COOP time mechanic explained (COOP play)

[SonoftheThrone]

In order to allow coop play, I asked to explain a proposal to developers for how it would work. Here is my proposal:

The passage of time would be linked, shared between the two players. Much like in games where a two-player team shares the same pool of money. When any player does an activity that "takes time", the time passage screen would pop up for both players, then and there, asking BOTH players to confirm/vote on the change. If one player disagrees, the passage of time activity will NOT take place. Both players would have to agree to allow for the harvesting of trees, crafting items at a table, etc.

Once the players mutually agree on the activity, it will proceed accordingly. Any and all time-altering activities would have to be mutually agreed upon by both players. It is that simple. Instead of a single player making the decisions, it becomes a unanimous one instead. If one player wants to go to sleep, both players must agree to that decision.

So, one player wants to sleep while the other player wants to craft. How would that work?

I propose:

Both activities would be rounded up to the nearest hour. If one player wants to sleep for 1 hour, and another player wants to harvest some deer meat for 15 minutes, the activity that took the longer time would be where the time continue from. Both activities would happen, so the one player would be rested, the other would have the deer meat added to their inventory. The time elapsed would reflect the highest time activity, the 1 hour of sleep.

How would the environmental bars work in this proposal?

The exact same way as they did in the single player mechanics. Simply round the activity (if choosing multiple tasks) to the one with the highest time (1 hour of sleep versus, 3 hours of harvesting trees large tree limbs). The tree limbs would win the calculation. The players should prepare themselves ahead of time for making sure they are safe before choosing an activity.

One player is inside a shelter sleeping while the other is outside, for three hours in the cold, near freezing and/or now being attacked by wolves!

How to fix this?

BEFORE agreeing to the time activity, each player better make sure that in the event of some random thing happening like a blizzard, animal attack, cold temperatures, etc. that they are in a safe place FIRST before they decide to undergo the time change. Just like when playing by yourself.

Why?

Your partner takes a nap indoors for an hour, but, again, you're stuck outside during that time (because you were searching for wood). You're, again, unsafe outdoors, being attacked by animals, freezing to death, etc. That would be the other player's fault for mutually agreeing to the time change when he wasn't in a safe spot to do so. It's not the sleeping player's fault because BOTH players voted/agreed on the time change.

How would the screen interface look?

The same as in single player. Just like any other loading event. Keep it all as it is for the single player, but, instead, it happens for both players because they voted on it. No one player makes a big decision to sleep or whatever the case without FIRST asking permission from their coop partner to do so.

ACTIVITIES TO "VOTE" on:

Harvesting animal guts/meat/hide

Harvesting wood (i.e. branches, large tree limbs, etc, but NOT picking up sticks)

Sleeping

Cooking/heating up food/beverages

melting snow

boiling/purifying water

A screen prompt would appear on screen asking that both players confirm the pending time-altering activity(ies). If both players agree, then it would all take place. If not, it would be automatically canceled by default. Unless both parties agree, no time/environmental changes would take place.

A clock widget would appear (like a loading symbol) when an activity would take place (unlike in single player). This would let each player know that their coop partner chose a time-changing activity. It would spin once the activity began.

A screen prompt would appear saying "(gamertag) is (activity name).

HOW TO KEEP IT SIMPLE? MUTUAL SLEEPING/SAVING

Unless BOTH players agree to sleep simultaneously, sleep doesn't happen. Since sleep occurs as SAVING the game, both players must sleep. Both players must be set up to save their game, wherever they are on the map. Whether it be one player in a building and another in a sleeping bag on the snow, both must be at sleeping bags/beds to save simultaneously. The other player should put out their bedroll in order to allow the needing player to sleep/save.

BUILDING ENTRY POINT SAVING....

One player enters a building, the game saves. The second player is outside in the woods. If both players agree to the save, the second player's bedroll will automatically be placed wherever they are in the game world. The game will "spot save" them there upon mutual agreement on the game's savepoint. In other words, one player is saving because of entering a building, and the second player is autosaving via their bedroll via the game's automatic placement of the bedroll as per agreement of the game save.

TIME-CHANGING AUTOSAVE paramaters....

One player wants to harvest something that takes 15 minutes of time. The other player is just walking around the environment. Both players agree to the time-changing activity. 15 minutes pass on the in game clock w/o impacting the game because the activity took less than an hour.

IF an activity takes an hour or more, than the mutual agreement voting will take place. Both players would agree, and any player, if not located at a save point already (i.e. in the same building as the other crafting player), that "outside" player will be autosaved via bedroll. If performing an activity that takes LESS than an hour, no agreement is needed. The game clock will adjust accordingly and all is normal. If the sky changes/weather changes in the time, so be it.

PLAYERS ENTER/EXIT SEPARATE BUILDINGS SIMULTANEOUSLY....

The game would save each player at both building entry points as in single player.

PLAYER ENTERS/EXIT BUILDING, SECOND PLAYER OUTDOORS....

The game would save the outdoors player's gamesave on the spot w/ a bedroll save while the first player saves at their building entry/exit.

ONE PLAYERS SLEEPS IN BEDROLL/BED, SECOND PLAYER ENTERS/EXITS BUILDING....

The sleeping player saves via bed/bedroll and the second player saves @ building entry/exit.

ONE PLAYER ENTERS TIME-CHANGING =/>HOUR ACTIVITY, SECOND PLAYER IS OUTSIDE....

Time passes ONLY after both players agree via on-screen confirmation/voting. Outside player is "spot-saved" via bedroll. Environmental meters rise/fall based on individual player environments (outside/inside, etc.)

TIME CHANGES (all time lapse in coop play):

NOTE: Bedroll game saves, i.e. "spot saves" are key to the coop gameplay proposal to work in terms of gamesaves and time-lapse activities meshing together for coop gameplay. This permits one player to save at a designated savepoint while the other player is permitted to save at a random, non-standard savepoint.

NOTE: Each player is responsible for their character's time lapse. BEFORE agreeing to the change, each player should make sure their fires are set for warmth, they are fed/watered ahead of time, etc. The game is NOT responsible for a frost-bitten, dead player after a failed, agreed upon time change. A "DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK!" on-screen text prompt will appear; it can be toggled on/off as an in-game hint in the menus.

NOTE: If both players are in the same building, whether or not they are on the same floor....If one player proposes a bedroll/sleep save, (due to the minimum sleep time being 1 HOUR), both players must agree. Both players will be "spot-saved" via bedrolls at their respective locations.

NOTE: Picking up sticks/in-game items does NOT change time as it is done in real time, reflecting the gameplay standard in single player.

NOTE: Any activity that is calculated by the game to take

NOTE: Any activity that is calculated by the game to take =/>HOUR will need "player voting". It will NOT occur automatically. Time elapse may show visual environment change/weather change. Game clock will advance (i.e. "10 HOURS OF DAYLIGHT" to "9 HOURS OF DAYLIGHT").

NOTE: If any single time-lapse activity/group of activities rounds to an uneven hour(s) i.e. [1 HOUR, 45 MINUTES] [3 HOURS, 20 MINUTES] etc.), voting must take place. Time will lapse as stated in previous "NOTE".

NOTE: If both players wish to perform time-lapse activities simultaneously, all activities will be added up in length of time as one single time event. i.e. 15 min. gut harvest + 4 hours of sleep= 4 HRS of time lapse. The greater time lapse activity wins the time lapse calculation. The remaining IDLE TIME DIFFERENCE for the other player will be resolved via a "spot-save" via bed/bedroll (if idle player is located outside, and/or located inside, but NOT within the proximity of a bed/building entry/exit point. Both players' meters will be adjusted respectively based on player location, weather, etc.

NOTE: If one player suffers injury/hypothermia due to being outdoors during an agreed upon gamesave (due to a player, for example, wanting to sleep for some allotted time, this would be the fault of the affected player in question for NOT planning for the agreed save prior to executing the time change. The same applies for a fire burning out during the lapse (indoors or outdoors regardless), becoming thirsty, hunger, etc. Again, it is the responsibility of each player to make sure that they conditions are ideal before mutually agreeing to a time-change in cooperative play.

I hope that this is sufficient! Is that a simple enough proposal? I hope that I covered it. If there's any other things I missed, please comment. Please consider this proposal.

Sincerely,

SonoftheThrone

[octavian]

Isn't it simpler to just increase the global time speed so that wherever in SP you would time accelerate in MP you would just have a normal progress bar with no time acceleration, like searching a drawer? :?

[SonoftheThrone]

Isn't it simpler to just increase the global time speed so that wherever in SP you would time accelerate in MP you would just have a normal progress bar with no time acceleration, like searching a drawer? :?

I addressed that very issue. Any time activity that takes LESS than an hour (whether searching through drawers, cooking, repairing clothes, etc.) all takes place automatically w/o having to "vote" on anything. Only when a time activity takes a minimum of an HOUR and/or more would it call for a mutual player vote. This is to keep each player from suddenly dying because of a time change via their partner that they were not prepared for, did not agree to.

Thank you for your reply and overlooking my proposal! :mrgreen:

[octavian]

Well yeah, my question was why have the vote if the action takes longer than an hour, why not have no votes at all? By, speeding global time and making everything that currently speeds up time into a progress bar that doesn't speed up time, because it's already sped up globally.

[SonoftheThrone]

Well yeah, my question was why have the vote if the action takes longer than an hour, why not have no votes at all? By, speeding global time and making everything that currently speeds up time into a progress bar that doesn't speed up time, because it's already sped up globally.

Speeding up time gives rise to too many variables. For example, I'm sleeping for 9 hours, and my partner is awake do other stuff WHILE I am sleeping. So what does the sleeping player do in real time while the other active player, in real time is walking around? These are questions the developers would want answers to. I gave them those very answers in this proposal. I merged the two time frames together through my bedroll spot save proposal.

Your proposal is ideal to say the least, but for simplicity of placing coop in this game w/o complex headaches for developers, I presented a quite genius, simple approach, if I do say so myself.

The proposal rests upon the concept of synchronized save files. Time calculation remains as it is in single player, w/o the developers have to change any of it. That is simplicity. The player voting is a tool to ensure that both players agree on the sudden passage of time in their joint game. Agreed upon time change is the professional way to go about it. It is the same concept as voting on a map before entering a multiplayer match. Time change affects both players; therefore, unlike in single player, time changes should be agreed upon unanimously in the coop mode. Two different players w/ two different goals agreeing mutually advance their ENVIRONMENTAL METERS AT ONCE....that is why I proposed "voting" on time-changing activities >HOUR in length.

Blizzards, fires going out, animals attacks, fog, hypothermia, hunger, thirst, fatigue. Time affects ALL of those factors. Therefore, time-changes should be agreed upon in cooperative gameplay.

Sincerely,

SonoftheThrone

PS-You do not have to agree nor fully understand my proposal. It is for the game's developers to hopefully endorse. The end result would be cooperative play for everyone, everywhere! Kindly give a +1 to it if you endorse it. Otherwise, please kindly permit my post in peace. Cooperative play will NOT take away from a single player game.

[octavian]

PS-You do not have to agree nor fully understand my proposal. It is for the game's developers to hopefully endorse. The end result would be cooperative play for everyone, everywhere! Kindly give a +1 to it if you endorse it. Otherwise, please kindly permit my post in peace. Cooperative play will NOT take away from a single player game.

Please, don't insult me, I do fully understand it. I just asked a question. If me asking a question means I didn't permit you to post in peace, sorry, you asked us to comment. I will refrain in the future.

[FINDarkside]

Isn't it simpler to just increase the global time speed so that wherever in SP you would time accelerate in MP you would just have a normal progress bar with no time acceleration, like searching a drawer? :?

I'm not sure if I understood you correctly but that would change nothing. If you sleep 8 hours a day you would spend 33% of your playtime sleeping and that's way too much.

[selfless]

You may have addressed the gameplay conflicts but not the technical. Synchronizing two different interactions in the same universe adds greatly to complexity of the programming and execution. Who hosts the world? What happens on desync? Servers? All requires more staff and more money.

Standalone is much simpler. Little wonder it is being used for this startup.

EDIT: What happens when the first player dies (permadeth)?

[SonoftheThrone]

You may have addressed the gameplay conflicts but not the technical. Synchronizing two different interactions in the same universe adds greatly to complexity of the programming and execution. Who hosts the world? What happens on desync? Servers? All requires more staff and more money.

Standalone is much simpler. Little wonder it is being used for this startup.

EDIT: What happens when the first player dies (permadeth)?

In the words of the "Siberian Bull" Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, (to answer your question), "If he dies....he dies!"

I cannot answer a programming question. I am not gifted as such. I'm an idea man, so to speak. 8-)

[FINDarkside]

You may have addressed the gameplay conflicts but not the technical.

I don't think that you should think too much about technical difficulties when making suggestion, the devs will know the best what they consider doable.

[bcwtruefan]

I would love even a basic coup coop mode and would be fine with both players agreeing to the time advance. Players would just have to coordinate and make sure they are someplace safe if the other player is going to sleep, craft, etc. I don't need a full on multiplayer experience with player playing separately in a shared world. I am more interested in COOP so would be fine needing to coordinate.

For sleeping I would be fine with both players needing to sleep at the same time for the same hours. Same with crafting, etc. One player initiates, other player confirms and time advances. If someone dies then that player is dead. Not more COOP.

As far as balancing with load, etc. I would not be too worried about it unbalancing the game and making things too easy.

[DarkUncleBoh]

First let me say, I am very much in favor of coop play for TLD (eventually) -- and I really really do hope that it happens in some form, at some point. That having been said, two things:

One,

Cooperative play will NOT take away from a single player game.

Unfortunately, this is inaccurate. Development time is a limited resource. I've worked in the software industry for 20 years, and every single software company I have ever worked for has struggled with the same issue - not enough development time (note: by "development time" I'm not necessarily speaking of "time till a release date" - I mean the total number of hours worked by developers, which is limited not only by release dates and obligation to customers, but also by simple economics/available funds).

...anyhow, as I was saying... development time is a limited resource. Every software developer struggles with the need to prioritize their development time. EVERYTHING that gets done, means that there is something else that will NOT get done as a result (remember the "No Free Lunches" concept from high school economics class?) -- so no matter how you slice it, adding a feature like coop play (which from a technical perspective is NOT trivial by any means) will take away development time from some other aspect of the game. Since the game currently is only single player... that means that the implementation of coop play will necessarily take something away from the single player game - be it a feature, or some extra polish, or additional testing time, etc. As Hinterlands is already being upfront about the fact that testing and quality assurance is taking a huge portion of their available time, there is no way that the addition of a feature with an entirely different set of potential problems and bugs, wouldn't have a big impact.

Two,

While your idea does have several good points to it, in my opinion it is more complicated than it needs to be. I'd suggest simply making it so that:

---- Player A starts to fish, selecting to do so for 3 hours

-- right away Player A starts to fish, as time passes at the normal play timescale

-- Player B gets a small message in the upper corner of his UI that says, "Player A fishing, 2:59 remaining" (and counting down)

-- if Player B continues to play "normally", then time continues to pass normally. Player A will continue to fish - likely bored out of his mind (possibly canceling the action when he's "had enough")

-- OR... Player B sees that Player A is doing a lengthy activity, so he takes that opportunity to harvest the rabbit caught in his snare, spending 50 minutes doing so

-- For that 50 minutes, time passed "quickly" (as it would in a single player game) - both players see the more rapid passage of time. When Player B is done harvesting, time goes back to "normal", with Player A still fishing (and both players seeing the remaining time Player A is fishing)

This way there is no "vote" process, and any player can do what they want when they want - it is to everyone's benefit to coordinate their efforts so that neither one of them ends up sitting around for long periods of time, but at least that option is still there if they want it.

[bcwtruefan]

DarkUncleBoh: That sounds like a great solution and very straight forward.

[DarkUncleBoh]

DarkUncleBoh: That sounds like a great solution and very straight forward.

Thanks. It's a pretty simple way to approach it, but it seems like it might be the best way to do so without negatively impacting the normal flow of gameplay at all.

[Leonard87]

First let me say, I am very much in favor of coop play for TLD (eventually) -- and I really really do hope that it happens in some form, at some point. That having been said, two things: [...]

This way there is no "vote" process, and any player can do what they want when they want - it is to everyone's benefit to coordinate their efforts so that neither one of them ends up sitting around for long periods of time, but at least that option is still there if they want it.

Well, so there would be a person standing around fishing from second players point of view. I think, first, that there should be the option to "help" the second player cutting the time needed to the half. Secondly, this first player would be attackable by wolves while fishing from the second players point of view, so an (not too hard to implement) interrupted by wolves, starvation and so on event should be placed in from the first players point of view (would like it anyway). The threads suggestion breaks immersion, i assume. Probably there should be more of a probability system. So that fishing 1 minute has like 3% success with an increasing probability. Like that increase is a linear function relative to the player skill, so that the total probability is a second order function. ( would like that in certain situations like fishing anyway,too. This would ADD intense moments where you hope to succeed like in real-life) So you could start and stop fishing while at least having a probability to succeed. Then your bar should show your current success rate. A half bar would then indicate 50% obviously. In the current version you definitely would just loose time with no success rate at all when you stop what your are doing at the moment before the end of the action. At the moment it is just a first order functon with a binary ouput (at the end).

Actually i'm with you. I think the developers should focus on single-player nonetheless. (builing in network code, synchronization and so on :roll: )