As common as the coffee, which we as coders are drinking each day way too much, we feel familiar in singleplayer games while moving as players in bullet time shooting all our enemies - with coolness and elegance.

Outrider of the whole hype was May Payne I and II. Of course. But in this game there was'nt ever a multiplayer mode, well.. it was obvious: if a player would activate his bullet time, would the other players slow down as well - but with no accelerated controls and so on? Wouldn't this be unfair?

This question has been rarely or never been questioned and I wanted to encourage you to discuss this here as game designers how you could integrate the bullet time feature into a multiplayer game / match - even if it would be just slightly or greatly modified. Even the most absurd ideas are welcome!

I would appreciate any ideas or comments how to realize this.

EDIT: Please don't discuss about "cool" game ideas which could take benefit from this technique. Thank you.

Cheers, Christian

Okay lets think about it.

When Client-A does the bullet time, he sees everything in slowmotion. Client-B see his normal speed like everyone else. How could you simulate this?
The only way i could think about, is to give Client-B (who shoots at Client-A) a timeshift. When Client-B starts to shoot, Client-A gets the info before Client-B can see it. So Client-A can react to his action, and send his movements back. Then Client-B gets it after a while, and it looks like Client-A is born in the matrix with super duper evasionskills.

I guess this will look laggy on the Client-B side, but i can't think of another possibility.

It's a hard but interesting topic for multiplayer gaming cause you have to simulate timeshifts.

The simplest way is to use skills. They don't see a bullettime effect but just increase there evasionskill so they don't get hit. But this is not what you want since the bullet time effect is completely missing.

The problem is, that if you enable one player to use his bullettime, others would have to slow down. Imagine a game of 10 players. Then imagine every player is using his bullettime from time to time. Everything is in slow motion! Thats not funny --- or even playable.

It would slow down all players and could become frustrating after a few times. If you get into such a slow down and you are in a fight then you will press the button for bullet time as well just to act as fast as before.

Another option is a local time bubble: a radial area where the time-slowdown happens. You can enter a bubble but not shoot into it. This could be checked in a prototype game. The bubble could have nice refraction shaders applied.

But to be honest: Something similar exists in the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3. They have some weapons creating such time-bubbles to slowdown projectiles. So you could help to defend your friends with that while they are running away with flags or try to make points at a certain base.

Glider 2 uses this kind of bubble too.

@HeelX, yes, thats why i said you should only slow down Client-A (local) not on the server. you have to send the data from everyone else later so Client-A can handle it first and send his reaction.

Client-B starts shooting but doesn#t see it on his client
Client-A gets this information, and simulate a bullet effect on his PC (local)
Client-A sends back his Evasionmovement
Client-B gets those movementinformations and see how he starts shooting.

Of course you have to do it in a short time, like 1 second difference. don#t know if this is enough.

Trailing could do it. The player who activated a bullet-time will see a trail of the opponent. He sees several copies of the player while the last one of the copies is very slow (the other ones are slightly transparent). Now he can shoot at the last slow copy and every hit counts.

The other player also sees trails of the opponent but the other way around. He has to shoot at the first and fast moving copy of the player. All the other copies could be slightly transparent.

With this approach everyone can play without any slowdown and break. Only movements of players will virtually appear slowdown.

If you need a German explanation then contact me via MSN.

you could slow everyone down, but make client a go normal speed move as fast as he would if it wasnt slowed down, then the only way for client b to go the same speed is the make him us bullet time as well.

like this
player movement speed is 6

player 1 uses bullet time

every speed in the game is halved

player 1 (user of bullet time) continues to move at a rate of 6 tho

player 2 in an effort to catch up uses bullet time as well and now everything except the players moves in slow motion.

If you want to shoot in slow motion on another player,
and the other player should not notice this time-slowdown,

you could make the player using the bullettime pass to a certain new state.

Lets say you want to stretch the realtime of one second to a treched 5 second
slow-motion time:

when the player activates the bullettime, the wole world slows down on it client.
the client only processes the game-updates for the next 1 second, and not
for the following 4 seconds. (the server-game continues to run in realtime)

Now the player-client will strech the updates during the 1 second following the
activation, to a 5 Second display of the action.
Wile this the player can aim and shoot at any other player, and conflict damage.

The other players see the action differently:
when the bullettime-player activates the action, he gets "transparent" and streched
accoring to the avarage movement when starting the bullettime.

During this 5 seconds seen by the other players, all bullets shot at the player
will hit this "streched" bubble.
After the 5 second period, the server calculates if the bullets would have hit the
player according to its position during the bullettime.

---
This way one player can enter a bullettime, and shoot at slow moving players,
and the other players can shoot at the player in realimte (although beeing harder
to hit, since the player is in a "half-transparent" state.


-> it can be problematic for cheat secirity, and might result in
unexpected hits by all players.

Damocles: I dont see how it works. If you simulate the real-time in slowmotion while catching the real-time events then it will be as fast as before. You only can display a shorter period of time in your bullet time to slow it down but then you have a lag when you return to real-time.

Because of that I introduced the idea of trailing. Everything is real-time then only the appearance of movement will be slowed down through a trail where you are able to shoot the slow trail to get an advantage from bullet-time.

The bullettime player is syncronized after the 5 second period,
so there will be a jump for the bullettime player.
This could be realized by a incresed time (fast movement)
for or by shortly blacking out the screen (recovery)
to make the jump not so apparent.

The other players will just notice the difference, that the
bullettime player will look differently, like in a transparent
bubble.

In the end, creating a bullettime for a realtime multiuser game
is not logical, and must lead to strange workarounds.
This is really a sinlgeplayer thing, where the player has full controll
of the time.

Quote:

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The other player also sees trails of the opponent but the other way around. He has to shoot at the first and fast moving copy of the player. All the other copies could be slightly transparent.

---

the bullettime player would move not faster as usual,
so I dont see the point of creating a trail for displaying the
bullettime player.