Multiplayer time pause if all players should be paused

[padfootie]

Hello all! This is something I've been thinking about ever since multiplayer came out and I just wish people talked about it more haha.

I mostly play with my boyfriend nowadays and I think Stardew is an amazing game for multiplayer. Hence why I think it's such a shame that I always have to skip every cutscene in the game if I don't want to lose massive amounts of time or even whole entire days. I love to make friends in game and I love how every character has so much personality and I feel like I shouldn't be choosing between immersion and huge time loss.

I don't think time should stop just if one person has a cutscene, but if all players are in a "paused" state at the same time, open inventory, open chest, in dialogue, prairie king (how can you even beat that game in one day if the clock is ticking all the time haha) so at times when time is paused normally in single player. This also applies to times like first days of the season when we are both at the store trying to count how many seeds to buy and whoops there goes the whole day lol. We are using a mod for this at the moment and it works really well. I don't see any way this could be exploited because the time only pauses when any player isn't actively doing anything.

I saw a post about this here and they also mentioned how after completing the community centre there is a LONG cutscene and we also experienced that. Feels really unfair that time passes and you just pass out right after.

Sorry for the long message, I just really feel like this should already be a feature in this game. I love how with having the mod that takes care of this I can just say to my bf "oh I have a cutscene can you open your inventory" and I don't have to worry about how I now cannot get to Clint on time to get that darn axe back or something. Thanks for listening haha.

 

[lazyroll]

Time pause in multiplayer is hugely overlooked sadly... Yes, you do 2x-4x faster some things if you're playing together with someone, but there's so much to do and to visit in this game, that if you're not speedrunning multiplayer, chances are, you're gonna miss a lot of stuff, especially on those special days when you have to visit someone, etc. We stopped playing multiplayer with my SO because we didn't like to rush with things, now we just talk over discord (if we're not in the same place) and play on our singleplayer saves instead...

 

[Traviscott]

support

 

[kildon]

Take a look at MultiPause. It can freeze time in one of three configurations: a) anyone is doing something that would've stopped time in SP, or b) EVERYONE is doing something that would've stopped time in SP, or c) an automatic version that balances the two. The first one can be easily abused, but it can make the game a lot less stressful in MP for sure if that is taking away from the game for you (as it was for us).

For something that can be controlled in a more granular way, TimeSpeed is really useful, too, but using that for this purpose requires manually freezing time.