Co-op Campaign

[GreatWhiteBear]

My brother and I don't really like to play against each other. So I thought it would be nice to have a Co-op campaign. I don't have much time myself but we think we can try make a start for the remake.
The Remake has fairly easy multiplayer mode.
Great job guys!

[Siegfried]

Oh boy, I love coop

[GreatWhiteBear]

Thank you, I started working on a co-op fighting campaign(Remake so the CPU is dumb as hell).

[The Dark Lord]

The idea is good, but since Remake does not have a proper AI yet, it's useless to make anything that involves AI players.

[Lewin]

The AI in the Remake isn't as bad as you think it is, if you use the script commands properly it is almost as good as KaM. They place troops in defence positions, and will attack if you set an AI attack command. TAKEALL doesn't work in r2087, (so you must define the number of each troop type to take) but I've implemented it since then. If you attack their troops, they will come after you. If you attack their buildings, they will come to defend them. (as long as there is a defence position with the radius covering the building)

The current limitations of the AI compared to KaM are:
- They do not build
- They will not position troops or attack unless you give them defence positions and attack commands (in KaM the AI can kind of work without any scripting, though not very well)
- They will sometimes pull troops back from an attack if the troops becomes "out of combat" for a few seconds

@GreatWhiteBear: If you are going to make a co-op campaign, you'll need to use defence positions and AI attacks in my mission editor, the KaM Remake editor doesn't allow you to program the AI. If you open a mission in the Remake then save it, it could lose some of the AI commands. (I've since fixed this) You'll need to understand what these commands mean, so I suggest you read the help file in my mission editor or some of the other documentation around.

Please note that the current AI system is temporary and will be rewritten eventually. But that's a huge task so I'm focusing on other features for now, as the temporary system is "okay".

I've been playing a co-op mission with my brother in the Remake. I took the map "stuck in the middle" and modified it so it was both of us against all of the AIs. The AIs attacked us every 20 minutes or so, and while it was not a big challenge, it was fun and the AI felt kind of like KaM. We were using the current repository revision though, so a few things have been fixed since r2087. Most importantly we found and I fixed many bugs in the map editor and game, and we played for many hours with no issues so the game appears to still be quite stable. (I am worried the next demo will have a lot more bugs than r2087 because we've done so much refactoring)
Lewin.

[GreatWhiteBear]

Since it will be an all fighting co-op campaign I came up with an idea.
Say, if you have 4archers and 7lancers left in mission 1, you get them as extra starting units in mission 2.

Who likes this idea?

[The Dark Lord]

Oh sorry, I didn't know the AI does things like that. In that case there are some possibilities.

[GreatWhiteBear]

First Co-op Mission almost finished. Will be at Lewins site before next moanday. AI doesn't attack since I am new with the mission editor. But, I gave you limited troops and not very much time. You also have very limited space to move and station troops.

[GreatWhiteBear]

It is here! First co-op fighting mission.
Don't edit it cause it will mess up the changes made with the mission editor.
http://ifile.it/vo4wiyp

[The Dark Lord]

I could make a co-op mission by just changing your ally in mission 16 TNL from an AI player to a human player.
That might actually still be quite challenging, as the original mission is pretty brutal.

[GreatWhiteBear]

Feedback please

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

I don't like it very much, to be honest..

But maybe that's because I like building missions better.. Also, the map's quite small (meaning that you don't have a lot of room to move around).

[Krom]

I think co-op missions for MP is okay, after all they are already kind of there (just set up your alliances and build towards each other).

Co-op campaigns are a bit too crazy. Make 1-2 coop missions and name them sequentially - there it is I doubt anyone would seriously spend time in MP looking for partners to help him beat the mission to advance to next mission in campaign..

[GreatWhiteBear]

It is a lot easier when you have a brother like I

[Lewin]

Yes exactly. I can't imagine playing through a campaign on the internet with some random, but I can certainly imagine playing it at home with my brother over a few weeks in our spare time. (I've already been playing a coop mission with my brother for 4 hours in the Remake to test the new version, it's fun) Because of that I think we could support coop campaigns but most of them should be for 2 players as it's hard to organise something with more (unless you have two brothers living at home I guess )

I don't think we should just rule it out, I would personally love to play a coop campaign with my brother or even friends from uni/school over the internet. Coop gives you a lot of possibilities and once we have a proper AI I think we can make it quite challenging.

I certainly agree that you'd never play a coop campaign through something like our Saturday matches, but over the LAN with a brother, cousin or friend, or over the internet to a friend you know in real life would not be hard to organise at all. I would really love to see this happen.

But yes, for now they can be single missions which you play sequentially because we have bigger fish to fry.
Lewin.