johny's ranting on (coop) gaming

Teamplay features

2008-05-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post is about BOTH cooperative play and team versus team gaming.

This is 2008. I have not posted for a LONG LONG time, but i have good reasons: no major cooperative game has been done since my last post (we're talking FPS here). Prove me wrong in your comments if you will.

How come? Is it really that hard to do? I've posted about different reasons, like this one or that one, on why this may be so, but there has to be a lot more to it than that, 'cause coop games are not here yet.

[There's high hope and great hype in the form of Left4Dead... Please make it a great great game!!! extra special pretty please. It could be the One Game That Brings People to Coop Gaming]

Anyway, i was thinking "This is 2008. Great games came out last year, there's gotta be something good in terms of coop gaming or at least teamplay". I was thinking Call of Duty 4, which included really great action scenes (short, completely scripted, but real intense), and Crysis (though i still have to find a PC that can render it in it's full beauty).

So i went and played CoD4 with some friends. No coop... i knew that. What really surprised me, though, was that there were no teamplay feature except for the vocal chat (press a key and talk, like in a walky-talky). How comes? in 2008? Didn't the creators of CoD4 play BF2? learn anything from it?

I do realize CoD4 is meant for smaller teams: the game supports only 24 players online. But even then: allowing teams at least to split in Red and Blue squads can't be all that hard to achieve? But no, no teamplay tools. It's just plain silly. And really hard for me to understand. And CoD4 is really a polished game: the single player and online game work just fine from version 1.0 (i know, that's the way it's supposed to be, but you know... Games' quality assurance "vary" a lot).

In my next post, allow me to recap what made BF2 a potentially great game for teamplay, and then bear with me while i discuss what else could be there to enhance teamplay.

[If anybody from the BF3 design team is reading this, please consider for a teamplay consultant position! Great rates too!] :D

Stay tuned for more... "soon".

Stop the press: Coop Warfare has come!

2007-01-26T20:45:00.000-08:00

F.E.A.R. an awesome (single player FPS) game released in 2005.
F.E.A.R. Combat: a free online multiplayer game based completely on F.E.A.R., by it's very own authors, except it's free.

Coop Warfare: Then some brilliant guys (mostly germans, i think) come around and create a mod for F.E.A.R. combat and make it a dedicated coop game!

FEAR was (and still is) a beautiful game. The weapons ranged from fun to fantastic. The action was great. The AI pretty darn smart (it used cover very well). When i played it, o remember thinking: "oh, some coop here would just be such fun".

If you like coop gaming, this is a totally free treat that you can enjoy for hours on end!

The links you need:

FEAR Combat: ftp://ftp.sierra.com/pub/sierra/fear/demo/fearcombat_en_107.exe
You can also go for a nice (and Legit) torrent download from the very official torrent:
http://torrents.vugames.com/fearcombat_en_107.exe.torrent

Coop Warfare: http://z4.invisionfree.com/FEAR_COOP/index.php?showforum=39
or directly at:
http://files.filefront.com/Coop_Warfare_05_Setup/;5447950;;/fileinfo.html
http://mods.moddb.com/7149/fear-coop/downloads/
http://ddream.hostingposts.com/modules.php?name\u003dDownloads&d_op\u003dviewdownload&cid\u003d48

http://ddream.hostingposts.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=48

WARNING: I will probably not be updating those links, sorry.

But remember, Google is your friend. All you'll have to search for is:

"FEAR Combat" from the official site to get the latest version available, and
"Coop Warfare" to check out the latest version of the mod.

Now do the right thin' and get playin'!

I’m still playing Joint Operations! (and good coop technology)

2007-01-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

I know, the game is, what? 3 years old now? But it’s still good. Let me tell you why.

Now, i know i dedicated this blog to cooperative gaming, and Deathmatch is the ultimate opposite of cooperative gaming, but slaughtering your friends online can be such fun! And Novalogic, in their last patch finally fixed a stupid bug that allows players to cut open, fill with holes, blow up, and also squash your friends and foes alike (i’m still not sure on whether this was on purpose or not, but i’m going ahead with the dumb mistake theory, and leaving behind the “this is an exclusively team-based game” theory).

Now that I’ve let that go off of my chest, let’s think about two things that make this game still enjoyable (related to online cooperative gaming).

1) This game runs on most PCs now (except for those that are stuck with those bad+evil+crappy+work only Intel GPUs). If you have a newer machine, you can push up the graphics and the game still looks believable.

2) Bandwidth demands are fine for cooperative gaming: few of us are playing, and the game behaves just fine under that small pressure. Anyone can be a server, and anyone can join and play (I haven’t tried 56K modems, and I don’t want to, ok?) Newer games demand more bandwidth. This game works fine as is.

3) Coop maps are widely available. There are more maps out there than I will ever play, and more to come. Thanks to www.dfbarracks.com for their much appreciated efforts to make those available to the rest of us, and great big thanks to the mappers for sharing their creations.

4) Coop gaming remains fun! The objectives are fairly clear (when the mappers know what they’re doing, and those are more common as the game is getting older), blowing stuff up and shooting bad guys remains fun. It’s all good!

Things that have to get better for cooperative gaming:

One thing I’ve really enjoyed in Battlefield 2 was the ease of creating small teams (“squads”), and how the game encouraged and actually gave an edge to teams that would use the capabilities offered to the small teams. It was almost magical to me when I would join an online game and one of those teams, and the team would actually work together! It allowed a true team spirit to arise, and common goals could be clearly specified (by the one guy that had created the squad): go there, destroy something over there,

And a new position came out: The Commander. He can do useful stuff for the small teams, and keep a good strategic eye on the whole map of the game. I thought this really was an outstanding feature… that was undervalued by most.

“Houston, we have a teamplay problem”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: lack of cooperative gaming often comes from the lack of cooperative players. Let me tell you how it goes in Battlefield 2, a game where one big team faces another big team, in order to capture some key locations (and shoot the bad guys). It’s not a cooperative game, since we are fighting other humans (I think, but I can be easily fooled), but it does demand quite some cooperation within each team, and the game has BRILLIANT features to enhance the life of the teams within the team.

A widely descript phenomena happened with Battlefield 2: People would just NOT join the small teams. Everybody (lots of people) wanted to play on their own, even when teamplay was clearly needed to achieve the goals that the game offered (capturing key locations). Some secondary, far away, key locations could indeed be captured alone, but the central key locations, that usually offered the best rewards (superior vehicles, strategic positions and such), were normally impossible to capture when the “lone wolf” wanted to do it on his own. Yet, lone wolves abounded. How is that possible? Why is that possible? Hypothesis abound, and this my list:

“I don’t want no boss to boss me around. I want to be free as a bird.” So, what are you doing here exactly? Don’t you know this is a team based game? (Just as Joint Operations –originally, as I’ve explained- Battlefield 2 does not offer single player, and Deathmatch is not available. So let me rephrase that question: Why don’t you go and play some other game instead of disrupting our beautiful ballet of coordinations? This game will let you create a team, and let you boss around people if you want to, you know, so feel free to create the ultimate team that achieves the über-super missions that you have set for yourself (and your team) if you want to. Just don’t go it alone: it doesn’t make sense. But there comes another question worth asking: do you have what it takes to set mission goals, react to enemy moves and reformulate strategy and tactics according to the flow of battle, and let your team know and react in real time? Can you learn it in time? Can you even keep people around you enough time for it to happen?
“I want to do my own thing, and just that.” Autistic persons do grow into the teens and adulthood, sometimes unnoticed. But games can really help make that disorder come back and shine for all to see, big time: “Common goals? Just because we are two teams in this whole game?” Sad, but far too common. Please go back and play single player, use your bandwidth to download stuff, and stay there!
“I don’t trust teams. Teams are bad for my score.” OK, but, like, hum, team based game has to mean something, right? Plus, if the game has a deathmatch option, just hang in with the guys that are playing that.
“I’m just learning this thing, ok?” The Noob. He doesn’t know the game, doesn’t know the keys, didn’t take time to get comfortable with the objectives. Why did he come? Why didn’t he practice more? Why does he want that helicopter that is way to complex for him to handle, let alone understand how to use it strategically? It’s ok to learn, but the whole point (in this game) of the single player part of the game is to prepare yourself for the ‘online with real people’ experience. It’s different, but not that different, so please practice before coming. Asking questions is ok, trying things at home on your own is ok, and following the lead of the more experienced people is REALLY ok too, you know? Interestingly, America’s Army (the game) solved that issue by demanding that players complete a training sequence BEFORE being able to play online. Some people call it tutorials, some people call it “Read the F*** manual”, I just call it “make sure you know what you’re getting into”. As long as you don’t succeed at the training (offline, on your own) component, you can’t play online. Another way to achieve this could be the “pilot school”: if you want to use a tool, you must have practiced it for X amount of time offline, on your own. This should be especially true with the most powerful/most difficult to handle elements of the game. Too much work? My friends just want to get on with it already? OK, but get ready to answer too many questions to enjoy the game, and too much whining from those that don’t understand why they keep losing. At least when I loose, I know why!

Anyway, Battlefield 2 was a huge leap ahead in terms of actively encouraging teamplay, and I want to thank the creators of those –simple- mechanisms. I really really hope that every game of this type (Armed Assault, Quake Wars, and the rest) from now on will include those mechanisms.

Swat4 expansion The Stetchkov Syndicate

2006-04-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

I've talked a good deal about Swat4. I've named it my best coop of the year 2005 and, by the looks of it, i'm going to have to name it best of 2006 too, unless something really good comes out (hint: Armed Assault).

So i've been playing the TSS expansion, and let me tell you that everything that was right and great about Swat4 is back, only bigger and sweeter. The maps are bigger, the ennemies meaner, the civilians less cooperative.

I don't mena to sound rude or anything, but this time around you can actually hit them civilians' with your "Fist of Righteous Fury". That's right, hitting them to calm them down and get them to cooperate is now an 'option'. Oh! and sometimes the bad guys actually answer to that (things like: "you sister liked it when i did the same thing to her last night")

Back to the coop gaming. There was a hack that allowed to play coop up to ten players in Swat4, and Sierra has now wisely decided to make that official, so 10 players coop is now an option. To go with that you also get bigger maps that will keep you busy and looking in every direction.

So YES, the expansion makes Swat4 even better than before. If you have Swat4, don't wait no more, and if you don't get the gold edition that marges the two together. You will enjoy new weapons, new maps, and generrally speaking a better game.

Now, supposing you get tired of playing cooperatively, and feel some "edge" is needed, try playing the other mods of Swat4, including team versus team (barricaded suspects). Swat 4 was designed for small teams to meet and shoot each other down, and it shows. To have actual fun, DO TRY TO PLAY WITH THE NON-LETHAL WEAPONS for a round or two. Tell me what your best moment was when you tried it. I know you never thought that arresting people could be fun, BUT IT IS. For real.

Rainbow6 Lockdown has some coop, but don't bother

2006-04-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

I mean, i gave it a try, on a 2 players LAN. But Lockdown is just too poor on the AI (artificial Intelligence) side to give you any thrills. Trying the "high" difficulty for the ennemies (giving them more hitpoints) will not help either. I tried.

Rainbow 6 Lockdown does have some positive sides, though.

For starters there's a wide choice on the weapons, which after playing lots of Swat 4 comes as a relief.
Next, you CAN re-spawn while playing coop. Again, after the intense frustration of playing non re-spawnable Swat4, this is a big relief also.

Other than that, it is a really straightforward FPS game that does not really give you lots of challenges. In single player, you just play through the maps until you're done with them.

There's a story... but you don't feel it in-game, you just hear about it during the briefings. So immersion will not happen unless you close your eyes. Luckilly, the ennemies don't shoot too well, so closing your eyes is actually an option.

Not much more to say, the coop works for up to 4 players only. It does work and let you choose the weapons of your choice (and some of your looks) so there's that to hold on to.

Battlefield 2 online petition for coop gaming

2006-02-02T12:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/petition-sign?Coop

This link will actually take you to an online petition to request support for coop gaming in Battlefield 2. I put my name there, just to see what comes out of it.

I've got to say that i do think that it is a waste of time for Battlefield 2 itself: Everything i read about it says that the bots cannot really be programmed in an efficient way. Even the coop mod (now on version 3) for BF2, created by people that got great things achieved on BF1942, are just keeping the bots' paths and making the maps around them. Lame for Dice to release things like that.

However, it might not be too late to demand that Battlefield 3 comes with a good AI (artificial intelligence), and easy programming for map makers and modders. So let's sign this and ket EA and Dice know about our wants and needs, friends!

While i'm at it, check out the maps coming out for SWAT 4. Most come complete with coop version, and the bots are solid and fun to antagonize.

Best coop game for 2005

2006-01-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

And the winner is… SWAT4. It’s amazing and sad altogether: 1 (one) good coop game in all of 2005?? It’s hard to understand, but sadly all too conceivable.

Now, you know I’m talking about First Person Shooters (FPS) on PCs. I don’t own a game console, and I don’t want any, ever. But 1 (one!) single good coop game for 2005?

Seriously, this is disappointing. Especially when you think of a game as delicious as F.E.A.R. FEAR was a really solid FPS. It had awesome action, great AI (artificial intelligence), solid storyline, good graphics, great environments (some people didn’t like the repetitive offices; I’d like to have some CQB with them in one of those). But no coop.

Now, there might be a glimpse of hope in Serious Sam 2, which I yet have to test on coop, so there are still some possibilities out in the open. If it is worth your attention, I’ll let you know.

But even though competitors were not really available, SWAT4 is sweet coop action, it leaves you hanging on the edge of your toes, every nerve focused on staying alive and making the right moves. I do need a patch/cheat to be able to get gamers back in the game after they die though: newbies just don’t enjoy being kicked out after opening their first door too quickly.

Battlefield 2: not good enough for coop

2005-11-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

It just ain't man! Come on! I've tried all the mods i could. The bots are just too stupid, and yet too complex for modders to bother loking at them. Forget about it.

This being said, it's great multiplayer action. Like Joint Operations if you will, but faster and louder. Less tactical, and more action oriented if you will.

SWAT4: the best coop in 2005... so far

2005-09-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

This year has not been -like- really rich in coop gaming. EXCEPT for Swat4. If you want hardcore, dead serious, coop gaming SWAT4 is there for you. The tension Swat4 puits in the players is awesome and the need for closeknit cooperation is a matter of life and death.

The game came with a 5 players limit originally, but people on the net figured out how to go round that and took the limit to 10, which was later acknowledged by the creators and inserted as a feature in a patch.

Unluckilly, even though the original maps were really good (and highly realistic, which i really enjoy) the community was far from the Joint Operations enthusiasm, and the game did not create such a flurry of new maps coming out.

Even then, any person that really wants to try a first class coop game should give SWAT4 a try. But PLEASE, complete the training tutorial before running and gunning. See, an additional twist in this game is that you are actually rewarded for catching the bad guys. And catching is not the same as killing. So you will learn to find and use the alternatives to brute force. A VERY nice change from all the slaughtering of the usual games.

Why is SWAT4 so good: The AI is also very robust. Bad guys run away, hunt you down, feint to drop their weapons... they're BAD, in a very very good way. For this alone, SWAT4 deserves a whole lot of credit. If you've read my blog carefully, you will have seen that SWAT3 is in my all time best of coop gaming hall, and SWAT4 was true to that inheritage.

Enjoy.

Best Coop of 2004

2005-09-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

OK, in case you haven't noticed yet, i play mostly (almost exclusively, because i like them best, not that i am not willing to play other games) First Person Shooters (FPS).

Anyway the best coop action i had in 2004 was Joint Operations (from Novalogic) by far. The game's realism was great and the action was a lot of fun, the learning curve for my newbie friends just right. All in all Joint Operations (and Escalation, its' expansion) was by far and wide the best coop game of 2004.

I storngly recommend it. One of the interesting aspects of Joint Operations was that it allowed big groups to work cooperatively: squads of 20 players were not unheard of, which is unique as far as i know. And Joint Operations delivered a field of action that was big enough for everybody to have something to shoot at. Rare indeed.

Another fantastic feature of Joint Operations was the community: there are litterally TONS of maps out there to play (missions if you prefer) specifically for coop gaming. So many, in fact, that an -almost- addict like me have not the opportunity to play them all!

Just one site to check out if you want maps: www.dfbarracks.com The maps are rated and commented, and the creators are availbable for comments, and even betterments if you ask nicely...

Combined together, these factors made Joint Operations a worthwhile coop gaming year for me. Nope, i'm not exagerating.

The dirty secret of coop: the players

2004-07-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

Today, i need to adress another issue that has been a strong deterrent for the appearance of a strong trend of coop gaming: The gamers.

I don't have enough worldwide experience with gaming to make any final judgement, and i do acknowledge readilly that making strong universal statements is normally pointless and too often misguided, but i'd like to mention that players can have hard times adjusting to the coop dynamics.

I'll be back with more on that.

network? could it be the networks? what about tools?

2004-06-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

OK, this time i might give the publishers a break: The networks are for effective coop not the yet.
I have to agree with that. Living where i live, (in a country far away from any good pings and with lees bandwidth than a shoestring could hold) i have to accept that cooperating in an intensive game is, practically speaking, impossible. At the very least, not fun.

The networks aren't there to support good games that are usually dependant on good networks. Example: living in a Latin American country, except Chile, of course, all you get when you want to join in is LAG. Bad lag. And that's just to get together in the game.

BUT, there is a BUT, programmers can be pretty bad at netcoding: the programming that goes into the game to make it work on the network. Some games would not even run on LANs! Granted this doesn't happen anymore... or are those just memory leaks? (We’ll get on bugs' case at another opportunity). I will not go into detailing who did what wrong in which games, but players have suffered enough from this.

Now, coop requires more than just "being together" on the game field/map: It needs a lot of communication between players: people must give each other orders, make requests, report valuable information, get their action plans together. And this is only getting more and more complex: the virtual battlefields are increasing in sizes and possibilities: in some games (Battlefield 1942) you can have 2, 3, 4 or even more immediate goals to conquer/protect. And in Joint Operations, you can do that with very different vehicles, by land, air, sea... And effectiveness in the assaults or the defense can only be obtained by combining weapons and delivery of the assailants...

What we need, then, are games/tools that will support the enhanced requirements for active cooperation which includes, but is not limited to:
* typing stuff to each other (too cumbersome to be practical, but hey, if that's all you got...)
* pointing out stuff on maps that everybody can look at,
* Macros (special keys) that allow transmitting key/stereotypical information.
* talking to each other/being able to signal stuff vocally to other players,
* video feeding: showing stuff to other players in-game, such as what i currently see to others while the action is going on, sci-fi and fantasy settings allow easily for that possibility, and some well explained tech trick would do the same for most of the 20th Century, at least with a CCTV). At least transmit screenshots at quick speeds to allow good decision making.
* silenced movements that indicates stuff. (Commando stuff you see on most movies with those characters in them).

All these methods of communicating -linking people together- demand added bandwidth: It’s not just about the game anymore; it is an extra demand on the network to let that web of communication work on top of it. Therefore, we need networks and tools. In a LAN, all that stuff is usually possible, due to great network stability, physical closeness, and the good old “shout it out loud enough and people will hear you scream” backup methods. But to get to a good network cooperative experience, we will also need these other tools, and they have to be fully integrated to the game.

Of course, these tools have been integrated into different games to different extents and with different successes, and some other guys have actually created tool to supplement the need for them: Teamspeak being one of them.

My request to the game designers: get those tools aboard, and make them work with as small a netcode as you can. Taking bandwidth is not an option at this stage in the history of bandwidth, except for testing on LANs. But SOON, when the guys that wrote “Infinite bandwidth” turn out to be right, we can actually put the to “good use”.

Reason #8: It’s too hard to get good AI

2004-04-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

he truth of the matter, it seems to me, is that programmers just don’t have the skills or the budget to get good AI. It is apparently a lot simpler to get a long series of scripted events right than getting individual and group behaviours set up so that they can act relatively independently from their environment, adapting to it and including it in their actions.

I must say that it is indeed a serious limitation.

However, bots have been around at least since Quake 2, if I remember correctly…
And I am positive that the bots from SWAT 3 know what they were doing (those bastards!). If anyone has tried Far Cry they also know that bots can be bad (in a good way) and do some pretty mean stuff, including flushing you out with a grenade, and flanking you, or finding back ways to get to you. That is the right stuff. In Far Cry, they go as far as shouting orders at each other, that makes it really real. (Even though, now that I think of it, good soldiers would use some sign language and trained special ops would use subvocal radios probably).

A complaint you see frequently on modders’ sites is that the games are not designed to support bots (MOHAA) and that sometimes getting the bots programmed is just too hard for the non-dedicated programmer (Hello Battlefield 1942!). That’s a shame, because it’s all about the replayability. And bots that go only one way are bound to be easily shot… boring.

By the way, bots with varying levels of intelligence and skills is a good idea (congrats on UT 2004)

To sum it up, get working on the AI, I can wait for graphics, now that we have reached Far Cry, but I want to see more and way better bots in action. And giving them perfect shooting capability and seeing through walls is NOT FUN.

Reason #9 for not including coop in a game: No one plays coop

2004-04-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

No one plays coop, nor want to play coop.

That seems to be the excuse of a lot of publishers. Egg and hen problem? You bet. Most of my friends WANT coop, but can’t it on their games. Call of Duty coop? Medal of Honor coop? I could go on and on…

What we get from a lot of publishers is the possibility of getting coop when we play multiplayers versus computer. BUT THAT AIN’T REAL COOP, it’s just another match versus bots. No great goal is achieved. (It’s fun nonetheless and, if you’re not gonna do anything else about it, it’s a great beginning).

But my thoughts are towards something more than that: Being able to advance on a storyline together with my pals. And that’s hard to find. Duke Nukem coop? That worked: you could go through the entire game, all the levels fighting you way together against the aliens. That was good stuff. Even Doom 2 had coop.

If you look at Sven’s coop for Half-Life, or the Coopmap maker’s sites, you’ll see that coop is not only a possibility, it’s a requirement of a growing amount of players. And it makes so much sense: you want to play with friends before you actually go competitive.

Maybe we could get a series of pools started around the biggest gaming sites asking around What is best?
 Deathmatch,
 Team deathmacth
 Coop
I am positive the answers would not be as obvious as too many publishers like to think…

reason number 10 for not including cooperative gameplay in games

2004-02-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

"It didn't occur to us". That seems to be an altogether straightforward explanation, and from some of my readings in forums and developer’s journals, it seems to be a fairly good explanation.

Let us go deeper into the human motivations and try to dig explanations for the phenomena:

Developers are not really familiar with the concept of cooperation. Given my experience on working close to software developers and engineers in general, I have a feeling that their training includes focusing on 1 problem at a time, and strictly avoiding social contact on all occasions (flame mail for this opinion will be warmly received). Programming, the way we do it these days anyway, seems to be a very lonely affair. I have not seen big companies do their programming, but I suspect that the pattern holds true: every programmer is king of his hill/island, and no-one can take that away from him. The result of this approach is Sid Meir’s example to the gaming industry a great game-maker that is totally incapable of thinking of multiple users.

Speaking of Sid Meirs, let me recall one of my frustrated cooperative experiences: When Alpha Centauri came out, I was visiting my father in-law. A programmer himself, he had greatly enjoyed Civ. I am not to hot on abstract strategy myself, but I thought it was a good way to link up and do stuff together. So, when I got the information about Alpha Centauri being a multiplayer game, I rushed and went for that game, set up the network between a couple of PII (I think) and convinced him to play. Of course, it was turn based, and you know that is. Anyway, we advanced more and more into the game, until it was time to start launching our armies and crush the rest of the factions of the planet (the bad guys). Because I am such an advocate for cooperative games, my father in law and me coordinated our attacks as much as we could, and sure enough we were crushing all those that dared to be on our way. Until the game started misbehaving… Soon enough we couldn’t get back into the game… I was confused, and could not understand what was going on, so I started searching for information, till I tripped on the mine that was waiting for me: Critics were saying that everyone had problems with the multiplayer at advanced stages of the game. CRAP!

The point is: Some programmers can’t think multiplayer. They can think of 1 person playing versus hordes of computer animated enemies and that’s about that.

On the other hand, we have programmers that certainly can: See Quake Arena, or Unreal Tournament made specifically for multiplayer mayhem. Those are the good game developers. And they do realize that too often the players for a 16-32 gamers match just aren’t there. What to do then? GET THE BOTS IN THERE IDIOTS!

Just today playing Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre, I am stuck in several spots in the game thinking: Imagine this bit played cooperatively, it would be greatness! But as I mentioned elsewhere in this blog: Novalogic just can’t get enough AI in its games.

Let me tell you though: muscle can sometime do the job of intelligence, even if it is not as rewarding: successive waves of enemies can do the trick for basic cooperation. Facing enemies coming from all sides does take coordination and gives a very good reason for tight cooperation. And it’s so movie like!

In synthesis, part of the problem or reasons for not including cooperative gameplay into the actual games seems to be that the developers themselves don’t think about it. It doesn’t cross their minds, because programmers have an exclusive relationship with their computers that prevents them from looking at the socializing that can be favored with the software they create.

Why won't game creators always include a coop mode?

2004-02-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

Now that is a good question. Let's think of the top 10 reasons...

2004-01-16T12:50:00.000-08:00

What is good cooperative gaming?

Enrolling newbies: First of all, the games have to be engaging and the basic ropes of roles should be very simple to learn, in order to engage new players. This is required so that the newbies get up to speed, and become functional for the team easily. Certain roles like being a grunt in a FPS or a grunt producer in RTS, should therefore be accessible. Getting into the details of carrying out bombing runs or producing advanced troops can be saved for later, as they become familiar with the game and actually DESIRE to increase their mastery of the game.

Be objective: Second of all: the game should provide clear-cut objective that are highly visible to all players. In SWAT 3, you had to kill every single bad guy and save the hostages. That was clear to everyone from the beginning to the end, and the tension was incredible.

Provide the means for cooperation: Some game just sit and demand cooperation. Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory seems to be one of them, because of an aggressive class system that differentiates clearly each one’s function, and because of an aggressive map designing that demands use of the classes (a team without an engineer is as good as dead usually, and being undercover spy for the other army is just fun). Often, some situations are what the doctor prescribed: in SWAT 3, very often the realistic environments offered so many vulnerabilities for the team that was entering the location that we just HAD to cover every angle and hope to press the trigger at the right moment to protect the rest. Achieving that coordination becomes a goal, and is something that will be remembered after the game.

Motives for playing cooperatively:
1) Lack of participants: In my case it was very often because we were not enough to get a team deatchmatch started (just 3 or 4 of us).
2) The desire to work together: playing with my brothers and friends together in a team made so much more sense than shooting each other. [OK OK, from time to time, a little deathmatch is also enjoyable.] At some point finding out who is the fastest-baddest-greatest shooter is just not something desirable. It is being together that is attractive.
3) Sheer cooperating pleasure: The human being is naturally sociable, and wants to work together not just to ensure survival, but also to achieve something higher/bigger than himself. Working together and reaching common goals is naturally enjoyed.

Enemies: The enemy should be common: everyone attack! Sometimes situations happen where the enemy of one is not the enemy of the other (in RTS which have some form of diplomacy integrated), but workouts can often be made, such as delivering resources, or blocking the path. Computer animated bots, with good AI are a must here. [A good bad example is the Delta Force series, while I enjoyed the solo play, there was a cooperative mode that we tried to play with my team, and the result was unequivocally the same: a rush to see who got to kill most of the stupid enemies. Novalogic has a deserved terrible fame in creating AI, which is a shame because the rest of their engines –in my view- was very good.] Sometimes, when enough players are around, 2 teams with conflicting goals (i.e. terrorists-counter terrorists) can keep the cooperation flowing… What went wrong with Counter Strike?

AI: So AI becomes very important in cooperative games, as a team of players can get really creative and spread out on the map to go achieving their goals. Can the CPU react to that? Can the bots respond to different situations like throwing a grenade to a group that is walking in a tight formation, or snipe each individual team member on a loose formation? The AI is a big requirement, because otherwise you fall on using other restrictions to control the situations such as a restrictive map design that allows only a player at a time through a corridor. True, it could happen in reality, but reality usually also offers so many more possibilities. The deployment of a SWAT team would normally include at least 3 or 8 positions: 1 or 2 sniper positions with good views to the crime scene, 1 central command station, and 1 to 3 teams going in. And in order to keep the game challenging, the AI has to be able to counter the sometimes massive firepower of a coordinated team: 5 machine guns can do a lot of damage, and bringing them down will in turn require coordinated action from the AI. What i mean is: good AI is challenging and keeps the gaming team on their toes.

2004-01-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

Now to the latest of my cooperative gaming experience: Battlefield 1942 (and specially Desert Combat):

Desert combat is a great fun game. It does most everything that Operation Flashpoint made before, but in a simple straightforward arcadish style that can get people hooked really fast. (Operation Flashpoint had an uneasy learning curve for those that were not self-motivated). And it comes with a native cooperative mode that genuinely fits the game. (Add inserted here: Why are the helicopters so damn hard to fly? They were so much better in Operation Flashpoint)

Of course, getting the game to work on a LAN can be difficult with certain "versions" of the game.

But, if you do manage to get the right patch-upgrades-add-ons-modifications-levels combination, you are in for a treat of a game.
Cooperation is required and soon becomes very focused: each one finds the weapon-vehicule combination that works best for them, and then can easily see what need to be done in the map: which flags need capturing-defending or where to drive the offensive. (Real battlefields are probably not as neat in organizing the tasks and goals, but who cares?) Therefore we achieve something beyond cooperation: self-organizing or "autopoiesis" as Maturana would put it. This is very good.

2004-01-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

Of course, i should talk about RTS. Real Time Strategy games are usually pretty functional for providing some good cooperative gaming. The reason is simple: they almost always have AI ennemies available, and the most recent games offer even to set some characteristics of the AI (such as rusher behaviour etc.) and they allow for players to work together in a number of ways.

In Starcraft for instance, there was a mode where allied plyaers actually begun at the exact same spot and had to work together to make their cities grow, including the possibility of controlling each others' armies. This opened the way for some uneasy situations, but most of the time, on a LAN cooperative players can agree on what the plan is and what to do. That was very effective, and demanded a good deal of cooperation, even if, at the beginning of the game some players had to patiently wait for the other(s) to be set so that he in turn could get his race going.

Age of empires 2: Age of Kings was similarly fun, with the difference that the difficulty could be set (starcraft was set on "mean" and you couldn't do anything about it; Warcraft 3 suffers from the same problem that can really be nasty on new players that don't want to go through the single player campaigns).

Currantly, i am playing Rise of Nations, and here appears a new philosophy: the rules to win can be totally customized: for instance, you can decide that the game should be won totally based on economics results. Since my wife is on the peaceful side of games, she can now enjoy the game without having to wage war.

RTS, generallly speaking, are therefore pretty good for cooperation. Specially for the part where you can exchange ressources and send your army to protect your allies. I like also the idea of armies attacking from different angles a single ennemy... death by crushing is most likely.

2004-01-16T12:06:00.000-08:00

So, SWAT 3 was a successful experience for cooperative gaming. Another came up on, curiously engouh, on the Xbox: Halo. From what i've read on the net lots of people had the same feeling: cooperation mode on that game made a lot of sense. [Except for having the share the screen, thank you very much.] Then the game comes on PC, and i am expecting to finally get back with my friends on a LAN and have some shared fun, but the developers decided against that. How could i begin to express my feelings regarding that decision??

Another successful experience was definitely Operation Flashpoint. That was a game that was just plain good. And this time around i got to play it on the internet (braodband finally got here). It was limited by the fact that many cooperative maps did not allow for re-spwan: Once you were dead, you were out. Some may advocate that made everyone serious and comitted to the ongoing action, but i think that it was just lame: it takes too much time to get together to be kicked out because of a hidden sniper with an aimbot. Anyway the game was a lot of fun because of real possibilities for cooperation: the tanks required several players to be fully functional, and combining weapons during an assault invariably brings some satisfying results. That game was good single player, multiplayer and could get just sweet in cooperative mode.

2004-01-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

I really wish i could play fun cooperative games. As far as my experience goes, the best of the best i played in that sense was SWAT 3 Elite Edition.

That (version of the) game came with coop as one of the options, and it worked just fine. Add to that the fact that the computer animated bots (the terrorists/punks/bad persons) were quite credible in their behaviours and good graphics (specially when played on a screen projector: it looked like you weer in an action movie) and it was a game that me and a couple of friends played for nights and nights.