Forums > Game Forums > Syndicate: American Revolt > Multiplayer

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BurningStickMan (17916) on 3/13/2012 3:53 AM · Permalink · Report

Anyone know how the multiplayer worked? Standard deathmatch? Eight players all controlling four man squads?

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lilalurl (733) on 3/13/2012 6:10 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Very interesting questions. I never had the opportunity to play it multiplayer but since you mentioned that I decided to check.

I used dosbox to play against myself. One dosbox instance as server, another as client. I also used the files you can get here to setup server and client sides. I used 192.168.0.1 as the address to which the client had to connect. And it worked.

http://syndicate.lubie.org/synd/html/synd_run_mulplr.php

So it is deathmatch on 10 special levels and it seems like it can be up to 8 players controlling each 4 characters (so up to 32 characters).

Team creation is the same as the standard game. You don't have access to all weapons but the research options are available, so I guess you can unlock them with time (?) or more likely use a cheat code to get them and money.

I took four screenshots in-game to show the synchronicity. As you can see each squad as a specific colour: http://tarantola.alexandre.free.fr/syndicate/main_000.png

http://tarantola.alexandre.free.fr/syndicate/main_001.png

http://tarantola.alexandre.free.fr/syndicate/main_002.png

http://tarantola.alexandre.free.fr/syndicate/main_003.png

If I have time this week-end I may try to test more than 2-player games and see how weapons evolved through matches. Also try the levels. I took the screenshots on level 2. Level 1 had some guards equipped with Gauss gun, so the first match I wanted to take screenshots of ended prematurely :-).

Since everything seems to work fine, perhaps we could try playing some matches with people from here. Perhaps some people on EAB might be interested too. However, I don't know if multiplayer games will be really fun

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BurningStickMan (17916) on 3/14/2012 2:08 AM · Permalink · Report

Awesome! Thanks for looking into this!

I wonder if the weapon/mod research money comes from continued matches over the same session. I'm guessing it's not a server setting? "All players start at XX level" kind of thing?

I say by session because some kind of lifetime, permanent progression system seems too advanced for 1993. If not - wow!

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lilalurl (733) on 3/14/2012 9:38 AM · Permalink · Report

I did a bit more testing.

3-player matches work. My computer was struggling doing that so I won't go further but I can only suppose 8-player matches work.

A bit disappointed by the fact that the 3rd player was only "vivid red" so it was not really to distinguish from the brown red of player 1.

Apparently, a 3-player match it not a last-man standing deatmatch, but rather ends when one player has all his team killed. At least that is what is seemed as the server player (that I used to play and to win) ended after I killed one team. You can however kill two teams simultaneously.

Time (for research) passes very quickly. 1 real second gives 1 hour ingame (at least in selection/equipment screen). Money goes fast when you do research.

Apparently, the unique source of funds is killing enemies. It seems like it is 10000 for each enemy killed. So that will be the bottleneck in terms of research.

On the other hand, that is probably a good thing because advanced weaponry (like a flamer that you can find in some levels) are really powerful against basic (unmodded) agents.

If you lose all your agents, the 4 in the original team + the other 4 in cryogenic pool, you then get the normal game over screen (falling airship). But then you just need to start multiplayer again and get new agents and 100000 (original multiplayer money amount).

To answer your question, you can save your multiplayer state and reload it for another session. I did not think to test at that time, but that probably means that players can share the same state.

Two interesting things: Pistols are not available in MP. You get 1 shotgun per agent as default weapon but others need to be payed for. Level 10 holds quite a surprise...

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Pseudo_Intellectual (66274) on 3/14/2012 3:19 PM · Permalink · Report

Can you persuadeotron other players' agents?

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lilalurl (733) on 3/14/2012 4:08 PM · Permalink · Report

I'll let you try :-). I thought of trying to do that, but since at the beginning you can at best have brain v1 (and other v1 mods) and that you need to find enough people to persuade first, without being shot by a guard, I quickly gave up.

I guess I will do a quick try later to see if the cheat codes work, be it to have a lot of money or maxed out agents, which could help testing that quickly.

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lilalurl (733) on 3/14/2012 4:28 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Well, gave it a quick try.

First, "rob a bank" and "cooper team" work and seem to give the same result. 250000 worth of money (so 150k more than usual...), several researches done (minigun etc...) but not all and more importantly full-V3-agents.*

So, as a matter of fact, you can persuade enemy agents. In which case, the player whose agents have been persuaded see them as "AWOL". When persuaded they go into panic mode (all 3 bars to max). If you keep clicking away from the persuadeer/persuadertroner, you can move away from him. However, he acts like a gravity well, so once you stop clicking away, the persuaded agent will walk back to him.** Also, despite persuading the enemy agents, you won't be considered has the winner. You need to find a way to kill them.

I guess the next thing I will try is a 3-player game, checking if you can persuade persuaded agents (ie player1 persuades an agent from player2. Then player3 attemtps to persuade that very same agent).

Here is a screenshot showing the AWOL status: http://tarantola.alexandre.free.fr/syndicate/main_006.png

And here are two screenshots that I had forgotten to link to, showing the difference between vivid red and brown/dark red in a 3-player game: http://tarantola.alexandre.free.fr/syndicate/main_004.png http://tarantola.alexandre.free.fr/syndicate/main_005.png

*: Edit: I am not sure about this anymore. I just gave it another try. First cooper team. Did not seem to work. Then rob a bank and I had the same result as you would in solo game: 1000000000, everything researched, V3 agents with heavy weaponry. So I guess you need to enter a second code for the first to take effect.

**Edit2: Lovely. I found out that you can activate the self-destruct mode (Alt+D, requires at least chest V1 IIRC) even when your agent has been persuaded.

Edit3: Interestingly, the scanner seems to work a different way regarding enemy agents. You can only see them on the radar screen if you click on the scanner and that lasts only a few seconds.