Hey everyone, I got some questions about what the best way to handle networking for a dota style game. I read the canonical paper about doing networking for an rts: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3094/1500_archers_on_a_288_network_.php - the question is, does this networking model still apply to modern rts styles where twitch/micro challenges are a big thing.

I am thinking specifically about the denial mechanic in dota 2 and wondering how it would be pulled off if all the commands are queued up and executed at least 200 ms later. Are all of the windup animations to cover this control lag in the game (this is my suspicion)? or do the hero actions run on a faster channel and are resolved in some other way?

I am curious, because I am thinking of doing a moba thing for the 7drts that is coming up soon.

thanks everyone!

urrgh, ui hell, tell me about it. My least favorite thing to do, I always just end up adding new features to the main game instead. That screen looks nice from a functional perspective tho, so you are probably on the right track!

hey, yeah it does! It is a bit cramped to hang out on a keyboard with two players, but doable. I haven't done a build in a while of the pc version, so it is a bit rugged right now in terms of lots of testing levels and greyboxes and unfinished crap all over the place. Will post here when I am ready for testers on that one again, and will pm you too.

[update 23]

update 23

- added a bunch of new funny crates
- invincibility
- no weapons (until you get another crate)
- invisiblitiy
- crate party (30 weapon crates spawn)
- fire works (constantly dropping dynamite)
- bomb box (12 bombs insta spawn)
- added icons on the existing crates to show the weapon inside of them
- redid the game over screen for tv and greater than 2 players
- added analytics so I can get weapon kill/death heatmaps

[update 22]

update 22
well, I guess I am continuing to work on this.

today was tweaking the pc version, trying to get something ready in time for the fantastic arcade deadline.

- new hud
- weapon crate drops (the weapon pickup method for tablets doesn't work well on pc)

most of today was tweaking the android version into shape, and sending to samsung.

[update 21]

update 21

Sent the final build to apple. Those that know, know I did about a million tiny fixes today, but here are the ones that I actually remembered to write down.
x add a new pre play config screen that you can set the game type, turn on replay recording, etc
x add replay on / off to the pre play screen
x add "watch replay" to the victory screen
x add a back button to the preplay screen
x get rid of the relliance on doors to make the game work
x add letterboxing to the main menu
x add a button that gets you to the everyplay ui on the title screen
x text on the tutorials should match the number of diamonds / kills required to win
x chase mode kills not matching kill number
x lighting ragdoll always in same orientation

Also, everyplay is totally awesome, and we have been capturing a bunch of ingame footage. It will make it easy for people to record and comment on their replays, which is totally awesome.

I don't know if I should move this to "finished" now that we have the tablet version out of the way, or if it is something that should wait until the pc version comes out (currently needing new hud / ui / and adding a ton of new levels).

I think this might do really well on kongregate... might be worth throwing up there if you can get the initial download size small enough.

no problem, happy to help out.

with the random placing I am just talking about mines.

this is looking really really nice. I love that unfiltered (point scale) texture look! how are you doing level generation? are they 3d spaces with ladders and lofts and such? I am really interested in that.

re: jumping... I think it is a few issues
- you auto jump without repressing the button. This behavior is unexpected (I don't know other platformers that work this way), and combined with the speed and the next issue is really frustrating
- when you hit the ceiling, you reflect back downwards rather than going to 0 velocity and having gravity accelerate you downwards. I found myself reflecting between floor and ceiling over and over again.
- there is no acceleration / deceleration on the jump, it is full speed both up and down. This makes it really difficult to evaluate when the jump is going to end, it has to be a memory thing, like how long you remember a jump taking, rather than a visual thing. I imagine with a ton of play, I could intuit the timing, but right off the bat, it doesn't seem natural. Also the way that jumps work is with deceleration at the top. I know there are some counter examples (old z80 games maybe?)
- there doesn't seem to be much wiggle room between the top of your jump and the next platform up, so landing on one of them is pretty difficult.
- also, on the subterranean, you can only jump up like two layers, most of the platforms are only accessible by dropping down. This makes the level less of a loop, and more of a one way street. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but having something that seems like I can get there and then making it such that the controls don't allow me to is frustrating.

maybe adding a little hold at the top if you are holding down the jump button would make it feel like you are giving it a little magic levitation spell, and give players more of a feeling of control. To me, the jumping read like little insects bouncing around rather than something with either weight or that needed to expend effort on levitation.

got three player working, there seems to be a bug where it crashes out of player 2 doesn't lock in, but player 3 has locked in on the wizard select screen. Once I got it working, you are right, 3 player is better.

with the traps, it seemed like the biggest way they functioned (or at least when I was dying from them), was due to the fact that my controls were such that I couldn't avoid them. When I was using them, I mostly placed arbitrarily, not on choke points or whatever.

also with the backgrounds, I think it is that the background tiles have the exact same contrast as the foreground layers, so you think you can jump to them as well. Maybe lowering the contrast, or choosing a different set of colors, or even better having a totally distinct tileset for those layers would help.

did some 4 player testing last night, and it went really well, but exposed some issues.
- Tracking what is happening point wise in a 4 player game is really really difficult, especially now that I have cut out the slow mo on kills.
- There are way way way more particle effects on screen so it is harder to track. The bomb trails and pigeon feathers in particular seem problematic. Something to deal with later.
- weapon swapping needs to be a pickup to force movement, and reward movement through the levels
- I was using all the ipad hud stuff, but I think a proper pc hud is going to go a long way towards solving a bunch of the point communication issues
- there can probably be a longer respawn wait when you die, to punish you for dying
- the game can support longer matches... we probably played around 20 matches, each of which lasted between 1-3 minutes. I think a timed deathmatch mode might be nice?

ok, feedback time, from two players. Will hopefully have a third player in this afternoon for a better test

- jumping is way hella too fast. I found myself never ever ever jumping up onto platforms, only falling down. it seemed like jumping was only so that you could jump up and fire onto a wizard on the next ledge. Outside of gameplay considerations, it felt deeply unnatural, like there was no weight to the characters
- couldn't figure out how to use mines, so we didn't use any of them. Should probably have read the help screen
- traps seemed fine, although the vertical lasers felt a bit unfair.
- background / foreground separation was a bit rough, especially on the subterranean level. You just need to darken the background much more, less texture in it.
- the fact that there are so many cosmetic weapon colors means that some wizards weapon use is masked against certain backgrounds. Might be intentional, but feels a bit unfair.
- having only one weapon is not really using the fact that you have wizards here to their maximum potential. You could have so many cool weapons!
- couldn't get back to the main menu, just crashes.
- play towerfall for ideas

I think the biggest thing was the control / movement felt so strange and like a chore to get around the levels that I wouldn't play more just based on that. I would suggest that you just play one player, and set yourself movement goals, then attempt them. Get that movement feeling fun without anything else at all in the way before you do anything else.

[update 20.1]

update 20.1
Decided to stay a bit late at work and jam on the 4 player a bit more
the homing pigeons now go toward who ever is the nearest player
removed some old crufty doors that wern't being used except as a place to store arbitrary data
players 3 and 4 get assigned random weapons (before they were all getting the same weapons as player 2)
hopefully there will be some more people to test with tonight

[update 20]

update 20

put the controller config on the main menu, redid it so that you can config just one input at a time rather than all 5.
the main menu is now adaptive to the screen resolution. Not sure if this is useful in the long run, but it was a quick fix for not having to redo all the layout on 4:3 ratio
did a quick double check to make sure 4 player is working, and it seems to.

hey man! I am totally into testing. I am also down with the local multiplayer aspect, and am kitted up to play it, and have some friends around at the office that are always up for a test.

Re: online vs local. I am just finishing up my local multiplayer game now, and I hear the concerns from people about it. I don't know that I would do another local only multiplayer game, even if it is a single screen thing. That is just because it is hard for people to find friends near them for whatever reason. Or maybe it is all those players that play with friends are more into fifa or whatever. I did some testing along the way with my current game and putting networking in, and it is totally something that would need to be done from the beginning, basically none of the weapons I put in make sense in multi player. Something I might play with later though.

on the other hand, towerfall on ouya might be doing ok? so maybe there is a market for this type of thing.

any who, pm me the thing, and I will give it a shot.

pretty slick! If I had one complaint, it would be that the control surface is too large, but I think that is just a matter of taste, and not that it works poorly in this game. I totally didn't figure out how to shoot until way too late, and I think I wasn't using the keyboard as intended. Will need to revisit and actually read the tutorial before playing.

well, you certainly got the hexagon one more play thing locked down. I think it could benefit from the audio continuing on the game over screen, maybe with a low pass filter in place. Like others say, I have some difficulty tracking when I have cleared a cell, and the distance to the next cell. Also some of the cells seem unwinnable. Also, another thing that hexagon has is premade (interesting) patterns. I am not sure if you are doing this or not, because I have only made it to 18seconds. But there was something nice about having these clearly drawn forms coming towards you.

well done over all though.

very very cool.

I would happily take a more technical tutorial! that is awesome that you wrote up what you have already though, and it works somewhat like I suspected it did! Kinda sorta IK implementation. One question that pops to mind though, if you have a propulsion force that is based on the number of limbs down, but that is unpredictable, are all of the character speeds in the game unpredictable? Or is there some other driving force at a higher level? Also, are these the same systems that drive the player characters in the game?

[update 19]

update 19

got the widescreen levels 1 and 3 working pretty well with 2-3 players
added support for 4 players, but haven't had the chance to test yet
sean is working on graphics for level 1 to replace the whiteboxing
redid the trails to no longer have dots where the player stops moving. I switched to the unity trail renderer for this, but I am not 100% certain that I love it. Better than it was though.
for some reason OUYA inputs started working. Not sure why, but I did overhaul the interface for inputs, so I probably fixed something by mistake.
Tracked down the bug on some android devices not supporting more than 2 touches. turns out it was a system wide gesture setting that was capturing the 3rd touch.