Hello and welcome to this devblog about a very important part of the game. As we mentioned in the first devblog, players can’t see what the other player is doing. More than a Game Design consequence, it’s a wish from our part to base gameplay around the dialog between the two players.
Communication in a game adds a new dimension that is hard to handle as it’s hardly controllable or measurable. It’s important to understand for the level design that if a puzzle is hard to solve alone with access to both screens, it’s even harder for two players who don’t have any vision on their partner's level.
In a cooperation game, the difficulty comes from the ability to be understood by other players. Talking clearly and precisely requires communication skills. The more complex a message is, the harder it is to deliver. And the more information you have to deliver, the harder the game becomes.
Palallel requires players to cooperate while having only 50% of his field of view and action. There’s a lot of things to explain and describe that are hidden from the other player.
Not forgetting the fact that players need to find the puzzle solution. Trying to explain something can be tough when players are in uncharted waters.
As each player has to interact with their partner, they need to express their respective needs.
A tool is necessary to allow players to exchange information. Here is what we explored :
- Vocal communication : quite classic, talking directly to the other player is very effective. It’s the most obvious and fast method to explain something to someone. However, it has some limitations. It’s really hard to describe the layout of a level and even more, as the information you give to the other player is temporary (in contrast to text messages for example).
This is our first choice for now. Even though it’s not enough and it requires being able to speak clearly and efficiently which is not the case for all of us.
There are no vocal communication tools integrated into the game for now. We are counting on external tools like Discord or Teamspeak. We will discuss this further in another devblog.
- Written communication : even more classic. This one is slower than a vocal conversation but has the merit of being accessible (no need for a microphone or a headset) and stays even after the message has been transmitted. It can be complementary to vocal communication.
We currently have a chat in the game.
- Drawing : one of the ideas we considered was a shared drawing space. Two issues with this solution: allowing a player to draw like this would break the game’s balance as nothing forbids a player to draw his level and share it with his partner. The other problem is server performance if the drawing is in real-time (this will also be discussed in another devblog on networking).
We then thought about drawing temporary lines that the other player can see but it doesn’t eliminate the issues but rather reduces them.
This idea has been put aside but got quickly recovered for another system.
- Visual signals : inspired by League of Legends, it consists of being able to spot a position on the screen to share a position temporary to the other player but on his screen. Yet, this signal isn’t sufficient. It would be mainly used to give his position or the position of an object to the other player. This can be abused as players can “draw” temporarily the wall position and the level's layout.
We searched for other solutions like :
Ø Spotting an object/exit/door and make it appear temporarily on the screen of the other player.
Ø Spotting an object/exit/door to only signal the presence of an object (limiting the “spot” feature only to objects).
- Emote : more subsidiary, we would like to add Emotes to send pre-made messages like “Need a key”, “Need a box”, “Stuck in front of a door”, “Ask to open a door”...
We think about mixing all of these and making a system where you can spot an object like a door and trigger an emote linked to this door. We aren’t sure about this system for now.
We considered a lot of possibilities but these research and playtests revealed two issues :
- It was difficult to talk about a specific object in the level. Players need to be able to “spot” a specific object orally.
- Showing the layout of the level to the other player would make the game too easy.
Keys in the game already have colors. A player could say to his partner “I need a blue key” for example. The color identification has been extended to all objects. “I’m stuck with a blue door and it can be opened when the red button on the other player screen is activated”.
We started looking for a way to give a color to a particular part of each object.
In the end, it seemed like the player needed more help to think rather than to communicate.
Meanwhile, the artistic direction linked to the school board has been adopted. We then thought about integrating a way for the player to create his own landmarks. We developed a tool that allows each player to draw on the level like a board. These drawings are only visible to the drawing player and not the partner. This tool will guide the player throughout his reflection.
Here is what we think we will keep at the moment : written chat, vocal communication, and the drawing tool. If we feel that the players need something else to communicate on top of that, we will add emotes or targeted emotes.
To summarize, the problems that come along with our game system require a way to communicate efficiently without breaking the game’s balance around the lack of global visibility.
That concludes this case on the issues that communication between players raises.
Thank you for following us throughout these devblogs and have a great weekend !
Thomas Lourties