cooperative FFR

[heyitsmee]

can you imagine it? playing a file together with one health bar one hit stat and one total score
with the right kind of chart amazing moments could be achieved i would think

i dont see this happening because its like creating a full new game but the idea itself is worth posting

2 regular 4 arrow charts loading at the same time only they are different and completing one another while having the same music

pure multiplier game rank list will look like

1.player1 & player2 - score

cooperative play? enjoyable?

[Villiex]

This idea makes me salivate. I don't know if it would ever happen, but if it did, I'd tie my friends to their computer chairs.

[Adamaja456]

that would be so much fun to play when my friend comes over. Instead of switching every song, we can just play a song together!

[All_That_Chaz]

I've always thought this would be a great idea. It seems possible with the multiplayer engine, the staff would just need to either find a way to apply two different stepfiles to the one song or separate one stepfile into two streams. Also the question of how to store the scores would be interesting. I would follow the multiplayer standard and have its own area, but I think that's just for display purposes. The trouble is that the co-op files would have to be completely new songs because you couldn't compare a player's co-op score to a score playing on his own. Maybe if you took the joint score and treated it as a single score and applied it to both players that would work, but that closes the door on making co-op files twice as hard as Death Piano because two people are playing at once. If it were me, I'd make completely new files and follow, say, guitar hero as closely as possible, meaning co-op scores would be completely separate from regular scores.

Either way it would be a beast to get working, but I'd absolutely love it. Opens the doors for co-op tournaments too which would be sweet.

[heyitsmee]

omg All_That_Chaz i have that game from your avatar on my Nintendo its called punch-out with a picture of mike tyson on the cover lol

i punch that drunk Russian in the belly..

[Mans0n]

I dont like the idea, personally. I like it the way mp is now. Because what if you say AAA a FMO and get oni. Well with co op it wouldint count because it would be for co op and not for sp.

[heyitsmee]

i dont see how any current song could be played in this cooperative mode because you would need specifically designed co-op charts so i dont see any oni problem

[windsurfer-sp]

It would be an individual game with individual stats etc...

There would be 1.5 million*1.4999 million possible user-name pairs to rank.

PS. FFR nearly has 1.5 mill members. I remember when we hit a million, how long ago was that?

[blackjack2300]

agreed, should definately be implemented

[Tasselfoot]

it would need completely unique charts... doubles charts. it's something that we can consider for 3rd style, but it would definitely not be an initial release type thing.... also, the logistics of it would be pretty rough. plus, scoring would be wonky. Since, say, Rubix and Laggy could play together and get Rank 1. Then Rubix and Sprite could play and get rank 2... then Rubix and Darkshark, rank 3. Then Laggy and Darkshark, rank 4. etc etc etc.

[Frozen Beat]

Uh...so in general, is this possible?

[heyitsmee]

Originally Posted by Tasselfoot

Rubix and Laggy could play together and get Rank 1. Then Rubix and Sprite could play and get rank 2... then Rubix and Darkshark, rank 3. Then Laggy and Darkshark, rank 4. etc etc etc.

whats wrong with that? thats exactly the co op spirit will lead to entertaining ranks and outcomes with constant room for improvement and endless pair options

[l u l l a b y]

Wouldn't it make more sense to have separate scores for each person's side of the chart? So if I was playing and AAA'd my side and my partner gets 5 billion misses, it wouldn't affect my rank 1 score at all.

[All_That_Chaz]

On scoring, just alphabetize the names to stop duplicates from showing up (So you don't have a score for Rubix/Laggy and Laggy/Rubix), then the sql query would just look for scores in which your username was one of the two if you want to look at your stats. Of course it's going to lead to a different high score for every possible combination that plays the song, but that really can't be helped.

I suppose one way you could limit the number of scores that show up would be to create some sort of UI where the user chooses five or so users that he can record co-op scores with, and the others won't be recorded but will just be for fun (which co-op lends itself to anyway). If player 2 is on player 1's list or vice versa, the flag will be set to record the score, otherwise the flag won't be set so don't. Maintainability deserves a mention here. For scores to count, you have to have the user on your list. Does that mean scores should be wiped after you remove that user? I would say no - I don't think it would be horrible to leave scores in the database for pairs that are no longer recording-pairs.

The limitation of the ability to record co-op scores would also be a neat subscriber perk. Like you can have 1 person on your recording list if you're a non-sub but 5 if you subscribe.

[Tasselfoot]

Something like this should be possible, yes. But a long long time away from any kind of implementation. Which would give plenty of time to come up with a reasonable way of recording and displaying high score tables.

[All_That_Chaz]

Going along with my idea, you could display the scores like lvlranks but with a drop-down menu at the top with the users on your list to choose which set of scores you want to see. If you wanted you could leave every historical pairing that has been on your list so you can see your scores with people who you can't currently record scores with. Or in lieu of a drop-down menu you could just put a free textbox and force the user to type in the name, but I don't like that idea as much. That's another reason why I like only having one user for non-subs. You wouldn't need to have the drop-down menu at all. You could just show the scores for that users recording pair. However I don't really know how much space or time that would save and would be difficult to customize based on user role. One space-saver would be to not include average ranks at all. I think that's a plausible idea since it would take a lot of effort for a recording pair to even play all the songs.

[Tasselfoot]

i think it would only be fair to record a users highest score, regardless of pair. the problem then arises is that when Rubix/Laggy get their top score together.... then I get my top score with Rubix... how does that work? I guess it would NOT show for Rubix, but would show for me.

There still is a limited amount of data that we'd be able to store.

Then again... this entire conversation is way ahead of its time. No need to worry about stuff like this when the biggest issue would be... when the hell would we have the time to code it? And who would be making the charts for it?

[All_That_Chaz]

Actually that would be easier than anything I've said. When the user gets their highest score, just record who the other user was as another thing to display in that user's co-op high score report. The concept of rank gets very fuzzy since each user gets one rank per song. I guess the song high score report would be something like this:

In this case there are three real games in the system where Rubix and Laggy together got a 2,000,000 on a the song, Tass and Sprite got a 1,999,960 on it, and Tass also played with Rubix and got 1,999,980.

User..........Partner..........Score..........Rank
Rubix..........Laggy..........2,000,000..........1
Laggy..........Rubix..........2,000,000..........1
Tass..........Rubix..........1,999,980..........3
Sprite..........Tass..........1,999,960..........4

The idea is that each user appears only once in the first column, but great players will be listed many times as the partner. And a duplicate score will always display if two users have one game as their best score, meaning one of them didn't find someone better. Say Tass and Sprite got a 1,999,960, and then Tass played the song with Rubix. Tass's score improves and the partner is now Rubix, and Sprite's stays the same, removing the duplicate score, and since Rubix has a better score with Laggy, it doesn't create a new duplicate.

As for the stepfiles, as far as I can tell it would be normal people like you and me that make dual charts for songs. And as for time to code, find the right people and take the time you need. I really don't see how that is part of the discussion.

[Tasselfoot]

it's a matter of getting ahead of ones self. we tend to do it often with 3rd style discussions. we're talking about general plans for multiplayer or for the layout or song selection... whatever. then we start getting narrower and narrower in our discussion, until 3 of us are arguing over whether we want to use 8.6 ariel font or 10.4 times new roman for the artist website link that doesn't even work.

[All_That_Chaz]

I guess I'm getting excited, but it's hard for me to think about what's possible when I don't know the system, so I just try to think about what the end product should look like and wait to be told what I want is impossible. Reporting is something I'm more familiar with than the nuts and bolts of the game itself so I looked at that instead.

As far as the co-op gameplay, I see it as another option with the multiplayer menu. There would be rooms and a chat that function exactly the same as they do in MP. If you don't want to make a separate option, you could force the user to choose between MP or co-op when making the room and then have some sort of ID next to the room name to show the users what goes on in there (Like put a [MP] or [CO] next to the room name). The only difference is that you'd have to restrict the song selection to those songs designated as co-op. The gameplay would be very similar to MP but would have two stepfiles going to the same song. I imagine it's there where a lot of the problems arise, but I don't know anything about flash.

I promise not to get to caught up in detail.