Gameplay Ideas

[duke]

Hello.

Now that's the Knights Multiplayer is extended to more than 2 players, there could be plenty more things to add.
This thread is about the gameplay, which means all the things you encounter when you are already playing.

I'll start with some useful ideas.

1) Add a player list, that you can open with the tabulator key.
Here's a sketch what this list should look like:

Code Select Expand

Knights Beta Multiplayer Server - knightsgame.co.uk:16400 - Played time: 34 minutes
________________________________________________________________________

Name Kills Deaths Ping

Stephen 12 5 43ms

David        8 12 56ms

K9        15 19 75ms

dukey        12 12 76ms

The "Kills" should count all the kills you made (zombies, bats, other knights).
The "Deaths"... oh, you know that. And the "Ping" should show how good your connection is.

2) We already spoke about it in the Multiplayer test. I just write it down. All the scrolls and potions are much more used with 5 or 6 knights, as when you play with 2. So this could be a fairness problem, 2 or 3 knights use all the scrolls/pots and the others just have no luck. To avoid this, we could add an option that those items respawns after 5 minutes or so.

3) Another thing we spoke about: If someone has the book or wand and the quest has something to do with it and the player who actually has the needed item should be marked on the map after several minutes.

4) And Another thing: In a huge map with more knights, we could add the possibility to change the starting point. (originally suggested by rpr)

5) Observer mode: Actually you can only watch the first player and the other half of the screen is blank. We should add that you can watch one player per time and switch through them with the space key.

6) The Chat: To make it a bit more informative, we should add some "system" messages. Example: Knight #1 kills Knight #3. The Chat should bring up "Knight #1 just slashed Knight #3 in two halfs." Or another example: "A dreaded zombie just ate Knight #4"

Well, that's it. Some of the ideas are not mine, but I just wrote them down for integrity. If you have some ideas too, write them down.

[K9]

Very good summary from the inaugural day event.  I especially want to see the stat screen you mentioned.  As for the cool extra real-time game details about someone just killed someone, would be great on another section of screen (or overlay) to avoid scrolling all the chat text too fast.

Looking forward to some observer mode upgrades when Stephen gets a chance.  That was a great bonus idea that worked amazing with two players, I really love it!  Sometimes you just need to stop and eat or rest your fingers, but it's a blast to watch both screens of a knight and see how they play each other.  Multiplayer just made things a bit more complicated, but if it's possible, I hope you can make all knight screens viewable at once or switchable, if it's not a major undertaking.  It's also great for newbies to see what the game is all about and learn some skills before jumping in.

[Stephen]

Agreed that the stat screen is a good idea. Showing the stats at the end of the game would be good as well, it would give a "final score" of sorts.

Getting the scrolls and potions to respawn is important too I think. This shouldn't be too hard to get working. I would probably make the respawn rate go up as the number of scrolls/potions in the dungeon goes down, so that initially there is no respawning but as more potions/scrolls are used up, the respawn rate gets faster.

For Observer mode it should be fairly easy to set up the left/right arrow keys to toggle between different players. (Space wouldn't work as you would be using that to type chat messages.) A mode where you can view all knight screens at once is also an interesting idea, although the screens might get very small if there are a lot of players! I also had the idea of displaying a fixed view of the whole dungeon (i.e. you have a fixed viewpoint of the whole map and you can see all the knights running around on it at once). That would be a bit harder to program though.

The messages when players kill each other (and similar things) is a nice idea too. In fact someone else suggested something similar, but including more messages, like "You just picked up a poison dart trap" and things like that. They thought this would be a good way for newbies to learn what all the different items are. This is an interesting idea but I would want to have a way to turn it off in the options of course...

[lukky513]

7) "Ready to start" should be unchecked when a player changes the settings, to prevent fast-setting-change abuse;
8) In long-term: support for map editor and map loading, to make it possible to try some balanced tournaments (although I don't know if is it really needed)
9) More flexible settings, like 3 wands on map or so - in big multiplayer plays it would be funnier
10) Some extended magic, maybe a wand of fire which sets enemies on fire?

I know some of the proposals aren't really in original Knights for Amiga spirit, but whatever.

[Stephen]

Thanks for the suggestions.

7) is a good idea, I will add this to my to-do list.
8 ) I am going to do a map editor at some point, though it's not a high priority right now.
9) I have increased the max wands to 8 for the next version.
10) Nice idea :) but I won't be working on stuff like that any time soon, as there is enough to be keeping me busy at the moment (bug fixing, tutorial modes etc). Unless you are offering to code it yourself of course ;D

You might also be interested in K9's idea of a dragon quest, that too features "smouldering" knights: http://www.knightsgame.org.uk/blog/2009/07/14/new-monster-ideas/comment-page-1/#comment-13

[lukky513]

I'd have to not go to school in order to program games ;)
I think that separate thread with ideas purely about new wands, potions, scrolls and overall items would do.

11) Oh, and I forgot one which is REALLY needed: time tag in chat. It may be server time, or UTC time, whatever, but it just has to be! :)

[jankaspar]

good idea