Cooperative RTS Does anyone remember the unadvertised unique co-op feature in the original Age of Empires? If so, did you ever play co-op seriously? Probably not, everyone at the time considered it a bug. But if your color was the same as another players color, you and that player played in a cooperative mode. I played in cooperative mode heavily; three of us to a single “player” and we would usually win against 3 separate players. Cooperative mode allows a huge degree of efficiency and coordinated activity, especially in a game of rather large scale. For example, one of my friends would take care of resource collection and static fortification construction. I would normally focus on making war on land and my other friend would focus on naval warfare. Anyway the point of this post is to get feedback on the cooperative RTS feature. I am considering including it in my upcoming naval war game Task Force Pacific If you bother with visiting my website, don’t bother reading it, its many months obsolete. As are the screen shots. --------------------------------------------------- Square Dance Studios

I thought that was one of the coolest features of Age of Empires I & II...my brother and I lost countless hours playing in that mode over the home LAN...one of us would handle the economy whislt another would handle all the military aspects of the civ. It was tons of fun.

Your project looks very cool, best of luck with it!

I'm working on a RTS/Action hybrid right now, since I'm just one person and I've got a tight schedule I can't include multiplayer in my game...but if I did I would include co-op play for sure!

What are your thoughts on a RTS game with no campaign mode? In my game the cities/starting locations, etc. are totally random. I'm going for a simulated multiplayer AOE type gameplay, rather fast paced. I personally think that type of play is infinatly more fun than a canned "gather 1000 wood, gather 1000 stone to appease some offscreen entity", then repeat...sort of campaign.

- Dan

Age of Empires II , Age of Kings offered this feature, it was not a bug and was an awesome feature which they removed for Age of Mythology. This was a neat feature because humans do things in a linear pattern, but AI has the ability to do many tasks at once, this feature allowed us humans to overcome this AI benefit.

It was fun to create one kingdom with multiple humans, I think Co-OP play in RTS's has just been touched on and there is a lot of room for improvement. I get together with some friends once in a while to play a game of Age of Mythology Lan style. We always play co-operatively against the AI, it is much funner and a sense of helping another player or asking for help or making strategic decisions together is what makes it so much fun.

I for one, think that many times the Cooperative multiplayer mode is not touched on much anymore. It seems to be one of the things that was left behind as games evolved from the old 8 bit systems forward. Its now slowly being re-discovered.

Remember how fun contra was 2 players...or double dragon, guerilla wars, etc.

Fewer and fewer games are coming up with that mode now...but the ones that do are some really fun games.

I like the CO-op mode in James Bonds Everything or Nothing.

It was pretty neat to play.

However most games still want to focus completely on the competiton mode...which is pretty sad.

Besides remember how much more fun Secret of mana was with more than one player.

I even remember playing FF3 (super nintendo) multiplayer with my brother. THey had that feature where you could use two controllers, and both players could play during the battles. It didnt' change the gameflow, or even the rules...it just assigned certain characters to certain players...and in battle that player chose the move during that characters turn

CO-operative RTS? Hmm... Well alot of User Map Setting starcraft maps (and other popular RTS games) have been made with co-op in mind, but the games code prevents anything like he describes in Age Of Empires, with 3 players essentially being "one". Most RTS games i've played usually allow alliances and co-operation, but don't allow units to mingle with another players assets (for instance, marines can't go into another players Bunker or dropship in starcraft, or command his units, or build his own units from another players factory).

I think it could be alot of fun to work in a team as one group delegating activities and co-ordinating tactics. Though from experience some people may not enjoy having their fate tied to another, especially if that "other" is incompetent or a bastard, so i'd probably leave in the option for traditional play, or a very liberal alliance system so you can use another players assets and indepth co-operation but still remain separate entities that can take their units and go off on their own.

*EDIT: doh, don't play other settings much, forgot about the Team Melee setting on Starcraft. Xp

[Edited by - Gyrthok on August 13, 2005 2:53:38 PM]

how did you get the team melee setting up? I would have liked that. By the way, have you guys heard much of Project: Revolution? It is a WarCraft: III Mod that basically ports StarCraft onto the War3 engine. We will probably see Team Melee in that then.

Co-operative RTS would be a lot of fun, and would be especially cool with the gameplay style of Command and Conquer: Generals.