Chaos Rematch - WIP thread

[Wampus]

I'm finding this is going to be slow going no matter what. Why? Because if I want to include multiplayer it kind of has to be working as multiplayer from the outset, even for a simplistic prototype before its made to look and sound pretty. I don't want to try to tag on multiplayer later after the single player experience is working since it would be much easier to build the whole thing around multiplayer early on.

Another challenge is the AI. I lost sleep over thinking about this last night. In the morning I realised my ideas were just too big to code efficiently. There is almost no end to the complexities you can add to AI for a turn-based strategy game like this. The trouble is I don't want to spend forever making the AI. I'll have to settle for good enough. By that I mean it has to do a decent job of providing a challenge and NOT have glaring AI problems that look like bugs.

[Ian Price]

It's at times like this you need to decide to fish or cut bait. Either continue and work your way through the problems or just knock it on the head before you waste more time on it.

With a new version of Chaos coming soon from the original creator, perhaps it's time to say that you've had fun, learned a lot and move onto something else. You can always revisit the game later on - the work that you've done already will still be there. Maybe coming back to it later, with fresh eyes, fresh ideas and a clear understanding of the difficulties might help.

[Wampus]

Oh, its nowhere near time to let it go yet in my estimation. I've only just got back on track! I need to adjust my expectations is all. I was hoping to get a prototype working by 19th December. Might be longer now. Tackling multiplayer today, when I get a chance. I had something partially working before but I discovered some bugs with the NET commands which basically made all my work with them up to that point worthless since my ability to host games properly was made practically impossible. I had to 'cut bait' with multiplayer at that point. Going to revisit the problem to see if the bugs are still present. If not I can speed this process up immensely. If so, I'll have to write code to host a server myself.

BTW the new game by Gollop is PC, Mac and Linux only. Also I'm sure it'll be very good but it will be considerably different to my game.

[Ian Price]

BTW the new game by Gollop is PC, Mac and Linux only

For now...

[Wampus]

Yeah, I am intimidated by the fact this new Chaos game is being developed. Since its being created in Unity there might be a mobile version of Gollop's new game in the future too. The thing is, when I reflect on this, I can't imagine a realistic scenario where his re-boot of Chaos is to the detriment of what I'm doing. If I like a game I look for more of the same. That is a trend that works in gaming. Chances are there is a smallish number of people who care enough about the original Chaos to look for a re-boot. If 'Chaos Reborn' does well, that would actually be better for my game overall. The re-boot of XCOM was a big hit with me and that didn't diminish my interested in XCOM-like games.

Another thing I'm glad about is that the original Chaos is in the public domain, thanks to Gollop being such a decent bloke, so I doubt I'd have to deal with legal repercussions from any of this.

Tonight I've gotten a bit of a boost. It looks like the multiplayer problem I encountered before can be bypassed. I found I was calling a SOCK_SHUTDOWN command before NETDESTROYPLAYER and NETSHUTDOWN. This resulted in just one reply coming from NETGETQUITPLAYER where I needed two - one for the NET commands and (for reasons I don't understand and aren't documented) a ghost player that seems to be created if you use UDP sockets for broadcasting on LAN (or whatever you need it for) as well as NET commands for communicating with the server. It seems the NET commands create player IDs for more than just NET sockets. I won't bore people with the ins and outs of it, but I will update the thread reporting an error if I find something other people might need to know.