Game Development - The Gap

By Cyrris

Back in 2001 when I first started making appearances on GameSpy’s community forums, my restricted internet connection meant that I was never really able to play games online with anyone who I met there. Quite often I’d have to just sit back and read about the fun which other members had while teaming up to play Tribes 2 or StarCraft or a bunch of other games. While most people at the time had meager 56k connections, which were sufficient, I didn’t quite have that. At my house we had our 56k modem shared on the home LAN between 2-4 computers depending on who was around, and usage was restricted to just a couple of hours a day.

So, it comes as no surprise that the first gaming experience I had online was with the text-based browser game Mech Wars, with NukeZone following soon after. Being websites, they didn’t require much in the way of bandwidth or time - although after getting deeper in, I began to realise that time was actually something that was more important than I first thought. After a while, in both games, a pretty clear gap was evident between players who could log in at any time, and those who had severely restricted access like myself. Some of the focus behind the development of The Project has been to see if this gap is still a problem, and if so, if it can be minimised.

As mentioned in previous articles in this series, one of the main differences between Mech Wars and NukeZone was how time was handled by the game engine. In NukeZone, everything was done to the second, and attacks were instantaneous - no travel time for your forces, instant results. Mech Wars did have travel times, with all military actions rounded off to the nearest “tick” - usually a tick being an hour. Seeing as I decided long ago not to go down the same path as NukeZone, I won’t be talking about it much and will instead be drawing mostly from experiences in Mech Wars. I have in the past generally tried to keep things above the game-specific level, but really this is best illustrated with examples.

Launching an attack against an enemy base would usually involve a travel time of around 9 hours, followed by 2-3 hours of combat, and then 9 hours again for your forces to return home (assuming they survived). It’s not exactly quick stuff, and I often launched attacks just before going to bed, knowing that I could still retreat at the last minute (upon waking up in the morning) if any intel came in suggesting I should. Now, this makes it seem entirely reasonable that the game could be played by only logging in once or twice a day, which is indeed how I first played it.

Looking at it from the defenders position though, the closest allies who can help defend you are 4 hours away, which means the window of opportunity for you to ask for defensive help is now just 5 hours against a typical attack - an hour less if the enemy knows to launch their attack mere seconds before a tick change. A person who logs on only once or twice a day has very little chance of being able to defend himself properly unless he has a force so huge that he can always handle things on his own - extremely unlikely.

Some Mech Wars rounds shortened ticks to being only 15 minutes, and while fun, just proved that anyone without day-long access to the web could not possibly do well for themselves. Hour-long ticks may test some players patience, but even then, a player really needs to log on 3-4 times a day to monitor their progress.

Given this, we come to a few possible methods to minimise the gap in The Project:

1. Making ticks even longer so less happens while a player is offline
2. Automatically notify a player’s allies if he has incoming hostiles
3. Allowing players to preset times to automatically launch attacks
4. Clever forces which automatically retreat if they encounter a force which is far superior

Now, I have listed these in order of unlikeliness. Making ticks even longer is simply going to repulse any players who can log on many times a day. Given that broadband penetration is leagues beyond what it was back in 2001, and the ease with which many can access the web from work or uni, it doesn’t make sense to alienate the more dedicated players of the game to cater for the casual players, who may not like the long times either.

The second point is far more reasonable given the potential timezone differences between clan members, but also removes a key facet of the game. I mentioned before how a community benefits from the interaction between players, and removing a vital reason to communicate would hamper this. At least for the time being, I’ve decided not to go with it.

The third point is something which could be genuinely helpful for clans with members in many timezones, and is actually one which I am still deliberating over. It does have aspects of #2’s problem, but definitely not on the same scale as attacks would still be organised as a team. On the other hand, it comes with other complications, such as the player going to bed, and waking up to find his forces auto-launched for an attack elsewhere, just when an unexpected raiding party paid his own base a visit while he slept.

The last point is something I probably will implement as an option, as it’s useful even for players who can log on quite often. Retreating from a battle one tick early can often mean the difference between coming home with half your forces, or with nothing.

All in all, I’m actually not implementing that much to minimise the gap, and the reason is simple: the gap is not as important as it was to me 5 years ago. This is of course rather subjective - I have switched from 56k-once-a-day to broadband 24/7, and some people haven’t. However, the people that haven’t are far fewer than they used to be, and given that my game’s target audience is the 18-30 demographic, that only works more in my favour, being a tech-savvy bunch of people.

I only started playing Mech Wars in the beginning because I couldn’t play 3D games online, so while it appears that more people having broadband will make less people bother with text-based games, it’s actually not something I am worried about. The first time I played Mech Wars, many people who joined me were those who also played Tribes 2 online, and since I got broadband myself, I have stuck around playing them as well - a testament to how enjoyable (…addictive) they can be.

When reading over the options, it’s clear that the benefits of closing the gap just don’t outweigh the consequences. The hour-long tick on its own seems to be the perfect compromise between dedicated players and the rest of the field in this day and age. Even text-based gaming has moved along a fair bit since 5 years ago. Or at least it will have, once The Project is done.

Series Index

1. Game Development - The Project
2. Game Development - Playing Fair
3. Game Development - Communities
4. Game Development - The Gap
5. Game Development - Frustration