Somebody should make a deathmatch map

[temnix]

It's too bad Bioware never did implement a deathmatch mode for multiplayer. That could be fun. Some modder should take up the challenge and develop it. Obviously, there would need to be special mechanics in place for a fight between players to be interesting. If you simply parachute 1st level characters somewhere, there isn't much of a point. The fighters will kill the wizards, if the wizards don't get them with Sleep, and the thieves will try hiding again and again until they can backstab someone. For deathmatch to work, I think all of the characters need to acquire experience every second and regenerate health. Sorcerers would be more viable than wizards, of course. There should also be some NPC selling items and monsters to kill for the gold needed to buy them. But most of all, a map is needed - big, complex, with lots of places to hide. Ideally it would be a brand-new and engaging map, but one could also stitch together a few of the existing maps. Have a look at this jigsaw puzzle assembled on the BG Wikipedia:

These are just some of the maps. If you rearrange them a little, move the Beregost temple area south a bit, for example, to match the road leading past the Thunderhammer smithy in Beregost, where the party, in fact, comes into the area, a lot of them are a near-perfect match. Completely a match in Cloakwood's case: look at how seamless the river is across the areas, even though hours of travel supposedly divide them. The Cloakwood fort quite naturally sits directly on top of the Friendly Arm inn's map. The borderline areas would have to be redrawn a little to fit, some trees and rocks added, possibly, but it should not be so difficult to make a map where the fort, the Friendly Arm, Beregost, the temple, the High Hedge, maybe the road south and Nashkel would all be part of the same map - or as many as can fit within the maximum map size the engine supports, of course.

For that matter, they obviously were all drawn originally together, and lines between them were only cut out to blur this continuity. Bioware needed a large world, separated by gulfs of travel time. Put back together, with special mechanics, they would make a fine deathmatch map, without interiors, of course. Everything would be in the open. The biggest challenge would be working the tilesets. They have things like shade polygons for trees, all at specific coordinates, water overlays and so on. But if it isn't possible to carry those over to the same tileset, they could be replaced with something simpler. Instead of flowing water in the pools, they could just be filled with blue, and Solid obstacle terrrain (type 0 in DLTCEP) works almost as well as polygons to create shades and block sight. It's not such a big sacrifice.

This would be an unsual type of deathmatch, of course. With a map this big and varied the players wouldn't necessarily want to start hunting each other right away. Some people would decide to cooperate to hunt monsters together and win treasure - until the time comes to stab your partner in the back, of course, literally or figuratively.

[Endarire]

My friends and I have dueled on the BG1 Temple map's exterior.

[temnix]

Okay! But a real deathmatch map, made for that purpose, would be better. Counter-Strike style. "Paladins win." By the way, what happens if a player quits the party? I mean, his character is ejected? Or how does that work in multiplayer, anyway?

[K4thos]

temnix, not sure if you're aware but there actually is official Deathmatch map made by Bioware. All traces of it have been removed from EE releases but leftovers still exists in classic BG2. I was even planning to bring it back at some point (scrapped the idea since Beamdog ignored my request for missing ToBex functionality and overall the mode designed by Bioware with rogue stone collecting didn't seem all that exciting). Here is more info: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/33062/wip-deathmatch-pvp-mod-design-discussion-and-request

If you're interested I may try to find those resources mentioned in the topic, probably still have them archived somewhere.

Edited July 5, 2021 by K4thos

[Almateria]

1 hour ago, temnix said:

Okay! But a real deathmatch map, made for that purpose, would be better. Counter-Strike style. "Paladins win." By the way, what happens if a player quits the party? I mean, his character is ejected? Or how does that work in multiplayer, anyway?

Paladins… could be a sort of a „for knight” type of game

 

[temnix]

  

On 7/5/2021 at 10:59 PM, K4thos said:

temnix, not sure if you're aware but there actually is official Deathmatch map made by Bioware. All traces of it have been removed from EE releases but leftovers still exists in classic BG2. I was even planning to bring it back at some point (scrapped the idea since Beamdog ignored my request for missing ToBex functionality and overall the mode designed by Bioware with rogue stone collecting didn't seem all that exciting). Here is more info: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/33062/wip-deathmatch-pvp-mod-design-discussion-and-request

If you're interested I may try to find those resources mentioned in the topic, probably still have them archived somewhere.

I didn't know about those things. I think a separate small dungeon-crawling map for deathmatch would be less interesting than playing on the familiar but different World Map as I propose here, though. The ideal would be an unknown, different, big and OUTDOOR map, with, say, winding canyons and pits and paths, something like the gnoll stronghold. That would be the most appropriate, I think. There could still be containers - idols or rocks or something. And this stone-collecting mechanic could have a place. Like so, for instance: find all three stones to win, but every stone carried damages the character over time (Diablo soulstone memories, no doubt). This wouldn't even be too difficult to code. I'm more curious about how PvP works pis-a-pis leaving the party, pausing, resting and other things. Perhaps pausing should be forbidden, and resting too. This would require some changes to the spell system, obviously, to restore spells to characters over time and so convert fighting to complete real-time, but also wouldn't be very difficult to code. What the characters would really need is a starting hit points bonus and XP accumulation over time.

Party membership is the most curious detail. I've never played multiplayer, so I don't know what happens if a character leaves the party. Does he get kicked off and disconnected? Does he turn into a blue-circle NPC?  If characters can act outside of the party...

I went ahead and created a multiplayer game to see how it looks. And I was surprised.

Look at this! It turns out the players all control different fleets, only between a company of six that usually means one character each. But a player can roll up more. This could be a MASSIVE deathmatch, if pausing is forbidden and the players agree to let some characters fight on AI autopilot. How would quitting the total party work, though, to form sides, I still don't know.

As I think about this, it occurs to me that the white gaps between the area maps could appear in the deathmatch map. Yes, it would be better if someone filled them in, copied and inserted some trees, drew up some rocks and the map became seamless. But if not, they could stay like this, recolored a little, converted into trigger zones, as walls dividing the map cells. Passing through a gap would damage the character. This could be used for tactics. To lead monsters into a trap, to make pursuers think before following, to trap an enemy already hurt, and so on.

That's all I'm going to say on this topic, though. This was fun to think about, and it wouldn't be impossible to construct this mode, but who is going to do it, really? All of king's horses and all of king's men on this site are not going to lift themselves up from making tweaks and do something new and interesting like this, neither individually nor together.

Edited July 7, 2021 by temnix