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http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/01/23/img:.oni/

IMG: Oni Interview

updated 01:31 pm EST, Tue January 23, 2001

 
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Inside Mac Games has published an interview with Bungie's Hardy LeBel, Lead Designer on third-person action game Oni. Among the topics discussed is the decision to remove multiplayer from the game:

The biggest factor in the decision to remove multiplayer support was the technological hurdle. We had been playing Oni over our office LAN and consistently experienced serious problems synching up the characters in multiplayer battles. The combat style in Oni focusses on precise timing and manuver so we decided that it made more sense to apply our technological and artistic resources to refining the single player experience, rather than continuing to develop a gameplay mode that would benefit a (relatively) limited number of end users. It broke my heart to do it, but I still believe it was the right choice given our circumstances.


by MacNN Staff

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    I am a multiplayer addict

    Some game makers in the industry think that multiplayer is still optional. I on the other hand, don't. Come on, think of what multiplay is at it's core. Unlimited challenge, unlimited replayability, unlimited variety. In single player, even bots that learn your moves still get beat. Usually turning up the difficulty doesn't turn up cunningness or ingenuity, it turns up accuracy and how much damage the computer can take. Whats the fun in playing the same thing except the computer hits you more? Multiplay is the answer, and I don't think the good people at GOD understand that. Perhaps when they see the dirth of sales they will understand...

  1. 0

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    Oni multiplayer

    Did you even read the article? Have you played the Oni demo?
    The game just wouldn't work very well on a network with the precise timing you need to do to pull off some of the movies.
    There's still a market for singleplayer games. Remember, Metal Gear Solid doesn't have multiplayer and it still sells really well on the consoles. Of course, Oni isn't really in the same league as MGS.

  1. 0

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    So fix it

    Yeah, I read the article, and I've played the demo. Not a good enough excuse. There was a time when FPS games didn't work very well on a network either, so people came up with ways to *make* them work, and now you can even play Quake 3 on a 56k modem with some chance of having fun and hitting things (assuming you consider either Quake or shooting stuff to be fun). If the multiplayer game doesn't play well on anything less than a 100Mbps LAN, there are two possibilities:

    - what you're trying to do is simply not possible with current hardware,

    - or, you've done a poor job on the software side and need to improve it.

    Oni is a quick and demanding game, but it's not THAT quick or demanding. When people want to do shared music performances across a network, sure, they'll need 100Mbps or gigabit. For a beat-em-up video game, it could have been done - it'd just take more work and ingenuity. Given the history of Oni, it may not be surprising that the time and ingenuity wasn't available, but that's no excuse either, just evidence of mismanagement.

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