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

Whee.

[mrseigen]

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

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.

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?