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Multiplayer: Difference between revisions
added movie shown at MW NY 2000 since its gameplay was recorded through MP; corrected date for E3 1999; added date of cancellation announcement
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The lack of multiplayer in the final product may have been the biggest blow to Oni's reception. Combined with complaints about the AI, players wanted to be able to play against other humans. The public viewed this as another sign of the game's incompletion, comparing Oni to FPS titles with multiplayer such as Unreal and Quake, and failing to recognize that melee combat over the Internet was nearly impossible at that time (and still is; [http://wolfire.com/overgrowth Overgrowth] a.k.a. Lugaru 2 promises LAN support only; a notable exception from Oni's time period seems to be [[State of Emergency]], a melee-oriented game that apparently had reasonably fluid online multiplayer). | The lack of multiplayer in the final product may have been the biggest blow to Oni's reception. Combined with complaints about the AI, players wanted to be able to play against other humans. The public viewed this as another sign of the game's incompletion, comparing Oni to FPS titles with multiplayer such as Unreal and Quake, and failing to recognize that melee combat over the Internet was nearly impossible at that time (and still is; [http://wolfire.com/overgrowth Overgrowth] a.k.a. Lugaru 2 promises LAN support only; a notable exception from Oni's time period seems to be [[State of Emergency]], a melee-oriented game that apparently had reasonably fluid online multiplayer). | ||
Some questioned why Bungie did not at least include LAN play functionality, since visitors to Bungie's booths were able to play | Some questioned why Bungie did not at least include LAN play functionality, since visitors to Bungie's booths were able to play LAN games (pictured at right, video below) at the [[wikipedia:Electronic_Entertainment_Expo|E3]] of May 1999 in Los Angeles, the New York City [[wikipedia:Macworld_Conference_%26_Expo|Macworld Expo]] of July 1999 and the San Francisco Macworld Expo of January 2000. However, multiplayer seems to have had latency issues even on LAN; Hardy LeBel [http://web.archive.org/web/20010816164220/http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/00/lebel/ stated], "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." Additionally, without more time to develop content for MP mode, the developers did not want to frustrate players with an incomplete netplay feature. | ||
For a period of time, starting from the announcement that MP had been cut, until some months after Oni's release, it was hoped that Oni would | For a period of time, starting from the announcement that MP had been cut (on day 3 of E3, May 13, 2000), until some months after Oni's release, it was hoped that an update to Oni would add in multiplayer. However, as Bungie no longer owned the code, it would have fallen on Take Two to perform this work. Whether due to the difficulty of learning and building on Bungie's code, or lack of financial motivation, no patches were made to Oni. | ||
Video evidence: | Video evidence: | ||
* | *[http://iritscen.oni2.net/movies/Oni%20at%20E3%201999.mov E3, May 1999]. GameSpot's brief coverage of Oni at E3 shows more MP gameplay; though brief, this is maybe the clearest footage. Are there 9 players in that game!? | ||
* | *[http://iritscen.oni2.net/movies/Brent%20at%20MW%20NY%201999.mov Macworld NY, July 1999] (4MB). In a one-minute interview, Project Lead Brent Pease talks about Oni, and some footage of attendees playing MP is shown. | ||
* | *[http://iritscen.oni2.net/movies/Steve%20demoes%20netplay.mov Macworld SF, Jan. 6, 2000] (15MB). In this excerpt from the Day 2 broadcast of BungieTV, Oni's animator, Steve Abeyta, works with one other player (Jim Ruiz?) to give us the longest look at MP. | ||
*[http://iritscen.oni2.net/movies/Harry%20at%20MW%20NY%202000.mov Macworld NY, July 20, 2000] (9MB). Though MP had been cancelled by this time, Oni Central's Harry shows an Oni video which seems to have been recorded using players running around in MP. | |||
Firsthand fan accounts of MP | Firsthand fan accounts of MP. The first four are negative even about the promise of decent LAN performance, and the fifth post is more optimistic. | ||
*http://carnage.bungie.org/oniforum/oni.forum.pl?read=12725 | *http://carnage.bungie.org/oniforum/oni.forum.pl?read=12725 | ||
*http://carnage.bungie.org/oniforum/oni.forum.pl?read=12790 | *http://carnage.bungie.org/oniforum/oni.forum.pl?read=12790 | ||