The Matrix Going Massively Multiplayer

Chembro writes "Looks as though Ubi Soft is making a Matrix MMORPG. Everything is still pretty sketchy now that Revolutions has "ended" the series, but so far it seems pretty interesting. I wonder when the game will be placed (i.e. before Revolutions or after) but this could be the way the Wachowski brothers keep the universe going and how it will end. Pretty cool if you ask me."

Comments

Bullet Time?

[sheemwaza]

I wonder if they will try to implement "Bullet Time"... It was a major part of the movie and the games, but in a multiplayer world it could be confusing/disorienting/annoying. No multiplayer in either of the Max Payne games because of this difficulty.

Re:Bullet Time?

[noname3]

You're right, I doubt bullet time would be feasable. It wasn't in The Opera either. There were stunts and you could bounce off walls, backflip and dodge the occasional bullet, but all at normal speeds.

Remind you of any scenes in the matrix? Slow motion wasn't used in every fight. If the game has stunts and a well designed martial arts system I'll be happy.

Bullet time doesn't need to be slow motion. Speedups for a single character would be much easier to pull off, and that's how someone would see bullet time from the outside. It'd be killer for martial artists and dodging bullets.

Re:Bullet Time?

[Guppy06]

"From the FAQ at thematrixonline.com: Yes, BULLET TIME(tm), slow motion interactive gameplay, is an essential part of the Matrix Online experience."

That will be a neat trick. If one person uses bullet time, does everybody else in the same zone also experience slowdown? If not, how would they manage to keep the specific character from falling out of synch with the server?

Re:Bullet Time?

[canajin56]

If you have Half-Life, play "The Specialists" and find out. The answer? Bullet time is a powerup, like, say, Quad Damage in Quake. Every kill you get gets you a single second of it, or you can pick up a powerup to get a full 5 seconds. When you activate it, everybody slows down, including you, but you can aim easier than the people who didn't activate it.

It's quite effective. How would you do it in a MMORPG? Nearly the same way. Have some limit on how often you can use it. When you activate it, it slows down everybody, but you not as much. Obviously not EVERYBODY on the whole sever...maybe there is some radius of effect? Will that make everbody out of sync? Yes, yes it will. But they don't have watches so it doesn't really matter. If you enter their Bullet-Time sphere part way though, you slow down as soon as you cross the threshold. Or maybe a visibility tree? So that you can ensure that nobody moving bullet time is visible to somebody who is not? Since the setting is urban, visibility ranges won't be too high...unless you are on top of a building...At this point you need to sacrifice some realism for some usability. Make it use a graph, but limit the length of the arcs to the range of whatever weapon the person is using. So what if you are moving normal but can see people moving slow-motion in the distance, so long as you can't interact with them?

If they spend a great deal of time tweaking the exact workings of who is in and out, during the beta, I bet it could work pretty damn well. Of course, then you have the problem of assholes who walk into crowded non-combat areas (Which there HAVE to be if the RPG part of the MMORPG is accurate) and use bullet-time to annoy people. The only way I can see to solve that is to make these areas like the towns in UO: No combat, so no bullet time allowed. Or maybe, you know, crowded place, so some agents notice you and kick your ass?

Wondering when the game will take place?

[Infernon]

The site specifically says after the 3rd in the trilogy. It also says that the Wachowskis are doing the story line.
I don't agree the the third movie 'ended' the series either. without getting into it, there's much that was left unsaid other than that which was implied.

Whee.

[mrseigen]

So what happens when people crack the game server and start modifying it?

A word from the subsim community

[lone_marauder]

The last big online multiplayer experience they planned was Silent Hunter II and Destroyer Command. The game (really one game, written as two to soak you for two purchases) was, quite simply, the most disastrous bugfest I've ever seen out of any game software company in existence.

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but if Ubi has anything to do with it, look carefully before buying.

what would be cool..

[gl4ss]

would be that if you could code your own minions and objects(the way merv had done, and how the trainman had done his place). and being free to hack the system as well(to perform insane stunts, without getting you banned).

of course if you chose to go that way there would be some kickassing done by the agents(you would have to be pretty powerful before starting to attract too much attention).

oh well.. too bad it'll probably just end up like everything else and you'll be kicking some rats in the sewers.

Re:what would be cool..

[gad_zuki!]

> would be that if you could code your own minions and objects

That is exactly how the game Second Life works. Its more Matrixy than the Matrix.

Hollywood and the video game industry

[jmerelo]

Since games make more money than movies, movies have just become teasers for the videogames that follow it.

Re:MMORPG?

[SharpFang]

Well, the way Saddam and Bin Laden "vanished" despite amassed eforts of intelligence agencies, armies, politicians, police and many more, makes you wonder.
And just think, what if THEY are on the GOOD SIDE? (note all the news in Matrix proclaim Morpheus to be the most evil, most dangerous terrorist of the world, just watch computer screen in front of Neo sleeping at the keyboard right before "Wake up Neo!")

Re:So....

[iJosh]

I would also like to see Ubi-Soft and the actual developers of the game Monolith Productions actually work with companies that will do the Macintosh and Linux development so we don't run into the whole deal where one platform is left behind or end up not even having the ability to play with the windows users. If you choose Linux or Mac, I would seriously suggest contacting Monolith and voicing your opinion.

Sphere of effect

[Overly Critical Guy]

What's the big deal? I imagine bullet-time will just have sort of a radius of effect. If you're not in the same room, you won't slow down, and if you're watching it from a distance, you will see people moving in slow-motion but the rest of the game is moving normally.

If you try to fire into that radius of effect, your bullets will just slow down, so you can't pick off the bullet-time people. Everything slows down in that bubble. Makes sense to me. Can't wait for the game.

A Better Ending would have been (spoilers)

[Joey7F]

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Okay, you know how the kid announces to all of zion that the war is over? I think a better ending would have been for him to go there but have everyone dead...except for 23 people; 16 women and 7 men. That way it would be clear that humanity will be enslaved forever, because this Neo made a different choice than his predecessors and they still ended up with the same result. It also would bring more power to the statement by the Merovingian that choice is an illusion between people with power and people without it. It would have been extremely dark and definitive but still would have left people scratching their heads. Fwiw I enjoyed the movie :)
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spoiler ended

Re:Um, hello, submitters?

[GlassUser]

You mean space to fit the six billion humans alive today? You could fit the entire world's population in an area just larger than the city limits of washington DC, assuming each person needed two square feet to stand. If everyone needed an eighth acre suburban home/lot, you could fit everyone in the four corners states. tsk tsk.

Might not be such a big problem.

[Graelin]

Regardless of how many rounds per second you gun can fire, the delay between each shot is also magnified in the sphere of effect.

So - if bullet-time runs at 1/100th of real-time that 0.01/second delay between rounds turns into one full second when the second round enters the SOE.

That being said, if the bullet-time SOE just slows things down then I will be extremely disappointed. The entire concept of bullet-time and the (IMO) related slow-motion fighting effects was to convey the speed of the characters involved. Max Payne almost got this right with it's Bullet Time implementation (you could aim at normal speed but you couldn't actually move faster)

A perfect implementation would allow for different time ratios for everyone in the system. Higher-level players would move insanely fast to low-level players because their time ratios were different. You wouldn't need SOE at all really, but while time-compression can be easily implemented in a computer it's the inverse that is impossible. In a MMORPG anyway.