Correspondence FO

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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AudioBottle
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Correspondence FO

#1 Post by AudioBottle »

I've been looking for a feature like this in the majority of turn-based games that I have played but none have felt like incorporating it. I think that Correspondence FreeOrion would be a killer idea. For those of you who don't know what a Correspondence game is let me explain. Correspondence was originally a way to play chess with someone who was not at the same chess board with you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_chess). You would send them your move in the mail and they would keep a board of their own and repeat the process. The idea behind this is that you can play multiple games over a period of weeks, months, years or whatever. The advantage of having this in FO would be that you could have multiple games going on at once but not have to sit and wait for the other player to be connected to the same server as you. You could make your moves and then go to work/school/sleep and check your game(s) the next day.
There are a few ways that this can be implemented into the game. My idea is that there would be a main Correspondence Game screen where there is a list of all of your saved (locally) correspondence games. In this screen there is a "refresh" button that would get online and check for turn ends from the other player(s). These could be sent over a server or even through e-mail depending on how small we could make these turn files (turn file being all of the data in that player's previous turn). Regardless of who's turn it was you can always view the game state and maybe even plan some pre-moves before your turn started.

I think this would make things more easy going in a 10 player game. Instead of waiting online with the game open, you could play multiple games at the same time and it would get a lot more gameplay in. Obviously this idea would need to be worked on and perfected, but I think that this is worth some thought.

Any ideas?
º¤o AudioBottle

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eleazar
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Re: Correspondence FO

#2 Post by eleazar »

The idea has been mentioned before.

With combat set to "auto resolve", i don't see any gameplay obstacles to correspondence play — assuming someone is interested enough to add the appropriate code.

This is probably one of those ideas that won't go anywhere unless someone new submits a patch.

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Tortanick
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Re: Correspondence FO

#3 Post by Tortanick »

Its actually not as rare as you make out AudioBottle. This is called play by E-mail and its been done in several games, the Dominions series springs to mind.

Really I'd like it if you could control your battles through this too, send battle orders for your fleets along side production and research ques. But that's not going to happen :(

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shrinkshooter
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Re: Correspondence FO

#4 Post by shrinkshooter »

I know how this works, but personally I would never finish a game like this. I would run out of patience. some servers host a correspondence version of the game of Go, which is a game I play, but where a game of go can go on for usually no more than an hour, the C-version of it can take a month or more. If this happened to a game like FO that could last several or many hours normally, I would just run out of patience with the C-version. I might make it halfway through and say to myself "okay, I'm tired of this." I understand not everyone is the same, but a c-version of FO seems like a true test of perserverence and patience.
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Uber-Noob
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Re: Correspondence FO

#5 Post by Uber-Noob »

I think it is one of those features that major commerical developers have stopped including because not many people will buy a game just because it supports corrispondence play. But the few who use it would really benefit from having it. I just wish I had a little more experience coding so that I could help implement it :( .

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AudioBottle
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Re: Correspondence FO

#6 Post by AudioBottle »

shrinkshooter wrote:I would run out of patience. some servers host a correspondence version of the game of Go, which is a game I play, but where a game of go can go on for usually no more than an hour, the C-version of it can take a month or more. If this happened to a game like FO that could last several or many hours normally, I would just run out of patience with the C-version. I might make it halfway through and say to myself "okay, I'm tired of this." I understand not everyone is the same, but a c-version of FO seems like a true test of perserverence and patience.
:shock: a few hours?! I've played Go games for days! and that was with my roomate! As for the patience, I personally love the fact that I can play a single chess game with someone in Norway for a few months and never talk to them. Its a "do it on my own time" kind of thing.. something my girlfriend wont yell at me about. "You've been playing that game for hours!!" :wink:

Maybe this is something I'll have to beg a programmer to do.. anyone want to trade for audio samples?
º¤o AudioBottle

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