I am working on a design for a game that is kind of an adventure/rpg game, and I wanted to add multiplayer support. The problem is, that the players do not have to be together at all points in the game, and they don''t even have to be on the same team. This makes things such as rest and travelling on boats hard(Anything that involves a certain amount of time). Since, if one player needs his characters to rest for the night, but the other player is still out adventuring, he''s not going to stop what he''s doing so the rest can be sped up. Or, if one player needs to take a boat to another island, unless both players are together, the trip time cannot be skipped, since it would be like the other player is losing time. And, I can''t allow any player to lose time since some of the missions are heavily reliant on how much time is available to complete them. Any suggestions on what I can do about this?

Make the ships REAL big, but not too big, and have it where they can talk to people on the boat. Also, have new people get on the boat and old people get off on every trip!

COOLNESS!

Good idea.

How about resting times, anyone?

If this game only has a few people, why are you anticipating having the players be seperated by that much. How many people can play the game? Is it linear? Can the people only play the game if everybody in their party is connected?

If the selling point of the game is the gameplay of an adventure/rpg game but played out in multiplayer form; concentrate on design that makes the multiplayer fun. Ignore all features in a single player game of your genre that detracts from the multiplayer interaction.

Also don''t force long periods of non-interaction to make it more realistic. Fun is more important than any other part of the game. If you make me press a button and stare at the screen to rest up, I won''t enjoy your game.

My mentor has always told me KISS (Keep it simple stupid) when my games are more difficult and complex then they need to be. My last game was a lot of fun simply because I stuck to that philosophy. The game didn''t have many rules to it, but was very rich strategy and teamplay wise. You may want to consider an alternative to "resting" that would make the game more enjoyable, and has the same desired effect on gameplay that you are desiring.

- Kevin "BaShildy" King
Game Programmer: DigiPen
www.mpogd.com

I wrote about this in my Master''s thesis. Check out the discussion here:

http://www.rolemaker.dk/documents/Requirements/03_Time/05_PacingOfTimeDuringSleep.htm