UG Multi-World Sessions?

[ShiraNoMai]

This is a cross-game modification system which randomizes different games, then uses the result to build a single unified multi-player game. Items from one game may be present in another, and you will need your fellow players to find items you need in their games to help you complete your own.

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I thought it'd be a neat idea for those interested to want to participate in one of these together and set up a time for us to play. Ideally, we'd all play at once, but there is definitely an option to play at asynchronous times if necessary!

Here's a list of the current available games that work with this:

• Adventure
  
• Blasphemous
  
• ChecksFinder
  
• Clique
  
• Dark Souls III
  
• DLCQuest
  
• Donkey Kong Country 3
  
• Factorio
  
• Final Fantasy
  
• Hollow Knight
  
• Hylics 2
  
• Kingdom Hearts 2
  
• The Legend of Zelda
  
• A Link to the Past
  
• Links Awakening DX
  
• Lufia II Ancient Cave
  
• Meritous
  
• The Messenger
  
• Minecraft
  
• Noita
  
• Ocarina of Time
  
• Overcooked! 2
  
• Pokémon Red and Blue
  
• Raft
  
• Risk of Rain 2
  
• Rogue Legacy
  
• Secret of Evermore
  
• Slay the Spire
  
• SMZ3 (Super Metroid + A Link To The Past)
  
• Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
  
• Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty
  
• Stardew Valley
  
• Subnautica
  
• Sudoku
  
• Super Mario 64
  
• Super Mario World
  
• Super Metroid
  
• Timespinner
  
• VVVVVV
  
• Wargroove
  
• The Witness
  
• Zillion
  

I'm going to be doing one this weekend with a few other friends and I'll be attempting Red & Blue (I have experience with Crystal, so in theory I should be competent at this?) and I can report back how it goes. If you want to know how to start setting one up, here's a link to guide: https://archipelago.gg/tutorial/

[Mr EliteL]

Hm, never heard of this Archipelago thing, but sounds good if you want to play in that way. Only game I might be good at is SA2 and...maybe Super Mario World and Sudoku but how in the world does Sudoku works under this, I can't think how. Take it each game uses a PC version, however they acquired them.

Would like to know how this weekend goes in your session, Shira.

[Moonface]

Yeah, I don't know how Sudoku would work for this and I'm really curious. I guess it would limit the numbers you can put in until someone finds something in their game that gives you more slots. That or most numbers are hidden so it's almost impossible to solve until numbers start showing, but I feel like it wouldn't take as long as most other games in the list to finish the whole board once you have enough numbers showing up and then the Sudoku player is just done and has nothing to do.

[Dragon Lord]

-Blasphemous
-Dark Souls III
-The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

These are games that I'd be willing to do multi-worlds of. Especially ALttP.

[Moonface]

The best option for me from the list would be Minecraft due to it being the only game I own on PC out of everything listed. However, I have played Hollow Knight and Stardew Valley to probably do decently using those games. I wouldn't mind trying out something completely new too though but it depends on whether doing that would make a multi-world session tedious from my end due to lack of knowledge on the game I'm playing through.

[ShiraNoMai]

It's best to know games you are pretty readily familiar with. I've played SM64, SMW, Hollow Knight, Stardew, etc., but I'm not very good at Mario to be able to do those, and I'd be stupidly lost in Hollow Knight again. I suppose Stardew could be an option but it sounds like a lot to remember to be able to optimize that. Pokémon I know inside and out practically so it was pretty much a no-brainer to go for that.

That being said, I did go through with the multiworld. Took us... 5 hours before we gave up. We had: 1 Ocarina of Time, 1 Link's Awakening, 1 Hollow Knight, 1 Slay The Spire, 1 Rogue Legacy, 1 Final Fantasy and 1 Pokémon Red (me). Rogue Legacy player finished first, followed by Final Fantasy, and by the 5 hour mark, Hollow Knight and Link's Awakening were approaching finishes. Ocarina player and I were pretty far behind, but our games are significantly longer and have way more checks. I'm trying to mess with my settings now but I was getting WAY too many TMs that were so useless and just filled up chunks of inventory. I think I wound up getting 32 out of 50 possible TMs? But yeah, I wound up getting near the 3rd gym by that 5 hour mark, but I also was going on insane fetch quests for others that learned their things were in really high level areas that I could technically access (An end-game item was in the Pokémon Mansion on Cinnabar Island (Gym 7) for the Final Fantasy player, and I had Surf access). Trying to dodge trainers and not get creamed by wild Pokémon was

Anyway tl;dr was fun will do again but tone down a bit of my settings to make it more time realistic. Pokémon is a long game, it turns out.

[Mr EliteL]

Ah, when you mention "1 Ocarina of Time" it sounds like you can have multiple players doing the same game each but I obviously assume items will be randomised differently in those and not somehow the same locations. Oof yeah though, if the game takes a while normally to do it'll be difficult to get through in a short session like 5 hours, although seems like if you and the Ocarina player were further in progression you may have kept going a little longer/be finished sooner.

I suppose Sudoku earns an item every puzzle you complete, or maybe each block/9 you complete successfully? Not expecting anyone to know yet.

[ShiraNoMai]

Oh heck, I thought I brought that up: Sudoku as actually used for hints! You can play it while playing the other games while you wait for others to find things (AKA if you get BK'd) and get yourself hints for your game to pass the time.

I played another round tonight, and made it roughly to where I was in the 5 hour run in only half that time. Played with only two others (Hollow Knight and Ocarina of Time) so it was slower progression but more time for me to 'practice'. I think my main thing I gotta practice now is learning where Trainers are because boy do I just waste time fighting Trainers cuz I run into their line of sight by accident

[Moonface]

I played another round tonight, and made it roughly to where I was in the 5 hour run in only half that time. Played with only two others (Hollow Knight and Ocarina of Time) so it was slower progression but more time for me to 'practice'. I think my main thing I gotta practice now is learning where Trainers are because boy do I just waste time fighting Trainers cuz I run into their line of sight by accident

Shame there isn't a mod that turns off trainers automatically starting fights so that you don't have to get dragged into fights that are a waste of time. It'd be like a mod Dead Rising 2 speedrunners use that skips time in the game to when each main story event happens so that runs aren't just spent standing around waiting for the timer to count down all the time.


Also I moved this thread to General Gaming since it fits better there than the feedback area for the forum.

[ShiraNoMai]

Spent a lot of time today researching my Pokémon Red randomizer routes and options. I found a really good map (warning: large image), and someone I play with in our large multi-world sent over a fantastic auto-tracker that works with Archipelago so I can keep track of what items I've checked and found and what ones I haven't. I'm good at remembering things but it's good to be sure cuz our first time playing I had randomized Hidden Items like a fool and one of the first hidden item checks was the side of the first tree in Viridian Forest (I thought it was the front and nothing came up so I thought it was a null check and moved on) but it turned out that the OoT player's Bottle was there and they were waiting on that for a bit until we encountered it in their hints. Felt very embarrassed about that but I know to check there now, even if I turned off Hidden Items in our new shuffle seed for tomorrow

Also I DID find a thing to mess with a trainer's "blindness"--there's a setting!



Turned that up to 50% because boy howdy I would absolutely like a fat margin of error when it comes to accidentally stepping in front of them when they're just slightly off screen.

[ShiraNoMai]

After I think 3 or 4 sessions, I think I've gotten the hang of this! I'm so excited to try a session with one of y'all. The setups are... unintuitive, to say the least, at the moment, but once that hurdle is overcome, we can bang out some fun times!

I've also gotten my time down to 3 1/2 hours, which is fantastic considering where I started (5+ hours).

I've recently joined the Archipelago Discord as well, to keep up with what games are in dev for future implementation: one I'm very excited for is Yoshi's Island, which is near completion! It had its first public beta test and is currently up in an apworld (a local file you can use to host a game). I went to try it last it night but just couldn't get it to work for me (it was unclear where I was fucking up but who knows). I hope it gets implemented soon!

Are there any games any of y'all hope to see implemented into the software one day?

[Moonface]

Based on the sessions you've done that I've been aware of, I'd say my biggest gripe with this system is the lack of knowing whether a run will last a few hours or run into 6-8+ hours. Then again, I also don't know if you have to do these things in one sitting or not, because every time you've played it's been in singular sittings but that might just be because everyone else playing wants to do that. The idea of an entire day being spent purely on an Archipelago session makes it lose a fair bit of appeal for me.

As for games I'd like to see, Binding of Isaac would be one just because that's practically the only PC game I play regularly lol. Darkest Dungeon could probably work good with it, although I don't know if games with hard game overs like that one can work for this because losing the game means you lose everything you might have gained in a run. At least with Isaac you keep anything you unlocked even if you don't finish a run. Thinking of run based games, Hades would probably do good too in that case.
Left 4 Dead 2 would be another good one to put in, purely because so many people own that game and given the Steam Workshop support it could probably even get maps made for it that are tailored heavily to Archipelago.

[ShiraNoMai]

Isaac is currently being tested and I believe has a PR submitted (a pull request to be committed to the main console for Archi), seems to be pretty cool so far. The logic spheres are to get progression items from pedestals.

Darkest Dungeon, like other roguelikes, would probably work just fine - when you game over or "lose your save" in current Archi, when you reload the game, the game loads you in with all your earned items already (idk what checks you'd be doing for DD, possibly mission completions to get character access or something?)

As for the length, you can always pick up a game from where you left off, as long as you still have the room ID kept somewhere it'll keep everything as is. We just choose to do it in one sessions cuz I usually play with a bunch of nerds that have a lot of free time.