Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
require a fixed number of participants, your only options are to give the person a
chance to reconnect, assuming the disappearance was a mistake, to include an AI
element that can take over for the missing player, or to shut down the game.
Tournaments require special consideration. If players compete to get the best w in-
loss ratio, one might deliberately choose to log out rather than lose the game—
which can deny the other person victory. Should the vanishing player be forced
to forfeit? What if the disconnection was an accident, caused by a bad line?
Unfortunately, there's no sure way to tell if it was.
You may find that one of the following suggestions solves the problem of vanishing
players for your game:
■
The vanishing player forfeits the game.
This solution may unfairly penalize
players who are disconnected by accident. It's only a good solution if the network
connections are extremely reliable, such as a local area network. If the players run
the risk of being disconnected accidentally and you are offering something valu-
able to the winner (such as a cash prize in a tournament), then you should not
require vanishing players to forfeit the game. Online gambling games do not
require the player to forfeit; they implement mechanisms for allowing a player to
restart a game in the event of a disconnection.
■
Institute a penalty for disconnections that is less severe than forfeiture.
If a
player disconnects in the middle of combat during an
EverQuest
session, the avatar
remains in the game for a minute, taking additional damage. Unfortunately, the
avatar doesn't fight very well by itself. On the MSN network, players who get dis-
connected once have 10 minutes to reconnect and resume the game; if they fail to
do so, they forfeit or, in some games, an artificial player managed by the server
takes over for them. If they get disconnected twice, they forfeit automatically. In
many games, the game tries to reconnect to the player for a limited amount of
time. In a turn-based game, such as poker, this has a minimal impact on the other
players who have to wait for their turn anyway. Ultimately, the player is assumed to
be away from his computer, and play continues without him until he reconnects.
■
Award victory to whomever is ahead in the game at the time of the discon-
nection.
This solution seems fair but means that the moment someone goes ahead,
she can disconnect to deny her opponent a chance to catch up. Again, you should
consider this only in circumstances in which it is difficult or impossible to discon-
nect intentionally.
■
Record it as a tie.
While this solution might motivate a losing player to discon-
nect intentionally, it still makes a fairly neutral solution.
■
Record it as a “disconnected game.”
You then have to decide exactly what this
means in the context of a tournament. If other players can view the records, they
can tell when someone racks up a suspiciously high number of disconnections and
avoid playing with that person. Or the server can determine that a player is being
disconnected too often and prevent him from playing for a period of time.
