The Shining Source

Shining game ideas: multiplayer

Anyone have any thoughts on the following?
Shining battle in style.

2 player internet game, you each get a team of 5 (randomly picked from say 30 chars) and you play maps vs monsters together.  Each map gets progressively harder, and sometimes you start on opposite sides with monsters in middle, etc.  
You can't replay maps to level up so you need to work together with your teammate to make sure you have a good spread of leveled up characters and items that are dropped, shared in order to win.
(this could be done with 4 players, 3 characters each even, and you could choose your chars yourself.. maybe that's another option)

2 player internet game, you each get a team of 10 characters, with standard stats but slightly variable, like an extra 20 ability points to spread amongst your 10 characters who have an average of "10" str and 6 defense and 25 hp.. .. different maps giving different spawns and maybe different characters.

other variables of these two.

Oh well, nevermind.

I just thought that shining battles would be a real cool experience to share online with/against another player.
I used to play the original series pretty much with my brother, because we'd both be crowding the controls, and though we had our own savegames, whoever was currently in the lead got constant hassling/advice from the other, and I always thought multiplayer co-op could be a great thing.

Shining Online will have some very similar multiplayer options, because a co-operative mode would be an excellent idea. 4-player battles would be good, if you had a smaller Force each.

Some form of challenge mode which required you to clear each stage to progress would be good as well, as would simultaneous battles a la SFIII, where one battle could influence the other.

There are lots of good ideas, of which these are just a few. SF is perfectly suited to online gameplay - it's just a matter of getting there

Probibly noone had replied because the developers are all working on the basic mechanics. Plus, I doubt that many people know how to use Microsquid's COM system.

Yes. Hilarious.

Would mouse control be acceptable for such a game? It's something that's bugged me about writing an online strategy. I prefer mouse control, but it loses the shining feel, plus towns are a bit weird when you point & click on destinations.

I really, REALLY want to knock together an online demo though. I think it'd be cool.

Perhaps a one week challenge would be cool. 40 hours to write a Shining Style online battle engine. I'd be up for that in a few weeks. Anyone else? ;P

either way it has to be turn based and with arrow controls, no more than 2 chars for a 3-4 playr game and no more than 3 in vs mode.

sorta like WCIII turnbased

I think mouse clicking is an option if you keep it grid based but you'd have to code the AI for that too.. the pointer would be a different square "shadow" of some kind.

Hmm, I could always put an option for mouse or keyboard control.

One idea we had for SO was quest mode. Take 4 - 8 people, each with one character (possibly two) through a small dungeon, defeating enemies and getting unique items.

I'm going away today (again), but when I get back I'd certainly be interested in doing a challenge - either competetive or working together.

Any takers?

I guess i'm up for the challenge since i'm already working on it anyway.
I have the multiplayer infrastructure ready which allows users to chat and take turns at scrolling the map. I kind of stopped working on it because i was momentarily obsessed with the P versus NP problem, but i'm not so much now.
I'm taking the CSE Design Project Lab in september, and one of the options is to make a multiplayer game. But i'm thinking about doing a Texas Hold'em Poker game since it's alot easier and less graphic intensive.

Were I not disappearing from the land of t'Internet in September, I'd offer to test that for you, Job - I love Texas Hold 'em. Oh well.

When Ty gets back we should set up the rules for this competition and maybe some kind of prize... just ideas.

ive always thought it would be neat to have some kind of combo attack system..where if a character who hadnt used his/her turn yet happened to be standing next to an enemy that was being attacked by another character you would get an option to join in or not. The plus being extra damage or something of that nature, the downside being using up that characters turn without moving.

That's a good idea Sean, the mechanics of turn-abuse advantage would surely work out over the space of an entire battle and would give greater strategy for human players.

I think greater item variety could provide a whole lot more depth to a game like this.

Actually having 50 characters built and 3 chosen for you and three other players randomly(or have a mode where you can choose yourself too) could really create a game that is re-playable.
Even if there were only 10 battles in a game due to learning new characters and how to best use them, and how to work with your teammates it would give it something new to discover.

Even human vs human - to create one map, and you could either have schoolyard pickem or random choice and play the game again and again and again, like chess(but shf battle mode), no towns, items etc to be made.  (I feel this one could be even "easy" to make due to no AI, if you could just get the information transfer between the two players to work)

Your idea sounds a lot like my platooning idea, but the people aren't together.
:-P

Well let's do it!

I'm keen for anything where I can work on character balancing and strategy structure with multiple players.

someone use me to help do that part, please ... devlyn is tied up and can't do any cloudslayer at the moment.

I guess I could slowly learn the networking basics myself, but surely some of you have crossed that bridge already?

Imagine the sort of fanbase just TESTING a game like that would gather.

I think collaborating on this project is probably the best idea, but it should really wait for a week, because I know for a fact Ty is very interested and will want to dedicate his time to it. Hopefully the enthusiasm will still be running high by next Wednesday - we can sort out all kinds of things in the meantime