______      __                __  _ 
  / ____/___  / /___  ________  / /_(_)
 / /   / __ \/ / __ \/ ___/ _ \/ __/ /
/ /___/ /_/ / / /_/ / /  /  __/ /_/ /
\____/\____/_/\____/_/   \___/\__/_/

A game for the "Network" assignment by Celestine Lau and Bo Xian See
Effects from destinysolo.deviantart.com, kai-power.com/graphics. Sprites from Ragnarok Online, and map from Starcraft.
Splash screen pieced together from the board game "Coloretto" (although our game is vastly different)

Goal

To create a multiplayer network game which involves player competition yet does not involve any bloodshed or excessive violence.

Method

The game is based around a simple concept where players must collect sets of gems of the same color in order to score points. Collecting a mixed set allows the player to unleash special moves on the other players or on himself. The attacks chosen are Mario-Kart style attacks which do not "kill" but simply impede the other players or provide the player with benefits such as increased speed.
What makes the game tricky is the scoring and powerup mechanism. Getting more sets of the same color will make the corresponding special move stronger, but in order to win, the player must get sets of all colors as evenly as possible.

Novelty

We would like to believe that the scoring system is relatively unique in video games, since it is more akin to scoring systems in a board game. Also, the fact that the scoring mechanism is opposed to the attack mechanism is something that is relatively novel, and seldom used in many multiplayer games.

Results

Latency posed a large problem during the design of the game, and is still a problem. After implementing the prediction algorithm mentioned in class, the effect of latency was reduced, but still faced issues when obstacles exist between the player's current position on the client and on the server. It led to a bouncing effect whereby a character might bounce back after moving forward because his position is lagging behind on the server. Also, obstacles prevent "prediction" from working completely.
Ignoring latency however, we felt that the game mostly achieved our goals. In fact, we found it so fun to attack each other that we suspect that players will ignore scoring to simply perform the special attacks.