Comment by et1337 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by et1337 | Hacker News Reader

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I worked solo for three years on a 3D cyberpunk shooter all in a custom C++ engine. It was a hybrid single/multiplayer idea, where you would progress through the campaign and encounter other players at the same time. The twist was, in keeping with the cyberpunk theme, once you got to the end it would be revealed that all the players were actually bots the whole time.

At first I was going to commit 100% to the deception. There wasn’t going to be real multiplayer in the game at all, it would all be fake. But then I realized the riot I would have on my hands if I actually tried to sell it as a multiplayer game and there wasn’t real multiplayer. So I wrote real multiplayer. By the end, the project was big enough for a team of 100. I was making cinematics, running a Discord server, trying to figure out how to train an AI to play my increasingly complicated game, it was insane. I ran out of money.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/QnMz27nPbB4

Code: https://github.com/etodd/lasercrabs

Dev blog: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=49277

A game where bots turned out to be real players would have been fascinating though.

I played a game like this before. The whole journey took about 6 hours to complete. Realizing who I was interacting with was one of the best moments I've had playing a video game.

Edited to add: I think I've played two games where the bots turned out to be people. The second game was much longer, and I never finished it - I only learned that the bots were people from a YouTube video later on.

This is a good idea, and it is under-explored!

Spoiler: VGhlIGdhbWVzIGFyZSBKb3VybmV5IGFuZCBOZWlyOiBBdXRvbWF0YS4gVGhlc2UgZXh0cmEgY2hhcmFjdGVycyBoZXJlIGFyZSBiZWNhdXNlIEkga25vdyB5J2FsbCBjYW4gcmVhZCBiYXNlIDY0IGluIHlvdXIgaGVhZHMu

Wow, great spoiler hiding trick!

Base 64 encoding spoilers is next level smart!

.

Riot Games did this one year for April Fools in League of Legends. Normally you can play a 5v5 match against other players, beginner bots, or intermediate bots.

For April Fools, they rolled out "Advanced Bots", which were actually another group of 5 humans, but with their username replaced with "<Character> Bot". Word got out pretty fast, but it was super funny queuing up for a game you'd normally win easily and being surprised at how smart those bots have gotten...

Okay, that's pretty funny.

I don’t remember which iteration it was, but there is a game in the Dark Souls series where one of the bosses is a player that invades your game to be the boss.

It’s a cool twist on the PvP of the game where you can be invaded by a player at almost any time but you can usually opt out of the PvP but this particular encounter is needed to progress.

There is such a boss in dark souls 3 but if you are offline an AI will play as the boss

Yeah that’s one of the caveats, or if there is nobody around to invade you at that particular moment it will be the AI as well I think.

Do both of you look like the protagonist on each console?

no, the human playing as the boss knows they acting in the boss role

So these games are versions of the book "Ender's Game"[0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game

and next thing you know you've committed genocide. Whoopsies

And much easier! See, this is why a team of people is better than just one person with tunnel vision.

I think it’s pretty insane & I’m amazed how you managed to get so far by yourself, especially since you wrote your own engine too. I love the feel of this game, did you ever consider starting a new Kickstarter or Indiegogo to continue/fund this project - I see that your last Kickstarter didn’t reach it’s goal, but maybe you could do with some extra marketing? Kind of a shame it stranded (understatement)..

Thanks for the kind words!

Yep, I ran a failed Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/et1337/deceiver-philoso...

Kickstarter is a lot tougher these days, it’s not as novel as it once was and a lot of people have been burned. You basically have to bring your own fan base of people ready to pay.

I read your blog posts ages ago about how making the camera work for the spider mode, and the origins of the project. Just now learning that it's cancelled, and this makes me sad :( I'd still love to play it!

I love the visual style you achieved - really awesome work. I hope one day you or someone else can pick up the code and make something from it.

Thanks! That would be cool.

Had the opposite idea a while back. Basically you tell people it's a single player Mario-like game but every enemy you meet is another player (flipped along x-axis so both walks to the right and others looking like enemies).

In Super Mario you don't actually need to kill anyone to finish the first level so I thought it would be quite fun to see what happens.

You might have to prime them with that the AI-system is broken and that is why enemies have so different patterns... or maybe people play very similarly?

Am i mistaking that, instead of the Kickstarter campaign the steam early access could have been a better road to "actual revenue"?

It's pretty insane what you did and already had finished!

Yep I think you’re right. Hindsight 20/20!

That's an amazing trailer!

Thanks. :) This comment is my payout for all that hard work!

Why not slap a vr camera and make it available as a vr game? It looks good and i think it may become a hit.

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