Lets put it this way:
While playing DF you will want to pause, yes?
If so, then you're going to need to build a sychronized system that can handle one person pausing without disrupting other players, for example the way the MAngband does it (turns auto-happen, but have some delay so those people busy shuffling around in their inventories for a thrown weapon aren't mobbed in the time it takes to do it). Downside: UNGODLY slow pace. Took me 10 minutes to walk across town to the dungeon (and then I quit).
If no, then you need to find a way to deal with people not playing the same amount every day and not at the same time. I.E. Forts Go Offline. There are various problems with having a fort not-exist for 12 years while everyone else putters along (or not). When the fort comes back, how does it synch up? It just lost 12 years, was it running itself? If so, we need to have a [R]etire Fort option in single player FIRST otherwise this can't be done. If it's not running itself, how do you deal with the differing date? We can ignore the year for the most part, but if he logged out in Granite and the date is now Hematite, how do you reconsile? Ignore it too, and his date is what his date is? But if the point of MPDF is to interact with other players, then...what was the point of having a bunch of unsychronized forts all running their own timelines doing their own thing?
If you're sending trade caravans (or armies) back and forth then you need to be able to reconsile that time difference,
especially if the player logs out.
"I be sorry captane, but tha fort be gone. Just gone, left a giant hole in tha ground."
And god forbid you have this world running both Fortress Mode and adventurers. What if an adventurer wandering around in a fort suddenly finds that that fort's player just went offline? How do you deal with him?
And as a note, I've been assuming that all the players are running their own forts, if you want a bunch of people doing ONE fort, that introduces another issue: you need to have everyone on at the same time, otherwise it just goes back to the daisy chain we currently have only using more network traffic and a dedicated server.
By the way, who's running the server?
You can't win an argument with Draco, because he has a way that he plays this game and any other way will definitely not work. You could come up with a totally workable system that needs no pausing because the interface actually doesn't suck allowing logging of activities, quick zooming to events on click, all kind of usability functions not capable with the current interface, the server runs at a constant speed and he would try to find another reason why it won't work because it doesn't fit in his world view. It's no use arguing with him.
Mostly because I contain all of the collected knowledge of all the previous arguments for why a multiplayer DF could and could not work. It comes up that often.
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Topic: Platformer multiplayer racing. And horsejacking (Read 2705 times)