Party On

After PAX, I worked on the opening of Flock of Dogs some more in anticipation of submitting to BFIG. Then I made a big decision. I'm going to attempt to add online multiplayer to Flock of Dogs. Now, I blogged about this like a year ago and decided not to do it then. I was warned that it's hard, takes a long time, and that since this is my first game, it's inadvisable (which, if you ask me, is kinda circular).

The reasons in favor of doing it have become clearer. A quick story.

When you want to fix bugs in your game, oftentimes, the first step is to figure out the conditions necessary to reproduce the bug. Once you've got reproducibility, you should have a pretty clear idea of where in your code the error is hiding.

Now, while this is unsurprising for any of my hardcore fans who've played endless hours of Flock of Dogs, at PAX, many bugs in my game were encountered. Since like I'm at a point where I want my game's demo to be playable (a) without my assistanc or presence and (b) to not crash and (c) to not suck, I want to smash bugs like never before! So. Time to reproduce. And, some might say this could have been forseen, but simulating the input of, say, 6 players, simultaneously, was too hard for little old me. I had anticipated this being a fine opportunity of having friends over, to relieve my great isolation, and, in truth, I've had a very good time when friends and family have demo'd my game. But I have fewer friends in Nashville (and now Long Beach) than in Boston. And the friends I've left behind (or the friends that left me)....I realized that (a) asking them to playtest without me my unfinished co-op game that crashes and glitches all the time, figure out how to recreate that behavior, and report back, would be tough, (b) proposing that they invite their friends over, have enough controllers for their friends, provide chips and salsa and drinks, to playtest my unfinished co-op game that crashes and glitches, figure out how to recreate that behavior, and report back to me, would be hard to organize and (c) asking them to do this like weekly or something....lol.

I like have 3 friends that even play video games. Like..that's partly why I'm making this game is to get my friends to play video games with me. And yeah, the dream was to have all my friends over and we all play together, but I'm a grown up now. And being grown up means that you go on Facaebook and realize all your once best friends live in Boston, Beverly, New York, Coeur D'Alene, Denver, Willits, San Francisco, LA, Long Beach, Las Vegas, Dallas, Nashville, Oxford.

So let's break it down.

PROS:
- provides means of more effective playtesting
- perhaps only way to regularly get 2+ people playing
- only way I'll ever be able to play Flock of Dogs with my little church buddies I grew up with, Ian, Daniel, and Joey, or my old roommates Jon, Johnny, and Jonathan, or my soccer buddies, Kevin, Bedig, Fithian, Lou, Sam, Monty, Oak, Brownie, and Matt T., or with Dave, Salem, and Matt B., or with Bill, Ted, Sarah, Sophie, and Matt S., all my other, leser friends ahahahaha.
- INCREASES THE POTENTIAL MARKET FOR FLOCK OF DOGS BY LIKE A MILLION
- much easier to build an online community
- would develop a marketable skill, you know, if I have to get a job some day

CONS:
- supposed to be really hard
- supposed to take a long time

So I'm giving it the old college try.

(Oh, I don't know what I meant by a quick story except that at PAX there were bugs and then I couldn't recreate them by myself after.)