Multiplayer Issues

[Marcus Petrius]

You talk about having different small packages that influence gameplay. Like a module with formations and more stuff like that. Wouldn't that mean that there are really a lot of different versions?

In most games, players with different versions can't play against eachother, or the game gets buggy.

How are you going to solve this?

(I'm pretty sure someone already thought of this, but I'd like to know)

[Ornlu]

Hm, maybe you can disable those packages when playing someone without them?

[Acumen]

Well, the modules wouldn't be designed to limit gameplay to such a large extent. Modules are split up in such a way to cater to a particular user's needs.

For example, someone who just wants to play over the Internet needn't download the singleplayer campaigns. If he doesn't have the Campaigns module, then the Campaigns option is greyed out in the main menu until such time as he downloads it. Naturally, if he wanted to play multiplayer with his buddies, they'll all need to have downloaded the MP module.

The advantage is that the player can download modules over a long period of time and still have gameplay in the meantime, or if, say, he doesn't plan on doing any modding, he doesn't have to spend hours downloading the Scenario Editor or other tools.

That's the theory, anyway. Ultimately the amount it proves beneficial to modularise the game modes will be dependent on just how much space those components actually occupy.