So I love SR3 but one of my main complaints is the 2 person Co-op limitation. I was wondering if one of you fantastic people could make a mod that would allow more than 2 people to connect to a game. Thanks in advance 
More than 2 player Co-op
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![[V] tulip.sniper](/forum/data/avatars/m/44/44320.jpg?1371567410){kind=avatar}
[V] tulip.sniper
Volition Staff
I'm just going to go ahead and say, no, this is not possible. At least no where close to the same capacity as the current 2 player co-op works.
Speaking of co-op, I was wondering if anyone could explain to me why local/couch co-op was never implemented into the game? This is a feature I would of, pardon my lack of better reaction, shit my pants over. I know plenty of people that would of killed to see this feature.
Edit: Could the admins possibly move this to its own thread or delete this post so I can start said thread? I just realized this isn't really the right place for this question.
Edit: Could the admins possibly move this to its own thread or delete this post so I can start said thread? I just realized this isn't really the right place for this question.
I understand that it would not be possible to get full 2+ player support b/c of missions and such. I'm thinking more of the ability to have 2+ people free roam the city. When u start a mission it could just pull in p1 and p2 like normal.
How plausible would a 2+ player free mode (akin to GTA4) be if you were forced to play as NPC meshes rather than your custom Boss? I seem to recall reading that's part of the problem with extending the amount of playable characters, as there isn't enough memory to load more than 2 customized characters.
I can almost guarantee it's because the game couldn't handle rendering two open worlds on-screen at the same time (with differing viewpoints, no less).
I can almost guarantee it's because the game couldn't handle rendering two open worlds on-screen at the same time (with differing viewpoints, no less).
As long as you could access one of the main players garages so you could get vehicles most of the people I know would be fine with it. Its a sacrifice they would be willing to take seeing as though we would still be able to do goofy stuff together.
[V] tulip.sniper
Volition Staff
The generic short answer:
As a general rule when designing games (or anything really), you need to utilize limited resources in an effort to make the game you want to make the best it can be. For any feature, you must compare it's cost with it's benefit, and decide if it's a good fit. The cost of any feature X can be broken down into the actual cost for labor to implement the feature (man hours), system resources (CPU/GPU cycles, memory, etc.), and finally, the lost benefit from other features Y that were forgone in order to implement X (this last cost is often overlooked
).While we would all love to have been able to include local co-op to Saints Row, it was determined to be not cost effective, and thus, not included. (It was actually considered at the start of SR2, but was cut pretty early on for reasons that are listed below)
Longer answer:
Local player co-op is an extremely expensive feature, in general. It gets even more costly for open world games, which is why you don't see it implemented very often in open world games. In fact, I can only think of one open world game that supports this feature, Borderlands (which is a fantastic game, BTW). So why is this feature often overlooked in games (especially open world games), when it no doubt adds value to the game? Well, the benefits are quite obvious, so let's look at some of the immediate costs (at least for SR)...
1) The budget cost to implement the feature. While we would all like to pretend there are not budget constraints, it's unfortunately usually a very real part of making AAA games. Since local co-op is a complicated feature (see below) it is also costly to implement both in time and $.
2) The game must render the scene twice each frame, instead of just once, which increases the CPU/GPU cycles and memory used by the rendering engine drastically. Since there are very hard limitations based on the system hardware, in order to still run at 30fps (which means you have to simulate AND render a frame every 33 ms) you must reduce the complexity of the scene from what it would be otherwise to keep a solid framerate. Depending on the game, a lot of these costs can be offset by turning off rendering features in split screen (disable AA, reduce render resolution, etc.), but that may not offset all of the costs. And then you have to start looking at reducing the actual scene complexity - cutting polys, reducing texture quality/variety, reducing object counts, etc.
3) The memory cost to load two areas of the city (unique to non level based games), doubles. Because each player can freely roam the city untethered in SR co-op, the engine would need to support having two areas of the city loaded into memory (ouch!). Memory is a very precious resource, especially on consoles, and any MB used to load the city is a MB that can't be used for vehicles, NPCs, well... everything really. Do you decrease the quality of the city so it fits in less space or maybe the area of the city that loads at the highest LOD? Do you forgo vehicle and NPC variety? Do you cut player customization (which uses a lot more memory than prefab characters)? And so on.
4) The simulation cost of loading two areas of the city increases. One system must now simulate two different areas of the city. Physics, AI, animation, object creation, etc. So again, what do you start cutting? Less pedestrian and ambient vehicle density, maybe? Maybe you decrease the area of the world that simulates or tether the players together, restricting free roam?
5) The disk/memory bandwidth increases for loading two areas of the city. The game can only load resources so quickly from disk (optical or HDD) into memory, and now you have two parts of the city competing for disk access. Do you decrease maximum movement speed (SR vehicle top speeds are already limited by disk speed)? Maybe you make resources smaller so they load faster? etc.
These are the main technical challenges, but there are many many more things to consider for a feature such as local co-op which spans so much of the game. So....
Would it have been possible to support local co-op? Yes. Is it right for Saints Row? We decided, No - it cost more than we were willing to pay after all things were considered. Whether that is the correct choice is ultimately up to you, but at least now you know more of what goes on behind the scenes when deciding what does or does not make it into a SR game.
[EDIT] Fixed some typos
[V] tulip.sniper
Volition Staff
Plausible as a mod? I would say almost impossible, since the source code will not be made public (at least anytime soon). Plausible in a future volition title? We'll just have to wait and see.
You do touch on one of the primary problems with 2+ player co-op for SR, with player and vehicle customization. Using non-customizable characters was definitely considered to enable 2+ player co-op, but ultimately we decided to spend our efforts elsewhere and not support that feature for similar reasons as my previous post.
So it sounds like without some sort of server handling all the expensive tasks it wouldn't even be possible, and to have dedicated Saints Row servers run by you guys was not the route you wanted to take b/c of the cost and time. Now it makes sense why it has not been done and probably will not be done. Thank you [V] tulip.sniper for putting your time into explaining it for me.
Hooooooooooooly SHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! I now am in love with Volition! Thank you fo taking time out of your busy schedule to write a short essay explaining everything.The generic short answer:
As a general rule when designing games (or anything really), you need to utilize limited resources in an effort to make the game you want to make the best it can be. For any feature, you must compare it's cost with it's benefit, and decide if it's a good fit. The cost of any feature X can be broken down into the actual cost for labor to implement the feature (man hours), system resources (CPU/GPU cycles, memory, etc.), and finally, the lost benefit from other features Y that were forgone in order to implement X (this last cost is often overlooked
While we would all love to have been able to include local co-op to Saints Row, it was determined to be not cost effective, and thus, not included. (It was actually considered at the start of SR2, but was cut pretty early on for reasons that are listed below)
*snip*
[EDIT] Fixed some typos
I am pretty much speechless and will forever be buying your games and supporting your company as long as you are around.