Microsoft Packs Up, Moves To Catan

Klytus writes "According to a press release posted at GamingReport.com, Catan GmbH and Mayfair Games have made a deal with Microsoft for the creation of the 'Catan Online Game', based on the popular Settlers of Catan board game. From the post: 'Available on Microsoft's Premium Game Service, the Catan Online Game will be accessible via both the MSN Zone and MSN Messenger. There will be multi-player online and download variants, each with rich graphics and a sophisticated AI.' Now we can play Catan endlessly through MSN." This deal is in addition to Capcom's various versions of Catan for console and PC in Japan.

Comments

Catan is already available online

[borisbfurry]

Right here

I smell a lawsuit...

[0x0d0a]

Let's see -- Microsoft just bought a license to do an online version of Settlers of Catan, and there's already an excellent GPL implementation in the form of Gnocatan. I have a bad feeling that the poor maintainer may be llooking at a lawsuit. :-(

Re:I smell a lawsuit...

[Sparr0]

lawsuits are what happens when you break someones copyright.

Re:You can smell the sponsorship from here!

[hrbrmstr]

It's "news" (albeit a bit of a stretch) since there are quite a few Catan "junkies" on /. Also, the shock-value of M$ cornering the Catan market is definitely news for /. readers.

It would have been a bit more useful if the editor included links to the already existing free implementations of Catan on- and off-line (which will probably all be decimated by lawyers now that M$ is "in the game") such as:

- http://sourceforge.net/projects/javasettlers
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/settlers3d
- http://gnocatan.sourceforge.net/

There are others lurking out there, but these are the ones I hit regularly. Download the source now while you can!

Re:You can smell the sponsorship from here!

[fireduck]

it's news because Settlers of Catan is one of the more popular board games out there (i.e., it's got geek appeal). It's the third highest rated game at boardgamegeek.com.

I recently picked it up at one of those christmas/calendar stores that was closing for 25% off. Haven't played it yet though...

The game I'm waiting for an online version of is Stratego. Found a java version a while back that was buggy, but I wish zone/yahoo/someone would license it (or at least put up a nice ripoff-ware version)

No Solo

[hambonewilkins]

My friends and I got hooked on Catan over the summer and found the Java version that you could use for netplay. Obviously, however, we prefered the real deal. Now, however, we're spread across the country, some of us without internet.

We talked about how strange it is that no "single-player" Settlers of Catan game (for computer) existed and hypothesized that it is due to the sheer complexity and the AI implementation would be quite difficult. There have been computer versions of Risk, but I actually think Settlers is more complex.

Re:No Solo

[Nyhm]

I'm not an AI expert (but I worked with some in school). Catan is a GREAT game, but it seems to have a number of balance-swaying heuristics. That is, there are limited high-level strategic directions you can choose, which can really affect the gameplay. This is perfect for humans, but an AI routine can iterate a few general strategies to find out which one works with the current state of the board.

My point is, an AI could be too easy to develop and be too good at the game. Then again, I've seen a lot of games rebound unexpectedly.

Anyone out there have real experience developing an AI for Settlers?? Are my comments accurate at all?

Re:No Solo

[CuteAlien]

First of all, there IS a settlers game for windows out there, since more than 4 years. It's was done by funatics development in strong cooperation with Klaus Teuber (the creator of catan). There's also a version of this game for the PS1 (which does not use the same AI) and some more versions for the Settlers Card Game and for Settlers in Space (i actually don't know if it's called exactly like this in english). I've done the AI for the PC Version, but many ideas for it where also contributed by Teuber. I'm not going to do an ad - i've stopped working for that company several years ago ;)

It was a hard projekt to do, but i wouldn't blame it so much on rules which are to difficult to play for AI, but more on the usual factors which happen a lot in game development. Like me not beeing very experienced at this time, very tight schedules (first project of a new company - you're not allowed to miss many milestones in such a situation) and some more problems which would probably sound familiar to anyone in this industry (like doing a peer-to-peer network solution and still trying to synchronice the game and the bots).

The basic high-level strategies are mostly getting the longest road, getting the most knights, or winning by building the most settlements and cities. Then there are a rules how to complete this goals and to check if they can be completed. At the lowest level are the ratings for individual building positions, which are mostly influenced by the amount of resources you can reach by them, by harbours or other special points (in other scenarios than the basic one) and by the danger of someone else reaching them first (or the need to reach them to block someone else). A set of rules for which resources are most useful for the player is needed (different strategies need different resouce distributions and certainly it's also important too see what others do already own, to find out which resources will be rare).

The setting of the raiders is easy - check the resourceneeds and if you want your bot to be emotional then make sure to remember who angered you lately and prefer this player and play some additional samples just to make sure he knows the bot is pissed off :).

One of the most complex parts is the trading. We did several approaches to this and i guess if we'd had more time we would have tried some more. Transfering the communication of a table game to computers is close to impossible. You just won't get that feeling when playing against bots. It's not so much which resources the bot needs, but more of a problem like when to stop trading or when to push the player some more in hope to get another resource. Some problems: In real life people talk at the same time (which sounds horrible in a computer game - you have to do it serial) or stop trading by just looking someone into the eyes or at theire gestures. These are elements which can't be simulated in a computer game (actually we did insert some shortcuts for "stop bothering me" and "make faster" in the first patch).

Besides the basic rules we inserted some more scenarios which all had different game rules and needed other strategies, but once the basic catan ai did work it was not difficult to adapt it. To make things a little harder for the poor AI we also gave each bot a different personality which had to take care that his reactions (and the animations) did fit those of a few friends sitting around a table.

After the projekt i was not too happy with the results of the ai. It was a fun game for someone new to catan, but experienced players could beat the ai without much problems. If i just would have had a little more time ... (once more i guess that anyone in the game industry has heard or said this sometimes).

An interesting fun fact: Teuber did himself complete a whole AI which did not play bad just using an excel sheet! You typed in the dice result and your move in a column and using some heavy magic the sheet displayed the answering move of the bots in another column. Most impressing thing i've ever seen done in excel.

I Almost Misread This Topic

[Spencerian]

Oh! Catan, not Satan.

For some reason I thought that this topic was just a rehash of a past Microsoft acquisition...

an online, multiplayer Settlers exists

[mithras the prophet]

see here: http://www.brettspielwelt.de/gate/jsp/base/index.j sp?nation=en

The legality is uncertain, but brettspielwelt has Settlers and lots of other popular boardgames in a thriving community, with ~ 500+ people online at any given time.

Oy...

[cjpez]

... what do you want to bet that the existing independant SoC programs are gonna get Cease+Desisted once it's been released? That'll suck. I know that Klaus was very unhappy about the existance of s3d, but with the legal and financial power of Microsoft to back him up, he could probably be much more successful in closing these things down.

I mean, in all fairness, he *does* own the copyrights for this stuff, but it sucks for those of us who have been buying Mayfair's stuff forever now and like playing online too.

Re:Settlers board game

[Schezar]

When my family (6) plays, the games average 4 hours.

Then you're playing the game wrong. There's a funny story about the man who designed Settlers:

In an interview in Germany, he was asked about time issues with the game. Specifically, what to do about people who spend too long thinking before making their moves. His response was something along the lines of:

"Well, we play these games with our friends, and usually in pubs. If someone is taking more than a few seconds to move, we begin chanting "Move, or we will hit you! Move, or we will hit you!" If they continue to dally, we hit them. It's never really a problem." (paraphrased and translated from German)

Basically, these games can be won by whoever thinks hardest and longest. If everyone spends an hour on each turn, they'll play a much cleaner game. Anyone could always make the optimum move given enough thought: the skill is being able to make these moves QUICKLY.

If it takes you 6 hours to play Settlers, I suggest the "Bewegen oder wir schlagen Sie." treatment.

A good rule of thumb is that you shouldn't spend more than 5-10 seconds at MAX without taking some action on the board. This goes for most all German games.

(Check out Puerto Rico, El Grande, Tikal, and Amon Re while you're at it. Right on par with Settlers.)