leaving an online game

hi, im making an online game, ive not played too many of them but ive got enough ideas. what i want to know is what is the best way for a player to leave the game? some games just make ppl dissapear which i dont want to do. some games will keep a player in the game if they are in a battle, even if they get d/c from the net. i dont want ppl getting d/c and being killed because of it. so is there a sensible way to leave a game even if the connection is somehow closed?

i just had an idea about this dissapearing act. rather than ppl dissapearing when they leave the game i want them to remain there. i want to make it so ppl cant talk to them or do anything to them though but i would really like it if there was some way of moving the person to a safe place without having them walk back to the start of the game. im just not sure what would fit one of these type of games.

note: this game has a similar theme to games such as boulders gate and tibia

Could you replace them with an ai?

Could you replace them with an ai?

hmm, thats a good one, all this time ive been thinking how to make someone leave the game realisticly. suppose i could try and come up with a good way to keep them in the game but make it so other ppl cant walk up and kill them or something

If you have the ability to have AI characters to fight at least reasonbly realistically (doesn't sound easy to me, but I'll stick with that premise!), then I would "split" the character's identity when the user leaves.

What I mean is that let's say that Player A and Player B are currently locked in combat. Then player B leaves the game. At that point, from player B's point of view, his character is saved in whatever state it was whenever he left, whatever health, etc. he had at that point. I guess he would move to some sort of holding pen, or become a "ghost" or something until player B ever returned...

From Player A's point of view, however, he'd still be fighting Player B, but now AI is controlling Player B. You might want to indicate through a change in color sheme of the character (not necessarily a dramatic change) that effectively tells Player A that Player B is now under AI control. If Player A kills the AI controlled character this has no effect on the state of Player B's character, which is in hybernation "someplace else".

One big issue though, in addition to smoothly transitioning from Human to AI control on the fly: what if the user has an intermittent lost off Internet connection, say 5 seconds? Or even only 1 or 2 seconds? If the human player has only a slight skip in the connection and then finds his character suddenly moved to a holding pen area (or turned into a ghost), then he/she will be pretty unhappy. So maybe AI should kick in for short gaps (probably with the character's color scheme chaning for that duration) and is then human constrol is restored in place if the Player returns in short order. But after, say, a 15 or maybe 30 second disconnect then the disconnected player's character is put into some form of hybernation or holding pen...

Just a thought,
Mike

you could have the character just turn into something that doesnt affect the game, but is still visible.

Example:
The character logs out, a puff of smoke appears, the character turns into a little woodland critter, that can be examined and thats all.

I used the concept of the lag monster.
Player A and Player B are locked in mortal combat.
Player A looses connection. A battle delay notice is issued to Player B with a timer above player A.

Generally I use a 30 second rule set, if the 30 seconds has passed, player B is presented with an option, to stay locked on player A for another 30 seconds, or release from combat.

If they choose stay locked, the timer resets for an additional 30 seconds.
If they don't choose anything, they are removed from combat with player A after an additional 15 seconds.

If player A doesn't return after 1 minute 30 seconds lapsed time.. the sand wurm lag monster comes out of the ground and swollows them, scaring everyone around them.

This ultimately just disconnects the users connection, or rather resets them out of the game world, when they return, they are where they disconnected at.

hmm. i dont really want to have a holding pen type thing. i want to keep the player completely visible at all times. i suppose the color change idea is good but maby not with color. there would have to be some kind of change to indicate that AI has taken over.

i think if someone closes the game or has connection problems then whatever battle they are in should be ended straight away and points awarded based on what has happened during that battle. the battle then cant start again unless that player is online to accept it. ofcourse there could be slight problems where a user would get disconnected a lot but in that situation the socket will have closed and the player will have to login again. possibly their PC might freeze so the server thinks they are still alive yet nothing moves on their screen. there will be checks in place for something like that but i would need a way to "pause" the battle until their PC is working again.

AI demons and things will just ignore AI players, that part should be simple ;)

sorry about the long reply times. im not getting any notification emails for some reason :confused: