After receiving an initial round of feedback, we’ve added several new features to the game, including:
- A points system. 5 points per kill (when another snake runs into you, or you eat the other snake — more on that below), -5 points for death, and 1 point for food.
- Single-unit snakes are food. So be careful when you spawn — you might get eaten and lose 5 points. Conversely, longer snakes no longer have to worry about randomly dying when small snakes spawn in front of them.
- Rounds. Each round lasts 5 minutes and is followed by a 15 second intermission during which the top scorers and your stats for the round are displayed. Your performance will no longer go unrecognized!
- More food per map size.
- Larger map per amount of players.
In the coming weeks, we will be working on reducing game lag and fixing some backend performance issues. Stay tuned by subscribing to the RSS feed for this blog, and please continue to provide feedback on the game.
Someguy798 said
The new updates are fantastic! You really put a competitive edge to the game now. A couple things you might want to tweak with this, though:
1. When 2 snakes have a head on collision, maybe make it so whoever is the largest snake wins out. Smaller snakes can still “encourage” larger snakes to die (block their path), just head on assaults would make the smaller one die.
2. Keep a running tally of your points, rather than reset it after each death, to get a better idea of what you’ve got. Maybe show the other snakes scores too, although that might make the screen too cluttered.
Also, if you resubmit this to Newgrounds, I’m sure you’d have a much better score. Might lead to more exposure too.
mikexstudios said
Hey Someguy798,
Thanks for your continual support and comments! You rock!
I’ve been advocating #1 for quite some time now and hopefully, it’ll be implemented soon.
#2…. is actually a bug! I thought I tested everything out before release, but it turns out that I wasn’t careful enough
. Thanks for telling us!
-Mike
Tricky said
Hey!
Me and three friends just played this game for about 4 hours straight. It’s addictive and fun.
The only suggestions I have are:
-Different colours for different snakes(making for much more “personal” competition)
-I completely agree with someguys idea to implement a system in which the larger snake would not die in a head on collision.
-and possibly a chat // lobby?
There are so many possibilities for this game like different coloured food for things like – speed boost ect
Anyways i plan on telling all my friends about this, and ill definitely go to newgrounds and vote number one. Keep up the Goooooooood work
eugeneiiim said
In response to your suggestions…
- Allowing players to select a snake color and sending out snake colors is high on our to-do list. Power-ups is another feature we’re thinking about.
- As a side project, we are working on http://www.chattative.com/ which will provide our chat service (hopefully working in some form within a couple of weeks). We found that existing solutions like meebo chat rooms were too bulky and intrusive.
Thanks for your support.
Tricky said
I will definitely frequent these forums for updates… thanks for the quick response, if i were you, i would be very proud of this site, and I could easily see this picking up as an internet craze! After playing this version i serached for others, nothing compares.
Someguy798 said
I think I’ve found a HUGE bug. When a 1 unit snake collides with another 1 unit snake, the game freezes. When you try to go back on, it simply shows a blank screen with the time flashing 0min 0s once. Definitely needs a fix.
Tricky said
Similarly, through me and my friends testing of the eccentricities of this game, we noticed two one-cell snakes colliding can cause a FROZEN game over sign appearing. You can however continue playing behind it, but it doesnt go away.
Tricky said
Another bug, if you crash on head to head with another snake and both of you are “suicide” ed, then you need to tap an arrow key twice instead of once to get your worm going again….
totally not a big deal… but you know.
eugeneiiim said
Someguy – Thanks for catching that, it hadn’t come up in our tests. Shouldn’t happen again.
Tricky – Looks like we still have some client bugs… We’ll be sure to fix those.
Paradox said
I’m not particularly fond of the new game’s speed, it seems too hard to get the food which hugs the walls without smashing into the wall and dying, and through one round I usually die around fifteen times, and I end up with a low score.
I do, however, like the expanding map size, very convenient for large games. Perhaps slowing it down just a touch might make things less inconvenient?
Michael said
Hi Paradox,
Thanks for the feedback. I agree with you that the game speed should be a little slower. We will make that change very soon!
-mX
Paradox said
I also happened to notice a glitch a few minutes ago, if you’re a one-unit snake, and you run into a wall, and hold that directional button down even after you die, the map moves off the screen.
Michael said
Thanks Paradox, the bug has been noted and should be fixed soon!
kevin said
Hi i have a lot to say, starters i think there should be a different map each game but like 5 maps and it randomly selects 1. I am not that sure on this idea but maybe a moving wall. Maybe a highscores for the best player that doesn’t go away like most games high scores (but still keep the one u have) ,power up (maybe a food that makes u lose 1 point). Also u should add this game on addictinggames , newgrounds, ugoplayer ect. 1 more thing if u die by your own body u should lose more points because u killed yourself lol. Anyways gr8 game my player is borat and everyone sucks lol
Paradox said
Wow, I haven’t played Multisnake for months, but it’s nice to see after months of no practice I still never lose. I preferred it when the timer for each round was five minutes, because it gave me the opportunity to get holy hell high scores, and compared to other peoples’, that was really satisfactory. One minute just doesn’t seem long enough to play a decent round, I only usually get scores ranging from 20 to 40. Maybe if five minutes was too long, perhaps three minutes?
Nonetheless, I still love this game. Hope to see more improvements as time goes on. -Paradox
PedoBear said
I think your game has crashed,
Gerry.Agnosia said
Hey, why has your game’s server been down the last few days?
I need my Multi-Snake fix!
Eugene said
Oops, sorry about that. It’s back up now.
/v/irgin said
Incredibly fun and addicting game
would really like to see some powerups in a future update
im thinking 3 food pieces that could be highly contested along with some other classic snake power ups like speed up snake or slow down snake
mikexstudios said
Hi /v/irgin,
Thanks for the suggestions. I think they’ll really make the gameplay more exciting. We’ll keep that in mind the next time we get a chance to work on the game.
Datarock said
My number one problem with it is lag; sometimes it’s perfectly smooth, but other times it’s incredibly jittery and jumpy, making it impossible to play. And it’s not my connection – I’ve tested speeds and downloads and they’re staying constant.
An update that I think you should implement is (voluntery) registration. If you register an account you can be put down on a leaderboard for the all-time best, and would help in chat, and also if there’s upgrades.
Feeding into the previous idea is leaderboards – one for the all-round best player, who’s accumulated the most points (requires registration), as well as records – most points in one round, most snake kills etc.
Another is different maps – make several, put them on a cycle.
A forum would be good as well.
And different colours for snakes.
Datarock said
Also, advertise more, you need better players. Seriously. It’s just so easy as to be dull – the last few games I’ve been playing, I’ve got 60+, whilst the next best player has about 20.
BruteForce said
Is the game down?
I ain’t been able to get on all day
Datarock said
Down for me too.
BruteForce said
Woo!
Back online.
Exhonour said
Multisnake is very simple, but its really fun. I think it deserves a bit more advertising.
One issue I had was that the game lagged a lot, the movement is not smooth and its like 1FPS, not sure how to explain. Maybe im the only one, or maybe everyone gets it <.<
I also wish there would be kind of a customization system, when picking your name you could also pick a color of your snake.
Having the name appear on top of each snake would be nice too.
A side panel scoreboard would be awsome, so you could see real time ranking.
And ofcourse a chat system :p
Exhonour said
Also im not quite sure, is the development of this game dead?
Eugene said
Development has been on hold for the last few months since we’ve been too busy with other things, but I’ve started working on it again so there should be some upgrades within the next two weeks.
MQOSE said
Yay, upgrades!
I agree with what Exhonour suggested, especially the color option and name part (although names might get in the way, maybe as a side bar saying what name belongs to which snake)
MQOSE said
I realize that there wouldn’t be enough colors for each person to have a unique color if there was more than a couple dozen people on. There usually isn’t, but another way to increase uniqueness would be to choose one color for the head and one color for the body of your snake. This would make the game much more personal, for various reasons. You would be able to see which color belongs to the best players and attempt (and possible fail) to avoid them. You would be able to hold grudges though…
A sidebar would be awesome for this too, as it would show the names of all player playing, their two colors, and their scores.
Deano said
Forget the colors, I say… Persisting names/accounts, a list of who’s playing in the room at the moment, and maybe a monthy/weekly/daily top scores list would be good enough.
Perhaps some sort of community/chat aspect (or just messaging via profiles) so the regulars can get to know one another, the masters can teach the newbies the best way to take out big snakes, etc.
But, I like that all the enemy snakes are the same color. Like I care who I’m eating, I’m just eating it ALL, yo.
CircuitSteph said
I do agree with Deano on the colors, but now that we’ve got personalized colors, I really can’t complain. It’s still a step or two away from a satisfactory way of uniquely ID’ing snakes, though. Sometimes I have to resist the temptation to run into someone because I want to find out who they are.
A chat function during (a slightly extended) cool-down time between rounds would be great; we could throw taunts and challenges around at each other.
MQOSE said
FREAKING COLORS!!!!
Praise the Multisnake overlords!!
Deano said
As I feared, the colors do not really change the game for the better… I mean, there are actually two issues:
1) colors don’t individualize the enemies as intended;
2) colors are PICKABLE by players, which makes the odds of even color distribution much less likely
I’m not sure how many people play the game at once, but one way to resolve this (short of rolling back this awful heinous change
) would be to assign colors, and either limit each map/server/instance to X number of players (with new maps spawned as more players come in), expand the number of colors to a really high number (maybe add patterns to help distinguish) so that it never repeats, or at least have the server hand out colors, and keep the numbers of each color fairly even.
For me, the colors are really a huge step back from what I love about multisnake – but, I also see a bunch of possibilities for different game types where colors would be useful (everyone vs. the score leader {who is a set color}, team multisnake, etc)… Though, of course, the more variety, the more potential audience dilution…
So, I guess, I’d just like to repeat that the colors are not adding anything positive to my game and I’d happily vote to go back (names of players and score reported live down the side would be much kick-assier)… I’d like colors if they were immediately meaningful and related to the game, rather than purely aesthetic (stealing from my idea above, how about a gradient, and the higher your score, the more you drift towards a shade of green… That’d certainly make the game more complicated, as it would open the door for intentional leader-kills without changing the overall mechanics/rules).
plus, there’s a weird glitch I’ve noticed where onesies start out a random color, then change to the color the player selected when they start moving. It’s kinda weird.
But, glad to see the devs are alive (I think I demolished one repeatedly in-game this afternoon). Be nice if there was a NEW blog post about this, though, so we could comment there… Or a forum?
Deano said
Also, playing just now, I’ve noticed the game slows down pretty massively above 10-11 snakes. :/
Deano said
Ack, it hit submit too early, I also wanted to say that a 5 min game time is too long… 3 mins was just about perfect, even a little long maybe.
mikexstudios said
Hi Deano, CircuitSteph, and MQOSE,
Thanks for the suggestions and comments. We’ll take them into account when we work on new things.
firebus said
+1 to persistent user profiles and leaderboards.
i win almost every game i play. but no one fears me! you all should fear me!
or maybe i only win because i play when the n00bs are out. maybe there’s someone else i should fear?! but i don’t know! maybe i should fear someone?!
anyway…
mykal said
When snakes run in head on the bigger snake should eat the smaller one because its really annoying when your snake is 23423 blocks long and you run into one thats only 2 blocks long and you die -_-
dohmah said
you know, if you let us peek at the source code, we could try to help you optimize network utilization and maybe some other inefficiencies. what’s your RPC system like? what is the wire format? is it running standalone or through a web server stack?
mikexstudios said
Hi dohmah: Yes. We have plans to make all code for Multisnake open source in the near future.