[Hajo]

I'm facing a problem in my latest project. It's a multiplayer game and there are narrow passages. If one player decides to go AFK for whatever reason in such a passage, it is effectively blocked for everyone else. I'm looking for solutions and two came to my mind:

1) Design maps in a way that there are no "1 person wide only" passages.

2) Let players move 'through' other players if the next square behind or besides them is free.

The first one seems to still have problems though. Even wide passages can still be blocked by groups of people. And some maps just loose the right feel without narrow passages.

Moving 'through' other players looks better. The narrowest passages still appear to be 1 meter wide, graphically, so it's easy to imagine one can pass by another player with a bit of squeezing and pushing.

What do you think? Is it a good idea to let players pass other players this way?

[BadMrBox]

Moving through the other players is the best way to go I would think.
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[RampantCoyote]

Absolutely let them go through each other. I remember griefers doing this in EverQuest in Cazic Thule - some Ogre would sit down and block an escape route. Nothing is as frustrating.
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[Hajo]

Thanks for the feedback :) I'll do it this way then, and let players move 'through' other players.

[Adam]

Both of your methods would allow players to be dicks if they wanted to group together to block passageways.
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[Verious]

[Hajo]

I noticed that too. I could recursivly apply the procedure until the chain ends, but I feel uncertain if that is good.

Right now I've decided to ignore this problem and go on with other tasks while now and then thinking about it.

[DeveloperX]

What I would do would be to simply push the other player that is in the way out of the way so that you may pass, and then push the other player back where he was located.

Something like an 'excuse me' command would be cool, that way you could walk up to players to talk, or say excuse me, and they move so that you may pass.

An example (using verious' graph)

# = Wall
A,B = Other player
U = Player character
>> = Direction of travel

The problematic situation:
##########
U >> AB
##########

Solution part 1:
You issue the 'excuse me' command to player A
who then moves behind you
##########
UAB
##########

to

##########
AUB
##########

Solution part 2:
You issue the 'excuse me' command to player B
who then moves behind you

##########
ABU
##########

Solution part 3:
Once you move two spaces away from the players, they will return

##########
AB__U
##########

to

##########
_AB_U
##########

I think that it would be effective.
Goodluck.
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[Hajo]

That'd be cool indeed :)

Server would have to track who was pushed and place them back when their place becomes free again. But this could be handled.

[DeveloperX]

[Hajo]

Thank you for your offer DeveloperX :)

A state machine is nice, but doesn't fit too well into Sonnheim. Most of the server code is event driven. The most easy way would be to add a "move" type event for the pushed player with a delay of a few seconds, and a destination back to his original place.

The server checks the event queue regularly and once events are due they get executed. Execution can give a result code to put the event back into the queue with a new delay.

So the server would try to put the player back to his original position every few seconds until it succeeds. One could also set a limit on tries.

In a way the events are like state transitions, so your idea maybe fits better than I first thought, it just come with a bit of a disguise ;)

[DeveloperX]

Ahh. Okay, well goodluck with it. :)
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