[Update] Dark Souls 2: Seamless Co-op - Team types and WIP Multiplayer features

Hi everyone

Development of the mod continues.

In this post, I will mention some WIP multiplayer features, specifically some challenges behind one of the more unique multiplayer mechanics.

Team types

In order to make friendly fire / friendly PvP modes. I needed to figure out how Dark Souls II figures out which team type is hostile toward the other.

Shown below is how the mod can differentiate between hostile and friendly types. Once the friendly NPC becomes aggressive, any curse fragments your party has will be applied to that specific now-hostile enemy.

Now that this is done, you can use the 'Hallucinogenic Elixir' to swap between normal, PvP (friendly fire), and PvP (hostile) game modes. Allowing an extra layer of challenge or certain game rules to be adjusted.

The put-together function that helps the mod determine whether the curse fragment buff should be applied to the entity is shown below:

Example in-game:

Looking Glass Knight

This is one of the main progression bosses of the game and has probably one of the most experimental and unique mechanics in the souls franchise.

For those who don't know. The Looking Glass Knight has an attack where invaders can be summoned into the boss fight directly, the bosses' shield goes up, and then the phantom breaks out of the mirror realm and then joins the boss to try and defeat the challenger.

If offline, a generic NPC player is summoned instead.

How it works (Vanilla)

I have previously reverse-engineered this mechanic with the intention of making it a little less awkward to do for the blue acolyte mod.

A player will use the red sign soapstone in Drangleic Castle, outside the boss room

There is a 50% chance that an invisible "MirrorKnight" summon sign is created and sent to the server (there is no visual indicator for this)

Host players download the summon sign, which contains NetSvrChrPreview data (i.e. a very brief overview of what your character looks like (e.g. armour, facedata, body type, etc.))

When the Looking Glass Knight does their summon attack, one of these "MirrorKnight" signs is summoned at random, and the NetSvrChrPreview data is used to create the visual effect of the invading player breaking out of the mirror realm

During this time, the invading player is connected to host and the host sends specific coordinate information to the invading player telling them where in the boss arena they should appear

The reason this mechanic is more-or-less dead in the vanilla game, is the strange conditions it requires. As the game is older and has fewer players, there is a very small chance that someone is invading in Drangleic castle, and even if they are then it is not guaranteed that it creates a MirrorKnight summon sign.

How it works (Seamless)

Right now - it doesn't. It will in the future however this is going to be a goal for after alpha testing, as I think I really want to nail down the core multiplayer first before re-introducing this mechanic.

The good news is that I have already spent time reverse engineering this mechanic and I know how to implement it into seamless. As seamless does not have a server, it's going to be a lot more challenging, but still very doable (just with a bit of spaghetti code).

ETA Requests

Something I wanted to quickly touch on is people asking for ETAs of the mod's release. Whilst I understand people are anxious for the mod, I cannot give an ETA because it's difficult to predict the workload the mod will give for me.

As I work through issues and make progress reverse engineering the necessary parts of the game, it could be that something takes an unexpectedly long amount of time, and if I had a pressure of a formal ETA that would lead to delays and disappointment and too much pressure on myself.

Although there will never be no predictive ETA - Once the mod is ready for testing it will very much be a short-release window, and there will of course be a post (and accompanying video) letting everyone know.

I am currently doing a playthrough with a friend on the mod and it is night-and-day compared to the first playthrough I did. Once we make some more progress on it then I'll start working on a strategy for testing.

Thank you for your patience, and a huge thank you to all of my supporters <3

Take care

~ Yui