Design Player 2 "auto-death", is it good game design?

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Biddum

Guest
In multiplayer games, a camera will likely follow "player 1" as they progress through a level/room. Some games will "auto-kill" player 2 if player 2 is outside player 1's camera view for a certain amount of time ( a few seconds). Is this good game design? Should player 2 be punished for "not keeping up" with player 1? Leaving player 2 without any consequence could cause confusion/frustration if they are off the screen and trailing too far behind.

Some modern co-op games would place player 2 into some sort of bubble and move them right to player 1 so they are "caught up". Is this "fair" for player 2? Is there a general preference on how to treat player 2/3/4 if they trail behind or too far ahead of player 1? I am curious to see what people think.
 

andev

Member
Should player 2 be punished for "not keeping up" with player 1?
This is one of the most annoying things when playing a game for the first time, with a friend who's played for a long time. They're up on ahead, slicing through enemies like a knife through hot butter, while I'm still stuck trying to get used to the jump mechanics.
 
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manopoliy

Guest
I prefer to have a splitt or shared camera the shared cam points towards the middle point of all player characters that deals at least with the fairnes of the 1/2/3/...player so as only personal preference I would say punishing players to get out of the camera view is bad design.
But in the end as always it all depens on the game you build and if it enhance your game design like do the players have to stick together or do they have to explore...
There is a game where you race a Jn'R parcour and the cam follows the first place and the field of view gets always smaller and you lose the run when you get out of the view.
In this situation it is an important game mechanic.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
One simple thing you could do is to center the view to the players' average position, and possibly stop players from walking offscreen as well. Now both the player that's ahead and the other players will suffer if they get too far away from each other, so they're encouraged to stick together without you needing to change any mechanics.
 
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Biddum

Guest
@Yal, that sounds like a great idea and is something I have not considered. In that case, would a game need a separate camera object that constantly moves to the average distance location of the two (or three or four) players? I am trying to think of how to develop an approach like this.
 
Resident Evil 5 has a mechanic where if one player isn't ready or is behind, you can't move on to the next area until the both of you press a button to "be ready". Perhaps that would work.
 
Yal's idea is good, it's one of the simple ones I like the most in games. You'd probably only still need the one camera, it itself would track the positions of the players and average them out.
My favourite but more complicated solution is smart split-screen. Like in Toejam and Earl on Megadrive. When you are together, the camera keeps you both in view, but if you move too far away, the game becomes split screen, with the angle of the split representing your position relative to the other player. So you can always easily join back up.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
@Yal, that sounds like a great idea and is something I have not considered. In that case, would a game need a separate camera object that constantly moves to the average distance location of the two (or three or four) players? I am trying to think of how to develop an approach like this.
It's probably the easiest approach (I'd do it with just maths and setting the view_ variables manually, but an object is fine too). Simply add all players' X/Y coordinates together, then divide by the number of players, and move the camera to that spot. And if there's zero players, don't do anything at all. (You might or might not want to handle dead players as players for the purpose of coordinates, and you might or might not want the camera to move with a max speed so it's not too jerky)
 
Or you could do it like how the LEGO Harry Potter games do it. If the two players are close enough, the camera will adjust to one screen. However if the two players fall away from each other, the screen splits. Sounds clunky at first but if done correctly it's surprisingly seamless.
 
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