triggering events like monster spawns and cut scenes etc., are a really cheap trick of lazy level/game designers.

It doesn''t matter, the public will release Co-op mods just like what they did with the original half-life. The only problem was that you saw why they didn''t build it directly into the game itself to begin with. There were too many bugs when playing the original levels.. players spawning outside the monorail, xen levels had players purposely falling off causing the server to reset the map.. over, and over.

Now that I think of it, every game I know of had co-op mods for players to play the original game.

quote:
because I could care less

Read that again. It doesn''t mean what you think it means.

You probably mean you could NOT care less, or, in short, "couldn''t care less".

You know, the funny thing about cooperative play is that I noticed that not a single journalist would ever admit in a review to enjoying it or considering it worthwhile, but not a single person I knew would say that deathmatch (or equivalent) was more fun than cooperative. It was as if there was some sort of public stigma attached to it, like "enjoying co-op makes you Weak!" or something. There''s something about shared adversity that brings people together.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL Docs | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost
Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff | Tiny XML | STLPort]

quote: Original post by HemoGloben
That means network Co-Op. I don''t know if any of you have actually thought about network Co-op, but it''s hard. It requires sync with randomizers, and tons of other little choices that usually an indiviual computer makes. Trying to sync these, while still running a normal game, is hard and resource tasking. Not just on the computer, but to develop also.

That''s why a server-client architecture is so nice.

On the topic of ccop and hl2; I wouldn''t be altogether surprised if valve included ccop and then just chooses to not support it, just because they know people want coop but they don''t want to support all the bugs and inconviniences connected with coop.

...and wasn''t it possible to get the original hl to play coop with some trixes due to the server-client nature of the game? I believe you should start a multiplayer map and enable monsters or something like that.

-Luctus
Statisticly seen, most things happens to other people.
[Mail]

Puzzle games, I think it makes sense... problems with a bridge blowing up I see can be a problem but why not just make it so the player blows up the bridge? MOH rising sun did that. I think a lot of those problems can be easily solved.. when one player goes to far snap him back near the other play (Again MOH Rising sun) did a great job of this. Puzzles and stuff like that.. thats harder I understand.. Now Half-Life. Think about team based play in multiplayer. Its already implemented in HL. More towards Deathmatch. Also most people just screwing with mods create effective team based play. So what is the problem with creating a co-op mode at that level? Cut secenes, when one triggers it, the cut scene happens, in game cutscenes, if one player misses it its his problem, and can watch the other screen or the entire screen could fill with the player who caused that screen.

Now with the mods, that doens''t prove that anything didn''t work. Falling off the screen is just bad desin on their part. Amateur modders will make mistakes like that. But if they would have just created a new entity for the other players to spawn at (many in fact) and written the code correctly crap that that shouldn''t happen.

I think there is a huge market in for co-op, but no one realizes it. I know so many people that would love to play a game with friends. And I think it''d help prolong the life of a game. I am talking about console development or network based co-op only. Your defantly right about the PC problems.

Also I think this is a mode that should be added into the design phase from the beguinning.. Just doesn''t make sense to me.