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Julian Gollop’s Chaos Reborn to have both synchronous and asynchronous multiplayer; work-in-progress screenshot revealed

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X-Com creator Julian Gollop has multiplayer Chaos Reborn functioning already. He’s got login, logout, join game, leave game, map initialisation and deployment of wizards. He’s got ‘end turn’. Now all he needs is the game bit to go in the middle.

“Before I get onto that I need to figure out how to make both synchronous and asynchronous games work properly,” writes Gollop on his prolific new devblog.

“The underlying functionality is basically the same,” he says. “Synchronous games operate under tighter rules – you have a relatively short time limit for your turn. If you fail to respond in time your turn is ended automatically. If you get disconnected your wizard will be taken over by the AI, but I want to allow players a chance to reconnect to the game if they just experiencing internet glitches.

“Asynchronous games are played over a much longer period of time, but still with a time limit. This will most likely be some modified chess clock style of timer, where you have a total time limit for completing all your turns, and the time counter counts down while it is your turn.”

The above screenshot shows a three player game set-up from the client’s point of view. “The final game will not look like this,” adds Gollop. “So please don’t make fun of my little wizard models!”

Post-Frozen Synapse, I’m not sure I could state a preference for either asynchronous or synchronous turn-based games. Not even with a neon blue shotgun pointed at a nearby doorway. What your view?