Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 1:42 am
In the field of dreams, anything is doable. As a practical matter, people are limited in either technical expertise or simple motivation. It's obvious we have the ideas, but if they were easy to implement, it would have been done long ago. (You can tell a good idea from a bad one, because people still talk about the good idea years later.)
Dungeon Master as a game doesn't need multiplayer. You don't even need multiplayer to enjoy it with other people, as this forum shows. The genre, however, could do with a kick to the head. Every game I play, I think, "this would be so much better if I could play it with my friends." Given the maturity of network software and the abundance of network API's, I'm disappointed more people haven't opened a market for well-developed, mentally intense multiplayer games instead of the hundred or so deathmatch clones we've been given. This is the real reason we need to buckle down and give DM its MP booster shot.
Again, technical expertise and motivation are our road blocks. I have a copy of Visual Studio. I know how to use it. I'm warmly familiar with one language and could learn another without too much hassle. I'm familiar with object-oriented programming and have done so many proofs-of-concept, entire forests have died to fill the pages of my notebooks. And yet, that second factor is impassable. A great idea only inspires if you're ready to be inspired by it. Something is missing.
Clearly the most promising clone at this point is Entombed. It satisfies the technology gap that DM has been missing for the last twenty years, despite DM being such a great game. (I'm way beyond appreciating 16-color graphics. I want the same kind of game that will challenge my senses.) Unfortunately, an engine alone cannot promise the type of problem solving enjoyment we expect from DM. It'll look gorgeous, to be sure, but it'll still be the same game under the hood.
That, of course, is why we continue bringing up this multiplayer idea. Nobody is quite prepared to tackle it, but everybody wants to. Eventually we'll spill over one way or the other. Either it will be deemed impractical and thus impossible, or one of us will do it. Or maybe we'll just keep talking about it until our children join the forum, and then they'll start talking about it. Our children's children's children might actually do something about it.
Perhaps a technical approach to the problem is in order. If I weren't getting ready to move my hardware to a new tower in about five minutes, I would fire this off myself. I'll give it some thought and come back later.
Dungeon Master as a game doesn't need multiplayer. You don't even need multiplayer to enjoy it with other people, as this forum shows. The genre, however, could do with a kick to the head. Every game I play, I think, "this would be so much better if I could play it with my friends." Given the maturity of network software and the abundance of network API's, I'm disappointed more people haven't opened a market for well-developed, mentally intense multiplayer games instead of the hundred or so deathmatch clones we've been given. This is the real reason we need to buckle down and give DM its MP booster shot.
Again, technical expertise and motivation are our road blocks. I have a copy of Visual Studio. I know how to use it. I'm warmly familiar with one language and could learn another without too much hassle. I'm familiar with object-oriented programming and have done so many proofs-of-concept, entire forests have died to fill the pages of my notebooks. And yet, that second factor is impassable. A great idea only inspires if you're ready to be inspired by it. Something is missing.
Clearly the most promising clone at this point is Entombed. It satisfies the technology gap that DM has been missing for the last twenty years, despite DM being such a great game. (I'm way beyond appreciating 16-color graphics. I want the same kind of game that will challenge my senses.) Unfortunately, an engine alone cannot promise the type of problem solving enjoyment we expect from DM. It'll look gorgeous, to be sure, but it'll still be the same game under the hood.
That, of course, is why we continue bringing up this multiplayer idea. Nobody is quite prepared to tackle it, but everybody wants to. Eventually we'll spill over one way or the other. Either it will be deemed impractical and thus impossible, or one of us will do it. Or maybe we'll just keep talking about it until our children join the forum, and then they'll start talking about it. Our children's children's children might actually do something about it.
Perhaps a technical approach to the problem is in order. If I weren't getting ready to move my hardware to a new tower in about five minutes, I would fire this off myself. I'll give it some thought and come back later.