How to do COOP in multiplayer

After some searching, I couldn't find a clear thread dedicated to coop play, so I'd like to discuss what's probably the simplest idea here:

2-4 player coop, the extra players would have to be a part of the main characters group and only participate in battles. 

This has been presented before (probably in several places), but also in this thread -
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,2424.msg35845/topicseen.html#msg35845

While it might not be possible to make it into the expansion release, I am hoping it will at least be possible to mod it in.  This could be a lot of fun in LAN situations.  Everyone can play single player to their heart's content, but when friends come over, friends can jump into the battles together.  It might even be helpful to beat some particularly difficult battles.  I know I would love to play some of the bigger battles with my nephews.

Basically, the game could just have the possibility of making every battle into a multiplayer game, where your friends can take over any of the NPCs.  The following would need to take place:

• The ability to "connect" to someone else's game and wait for battles - perhaps duplicate what is happening on the main map for viewing purposes? (not required but might be nice)
• The ability to know that someone else is connected to the game when a battle occurs
• The ability to select a companion to take over for the battle (maybe any unit type present)
• The ability of the multiplayer engine/portion of the game to be fed all the details about the upcoming battle (e.g. Player is sieging X castle, player has X units, defenders have Y units, companions have Z inventory, etc)
• The ability of the multiplayer portion of the game to feed the results back to the singleplayer game (e.g. Player won and had X units killed, Y units wounded, etc)
• The ability of the multiplayer engine to support 100+ AI-controlled units with 2-4 human players present in the game

That last one is the most likely technical nail in the coffin if it's not possible.  I'd at least like to hear if it will be.  If it MIGHT be possible...

What do you guys think?  If enough people want SOME sort of coop, perhaps the core engine can at least be written in such a way to make this possible via a mod. 

So.. you want to play M&B with 2 - 4 people on 1 computer, online?

I'm pretty sure that not what he's saying. What he is saying is he want's a LAN option so that several players (on the same connection) could play the campaign. But not on the same computer. So, basicly, he'd have a few of his friends come over with their laptops, they set the game up, and then they play the campaign.

Correct.

That would be fun. But your saying that you would only join the battle with your character, not your party? So if a friend of yours are fighting a tough enemy you yourself could jump in and help him, but not bring your own army? Or do you want to bring your own army as well?

The ability of the multiplayer engine to support 100+ AI-controlled units with 2-4 human players present in the game

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This will be 0 problem on LAN, it would be tough to do it over the web though, but hundreds of AI on a 1 gig LAN is no problem as long as the host have a massive computer or you run a dedicated server. Of course, a dedicated server option would have to be made.

This is an old "idea" with a lot of merit, especially nowadays since pretty much every other game and their great uncle has coop in them. That said I'd be baffled if the team hadn't thought of this.

I was thinking simpler than that, stygN.  There'd basically be only one campaign game going on, with one main character.  The coop I'm describing would just allow friends on a LAN to jump in only during a battle to take control of a unit (companion/hero or otherwise) that is already in the main character's army.  It's a cheesy version of coop, but beggars can't be choosers, and I still think it would be fun.  You could let your friends choose their equipment on a companion or something.

If we could start there, then we could consider adding more strategic coop gameplay, like you mention with multiple players controlling multiple armies.

So, you picture 4 guys on a LAN, 1 of them is playing his char and the 3 other just sit around a wait for a battle? That could work.. I mean, battles happen really often!

I guess that the computer would take over if someone dropped out? Good idea! We should be able to do this with custom battles. Ones more Immersed than what we have now.

This is much more doable then having a multi campaign LAN game. One guy play and the rest just watch him play and join the battles! Super! It would perhaps get boring after an hour or two, but I would still like to do it, if only I had friends to play with 

its kind of boring to wait an battle what if theres your friends have their own party and you can disade what to do to your party, but you have to be in same faction

I think it's a superb idea.

Now, I'm not good with internet/networking, so I'm not exactly sure how this would work out or if one could connect to each other using the internet and not have to be in the same physical room. That's...Uhm. Cisco crisco oil retard's domain.

I think co-op would work better if everyone had their own hero from their own savegame with their own army and faction. ...This might not be co-op, but I think it would be interesting to play and watch your friends actions with all cheats/hacked profiles, I think it would add a lot of depth. On top of that, on a larger world map with larger armies, you could probably add a little strategy to it; attack one friend from the front, get the other to attack from the back for a terrific pincer-attack.

yeah if I was going to join my friends fight I wouldn't want to be Marnid with just a club.  We should be able to import our own characters as NPC's or just for that fight

This would be a welcome option if coop multiplayer (in any form) could be added to the game. 

May as well echo what I said in the other thread: when I started tempting my buddies with a descriptin of M&B, the first question was "multiplayer?".  Getting together for LAN fun can be a blast, but limiting it to battles takes some of the fun out of it.

The way I see it, you have two options in structuring it to accomodate PCs.

1) Multiple PCs in the same campaign, who can join battles that others start -- so it ends up being like multiple factions in a battle.  If the number of NPCs players can control is restricted to a lower number, then this becomes more manageable. It also allows them to pursue alternate agendas or even co-ordinate as units to strike an enemy kingdom on multiple fronts at the same time.  With the expanded RP options of Warband coming up, this could be a blast... nevermind the variety present in mods.

2) Perhaps it would simplify things to automatically group PCs into a party, with one of them designated as "the lead"? Other PCs would just be treated like Hero NPCs, in terms of the game responding to them.  An option to transfer the "leader" flag to let different characters take the lead at different points would be a good thing.

Now, the option to either band together in a party or pursue seperate agendas at the same time... that would rock.  But I'm sure some/most of this would be a pain in the ass to implement. Still, a guy can dream.

^^ What these guys said.

I Did what your supposed to do and searched for a co-op thread before starting my own and this is pretty much what i had as my idea for a coop LAN play.

As has been stated above there are pretty much two ways you can do it.
You have one army and individual players are their imported characters playing as heroes in the army.
Or you have multiple armies controlled by each player ( to do this you would have to go either fully turn based or fully real time (no pausing))

My thought was of the first one cause it then makes it easier to have more Players joining without upping the army sizes in the battles by too much. And you also have only one controller. I'd imagine the non-controller people would have access to character reports/stats while the driver goes around and also perhaps a button to overthrow the current leader if he's doing something stupid..IE assualting a major city with 5 people...

I imagine there'd have to be quite a bit of initial modifications to get some of the ground work but as warband is already established connections and stuff like that should be easy-ish.

Advantages would be that you could have it as a kinda casual LAN game, ie have a movie going in the background, drink a few beers, one person controlling the army and then be like Guys battle time, all turn back to computers and woop some people


Yeah. My thoughts on coop.

Okay, I accidentally posted a thread with near enough exactly the same idea, I locked it, I did do searches prior but my search terms were vague and didn't lead me here, but here's the text from that thread.

I realize that a cooperative campaign map isn't going to be made, which I don't care for, but this could be a suitable alternative that may actually work within the game and allow for cooperative gameplay between two or maybe more players.

The second player joins the first players 'world' and becomes listed as a companion party member, he brings his own character out of any of his save profiles, and that character is treated like a regular party member outside of battle, receives daily training exp, maybe a wage and brings his own inventory, this way two players could start a whole game together with coordination or just two players could drop their best characters into each others parties for a bit, essentially that second player has no control over world map movements, beyond telling the first player what to do in a chat.

Upon entering areas, hitting random events and so on, both players drop in and the game continues like normal, save for the extra player.

I'm not sure how receiving money would be handled, both players receive the total payment? The payment is halved for each of them? Should they be able share money? Also on the monetary note are shop menus, both players would see these individually (starting from when you click on the shop button in a town menu) this would allow for both players to do their own thing, maybe input a way that the first player can force them to leave if the second player does not exit the shop menu.

As for tournaments, I'm not too sure about this idea, but always have the players on the same team until the final rounds of the tournament, and if one gets knocked out he must spectate until the other player wins or gets knocked out.

Maybe saving a joint game could be possible so both players could have an ongoing campaign that they can both pick up again next time they play?

I hope you like my idea, I myself don't know how far the mount and blade engine works and I don't know its limits, so I wouldn't know if this were feasible at all.

I think implementing a multiplayer campaign system is one of the most important suggestions for the game and one that many people want. If we can't have a complete multiplayer campaign, going the co-op LAN route with one main party and multiplayer battles is definitely worth using. I know my brothers and I would make good use of the feature.

Egbert said:

I think implementing a multiplayer campaign system is one of the most important suggestions for the game and one that many people want. If we can't have a complete multiplayer campaign, going the co-op LAN route with one main party and multiplayer battles is definitely worth using. I know my brothers and I would make good use of the feature.

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Yeah, some people have said that the net wouldn't handle huge battle numbers, so if they do LAN that should be fine, and if its just one party then it isnt exactly easy to get HUGE numbers on the field unless you are using the battle sizer, which would be cool btw. Either way a LAN option would be loved, cause you could go with 2 mates and a party or at bigger LANs you could have the entire LAN in one party and have epic strategies being played out....