Site FAQ page

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Hissatsu
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2012 9:35 pm

Re: Site FAQ page

Post by Hissatsu »

Well, thats why there exists a thing like "chess timer". This way, you dont have set "10 sec per turn", when you need you have time to think, but overall time you got is limited, so overall you dont have much time to pause the game for.

This game was indeed bult for single player, but including multiplayer isnt very hard... especially with all those money they got from kickstarter, man, for 200k bucks you could do more than that!
DrNoid
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2012 9:40 am

Re: Site FAQ page

Post by DrNoid »

You have to think through a battle in your head, including pauses from the other side.

Imagine you have two weapons with slightly different re-fire rates that you want to fire synchronously. To do that in SP, you just pause as soon as the slowest is charged, target 'em both, and un-pause. This is easy, because you can follow the charge-bar that is creeping up at a constant pace.
Now imagine that creeping up to be constantly interrupted by the other player pausing. It'd be annoying as hell!
Icehawk78
Posts: 230
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:55 pm

Re: Site FAQ page

Post by Icehawk78 »

Hissatsu wrote:This game was indeed bult for single player, but including multiplayer isnt very hard... especially with all those money they got from kickstarter, man, for 200k bucks you could do more than that!
Haha, the entire point of what I was saying is that "including multiplayer isn't very hard" is not even remotely close to true. And given that the KS was for developing/distributing the single player game, to add multiplayer would likely need a second KS with similar or higher goal levels.
Hissatsu
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2012 9:35 pm

Re: Site FAQ page

Post by Hissatsu »

2 Icehawk78
Yeah, but i mean, they got 2005% of what they needed. Thats 1905% extra funding! Of course, some extra was spent to make a bigger game than they wanted, but still, they must have a lot of extra money on their hands. And they love what they're doing (not like they just want to make it and be done with it) - so why not progress further?
I have some experience coding games, and this game is not very hard to add MP to. Latency would be much fo an issue, coding another ship - depends on how they coded the first one, if they did it with scalability in mind, then it would be much problem (and seeing how both player and enemy ships act with similar mechanics, i think adding third ship to the mix, or letting player control the second ship would be much different). Adding multiplayer modes - yeah, some time involved, but then again, they have that time because they got way more money than they wanted, and this means, they now have food and stuff for several years ahead and can do what they want with their game.
Icehawk78
Posts: 230
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2012 4:55 pm

Re: Site FAQ page

Post by Icehawk78 »

Hissatsu wrote:Yeah, but i mean, they got 2005% of what they needed. Thats 1905% extra funding! Of course, some extra was spent to make a bigger game than they wanted, but still, they must have a lot of extra money on their hands. And they love what they're doing (not like they just want to make it and be done with it) - so why not progress further?
Without actually looking at their accounting, I don't think there's any way for you to realistically assume anything about the studio's current budgeting/funding levels merely based on the Kickstarter funding levels. It's possible that they spent a large chunk of that expanding the game to support Linux/Mac, or that they spent a large chunk of it making it available on GOG, Steam and the Humble Store simultaneously. Realistically, I have no idea (who knows, maybe they're both swimming in piles of gold coins!), but likewise, I also doubt you do as well.

I'd agree that it's likely that they enjoy what they're doing, but it's also very possible that they're ready to move on to a new project after this one, rather than just maintaining/milking this project indefinitely.
Hissatsu wrote:I have some experience coding games, and this game is not very hard to add MP to. Latency would be much fo an issue, coding another ship - depends on how they coded the first one, if they did it with scalability in mind, then it would be much problem (and seeing how both player and enemy ships act with similar mechanics, i think adding third ship to the mix, or letting player control the second ship would be much different). Adding multiplayer modes - yeah, some time involved, but then again, they have that time because they got way more money than they wanted, and this means, they now have food and stuff for several years ahead and can do what they want with their game.
As I've already mentioned, the sheer amount of changes that would need to be made to the gameplay (and all related aspects - balancing, etc) alone make adding multiplayer not at all trivial, as you initially claim. The issue isn't development-related, it'd be gameplay related.

Additionally, realistically, it seems highly unlikely that the developers are at all interested in multiplayer themselves, and thus I would be shocked if they decided to add that with whatever additional time they may or may not be interested in spending on this project.

(Also, the Kickstarter was funded with $200,000. Full time salary for two developers who are also handling several other aspects of the business simultaneously is easily $100,000, depending on where they live, on top of whatever costs they incurred from distribution/game development (ie purchasing development systems, licensing code for usage, etc), so you can hardly extrapolate from that that they "have food and stuff for several years ahead".)
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