Posted by
timothy
on from the please-give-me-a-driving-simulator dept.
PokeBlor writes: "Arena.net has an article by Patrick Wyatt, a Blizzard ex, that goes into depth about the creation of multiplayer games, ranging from replayability to lag. He uses good examples from Starcraft and Warcraft 2, two games that Wyatt was a designer on."
Thats pretty amusing, seeing how Blizzard has to sue people to stop them using their own lag-free networks cos the official ones suck so much!
Re:Avoid lag?!
by
Telastyn
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I wouldn't say suck really. They're just overutilized. I'd also assume they come under attack fairly often.
When you get a few hundred thousand users on a server it's going to slow down, no matter the code or connection... While 3rd party server apps might be faster for small groups, I doubt they will be as fast as the 'official' server on compriable equipment with a few hundred thousand users. And if it is faster, I'd be suspicious about what features/preventative measures were not included to get the speed gains.
Re:Avoid lag?!
by
Gailin
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Off Topic:
Figured I would post the email that I received from a Blizzard employee in response to the letter I wrote them regarding bnetd
Hello.
Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process. Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased. Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers. Therefore, Blizzard has taken an aggressive stance opposing the use of these programs.
Please take a moment to read through our FAQ regarding these issues at http://www.battle.net/support/emulationfaq.sht ml if you have any questions or concerns about Blizzard's stance on software piracy.
{WR655}
Thank you for your email, Kenny Z. Technical Support Blizzard Entertainment PS. If you plan to reply to this message, please include all previous messages between us.
Maybe Blizzard should create a CD key server that third party game servers could connect to for authentication. It seeems like that would be more desireable for Blizzard. That would take some of the heat off of their servers (by allowing the third party servers), and provide cd key checking. Then they could just crack down on servers that don't do the checking.
>Thank you for your email, >Kenny Z.
I wonder if he's related to Kenny G?
-- "... the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy" - Janov Pelorat
Once [bnetd allowed Warcraft II beta], I think they just drew the line.
Yes, but (a) bnetd and FSGS didn't allow cracking; and (b) Blizzard doesn't have a legal leg to stand on anyway. These programs reverse engineering and reimplement Blizzard's protocol, which is perfectly legal. It was someone else who created the Warcraft hacking patch, and as I understand it neither bnetd nor FSGS directly linked to said patches. If anything, it was sites providing those patches that should have been pursued.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It really doesn't make sense. If they use CD Keys that are secure at all they could easily create a Key server and let people submit keys all day without losing security.
Look at Q3. There are many ways to play online with a valid key, but there haven't been any attacks against the keys directly.
I don't know specifically what they did, but I assume it's something like this.
Generate random number (as securely as possible) SHA1 the number (hash it) Write down the hash
Distribute the original number as a CD key, the game hashes this and sends the hash to the keyserver which checks that this hash is valid. The keygen then notes that for the next five minutes, the client's IP is allowed to play.
Servers check with the keyserver when a client tries to connect. If the keyserver says to allow them, they do. (A cracked server skips this step.)
There's pretty well no way for this to be compromised. (Well, as long as your original random numbers are random. But this is pretty easy, considering you can use physical devices, your choice of algorithms, etc, etc)
Blizzard could easily implement this. In fact, it's probably easier than having some special pattern of numbers that's secure. There's also no secret that they must keep (except the list of valid #s, and that doesn't have to sit online).
So really, no, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
What about a rating
by
asmithmd1
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The article doesn't mention cheating or a peer rating system like Ebay. This is something an online gaming community can add so that when you are tring to find a partner you have some idea how he has behaved in the past
The way cheating is handled in chess.net is that an account is marked as an abused after a couple instances of cheating. Of course people can and do create new accounts, but it is at least something.
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Re:What about a rating
by
Rudeboy777
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've considered this in the past, and I think it would really help a game like Starcraft where there are many hackers out to spoil everyones fun (most notably using the dreaded 'map hack' which reveals all hidden terrain). Some sort of a system where players who suspect another player can make an 'accusation' which will stay on the opposing players record for X amount of time. Only one accusation per player of course, and perhaps some way of preventing all of a players buddies from making accusations because their friend said to (this is a little more tricky...)
What appeals to me most about this is that it's ultimately the community spirit working against cheaters as opposed to trying to stay ahead of them technologically (we've all seen how well that works)
--
From hell's heart I fstab at/dev/hdc
Re:What about a rating
by
Klatma
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Its not that tricky to keep all of someones friends from giving one guy a bad rating. You must have actually played a game with the player before you can rate the player.
This system sounds appealing to me. I could see someone who is accused of cheating because he clobbers everyone, and know that it will be a challenge to beat this guy, because he is either really good or he cheats. So then I can either accept a challenging game or not play against this person.
But it is so easy to sign up for accounts on most systems that if someone is accused of cheating too much they can just create a new account and start with a fresh rating. But overall a system like this would be good.
Re:What about a rating
by
demo9orgon
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You have a great idea here. I stopped playing Starcraft/Broodwar against anonymous vermin a long time ago because some d00d thought that after we had destroyed the enemy that I was the enemy. I beat his ass so bad he dropped, but it still didn't do much for the feeling that this punk thought he could beat my ass after being my _buddy_. That crap does not fly in my book, so I only play with honorable people. The same stuff happened to my wife, and she found the whole online sc/bw scene repugnant and hasn't bothered going back.
In general, there's a whole asshole brigade of young online gamers who don't feel their online actions matter. That is a bad attitude, and a terrible way to conduct oneself.
The merit of a such a system lies in how identities are tied to a CD-Key. So if someone is an asshole, their bad karma is going to tail them unless they pay Blizzard and their Vivendi handlers for another chance at redemption. Sure there should be some kind of amnesty plan, but the whole system is going to require some kind of lock-step policing; a policy which would automatically invalidate bogus ratings. So that at the end of the game, when you're looking at the "Save Replay", or "Exit" options, there would be another, "Rate Players", which would bring up an interface that would include all of the MEAT players you just threw down with, some simple radio buttons for each (rate the behavior of your friends/opponents --based on the Alliance status when the game concluded) with 1 to 5 (1 being fscking sphincter to 5 being excellent), and a 255 character "comment" field, suitable for nice words like, "turncoat,cheating, bastard".
In the end, with a free service, and a very non-free implementation cost, to Blizzard, the ends are probably not worth the cost to implement. This is to be expected, and maybe there's a niche here for a 3rd. party to step in and provide a most excellent service which arbitrates the honor of people who would feel better about getting into a game with someone who is really interested in a "3 vs. 3 CPU!!!" instead of "1 vs. 2 vs. 3 CPU!!!", or the ever popular variant "2 cheaters vs. 1 pigeon", or the "Newbie!" games.
Hey, where's a venture capitalist when you need them!!!?
-- Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I find that todays game players are spoiled and demand more and more from a game in both graphics and robustness.
You can always judge the quality of a game player by asking if they have ever used a MUD. I honestly think this is a genres of Multiplayer gaming which has been tossed to the wayside by 13 year olds who have never heard of a BBS and want to push the limits of their new GeForce4 as to show off to their friends.
Talk about robustness, anyone who can remember MajorMUD or Tele-Arena know what I'm talking about.
I just honestly think game makers need to look back and reignite the Text Based RPG craze. I honestly feel there's money to be made in it.
Only reason text based was popular was because there wasn't enough horse power for graphics. It was the quality of the game that made it poular. There were probably a few bad text based games. Just like today's graphically rich games. There are good and bad, just like in all products. Text based isn't better than graphics. And what's wrong with trying to see what your new $300 video card is capable of? Some of us can't wait for the day when game graphics will be indistinguishable from real life.
Re:My comment..
by
WndrBr3d
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Many of todays game makers have tried to pack the robustness of old Text Based games into a graphcial interface but they're failed miserably. There's only so much you can do with the mouse.
bah, I was around when MUDs were fairly popular. I never played one. Never. They did not appeal to me. The days of text gaming ended w/my Vic20 and the cartridge of Dracula's Dungeon.
Granted, I don't show off my GeForce4 b/c I don't own one (I don't play anything except Quake1CTF and due to extremely high ping times for some reason *cough* woh.rr.com *cough* I can't even do that).
But how the hell could you compare gaming of yester-millenium to games of today?
I am waiting for broadband GT3. Now that would be fucking sweet.
Sigh. I miss the old days of playing Galactic Warzone. It wasn't widely played, but it blew Tradewars away completely.
Does anyone remember a game called Omega as well? It was like Ultima with ASCII graphics, where you could traverse the actual world, not just the dungeons. One of the coolest (and most frustrating features) was that after the sun went down, the ghosts of the monsters you killed came looking for you again.
I don't know if spoiled is quite it. More to the point, I think some games spend too much attention on graphics, sounds, special effects, and not enough on making a good, playable game. That's true of all game genres, not just multi-player online games.
If you're looking for a MUD, even a text-based one, they're still out there:
NetHack - successor to Rogue, the granddaddy of them all
If what you're looking for isn't listed, check out the The MUD Connector
Re:My comment..
by
EvilKat
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Frankly, I would like to see some multiplayer graphical games out there that take the concepts presented in text-based games and make them available in an image-based form.
Things like, allowing private individuals to design worlds and host games (without having to pay the company except to buy a copy of the game), setting up the rules and scripts/code the way they want it for their domain, being able to add areas onto the worldmap as they wish, just like in text-based RPGs, being able to make players apply for characters, so that you don't just get the trigger-happy PKers, the ability for admin who are not employed by any software company to boot/fire undesirables from the game (the ones that are ruining it for everyone else)... What I'd like to see is a graphical game which centers more on roleplay and less on getting stats/artifacts/levels-up. But then, I've always been big on MUSHes (RP-centered text-based games). I guess I just wish someone would make a graphical version of PennMUSH.:)
If, by GT3 you mean Gran Turismo, then wait patiently for about a year and a half...
GT4 has been officially announced and will be network-ready (it replaces the GTN expansion) and will ship in Japan mid-2003 and will probably be in North American hands a few months later.
GT4 is said to include variable weather and time as well as new tracks from China and somewhere I can't recall at the moment. All this I got from my latest PSM2 maazine.
There's also going to be a PC GT as well.
GTRacer
- Time to subscribe to broadband, no?
-- Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
You could try to make the same analogy between books and television -- but as you can tell, books are still fairly popular.
Text based isn't better than graphics.
The original poster didn't say that they were. He just said that he thought that there was a still a decent market for them, and I think that he's probably right.
Re:My comment..
by
Zathrus
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
And what's wrong with demanding more robustness and graphics from modern games? Oh, that's right, you have fallen into the delusion that text based games are inherently better than their graphical counterparts. The belief that there will never again be as good of an adventure game as Zork (or Dungeon for that matter), that text MUDs were the apex of the ORPG genre, and that first person shooters are inherently sucky.
Of course, we will ignore the thousands upon thousands of MUDs, text-based adventure games, and so forth that outright sucked because they didn't have a cohesive world, storyline, had a broken interface, impossible-to-decipher riddles, broken code, or any one of a number of other issues. Clearly the fact that successful games usually had all of the above in working order doesn't mean anything.
Do you work for Hollywood? You know, that group of "big brains" that thinks the next Big Thing is to make computer generated movies, since Pixar and Dreamworks have been so successful (and thus ignoring that Toy Story, Bug's Life, Shrek, and Monster's, Inc. succeeded due to a combination of script, acting, direction, AND technology; not technology alone).
Yes, I played a text mud long, long ago. And found it boring and uninteresting. I quit after a couple weeks at best. Verant, on the other hand, has commanded $10/mo from me for nearly three years because EverQuest, despite it's flaws, has proved to be enjoyable for the most part. There are tons of things in EQ that annoy me, but the good bits outweigh the bad most of the time (and when they don't, I take a break, as I'm doing currently).
Future MMORPG designers not only have to get the carrot-stick model right (which is pretty much the only thing I think Verant did), but also incorporate a rich world, an intriguing storyline (as much as you can given the MM part), a good interface, and a rich graphical world. Oh, and yes, it'll have to be robust too. Or you'll have to have deep pockets to run in the red until it becomes robust (c.f. Anarchy Online - I hear it doesn't suck rocks now. I don't care to find out.)
And, slightly offtopic, but one of the biggest challenges they'll find is convincing jaded MMORPG players to come to them. I know that after playing EQ I have no desire to play another MMORPG, since I understand exactly how much of a time investment it implies.
Not terribly impressed w/GT3's handling but I assume that will improve in GT4.
I have been playing GT1 for years, just got GT3 this past December. I will patiently wait for GT4:)
Re:My comment..
by
Ixohoxi
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You don't even realize that you are agreeing with him, 100%, do you? Game quality was essential when the focus WAS the game. Now the focus is usually the graphics first, then network play, then the gameplay. The games that get the awards are the ones who don't exactly follow that recipe.
Games these days are quite like women. They keep getting prettier, but not necessarily any better; they may provide more stimulus, but that doesn't guarantee more pleasure. Just some free association there... take offense only if you're the offensive type.
And speaking of the ladies, I know why you can't wait for the day when graphics are indistinguishable from real life... you naughty little boy. Get a real life, don't rely on graphics to make it look like you have one. "And what's wrong with trying to see what your new $300 video card is capable of?" Are you by chance the exact 14 year-old the previous poster was referring to?
--
What's a second? An hour? A day? It has much more to do with the Earth's rotation than with cesium.
and some of us like to use our imagination. not leave it to the game developer's art department.
I still love q3 and rtcw, but I still love to fire up Supernova and Zork! It's all about personal preference... don't just assume text games are all worse-off than their graphical counterparts.
Sure, 3D effect-laden graphics that need the Ti4600 to run are certainly far more popular, but don't generalize so much
This would've helped when...
by
Ron+Harwood
·
· Score: 2
I was planning BlackNova Traders... there's a couple of points that aren't covered in a lot of game design books (a lot of which think everything is either RTS or FPS).
Even the basics are hard
by
SilentChris
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I remember trying to do a simple multiplayer turn-based game in CS class a few years ago (a Risk clone) and even that was hard. Creating the network tools by hand, it was a challenge to get the server to properly handle the back and forth timing required (send move request, wait for request, take in request/send out another one?) I can just imagine a realtime game where every second counts.
Although, I don't think some of the algorhythms in place right now for latency (for example, Quake III Arena) are much better. I don't think it's fair to allow the computer to "judge" modem players' moves, and try to determine "if" the player would have got the hit. Not only is this unfair to the player (when they get to a real LAN tournament they'll be roasted), it's also unfair to the vet with a decent connection, because the newbie in essense gets a free hit. I would propose figuring out better ways to communicate over the network instead of trying to second guess the players' moves with algorhythms.
Re:Even the basics are hard
by
SilentChris
·
· Score: 2
I can use the analogy of security which is frequently told on Slashdot: it can't be bolted on, it has to be designed from the beginning. What's better? Fixing the underlying network code or tacking-on an improvement which, in fact, gives an intentionally vastly different game experience for each player?
I'm also not really sure where your insult is being targetted, or even what it is. Not all game makers rely on the default DirectNet or TCP/IP stacks to create their games. Some create their own stacks (I recall Carmack saying they had to create their own IP stack for Quake on Dreamcast). If you rely on the existing network code, you're relying on what someone else perceived as the best way to optimize the packets were - whether this was a game or not. The better programmers (for example, in first-person shooting, id and Epic) create highly-optimized, usually UDP-based solutions. If they relied on the exact same code as the original, for example, used to spit out web pages, most players would be toast.
Re:Even the basics are hard
by
Zathrus
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You're still not making sense. In fact, less sense than you were originally.
First you say not to "rely on the existing network code", and then you talk about creating "highly-optimized [...] UDP-based solutions". What do you think UDP is? It's existing network code. The only magic being perfomed is the data inside of the packets. Everything else - from the trivial handshaking to the deeply important things like encoding, transport, routing, etc. utilize existing code. What the previous poster was saying is that you are asking them to rewrite THAT code, and that is outright absurd. Go ahead and do so, but if you expect people to actually use it beyond a home LAN then they're going to stuff it into a TCP/IP packet which is not only going to undo any magic you may've done, but add additional overhead on top of it.
To go back to your original complaint, if you'd like to see how things work without having everyone using prediction, just turn it off. You can you know (and sorry, I'm not enough of a Quakehead anymore to recall the correct variable). Welcome to hell. There's a reason that id, Epic, and everyone else has started using player prediction on both the servers and the clients. Without it you're limited to the lowest common denominator for network traffic. Think back to Doom and how much it sucked when someone with a shitty computer or ethernet drivers connected to the game.
The key to player prediction is the right balance. Too much prediction and you get a lot of silly things like modem players shooting people on OC-3's after they're down the hall and around 3 corners. Too little and you make it unusable for anyone not on an OC-3.
Re:Even the basics are hard
by
mrpotato
·
· Score: 2
algorhythm: a computer process making a computation that must be done repetively over a fixed period of time.
I think the number one problem with online games is cheating. There have been countless times where I have been totally addicted to a game, and then a cheat ruins all the fun. People play online games because it is so much more exciting to compete against a real person. If the game becomes unbalanced, players will either move on to another game or use the cheat themselves.
I think the number one problem with online games is cheating.
And the number one reason for that is
underestimation of
the number one security rule,
i.e. Never trust the client.
The reason for that, I believe, is
trying to get better performance at the cost of
security,
but with online multiplayer games,
the risk can be often to high.
That's a bit much though. If you aren't some world class Quake player, having some bot using lamer always shoot you with the railgun the first time your model's clipping plane is in sight (then calling you a "fag") just isn't very fun.
We hope you have enjoyed this article. Check back in March for our upcoming article on one of the most controversial issues in Internet gaming today: Dealing with Online Cheating.
The idea behind setting up a game and giving it rules to create an artificial constraint that everyone agrees to work within. The important part is that agreement. Sure, you can technologically bend and break the rules, but that doesn't make it right. The idea is to level the field somewhat and then make it a battle of skill and wits WITHIN the constraints of the game.
The big problem with cheating is identification. If you want to go out and duel against other bot builders then it's a fair competition. Other people are out there trying to move and react as quickly as they can but within the rules. If you present yourself as one of those people (the "nearly undetectable" comment) then you should play within those rules.
So, I'm glad that you get a huge power kick out of being able to dupe people trying to play within the bounds, but you've completely missed the point. Note: The Matrix is a horrible example to justify your actions. The Matrix is about revolution and fighting tyranny, not getting the highest number of frags.
-- ---
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I would maintain that you've missed the point of games. If it was true that in games "You are supposed to win by any means necessary," then I would posit that most games would be unplayable. If you took the field in Football and the other team's coach shoots you with a sniper rifle, that would be winning by any means necessary. Games have rules for a reason.
The example you brought up to support your point isn't valid. Even if we disregard that Matrix is a movie, not a game, the premise is closer to a war than a game. The war is between humans and the machines. Any means necessary can be more valid in a war setting than a game setting.
I would also say that you've completely missed the point of gaming. I can out ride a 3 year old, but it doesn't make it fun. Maybe you can take your obvious skills and pit them against other bot-makers and try to see how fun that might be. Which bot maker is the best, etc. Try it, you may have something that you've been missing -- real fun.
That's one way to look at it... a shitty way, but one way.
Alternatively, why not look at it like a sporting contest, such as tennis. When you go out to play tennis (or raquetball, or whatever) with someone, is your goal to bend the rules and win at all costs? Or is the goal to have fun competing within the mutually agreed upon ruleset?
I think this is because they don't understand that they're thinking inside the box. A computer game is a construct; a player is someone attempting to defeat that construct.
You're the one who seems to be lacking a great deal of understanding, as well as maturity. People play games because they want to think "inside the box." They set up that situation to test their abilities at a certain task. The real world is what's "outside the box," where almost anything goes. I'm sorry you can't bring your super-duper-ultra-l33t Quake bot to McDonald's to flip burgers for you so you can stay home working on new ways to DDoS people trying to play a game and otherwise bring your miserable anti-social tendencies into everyone's face. If you think that the ability to write an undetectable cheatbot makes you akin to some sort of fictional movie character, or a God, or someone who controls the Universe, all things you've said, you've got some sort sort of delusional disorder. You're one thing: an immature, snotty little punk who, if you were one tenth as good as you think you are, would be the one creating those games, working with the developers whose gift to the players you destroy, and earning the adulation of those players you sneer at. But you're not. You're sitting at home, writing your little bots and developing a god complex simply because you're unable to accept your own personal failings and blame the world for what's wrong with your life so you seek to bring it down to your own level. It's the only way to feel good about yourself. Congratulations on your contribution to humankind.
> I can walk into nearly any deathmatch in the world and win with nearly no effort at all. Like Neo. Like God!
I have a game you'd really like. The UI consists of a "play" button and a high-scorers widget. Every time you click "play" you win, and your name is added to the top of the high-scorers list, with a score one point higher than the highest score already there.
This is the most fun game I've ever played. I've never lost! My score gets better every time I play!!! I feel like God's own God when I played it!!!!!
Well, he might be Neo. Only someone really anal retentive would make a bot. To keep himself regular, he has to eat a liquid diet of that slop they ate on the Nebudchanezzar.
And the number one reason for that is underestimation of the number one security rule, i.e. Never trust the client.
No doubt that most network game designers need to read some good network programming books (or just Stevens), but even if games had a 100% solid protocol you'd still have auto-aimers in FPS games. I'm sure there are plenty of other cheats that don't involve taking advantage of the network.
I try to help them, but like Neo knew, sometimes the best solution is just to kill them as many times as you can.
Actually I find cheating to be boring and obnoxious. It's not really a test of skill or intellect. I prefer to win games by simply being better than my opponents.
No one wins when you cheat, because by cheating you've removed any chance to win.
I like to annoy cheaters in Half-Life TFC. Most common (or most obvious) is the auto aim or auto trigger cheats that net a sniper a headshot every time. I'll switch teams and play something really spammy like a demoman or soldier and bounce my new cheating teammate all over the place. If he switches teams so do I. If he switches characters he's suddenly lost most of his advantage (auto aim does wonders with the shotgun but isn't the instant death that the sniper deals). I've run more cheaters off that way than any other.
If you Never trust the client. then you absolutely cannot create an online game. At
some point you have to trust the client. And there is absolutely no way to prevent
someone from hacking the client for auto-aim, auto-dodge, etc.
I was talking more about
strategy and MMORPG games than about FPS.
Remember that online game is a term
describing much more than just Quake.
So I mean situations where human intellect
is more important than auto-dodge.
I don't play FPS games, I find them boring
and repetitive
(please take no offense,
this is strictly my personal opinion),
but if I was designing one,
I would include scripting of characters behavior,
as an integral part of the game.
Players would focus on the strategy
instead of manual skills.
But then again, maybe it's not what
FPS fans would like.
even if games had a 100% solid protocol
you'd still have auto-aimers in FPS games.
Of course, but this is the kind of cheat which
will always be possible.
That is because of the nature of the problem.
Shooting to the target
is the kind of problem which is
better solved by the machine than by a human.
I would solve it in a different way:
characters could be set to automatically aim
to the enemies (as an integral part of the game,
not as a cheat) but when he shoots,
the decision if the target was hit
is made by the server,
depending on many factors
(like if the character and target are running,
if the character is tired, hurt, far from
target, etc.).
It would not only solve the auto-aim
cheat problem, but would also make the game more
realistic.
My point is that when you have online
multiplayer game,
where people from the whole planet
play the game on their own computers,
the only sane assumption is that
sooner or later
(usually sooner than expected)
someone will use a hacked client.
So if you don't want cheats,
you can't depend on strictly manual skills,
which would be extremely easy for a machine,
like aiming to targets.
Otherwise, you'll have big trouble
when someone finally learns your protocol
or alters the client binary.
That could mean the end of fun for many people
and an endless fight against cheaters
for the game developers.
I like the idea of WorldForge project, which I think will be introduced
with Mason
and Werewolf, i.e.
to integrate into the game
the AI scripting of PCs
with identical possibilities as the AI of NPCs.
There'll be lots of ready to use scripts
and some GUI script builder, as well as
a possibility to write the scripts
(currently in Python).
So you'll be able to program your character
to always run away when he's attacked by someone
taller than him,
or otherwise always instantly hit the offender
in the face.
But also more general tasks, like eat when
he's hungry, buy food when he has no food,
find food when he has no money, etc.
That way when you don't play the game,
your character can still do something
useful, unlike most of MMORPGs where the
character usually just stands still or
disappear.
Thanks to that,
there's no point in cheating with
the client by e.g.
setting your character to automatically
train his skills for many hours,
because everyone can
easily program his character to do the same,
probably with just few clicks in the GUI.
Check out the Cyphesis,
WorldForge AI/ALife engine.
There's still not much of documentation,
so the Cyphesis source code is the best reference.
So that's about the client itself.
On the other hand,
from the side of network protocol and
the clean client-server architecture,
the client never gets to much info,
and it's never trusted to make any decisions,
other than just send to the server what the
character wants to do (not even what he actually
does, just what he wants).
I'll quote part of the Atlas protocol summary,
my emphasis:
Atlas is standard protocol between server and client. It should
work with simple/complicated server and simple/complicated
client and with all combinations. ASCII version will use XML.
Server might be thought as body for character and client might
be thought as mind for character and protocol is neurons
connecting these.
Features
Flexible and transparently extensible
Works at the same time with old and new clients
Initially XML used for easy debugging and later
optimized binary format.
Transmits only changed information and server doesn't
need reveal any more it wants.
Usually assumption is
made that clients are hacked and thus are not
trustworthy.
See also the
Atlas Tutorial.
The standard implementation of Atlas is Atlas-C++,
the source code of which
can be great for anyone who wants
to learn multiplayer games related network
programming, and high quality network programming
in general.
For more about Atlas, check out the
Battleplan and
protocols at worldforge.org
mailing list
(see the archives of scripting@ for
discussion before 1999, and protocols@ for later and actual discussion).
So, the point is that not trusting the client is
the fundamental aspect of game design,
not just a feature to be added later.
There are and will be games designed around
open protocols (where you can easily
read and change the client-server traffic in
both ways),
free software clients
(which you can easily change),
and servers (which you can easily read
and find out how they work),
but those games
won't have problems with cheating
because of their design,
not because of
security through obscurity
like in most of games today.
That's why I always talk about WorldForge
when there's a discussion about
multiplayer games design, security and cheats
- these folks do it
exactly the way how it should be done.
Every time you click "play" you win, and your name is added to the top of the high-scorers list, with a score one point higher than the highest score already there.
I hacked your crappy game so that it presses the play button for me, in an infinite loop. Now, I can get a higher high score, much faster.
I'm like Neo's God now!
the number one problem with online games is cheating
Let the mists of time roll back to the early 1990's. A open source X11 game called Netrek was all the rage. It involved little spaceships flying around shooting at each other and capturing planets.
Now, I loved Netrek, but I sucked badly at it. So I decided to crack it and write a cyborg client that did all the hard stuff for me. Netrek had (has) a fairly robust RSA authentication scheme to try and stop this, with some clever tricks that a most commercial games still haven't caught on to. But I perservered, and managed to insert a spoofing borg in between a blessed client and a server. Hurrah!
So then I added all my borg features. Cloaked ships showed up on the tactical screen. My torpedoes auto-aimed. My shields flicked up and down by themselves, and my phasers would get and keep a mortal lock with one keypress. I even coded up complex behaviour, like engaging a suicide attack that coordinated engines, helm, weapons, defences and tractors to practically guaranteed mutual destruction against a more valuable ship. And what was the net result?
I was able to dedicate more time to read messages and become a better team player. And that was it. Because Netrek had been designed from day 1 to be cheat proof. There was simply very little advantage to be had from it.
Examples: I fired perfect vector torps, aimed precisely where my target was going to be. Only that was pointless against anyone halfway decent, because they would dodge them. Every time. Torpedoes in Netrek are used to deny areas of space, not just to destroy. I couldn't do that.
I could see cloaked ships on the tactical, sure, but the information I got from the server was bogus. Speed, direction and position were all wrong. The server only gave enough information to display vague ?? marks on the galactic map, so all I could do was to make myself more aware of an incoming cloaked ship.
I had defensive systems that were optimal at keeping me alive in a 1 on 1 duel, but Netrek is a team game. Sometimes you have to come in screaming at warp 9, yelling "Damn the torpedoes!" and take the bullet for your buddies. Or you drop shields to take a single hit on the hull, because you can repair hull and shields simultaneously. You don't always want to split damage though, it depends on the strategic situation, whether you think you can defeat your opponent and whether you need to keep your hull intact to maintain top speed to get somewhere else in a hurry. It's all about context.
Lesson learned. Each aspect of Netrek is simple. You shoot. You move. You carry armies. But the interactions are so complex as to make any automated response to any given situtation counterproductive. Add to that a paranoid server that trusts nothing, and tells the client the bare minimum (and occasionally lies) and you have a game that is effectively cheat proof. All that a hacked client could do was give a clueless player the illusion of being competent, and nothing more. It could make a small difference when used in the right place at the right time, but it couldn't get you to the right place at the right time, nor could it decide to hold fire and suck it up in preparation for getting you the hell out of there and off to somewhere more useful. Those decisions took skill and judgement. The best players still whipped my ass in personal combat, and the best teams absolutely creamed the teams that I played in.
Those really were the days, my friends.
-- If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I think Blizzard is within its rights to try to stop these emulators.
First off, B.Net is a free service run at Blizzard's expense. The only catch is that you need a licensed copy of the game to connect to it. Second, they already have basic LAN connectivity (which doesn't require valid CD key's btw) for LAN parties and office shenanigans. Finally, they've been relatively responsive to upgrades to improve connectivity.
The use of B.Net ensures that everyone's patched to the same level and you don't have to worry about compromised servers trying to hack your client. Sure you need a licensed copy of StarCraft or other, but that's pretty small compared to the others with monthly access fees.
-- ---
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
A b.net clone can let people with pirated serial numbers for games play a b.net game. Say I run a popular b.net clone server that doesn't check for the game's serial number, a hundred people regularly connect to it and only twenty five of them have valid copies of the game. Blizzard has lost out on seventy five sales of the game and the pirates have no penalties for pirating the game. Blizzard makes megabucks you say and thus seventy five less sales isn't even a market statistic. What happens when there's thousands of people running b.net clones each with a hundred regular users a majority of which don't have valid copies of the game. That amounts to appriciable percentages of revenues being lost. It makes sense to disallow b.net clone servers even if those developers personally aren't infringing on any of Blizzard's copyrights. Warez copies of Warcraft 3 are going to hit servers weeks or days before the game is actually released, if these people can connect their warez copy of it to a b.net server that doesn't give a shit who copies the game Blizzard is going to lose out on a ton of sales because there's thousands of college and high school students with fat connections who don't feel they ought to pay for a video game.
So by your logic, if b.net checking CD keys doesn't prevent piracy it should be allowed to be encouraged? My magic 8-ball tells me you're destined to run a company into the ground. I hope you don't have any authority somewhere I have a stake in. You don't seem to grasp the concept anyhow, if a thousand b.net servers pop up and a majority of them have people playing with pirated copies of b.net games Blizzard stands to lose megabucks.
Where did I say everything that's bad for Blizzard ought to be illegal? Maybe it is just my reading comprehension skills or something but I gleamed from rereading my post that I was providing a counterpoint to the claim of the original poster. It seems you like far too many slashdot readers think everything is free. Blizzard used the DMCA to shut down b.net clones, it is a shitty law and it is sad they had to resort to using it. However they're protecting their property by means of law. If you're so fucking worried about the DMCA nuking Samba out of existance donate some money and write some letters so people do some lobbying to strike down the DMCA so companies have to protect their property by more geek favorable means.
Actually thousands of college and high school students cannot afford $50 copies of every game under the sun. I believe a study was done 2 years ago(?) that showed that most warez was done at college (big pipes), usually private ($$$), engineering (saavy), places.
Most buyers of the games were parents of younger soon to be private engineering college students, or former private engineering college students. Go figure.
It's simple.. If I can buy the game and actually play it in an enviroment without lag and cheating then I wouldn't have to run a bnetd because what would be the point? Bnetd exists simply because of Blizzard, battle.net sucks.. I used to be an avid starcraft player until everyone started cheating, cheating sucks.. I got fed up and decided I would never buy another Blizzard game until they fixed battle.net. I haven't bought diablo/diablo2/whatever else they have out and I wont buy warcraft 3. So if thats 150 dollars based on one person times that time the 25 people who you say really did buy the game in your example; that's 3,750 USD lost to blizzard (and those 75 that would of pirated the game; still gonna pirate it). So Blizzard gains absolutely nothing and I know there are people like me.
Blizzard will start to lose market share in the game market soon. If they'd take an example from ID and simply allow people to run their own servers they'd do themselves a service. ID software is more pirated than Blizzard shit; they don't complain because they know a game has a life cycle, you can't make money off of it forever so they provide a quality product and a quality game and let you play it where you want, when you want how you want. The customers who are gonna buy their games are still gonna buy them and the pirates will still pirate, and hopefully eventually they'll grow up and purchase ID games.
Blizzard is just putting nails into their own coffin.
That's what I was saying. The people with the fattest pipes and least money are going to be the biggest pirates. I would bet that most people who've ever complained about bandwidth caps on their internet connection do so not because they supposedly can't browse the net at high speed but have less bandwidth for warez, mp3s, and porn.
Lots of people "can't" afford it but they don't have the T3 connection to their bedroom that lets them download an ISO of a video game in less than an hour or a file sharing network within the campus network where they can grab ISOs and zip files of games at 100Mbps. The ones with the fat pipes just about anywhere are going to do more than their share of warezing simply because they can download for free overnight an ISO or hacked image rather than go pay upwards of 60$ for a game. I know people that have a cable modem specifically so they can grab zip images of games from warez IRC channels. They could easily afford the game but chose instead to get an illegal copy of it.
id Software makes money off of a game that's distributed with a server. They even built in CD Key checking (which is easy to disable, but they simply count on enough non-cheating admins.)
This totally blows Blizzard's claim that there's no way to do it out of the water. id is doing it and making a ton of money.
Furthermore, even if Blizzard might lose money, that shouldn't justify their controlling how people use a product that they've legally purchased. What's the real difference between making a Diablo2 mod that adds a new character race, and making a server?
Why should we care what they want us to do with the game? People say that if we don't want to play by their rules we shouldn't buy the game. Perhaps, if they stated their rules up front, we might not. But now they took our money, so shouldn't they play by our rules? Or at least not impose and unfairly on us?
Ummmm Battle.net being slow has everything to do with games; this is one of the prime reasons to use/play their games, Blizzard games are played over tcp/ip lets not convolute shit with "p2p protocol" (they just recently added udp support to starcraft).. The quality of the game has everything to do with battle.net, people don't buy starcraft or diablo to play by themselves. Maybe you do.. you're a small percentage.
As for cheaters, they usually come in the form of clans.. I don't have to play with them but after a couple of times having that happen it becomes pointless to play on battle.net. If someone is gonna cheat on a bnetd server they usually are more accountable. The people that play on that bnetd server wouldn't stand for it as they wouldn't be the ones cheating.. If the majority is cheating then you just remember to never play on that server and choose a different server. Much like quake/quake2/quake3.. All different types of servers, you play on the ones with the lowest pings and the least cheaters.
You try to make valid points but your points have flaws.. serious flaws.. If you wanna play a battle.net game with a 450 ping and then on top of that have people cheat then thats your business but thats not what I expect from a game I paid 50 or more dollars for.
With that.. I'm done with this conversation; no offense but you aren't really providing any rebuttal with valid points except to say that I and others should except battle.net for the shit that it is and just deal with it.
The big problem comes in with the CD-Key checker. Obviously bnetd cannot implement and/or enforce this.
So, this all comes to down to why. Why is bnetd being written? Is Battle.Net really that unresponsive? Has Blizzard suddenly started trying to charge money for it? What exact need does bnetd address? It would seem the main advantage to bnetd these days is to allow Internet play of non-licensed versions of Blizzard's products.
So, what is the "signifigant non-infringing use" for bnetd?
Additionally note: Licenses aren't "if it's not enumerated then it's excluded". Blizzard does have a pretty good case that one of the main uses of bnetd would be to abuse their copyrights (non-licensed use).
-- ---
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Wait one second. How could multiple Bnet clones lead to people stop buying Starcraft and Warcraft?
The argument for bnetd is that it allows licensed game owners to use an alternative network. You're making Blizzard's argument with your last line. People STILL NEED TO BUY Starcraft, et. al. even if they use bnetd to play over the internet. If people are using bnetd because they don't want to buy the software and have a valid CD key then they're breaking the law.
Arguments about freeness are to bring up the question of why bnetd is needed. B.Net's use only requires a licensed copy of the software. No monthly fee or anything else. So, if the system is available to all legal owners of the game, there's no additional costs, and the system is relatively responsive, again, why are we creating a clone?
-- ---
I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
If they advertised Battle.net usage as a feature of the product then the EULA for that is unenforceable too because it's an integral feature of the product.
That's so that you can't get around first-sale restrictions by selling a book which turns out to be a blank coupon which you redeem for the real thing (even instantly at the counter) after signing a contract... You could do that, but the contract would be unenforceable because you were essentially selling the book, not the coupon.
Ditto with Battle.net and Diablo2.
That said though, there was no sale with Warcraft 3 betas and the contracts were agreed to beforehand. In that case, EULAs probably are binding.
How *not* to make a game site..
by
Tukai
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If you're planning to make a multiplayergame, or even a site that has something to do with the subject: you definitely dont want to make a site that is only browseable with some fancy browsers that support CSS.(NS 6.x+, IE whatever). Cant believe this arena.net crap not letting people read the article with good'ol Netscape 4.76.. Even some plain text would have satisfied me but now I only get to read the "upgrade your browsers and come back". Yeah, very likely. Hope they werent trying to sell anything because this is not the way.
/T
Other article
by
delta407
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
It's interesting reading, including "Lesson four: UDP is better than TCP, but it still sucks" and "Lesson five: Whenever you think the Internet can't get any worse, it gets worse". It's good stuff.
And those of us who'd developed Netrek way back in the day read this article and fell about laughing. I mean, these guys could have saved themselves six months easy just by reading the change comments in socket.c;-)
-- If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Re:Oxymoron...social gamers
by
artemis67
·
· Score: 5, Funny
True, most of the "social interaction" in online games consists of the following statements:
"You f***ing lagger! Relog now!" "Stupid newbie!" "WTF? You hacker!" "Camper!!! Kick that f***ing camper!" "0wned!" "Ha ha you suck!" "You #!@% Q#% @!#%$ piece of @#%$!"
Multiplayer Games Overrated?
by
slipkid
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This article should be mandatory reading for game designers everywhere. It seems that more and more games are coming out with gratuitous multiplayer functionality just to sell copies. The criteria in this article should be a pre-release checklist for any game including a multiplayer option.
There are certain games whose genre or interface makes multiplayer functionality completely cumbersome to the point of being unplayable. The Baldur's Gate series comes to mind as beautiful single-player games with horribly implemented multiplayer modes... IMO of course.
I'm a fan of multiplayer when multiplayer works, but I won't be a party to Monkey Island on Kali.
I don't think this is off topic (maybe a little). In some games you are somewhat free to build a personality with skins and so on. I hope this will evolve because I think that it is a nice feature. I found a protocol that delivers many 3D features in a compact way. The protocol has a design that enables loading up objects with shape and behavior.
The protocol is called Verse and is a network protocol, for three-dimensional, client/server graphic - Quote: "A typical way to communicate in Verse is to let clients upload or use existing objects as avatars, and then communicate by moving and animating these avatar objects".
Be carful on what you call cheating
by
jellomizer
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I am sure you are talking about when people hack the program or break there word on the rules of the game. But some people accuse other for cheating for playing with a different stradigy. I have been accused for cheating because in StarCraft I didn't build any fighting units (except for cannons) and snuk in a Probe and build cannons around his base. So if there is a way to stop cheator it can also be a way to give an advantage to Sore loosers who rather unplug thier computer then admit defete.
-- If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Be carful on what you call cheating
by
jandrese
·
· Score: 2
I would just accuse you of being dumb actually, and your opponent was even dumber. I reserve the word "cheating" for people who actually hack the client or the protocol and give themselves an unfair adavantage. Like the old "high lag multiple refund bug" lots of RTSes suffered from (and some still do).
--
I read the internet for the articles.
Re:Be carful on what you call cheating
by
Xerithane
·
· Score: 2
You don't cheat, you just suck ass at starcraft. Big difference. You may want to actually learn to play and join some newbie games so you can actually enjoy the game. The problem with people like you is that you don't actually take the time to learn the game but you just play with cheap tactics that really screw the game up and don't make it any fun. Any 2 bit chimp can build cannons up in someones base -- it's no fun. Most people should be able to stop it, but it offsets the game... you are the same type of people who rush in with SCVs right in the beginning.
This is actually covered in the article somewhat, which is making the game fun and balanced. You need to make it so it has an easy learning curve, but something that doesn't allow "bitch tactics" but still will allow other rush tactics. Same thing with War2 and the lumber mill in front of the gold mine...
Re:Be carful on what you call cheating
by
Pxtl
·
· Score: 2
I found TA had an excellent approach - you have one main builder to start, and he has a spell that can do incredible damage, but you don't attack with him 'cause if he dies its game over (if you don't play with that option turned on, its your own fault for screwing up the gameplay). Also, if two of these Commanders fight, they blow up extra-big when they die, so its impossible to kill one with another, as it'll always make a tie.
Improved graphics spoiled Ultima series
by
October_30th
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Ultima series was not exactly a multiplayer game, but I think it serves as an excellent example of how a brilliant game is destroyed by demands for "realistic" graphics.
With bare-minimum graphics like Ultima III on C64 all the action took place in your own mind -- the best virtual reality/graphics engine ever developed.
When the series moved onto a sort of 3d graphics in Ultima VI the whole atmosphere changed. Suddenly you had these STUPID, squeaky-clean looking characters on the screen instead of the rough bunch of veterans you always had imagined. All the monsters were pitiful caricatures of the nightmares I had fought in the earlier Ultima episodes. In short, the whole game was fucked up because you were being forcefed the (annoying) vision of the game developers.
game graphics will be indistinguishable from real life
Sigh. And what's the point in that when the purpose of the games is to help you to spend some time away from the reality!?
-- The owls are not what they seem
I don't know if StarCraft is 'balanced' . . .
by
stevarooski
·
· Score: 3, Informative
. . . or if it is, its very subtly so and outside the range of your average player. The article makes a great statement as to the importance of balance, and this is exactly what turned me off StarCraft.
Every time I played on Battle.net, anyone with half a brain simply played the Zerg and rushed the hell out of everyone else. Usually, the Zerg won. In a war of 'resource command' it would seem that those who can expand the fastest would win.
Just to convince people I'm not blowing hot air, look at the StarCraft Season III Ladder Tournement results and count the occurances of Zerg versus occurances of other races. By my count, of the top players, there was 1 instance of Humans, 2 of Protoss, and 21 people playing the Zerg.
--
- - - - - - - - Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Re:I don't know if StarCraft is 'balanced' . . .
by
stevarooski
·
· Score: 2
My argument based on personal experience, since obviously I wasn't at these tournements. However, if you require more than my previous post, go to google and look for yourself. Also take into account that there have been many balance tweaks via patches, addons, etc to StarCraft since I last played--although the necessity of these fixes might be seen as evidence for what I discussed above.
Bear in mind I'm NOT NOT NOT saying its a bad game! I loved StarCraft. ..Just that I didn't think it provided a balanced multiplayer experience, since the Zerg rush back when it came out stopped me from playing online. Since then maybe its changed, but I don't play anymore so I wouldn't know.
--
- - - - - - - - Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Unit VS Race Balancing
by
Guru1
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It wasn't until we changed from Warcraft's "unit equivalence" to StarCraft's "race equivalence" that we were able to correct the most egregious play imbalance issues.
I find this to be a very important statement he made in regards to the development of multiplayer and RTS games. After warcraft, the piles of RTS games that came out all had some thing in common. A few races (or civs, etc) that had different units that all did basically the same thing.. the "ranged unit" the "fast unit" the "strong unit that is really expensive", etc. Other than some small games that didn't really make it off the ground, Starcraft was the first mainstream game that said "this race can do this and this other race is completely different". I believe that Starcraft is replayed so often because there is an incredible amount of flexability with each race and when combined with fighting against another diverse race, it creates an incredible amount of possibilities.
What makes this a great money maker for games such as Diablo and Starcraft (if they'd get off their buttocks), is that they can reuse the same engine they already had written, code in another race (or couple classes as in Diablo II LoD), and have people scrambling to buy it, since it adds an exponential amount of excitement to the game. If Starcraft added one single race (sold at the price of $25 in stores), I would instantly buy it.. not only would I be able to learn all about the new "Dotslash" race, but I would be able to figure out piles of strategies about how to fight Dotslashes with Terrans, or Protoss.. Just as the message boards are filled with people asking how to fight Druids with Necromancers, etc etc.
The game industry needs to focus more on additions to their games, instead of starting from scratch every single time. Not only would the players be happier, but I imagine the pocketbooks of the game makers would be happy as well.
Dave
Re:Unit VS Race Balancing
by
jandrese
·
· Score: 2
I think Command and Conquor would be the first Mainstream game where the sides weren't mirror images of each other. Starcraft was the first game to get it right with 3 races though, which was mindblowing at the time, especially since the races _are_ so different.
--
I read the internet for the articles.
Re:Unit VS Race Balancing
by
Graymalkin
·
· Score: 2
While Baldur's Gate isn't an RTS or anything they do almost exactly as you suggest and release different games all based on the same engine. If you play Planescape:Torment or Icewind Dale everything but the graphics and command frame are pretty much identical with maybe a few improvements or tweaks here and there. Tales of Sword Coast and Heart of Winter were just a couple of additional maps on top of the original game. I think the problem with adding a new race to games like Starcraft and Diablo is they are balanced from the beginning. While the three races of Starcraft play differently they balance out in the end because you adjust to strategy or play style to suit a specific race. Adding a new one in the middle throws that system out of whack for a very long time because you've changed the dynamics of the whole game. Even in Diablo the added characters were justy cheap additions which combined traits of different classes into a new character, the new amalgam didn't really have a big advantage over any of the original classes for the most part. Expansions get really critically reviewed when they change every aspect of the game rather than just providing a little extra play time for those who've already been at it for a while.
What you've just described is basically the style of table top wargames, especially ones from Games Workshop different races have different abilities. The only drawback to this type of system is for the game designers to make each new race super powerful in comparison to make it atractive for purchase. The games do turn out to be pretty well balanced, despite cry's to the contrary, a good player will usually win over a bad one regardless of the armies involved.
This concept fleshed out in a computer game would be EXCELLENT. Not only do the gamers win, but the publishers have a way to make a good profit off of coninuing a game's expansion. Consider a computer version of a table top wargame, once the initial engine is written there is little work involved in creating new races, weapons, equipment, vehicles, powers, ect. Rather than spending several years in developement of the sequel release an expansion pack for $20 several times a year. Rather than wait four years to collect $50 for the sequel collect $200 or so for all of the expansions. A new compatible version of the engine could be released every couple of years at that point to keep up with technology.
-- I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Re:Unit VS Race Balancing
by
Alsee
·
· Score: 3, Funny
the new "Dotslash" race
No, I'm sorry but the "Dotslash" race is intrinsicly unbalanced. The Dotslash Effect incapacitates any target enemy.
-
-- - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Sorry, I don't buy it.
by
No+Such+Agency
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Don't be a MUD snob. I know it's difficult, we are all snobs about something, but it's not a 13 year old's fault if they haven't played some ancient text game that you liked so much. Hell, I've never played a MUD (I'm 27yo), though I've heard some were *great*. But they weren't necessarily good because they didn't rely on graphics. They were good, because like some cutting edge 3D games, they were designed and coded with care and concern for gameplay.
-- Freedom: "I won't!"
Re:Oxymoron...social gamers
by
alcmena
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I used to run my own Counter-Strike server, and I couldn't agree with your post more. It got so bad that I eventually wrote a program that punishes people when they would complain about laggers, campers, cheaters, etc. The punishment was 50% of your health. Do it three times, you're gagged and can only talk to your team. Three more, you're kicked. Three more, you're banned for an hour.
I'm usually one who is strongly against filters, but I have to admit, this one did wonders. People learned to either be civil towards each other, or they learned to be quiet.
I don't think Counterstrike is really representative of all online gaming. If it was, every flat surface in EQ would be covered in pornographic spray logos.
Certainly the zergling rush is the easiest good strategy, but it isn't the only valid one, or even the best. If the zerg don't win early, they're in a lot of trouble - it's hard for them to match up with the powerful late-game units other races have.
(Also remember your workers can attack if ordered; this is surprisingly useful in thwarting the early zergling rush!)
The map makes a big difference; in a highly constricted map, the rush is a lot harder. On an island map they're in deep trouble.
Seems to me you're blaming the developers for what the legal department and the marketing folks are doing. How many Blizzard designers do you think really care which network the gamers use, as long as they play the game?
Unsupported Browser?
by
evand
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Seeing as my using OmniWeb to view arena.net resulted in a quick glance at the requested page (which looked fine) and then a bounce to ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Browser, I thought I'd respond in kind (note: I didn't actually send HTML email; I had to replace some of the hyphen characters with just bolding the topics so that I wouldn't get blocked by the lameness filter):
To: webmaster@arena.net
Subject: ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Webmaster
Why am I getting this instead of a friendly, congratulatory email?
You are here because the webmaster you are using is apparently too lazy to create pages that work in most browsers, regardless of their support for the full HTML 4.0 specification, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Most likely, you're losing a decent hunk of viewers because of this.
Why does that matter?
In the pursuit of giving web surfers the kind of experience that you want them to have, as opposed to simply letting them control the experience for themselves (as would tend to be suggested by the HTML and CSS standards), you tried to use the best technology available, which I heartily commend. HTML 4.0 and CSS are examples of some of the best and most widespread standards-based technology available for presenting interactive media to the world. However, you have decided that, rather than simply using these technologies and letting the user decide if and how to implement them on the client-side, your webserver will detect browsers that you haven't tested with and will send the user of said browser to a completely useless page rather than actually delivering the content that the user requested.
What should I do?
If your webmaster can't figure out how to get pages to display at all in browsers other than those created by Netscape and Microsoft, you might want to hire a better one.
If you are running a smart webmaster who has simply gone astray from the vision of the web, you will want to either ask them to change their policies or follow the advice above.
Aggressive play
by
Broccolist
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That was a bit of a disappointing article. I was expecting some major insights from a developer of such great games, but he mostly just reiterated banalities that any long-time gamer is aware of.
But I would add one more crucial point: gameplay should be fast-paced and aggressive. Sitting in your base and defending against unsuccessful attacks is just boring. In Warcraft 2, defending almost never worked and attacking was always to your benefit. The result was an edge-of-your-seat game where, among skilled players, every unit you pumped out was immediately sent to the battlefield and you were constantly trying to stop one of your bases from being trashed. I have yet to see an RTS which, all balance issues aside, is just plain more exciting than a good game of multiplayer War2. This is why I continue to consider it the greatest RTS ever made.
But Blizzard seems to have lost sight of this in later games. In Starcraft, sitting in your base and defending actually works, which makes for terribly boring games. Am I the only one who finds that games after Quake 1/Warcraft 2 have subtly become more and more slow-paced and boring?
Frankly, I would object to the "balance" business, which seems to be taken for granted by all game developers nowadays. Of course, games should be mostly balanced, but saying that ideally a game should be 100% balanced is going too far. A bit of imbalance serves to focalize the players' energies. E.g., in the original Quake, the most important thing was to control the rocket launcher and red armor, and this made for exciting games where players desperately vied for control of the key resources. In later Quakes, you can just pick up any weapon, since they're all just as good.
In sum, I don't think "balance" is the holy grail modern developers make it out to be. IMHO, the attitude of "balance above all" epitomizes all that's wrong with modern games. If a bit of imbalance is necessary to make a game that's more aggressive, fast-paced and fun, I say game developers shouldn't be afraid to sacrifice the principle.
Re:Aggressive play
by
o6dukeleto
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In response to Balance:
I would say the importance of play balance is directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to play a different side effectivly.
In the case of FPS such as CS, a little imbalance is probably ok. As all I have to do, is switch sides. Some people even like to play the underdog.
In the case of most MMORPGs, I would say imbalance can cause a lot of problems. The reason for this is that people spend hours, days, months, years on particalar characters, and to play another character takes a hugh investment. Therefore people will become disenchanted because of the time investment.
Importance of balance is directly proportional to the time required to play a different side.
I'm running an older browser on a 4-year-old sgi. It sees stylesheets just fine, but I get this bizarre error page everytime I load arena.net.
In fact, [and this is the annoying bit] during the 2 second meta-refresh pause, my browser acutally loads the page. But since it could not display just the right version of Arial, I could not view the page for long.
I'm sure the article is very interesting. I thought of loading on the laptop sitting behind me, but since they're being so snotty about it I think I'll pass.
I've designed many non-computer games for a few years now, and I see all the same issues discussed in this article that we've seen in face-to-face multi-player games. He covers the basics quite well. There are two aspects that he does not discuss which I believe are important.
First, good games are cohesive. The rules and the plot and the mechanics should flow together. The fundamental structure should dictate the higher behaviors in the game. This creates a game world that makes sense and learning a few basic guidelines are all that you need to get started.
Second, many games with three or more players and player interaction can suffer from petty diplomacy. If someone gets ahead in the game, other players can take time to squash the leader. If bad enough, there is a disincentive to get ahead. Balancing this problem can be quite tricky, and I would like to see more discussion about how designers deal with it on-line. IRL, we use hidden information, randomness, or high complexity to keep petty diplomacy from breaking a game.
Still, a good article, and it distills years of game design experience very well.
He has a point
by
Srin+Tuar
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The primary things done by cheats (looking through walls, etc) are things that the game does not prevent.
When you design a game you have to consider the players hardware to be untrusted. You cannot prevent a persons computer from telling him all it knows, nor can you prevent it from obeying his commands.
So to limit the information a person knows, you have to limit the information that is given to his computer. (If you dont want someone to know the location of all the other players in an FPS, you simply dont send them that information.)
Taken to its logical conclusion, The player's PC would end up being thin terminals doing I/O, while all the game logic is hosted on a central trusted server.
For games with a central server, then the game is only as fair as the server is. This does break down a bit with servant-peer topology- such as starcraft. In this, since everyone's computer has total knowledge of the game state knowledges cheats are possible (knowing how many resources everyone has and where they are).
However, if anyone cheats in a detectable way the game is aborted by all.
Re:He has a point
by
j7953
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The primary things done by cheats (looking through walls, etc) are things that the game does not prevent.
So what? A chess board also doesn't prevent you from moving the pawns sideways.
-- Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
He missed the biggest problem of all...
by
EricLivingston
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I find I have zero interest in MMO games. I diddled around in EQ when it first came out, and UO when it first came out, and cancelled both quickly. I've since realized that the key problem I had with both games is an inherent problem in all MMO games: You're just a small cog in a huge machine, with no compelling reason to exist in the world.
After running around killing bats for a while in EQ this realization hit me - my character could come, go, exist, or not and nothing really changes in the world. It just doesn't matter. This is by necessity - the game cannot make anything pivotal happen based on my character, 'cause it can't assume I'll be around or even that I'll exist (as a player).
So, what you wind up with is a bunch of folks running around killing things and so on, but really to no purpose at all ultimately.
yeah, you can gain levels and become some 50th level powerhouse, but who cares? There are hundreds of others just like you. You might even go out with some buddies and kill some big thing like a dragon or whatnot, but who cares? It'll just respawn in a while anyway. The world is essentially unchanged. It just winds up feeling so pointless.
I guess I've just been bred on single-person games that make you feel like you're truly at the center of the universe (such as Deus Ex, where you literally save reality). Even Half-life, which arguably has a lot going on besides your own sorry butt's survival, makes you feel like you're right in the middle of the action all the time. I guess I'm just spoiled that way.
I find in the MMO games I'm just wandering around in a very static world wondering what vermin to kill next or whatever - it's all quite boring really. I suppose guilds might help to some extent, in that they present a nice social environment of bonding, etc, but you really just click the futility up a notch: instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I've read that games like DAOC have a multi-year storyline that will play out some kind of plot, but again, I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
Re:He missed the biggest problem of all...
by
ellem
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
the key problem I had with both games is an inherent problem in all MMO games: You're just a small cog in a huge machine, with no compelling reason to exist in the world.
instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
eeriely like real life, huh?
-- This.sig is fake but accurate.
Re:He missed the biggest problem of all...
by
EricLivingston
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Exactly! That's really my point: I want my game experiences to be much more centered around me. It gives me more incentive to continue and complete whatever it is I'm trying to do if I think that the whole deal hinges on my actions. Sure, sometimes in real life there are actions I take or things I do that have larger impacts on the world or folks around me, but for the most part my day-to-day life isn't really epic in nature (frankly, to be honest, I can't think of any period of my life I'd call "epic" in nature:) . Thus, the games fill in some of that gap and let you live "larger than life" for a while. These multiplayer online games do not, and thus have no appeal to me.
So, from the standpoint of challenge to game makers, I'd posit this one: how can you cater to millions of players, yet have each one feel they have a large part in what's going on and that their actions actually matter in some non-trivial way?
Re:He missed the biggest problem of all...
by
wurp
·
· Score: 2
Check out the game that I'm project lead for, Magicosm, at http://www.cosmgame.com
While obviously we can't let everyone actually save the game world (since if you failed it would mean the end of the game for everyone else;), you can create your own village, expand to become a country, build buildings within your area, declare laws in your ruled area, drive away or attract local monsters, run a newspaper, etc., all of which have lasting impact on the game world.
The game is not available yet, but we will be showing it at the Game Developer's Conference (Sun is sponsoring us). At a guess, I would say we will be releasing in about a year and a half.
Unfortunately, what we will be showing at the GDC will look more like an EQ clone than anything, but that's because we have the infrastructure done but not all of the game mechanics, and because of the superficial nature of what you can show at a conference to people passing by.
I don't think it's fair to allow the computer to "judge" modem players' moves, and try to determine "if" the player would have got the hit. Not only is this unfair to the player (when they get to a real LAN tournament they'll be roasted), it's also unfair to the vet with a decent connection, because the newbie in essense gets a free hit. I would propose figuring out better ways to communicate over the network instead of trying to second guess the players' moves with algorhythms.
If my connection to a game is rotten, there's nothing the game client or the game server can do about it.
If you're only getting 4 updates a second from the server, your client *has* to guess what the other players are doing until the server tells it what really happens, because the alternative is to have a 4 FPS update.
Likewise, if the server only gets 4 updates per second from your client, it *has* to guess what you want to do, because it can't read your mind. Most servers guess that you'll keep holding down the keys that you were holding when it last heard from you, which is a tolerable solution. What would you prefer them to do?
The networking code in most games is already as good as it can be. The interpolation code tends to vary from game to game, but the effects are usually the same.
First of all, wrt the Ultima series, are you sure it was the good graphics that ruined it? After all, very few series stay good over long periods of time, they have a tendancy to get worse with each successive game/movie/book/whatever. There are notable exceptions, but claiming that Ultima XXII would kick ass today if they had just kept making games for the C64 seems pretty silly.
The point of game graphics indistinguishable from real life is to make your escape from reality more complete. Just because it LOOKS like real life doesn't mean it has to PLAY like real life. Just look at ID Software's games (from Wolf 3D to Q3A) for an example of games that have gotten progressively more realistic looking without becoming anything more like real life.
-- "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
The amount of lag should be increased!
by
WolfWithoutAClause
·
· Score: 2
One of the issues, particularly with twitch games, but also others as well, is that some players have less lag than others.
I simply think that the server should be able to set a minimum lag for the players, and if a player is well below that, the server should introduce extra artificial lag- upto the minimum atleast.
I mean, if you're 3l337 it won't make any difference right?;-)
The other advantage is to the developer- if there are some serious playability issues when the lag reaches a certain threshold, the designers can find this out during testing.
I've actually been on servers that work the other way- if your link starts to lag for a few tens of seconds, you get booted. That really sucks big time. Like you've done something wrong, you deserve to lose the frags you built up, because someone else did an ftp download? Uh huh. That makes sense.
--
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
Re:The amount of lag should be increased!
by
WolfWithoutAClause
·
· Score: 2
Sure, I've got an ADSL line and I often see 50 ms or so. But I sometimes think the game may be a bit more interesting if the minimum lag was bought up to 150ms in a lot of cases. And its not like I suck at low ping- I'm in the top 25 percentile last time I checked (alright that was a bit flukey). I've been known to play on servers in Australia from the UK occasionally. [ Lag of 700ms or so IRC;-) ] No way I would win but my frag/death ratio was about equal. You learn to think ahead. Splash damage is your friend. As you say, interesting mod.
--
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
The real problem with current MMORPGs
by
mfterman
·
· Score: 2
Is that as a player I want to explore different aspects of the game, go through a lot of different character classes. I also don't want to keep restarting a new character every time I want to change classes. In games like Diablo, where you have a finite world (in duration as well as space) that is reset every time you have a new game and your character has no real social identity with other players, it's not a big deal to kill an old character and start a new one.
However in a persistant world, I might want to have my character go through a great deal many careers, while at the same time keeping the same character, that I am interacting with other players with. I don't want to have to tell my friends that I'm now character Y instead of character X.
While obviously games are an escape from reality in some sense, there is one thing from them I wouldn't mind seeing taken. The opportunity to learn new skills while letting old skills decay. Or the ability to sacrifice old skills, deliberately weakening my character, so I can have more room to learn new skills and powers more cheaply.
Once I'm done with a magician, I might decide to turn my character into a fighter and let their magical skills decay. In time I might move on to a cleric and let the sword and related skills rot. All the time I'm still character X even if my profession changes.
Of course to properly handle this you need a point-based system or something like the upcoming Dungeon Seige, where characters simply grow in whatever skills they use. Levelling becomes a thing of the past. I do not consider this a bad thing. Levels are just a game mechanic device to regulate advancement. There are countless pen and paper RPGs that find the concept of levels nonsensical.
The power cap is annoying to powergamers who want godlike levels of power, but some may find it more of a challenge to grow in power within the limits of the game. It also reduces the power spectrum spread that a MMORPG has to encompass. Once players reach the power cap, it all comes down to optimization within that level, and because they can drop a few points here and add a few there they can tinker with their characters endlessly.
Ideally a game should have more things for the players to do than grow in power endlessly. Or they can allow for 'king of the hill' advancement. You can give great swords of power out that every player will want. All of a sudden, hanging onto a weapon like that becomes the challenge. You can give social ranks based on peer acclaim that will grant extra power to a character. All of a sudden, players worry about the support of their peers and they risk the chance of dropping in power.
That's something you can do in a persistant world game, let characters drop in power and give them a chance to regain what they have lost, not to mention keeping them less complacent about what they have. This adds to the replayability without the need to start a new character. They can build characters that have real history to them. Some of the most famous people in history, such as Napoleon, had drops as well as rises.
Of course for games like Diablo I/II, where you have a world with a finite plotlength as well as finite size, you might as well go for the oneshot player system. I'm talking about games like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot where you have a world that you play a prolonged part of.
Why you should play starcraft....
by
El+Camino+SS
·
· Score: 2
If you've never played starcraft, you should.
My best friend loves all of the Civ games, but he is a Starcraft freak because of the sheer fun.
Why is it good? It is speed chess. If you have ever seen speed chess, you would understand. When the people that play long games get into the whole speed, hit and run, and intimidation tactics of starcraft, then you'll love it.
There is one drawback. I was a good player that left because the players kept getting weeded out by frustration of playing some real hardcore maniacs out there that would slay you quick. Its evolution, they survived, most can't compete.
The game is $20 US now everywhere, it really is worth it. From a average gamers perspective it is truly worth it.
Global wargame - a road to peace?
by
richie2000
·
· Score: 2
The other day, while playing Counterstrike online, the thought occured to me to use the same basic rendering engine for more than just a lot of FPS games. I have heard of someone building a flightsim around the QII engine, but never seen it. Yesterday, a friend told me about C&C Renegade, a FPS game based on Command & Conquer.
So what if someone (this means iD, Blizzard, Westwood and/or Sierra/ValvE) were to make a hypermassive multiplayer online RTS/RPG/FPS? With almost all aspects of war integrated? Imagine someone playing a flesh-and-blood general on a tactical level, sending out orders to real, live players in a flight sim with F/A-18 Hornets to attack a SAM site staffed with more real, live people. On the ground, there would be battles fought between tanks and Delta Force-style snipers would seek out the opponent's leaders.
The client would use the same basic engine for gameplay with different GUIs for the different levels, kinda like Counterstrike is a mod to Half-Life which basically is a mod of Quake. When starting, you select if you want to be Air Force, Navy or Army and then what you want to do: Pilot a fighter, manage supply routes, man a SAM battery, aim a howitzer, crack enemy codes or be a grunt with a machine gun. Imagine the clans/platoons/squadrons that would evolve. Positions that no one wants would be filled by computer-generated players on the servers. Ah, the servers. One game on a cluster of servers world-wide. And there would be real-world money in it. Arms dealers would spring up on eBay. Whoever makes this game will be rich - if they do it right. And I've got prior art.;-)
Of course, this doesn't have to be set in a realistic world, the Game could easily work StarCraft-style or for NOD vs GDI or for replaying most of WWII.
Now, methinks this can be built. Should it be done? Would it help ease tension in the world - act as an outlet for agression if you could bomb the crap out of a simulated Afghanistan? Or would Al-Qaida use it as a training camp? Discuss.
One client to fight them all, and on the battlefield smite them.
Re:Global wargame - a road to peace?
by
richie2000
·
· Score: 2
Well, while one side would have Apaches, the other would have Stingers they bought on eBay.:-) Those kind of imbalances can exist in any game - what if one side had 100 foot soldiers with M-16s and the other 200 with knives? Who would win? If the battle took place in a twisty maze of narrow passages? On the town square? Balancing gameplay would be a task for the servers but I agree - it would be difficult.
TeamKillers could be a problem, yes - this borders on the cheating problem. Maybe a ranking system where you have to start flying supplies a while before you can apply for a B52? Or maybe simply turning friendly fire off?
Re:Global wargame - a road to peace?
by
mlk
·
· Score: 2
Operation Flashpoint!
-- Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Re:Global wargame - a road to peace?
by
richie2000
·
· Score: 2
So why does dedicated servers tell you their current FPS when logging in? And, I have noticed that if the server is too weak, the game lags badly. It seems like it can't supply the clients with the motion information fast enough.
Oh, and 110ms in ping is nothing. I play on a Breezenet radio link and have seen pings between 40 and 400 - at around 300 it becomes a nuisance. Then again, I'm a n00B and probably wouldn't recognize the value of a good ping if it came up and knifed me from behind.;-)
Re:Global wargame - a road to peace?
by
ender81b
·
· Score: 2
FPS is almost wholly the end computer's problem. Now, the exception to this is when lag problems start to crop up. Depending on the speed of your computer you will notice a FPS drop anywhere from 200ms-400ms.
110ms isn't nothing major, agreed. But the point was that it increased by 100ms after 20 clients where logged on. (100% increase)
Re:Global wargame - a road to peace?
by
Peale
·
· Score: 2
It was called 'AirQuake'. It was also written for Quake I as well.
Re:Oxymoron...social gamers
by
alcmena
·
· Score: 2
I had no problem banning cheaters by WON ID and by IP, if they really were cheating. I ran two different cheater detection systems (TSC and PunkBuster, when it worked). The problem was that any player who had been on the server more then a month was constantly being accused of cheating by the new players. People who had played with each other for a while would form teams and use stratagy (gasp!) would whomp on the new people. The classic run and shoot didn't work, so rather than learn and get better, people would shout "[insert player who killed you] is cheating!"
I'd venture to say that less than one out of twenty players accused of cheating actually was. And I know from personal experience that being called a cheater every time you play, when you know you are not cheating, makes the game less fun in a hurry.
When the filter was installed, a lot of the accusations disappeared. The game became more pleasant as those who thought they had skill, but didn't, left when they realized their cries only brought them more grief. The average skill on the server kept rising, and it became more fun for everyone.
Re:Scripting is generally useless, except for AI
by
Shiny+Metal+S.
·
· Score: 2
What is the point of scripting? If a task is so mundane and repetitive that it is easily
scripted, why even bother putting it into the game to start with?
All that extra coding,
debugging, cpu time and possibly bandwidth is wasted on something that no-one is
interested in, and doesn't add anything to the game.
Would you like to play a game?
by
richie2000
·
· Score: 2
Oh well, I was rich for almost a full day. Back to playing the ponies, I guess.;-)
But I got another idea reading your post - what if you just designed a universal interface between different games? So the next time [insert major game manufacturer] makes a game of a suitable type, it can interface with the Big Game server network and talk to games from [insert other major game manufacturer]. This would probably speed up the evolution needed and eventually grow into the Big Game network we want. Just look at the number of CS servers world-wide - if they could all interconnect and cooperate, they would easily have enough CPU and bandwidth to support this. Just using the same format for the maps, textures and a common protocol for movements and stuff would go a long way.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats pretty amusing, seeing how Blizzard has to sue people to stop them using their own lag-free networks cos the official ones suck so much!
Free cell phone tracking
I find that todays game players are spoiled and demand more and more from a game in both graphics and robustness.
You can always judge the quality of a game player by asking if they have ever used a MUD. I honestly think this is a genres of Multiplayer gaming which has been tossed to the wayside by 13 year olds who have never heard of a BBS and want to push the limits of their new GeForce4 as to show off to their friends.
Talk about robustness, anyone who can remember MajorMUD or Tele-Arena know what I'm talking about.
I just honestly think game makers need to look back and reignite the Text Based RPG craze. I honestly feel there's money to be made in it.
I was planning BlackNova Traders... there's a couple of points that aren't covered in a lot of game design books (a lot of which think everything is either RTS or FPS).
BlackNova Traders
H
W
orld
It's in C!
Although, I don't think some of the algorhythms in place right now for latency (for example, Quake III Arena) are much better. I don't think it's fair to allow the computer to "judge" modem players' moves, and try to determine "if" the player would have got the hit. Not only is this unfair to the player (when they get to a real LAN tournament they'll be roasted), it's also unfair to the vet with a decent connection, because the newbie in essense gets a free hit. I would propose figuring out better ways to communicate over the network instead of trying to second guess the players' moves with algorhythms.
I think the number one problem with online games is cheating. There have been countless times where I have been totally addicted to a game, and then a cheat ruins all the fun. People play online games because it is so much more exciting to compete against a real person. If the game becomes unbalanced, players will either move on to another game or use the cheat themselves.
Does he go into how to sue people who clone your game servers? Cause that's an important area of Blizzard's business right now too.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
If you're planning to make a multiplayergame, or even a site that has something to do with the subject:
you definitely dont want to make a site that is only browseable with some fancy browsers that support CSS.(NS 6.x+, IE whatever).
Cant believe this arena.net crap not letting people read the article with good'ol Netscape 4.76.. Even some plain text would have satisfied me but now I only get to read the "upgrade your browsers and come back". Yeah, very likely.
Hope they werent trying to sell anything because this is not the way.
/T
There's another article that sounds similar about is written by Peter Lincroft entitled The Internet Sucks: Or, What I Learned Coding X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter back when multiplayer games were not plentiful.
It's interesting reading, including "Lesson four: UDP is better than TCP, but it still sucks" and "Lesson five: Whenever you think the Internet can't get any worse, it gets worse". It's good stuff.
True, most of the "social interaction" in online games consists of the following statements:
"You f***ing lagger! Relog now!"
"Stupid newbie!"
"WTF? You hacker!"
"Camper!!! Kick that f***ing camper!"
"0wned!"
"Ha ha you suck!"
"You #!@% Q#% @!#%$ piece of @#%$!"
This article should be mandatory reading for game designers everywhere. It seems that more and more games are coming out with gratuitous multiplayer functionality just to sell copies. The criteria in this article should be a pre-release checklist for any game including a multiplayer option.
There are certain games whose genre or interface makes multiplayer functionality completely cumbersome to the point of being unplayable. The Baldur's Gate series comes to mind as beautiful single-player games with horribly implemented multiplayer modes... IMO of course.
I'm a fan of multiplayer when multiplayer works, but I won't be a party to Monkey Island on Kali.
I don't think this is off topic (maybe a little). In some games you are somewhat free to build a personality with skins and so on. I hope this will evolve because I think that it is a nice feature. I found a protocol that delivers many 3D features in a compact way. The protocol has a design that enables loading up objects with shape and behavior.
The protocol is called Verse and is a network protocol, for three-dimensional, client/server graphic - Quote: "A typical way to communicate in Verse is to let clients upload or use existing objects as avatars, and then communicate by moving and animating these avatar objects".
I am sure you are talking about when people hack the program or break there word on the rules of the game. But some people accuse other for cheating for playing with a different stradigy. I have been accused for cheating because in StarCraft I didn't build any fighting units (except for cannons) and snuk in a Probe and build cannons around his base. So if there is a way to stop cheator it can also be a way to give an advantage to Sore loosers who rather unplug thier computer then admit defete.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
With bare-minimum graphics like Ultima III on C64 all the action took place in your own mind -- the best virtual reality/graphics engine ever developed.
When the series moved onto a sort of 3d graphics in Ultima VI the whole atmosphere changed. Suddenly you had these STUPID, squeaky-clean looking characters on the screen instead of the rough bunch of veterans you always had imagined. All the monsters were pitiful caricatures of the nightmares I had fought in the earlier Ultima episodes. In short, the whole game was fucked up because you were being forcefed the (annoying) vision of the game developers.
game graphics will be indistinguishable from real life
Sigh. And what's the point in that when the purpose of the games is to help you to spend some time away from the reality!?
The owls are not what they seem
. . . or if it is, its very subtly so and outside the range of your average player. The article makes a great statement as to the importance of balance, and this is exactly what turned me off StarCraft.
Every time I played on Battle.net, anyone with half a brain simply played the Zerg and rushed the hell out of everyone else. Usually, the Zerg won. In a war of 'resource command' it would seem that those who can expand the fastest would win.
Just to convince people I'm not blowing hot air, look at the StarCraft Season III Ladder Tournement results and count the occurances of Zerg versus occurances of other races. By my count, of the top players, there was 1 instance of Humans, 2 of Protoss, and 21 people playing the Zerg.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
It wasn't until we changed from Warcraft's "unit equivalence" to StarCraft's "race equivalence" that we were able to correct the most egregious play imbalance issues.
I find this to be a very important statement he made in regards to the development of multiplayer and RTS games. After warcraft, the piles of RTS games that came out all had some thing in common. A few races (or civs, etc) that had different units that all did basically the same thing.. the "ranged unit" the "fast unit" the "strong unit that is really expensive", etc. Other than some small games that didn't really make it off the ground, Starcraft was the first mainstream game that said "this race can do this and this other race is completely different". I believe that Starcraft is replayed so often because there is an incredible amount of flexability with each race and when combined with fighting against another diverse race, it creates an incredible amount of possibilities.
What makes this a great money maker for games such as Diablo and Starcraft (if they'd get off their buttocks), is that they can reuse the same engine they already had written, code in another race (or couple classes as in Diablo II LoD), and have people scrambling to buy it, since it adds an exponential amount of excitement to the game. If Starcraft added one single race (sold at the price of $25 in stores), I would instantly buy it.. not only would I be able to learn all about the new "Dotslash" race, but I would be able to figure out piles of strategies about how to fight Dotslashes with Terrans, or Protoss.. Just as the message boards are filled with people asking how to fight Druids with Necromancers, etc etc.
The game industry needs to focus more on additions to their games, instead of starting from scratch every single time. Not only would the players be happier, but I imagine the pocketbooks of the game makers would be happy as well.
Dave
Don't be a MUD snob. I know it's difficult, we are all snobs about something, but it's not a 13 year old's fault if they haven't played some ancient text game that you liked so much. Hell, I've never played a MUD (I'm 27yo), though I've heard some were *great*. But they weren't necessarily good because they didn't rely on graphics. They were good, because like some cutting edge 3D games, they were designed and coded with care and concern for gameplay.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I used to run my own Counter-Strike server, and I couldn't agree with your post more. It got so bad that I eventually wrote a program that punishes people when they would complain about laggers, campers, cheaters, etc. The punishment was 50% of your health. Do it three times, you're gagged and can only talk to your team. Three more, you're kicked. Three more, you're banned for an hour.
I'm usually one who is strongly against filters, but I have to admit, this one did wonders. People learned to either be civil towards each other, or they learned to be quiet.
I don't think Counterstrike is really representative of all online gaming. If it was, every flat surface in EQ would be covered in pornographic spray logos.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Certainly the zergling rush is the easiest good strategy, but it isn't the only valid one, or even the best. If the zerg don't win early, they're in a lot of trouble - it's hard for them to match up with the powerful late-game units other races have.
(Also remember your workers can attack if ordered; this is surprisingly useful in thwarting the early zergling rush!)
The map makes a big difference; in a highly constricted map, the rush is a lot harder. On an island map they're in deep trouble.
Seems to me you're blaming the developers for what the legal department and the marketing folks are doing. How many Blizzard designers do you think really care which network the gamers use, as long as they play the game?
Seeing as my using OmniWeb to view arena.net resulted in a quick glance at the requested page (which looked fine) and then a bounce to ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Browser, I thought I'd respond in kind (note: I didn't actually send HTML email; I had to replace some of the hyphen characters with just bolding the topics so that I wouldn't get blocked by the lameness filter):
To: webmaster@arena.net
Subject: ArenaNet Error: Unsupported Webmaster
Why am I getting this instead of a friendly, congratulatory email?
You are here because the webmaster you are using is apparently too lazy to create pages that work in most browsers, regardless of their support for the full HTML 4.0 specification, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Most likely, you're losing a decent hunk of viewers because of this.
Why does that matter?
In the pursuit of giving web surfers the kind of experience that you want them to have, as opposed to simply letting them control the experience for themselves (as would tend to be suggested by the HTML and CSS standards), you tried to use the best technology available, which I heartily commend. HTML 4.0 and CSS are examples of some of the best and most widespread standards-based technology available for presenting interactive media to the world. However, you have decided that, rather than simply using these technologies and letting the user decide if and how to implement them on the client-side, your webserver will detect browsers that you haven't tested with and will send the user of said browser to a completely useless page rather than actually delivering the content that the user requested.
What should I do?
If your webmaster can't figure out how to get pages to display at all in browsers other than those created by Netscape and Microsoft, you might want to hire a better one.
If you are running a smart webmaster who has simply gone astray from the vision of the web, you will want to either ask them to change their policies or follow the advice above.
But I would add one more crucial point: gameplay should be fast-paced and aggressive. Sitting in your base and defending against unsuccessful attacks is just boring. In Warcraft 2, defending almost never worked and attacking was always to your benefit. The result was an edge-of-your-seat game where, among skilled players, every unit you pumped out was immediately sent to the battlefield and you were constantly trying to stop one of your bases from being trashed. I have yet to see an RTS which, all balance issues aside, is just plain more exciting than a good game of multiplayer War2. This is why I continue to consider it the greatest RTS ever made.
But Blizzard seems to have lost sight of this in later games. In Starcraft, sitting in your base and defending actually works, which makes for terribly boring games. Am I the only one who finds that games after Quake 1/Warcraft 2 have subtly become more and more slow-paced and boring?
Frankly, I would object to the "balance" business, which seems to be taken for granted by all game developers nowadays. Of course, games should be mostly balanced, but saying that ideally a game should be 100% balanced is going too far. A bit of imbalance serves to focalize the players' energies. E.g., in the original Quake, the most important thing was to control the rocket launcher and red armor, and this made for exciting games where players desperately vied for control of the key resources. In later Quakes, you can just pick up any weapon, since they're all just as good.
In sum, I don't think "balance" is the holy grail modern developers make it out to be. IMHO, the attitude of "balance above all" epitomizes all that's wrong with modern games. If a bit of imbalance is necessary to make a game that's more aggressive, fast-paced and fun, I say game developers shouldn't be afraid to sacrifice the principle.
I'm running an older browser on a 4-year-old sgi. It sees stylesheets just fine, but I get this bizarre error page everytime I load arena.net.
In fact, [and this is the annoying bit] during the 2 second meta-refresh pause, my browser acutally loads the page. But since it could not display just the right version of Arial, I could not view the page for long.
I'm sure the article is very interesting. I thought of loading on the laptop sitting behind me, but since they're being so snotty about it I think I'll pass.
I've designed many non-computer games for a few years now, and I see all the same issues discussed in this article that we've seen in face-to-face multi-player games. He covers the basics quite well. There are two aspects that he does not discuss which I believe are important.
First, good games are cohesive. The rules and the plot and the mechanics should flow together. The fundamental structure should dictate the higher behaviors in the game. This creates a game world that makes sense and learning a few basic guidelines are all that you need to get started.
Second, many games with three or more players and player interaction can suffer from petty diplomacy. If someone gets ahead in the game, other players can take time to squash the leader. If bad enough, there is a disincentive to get ahead. Balancing this problem can be quite tricky, and I would like to see more discussion about how designers deal with it on-line. IRL, we use hidden information, randomness, or high complexity to keep petty diplomacy from breaking a game.
Still, a good article, and it distills years of game design experience very well.
The primary things done by cheats (looking through walls, etc) are things that the game does not prevent.
When you design a game you have to consider the players hardware to be untrusted. You cannot prevent a persons computer from telling him all it knows, nor can you prevent it from obeying his commands.
So to limit the information a person knows, you have to limit the information that is given to his computer. (If you dont want someone to know the location of all the other players in an FPS, you simply dont send them that information.)
Taken to its logical conclusion, The player's PC would end up being thin terminals doing I/O, while all the game logic is hosted on a central trusted server.
For games with a central server, then the game is only as fair as the server is. This does break down a bit with servant-peer topology- such as starcraft. In this, since everyone's computer has total knowledge of the game state knowledges cheats are possible (knowing how many resources everyone has and where they are).
However, if anyone cheats in a detectable way the game is aborted by all.
After running around killing bats for a while in EQ this realization hit me - my character could come, go, exist, or not and nothing really changes in the world. It just doesn't matter. This is by necessity - the game cannot make anything pivotal happen based on my character, 'cause it can't assume I'll be around or even that I'll exist (as a player).
So, what you wind up with is a bunch of folks running around killing things and so on, but really to no purpose at all ultimately.
yeah, you can gain levels and become some 50th level powerhouse, but who cares? There are hundreds of others just like you. You might even go out with some buddies and kill some big thing like a dragon or whatnot, but who cares? It'll just respawn in a while anyway. The world is essentially unchanged. It just winds up feeling so pointless.
I guess I've just been bred on single-person games that make you feel like you're truly at the center of the universe (such as Deus Ex, where you literally save reality). Even Half-life, which arguably has a lot going on besides your own sorry butt's survival, makes you feel like you're right in the middle of the action all the time. I guess I'm just spoiled that way.
I find in the MMO games I'm just wandering around in a very static world wondering what vermin to kill next or whatever - it's all quite boring really. I suppose guilds might help to some extent, in that they present a nice social environment of bonding, etc, but you really just click the futility up a notch: instead of simply having a character that doesn't matter to the world at all, you have a whole guild that really could exist or not and nothing would really change.
I've read that games like DAOC have a multi-year storyline that will play out some kind of plot, but again, I'd imagine that for 99% of the "population," it just won't matter what they do, find, or accomplish.
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
I don't think it's fair to allow the computer to "judge" modem players' moves, and try to determine "if" the player would have got the hit. Not only is this unfair to the player (when they get to a real LAN tournament they'll be roasted), it's also unfair to the vet with a decent connection, because the newbie in essense gets a free hit. I would propose figuring out better ways to communicate over the network instead of trying to second guess the players' moves with algorhythms.
If my connection to a game is rotten, there's nothing the game client or the game server can do about it.
If you're only getting 4 updates a second from the server, your client *has* to guess what the other players are doing until the server tells it what really happens, because the alternative is to have a 4 FPS update.
Likewise, if the server only gets 4 updates per second from your client, it *has* to guess what you want to do, because it can't read your mind. Most servers guess that you'll keep holding down the keys that you were holding when it last heard from you, which is a tolerable solution. What would you prefer them to do?
The networking code in most games is already as good as it can be. The interpolation code tends to vary from game to game, but the effects are usually the same.
The point of game graphics indistinguishable from real life is to make your escape from reality more complete. Just because it LOOKS like real life doesn't mean it has to PLAY like real life. Just look at ID Software's games (from Wolf 3D to Q3A) for an example of games that have gotten progressively more realistic looking without becoming anything more like real life.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
One of the issues, particularly with twitch games, but also others as well, is that some players have less lag than others.
;-)
I simply think that the server should be able to set a minimum lag for the players, and if a player is well below that, the server should introduce extra artificial lag- upto the minimum atleast.
I mean, if you're 3l337 it won't make any difference right?
The other advantage is to the developer- if there are some serious playability issues when the lag reaches a certain threshold, the designers can find this out during testing.
I've actually been on servers that work the other way- if your link starts to lag for a few tens of seconds, you get booted. That really sucks big time. Like you've done something wrong, you deserve to lose the frags you built up, because someone else did an ftp download? Uh huh. That makes sense.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Is that as a player I want to explore different aspects of the game, go through a lot of different character classes. I also don't want to keep restarting a new character every time I want to change classes. In games like Diablo, where you have a finite world (in duration as well as space) that is reset every time you have a new game and your character has no real social identity with other players, it's not a big deal to kill an old character and start a new one.
However in a persistant world, I might want to have my character go through a great deal many careers, while at the same time keeping the same character, that I am interacting with other players with. I don't want to have to tell my friends that I'm now character Y instead of character X.
While obviously games are an escape from reality in some sense, there is one thing from them I wouldn't mind seeing taken. The opportunity to learn new skills while letting old skills decay. Or the ability to sacrifice old skills, deliberately weakening my character, so I can have more room to learn new skills and powers more cheaply.
Once I'm done with a magician, I might decide to turn my character into a fighter and let their magical skills decay. In time I might move on to a cleric and let the sword and related skills rot. All the time I'm still character X even if my profession changes.
Of course to properly handle this you need a point-based system or something like the upcoming Dungeon Seige, where characters simply grow in whatever skills they use. Levelling becomes a thing of the past. I do not consider this a bad thing. Levels are just a game mechanic device to regulate advancement. There are countless pen and paper RPGs that find the concept of levels nonsensical.
The power cap is annoying to powergamers who want godlike levels of power, but some may find it more of a challenge to grow in power within the limits of the game. It also reduces the power spectrum spread that a MMORPG has to encompass. Once players reach the power cap, it all comes down to optimization within that level, and because they can drop a few points here and add a few there they can tinker with their characters endlessly.
Ideally a game should have more things for the players to do than grow in power endlessly. Or they can allow for 'king of the hill' advancement. You can give great swords of power out that every player will want. All of a sudden, hanging onto a weapon like that becomes the challenge. You can give social ranks based on peer acclaim that will grant extra power to a character. All of a sudden, players worry about the support of their peers and they risk the chance of dropping in power.
That's something you can do in a persistant world game, let characters drop in power and give them a chance to regain what they have lost, not to mention keeping them less complacent about what they have. This adds to the replayability without the need to start a new character. They can build characters that have real history to them. Some of the most famous people in history, such as Napoleon, had drops as well as rises.
Of course for games like Diablo I/II, where you have a world with a finite plotlength as well as finite size, you might as well go for the oneshot player system. I'm talking about games like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot where you have a world that you play a prolonged part of.
If you've never played starcraft, you should.
My best friend loves all of the Civ games, but he is a Starcraft freak because of the sheer fun.
Why is it good? It is speed chess. If you have ever seen speed chess, you would understand. When the people that play long games get into the whole speed, hit and run, and intimidation tactics of starcraft, then you'll love it.
There is one drawback. I was a good player that left because the players kept getting weeded out by frustration of playing some real hardcore maniacs out there that would slay you quick. Its evolution, they survived, most can't compete.
The game is $20 US now everywhere, it really is worth it. From a average gamers perspective it is truly worth it.
So what if someone (this means iD, Blizzard, Westwood and/or Sierra/ValvE) were to make a hypermassive multiplayer online RTS/RPG/FPS? With almost all aspects of war integrated? Imagine someone playing a flesh-and-blood general on a tactical level, sending out orders to real, live players in a flight sim with F/A-18 Hornets to attack a SAM site staffed with more real, live people. On the ground, there would be battles fought between tanks and Delta Force-style snipers would seek out the opponent's leaders.
The client would use the same basic engine for gameplay with different GUIs for the different levels, kinda like Counterstrike is a mod to Half-Life which basically is a mod of Quake. When starting, you select if you want to be Air Force, Navy or Army and then what you want to do: Pilot a fighter, manage supply routes, man a SAM battery, aim a howitzer, crack enemy codes or be a grunt with a machine gun. Imagine the clans/platoons/squadrons that would evolve. Positions that no one wants would be filled by computer-generated players on the servers. Ah, the servers. One game on a cluster of servers world-wide. And there would be real-world money in it. Arms dealers would spring up on eBay. Whoever makes this game will be rich - if they do it right. And I've got prior art. ;-)
Of course, this doesn't have to be set in a realistic world, the Game could easily work StarCraft-style or for NOD vs GDI or for replaying most of WWII.
Now, methinks this can be built. Should it be done? Would it help ease tension in the world - act as an outlet for agression if you could bomb the crap out of a simulated Afghanistan? Or would Al-Qaida use it as a training camp? Discuss.
One client to fight them all, and on the battlefield smite them.
Money for nothing, pix for free
What's a camper?
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
I had no problem banning cheaters by WON ID and by IP, if they really were cheating. I ran two different cheater detection systems (TSC and PunkBuster, when it worked). The problem was that any player who had been on the server more then a month was constantly being accused of cheating by the new players. People who had played with each other for a while would form teams and use stratagy (gasp!) would whomp on the new people. The classic run and shoot didn't work, so rather than learn and get better, people would shout "[insert player who killed you] is cheating!"
I'd venture to say that less than one out of twenty players accused of cheating actually was. And I know from personal experience that being called a cheater every time you play, when you know you are not cheating, makes the game less fun in a hurry.
When the filter was installed, a lot of the accusations disappeared. The game became more pleasant as those who thought they had skill, but didn't, left when they realized their cries only brought them more grief. The average skill on the server kept rising, and it became more fun for everyone.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
But I got another idea reading your post - what if you just designed a universal interface between different games? So the next time [insert major game manufacturer] makes a game of a suitable type, it can interface with the Big Game server network and talk to games from [insert other major game manufacturer]. This would probably speed up the evolution needed and eventually grow into the Big Game network we want. Just look at the number of CS servers world-wide - if they could all interconnect and cooperate, they would easily have enough CPU and bandwidth to support this. Just using the same format for the maps, textures and a common protocol for movements and stuff would go a long way.
Money for nothing, pix for free
there are no secrets in chess: no info hacks
The game is turn based: not bots to give extreme reaction speeds.
The moves are all well defined, and making an illegal
move is so obvious as to be pointless: the server/peer will abort the game or refuse the move.
So that is a terrible example.