Build Your Own MMOG

yebb writes "CNet reports about a company called Multiverse that has just begun beta testing of its platform for creating and integrating online virtual worlds. They are allowing developers and companies to use their online framework to expedite development of online games. Their network is free to use as long as you don't make any money from it's usage, but they also provide open source client applications to use or modify as you see fit." From the article: "'The business model is long-term,' said Richard Bartle, one of the pioneers of online games and an editor of Terra Nova, a leading Web site about virtual worlds. 'Although Multiverse's software will help speed up the to-market time for companies, it's still going to take developers ages to create content.' While Bartle is cautious about Multiverse's business model, he's fascinated by its potential."

Comments

Pre-CU (and NGE) SWG server maybe?

[WCMI92]

With SWG being rumored to close down in Feb (due to a miscalculation about how many cancellations NGE would cause) I'd love to see someone impliment a pre-CU server somewhere. :)

Re:Pre-CU (and NGE) SWG server maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

Re:Pre-CU (and NGE) SWG server maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would require SOE to sell its code, unrelated to this site.

Re:Pre-CU (and NGE) SWG server maybe?

[Solitude]

SOE killed my master doctor. Not cool.

They had the best skill system I've ever seen in a game. I've played Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest 2, and now World of Warcraft. I preferred SWG's skill system over all others. UO was second. No classes, but a certain amount of skill points you would distribute among the skills. Don't like what you have, you can change or tweak it. Certain templates emerged as that's just the way people are, but if they would have spent some real time balancing that out it wouldn't have been the disruptive force it was.

Crafting was cool: you spend time "experimenting" and you make a schematic, then you throw that schematic into a factory along with the resources for mass production. Player housing, player cities, resources gathering devices, bounty hunting Jedis, weaponsmithing, armor crafting, droid making, buff and health pack creating, dancers, and musicians... tons of variety.

Now it's crap. But whatever I'm having fun in WoW in the meantime. There's a reason it has 2 million subscribers. It's not perfect, but it's fun so far.

Distributed MMORPGs

[VGPowerlord]

I wonder if anyone will ever get around to making a distributed MMORPG. Something where different parts of the game world would be hosted by different operators.

I suppose that would open a whole new slew of issues, though.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[krunchyfrog]

Well, I do think the bittorrent principle would be of use to share objects around users, especially from those who would have larger pipes.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[cmstremi]

The overhead and lag would be unbearable using something like BT to keep the world in synch.

A 'distributed world' would make more sense (and probably what the parent post was saying) if 'zones' would be distributed. So running to the edge of one 'zone' might switch you to another one that might live on a different server at a different location. This of course might include a different type of game server if the client would be able to manage both. So you go from a street-based game and hop in a rocket and go to a space-based game.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Siberwulf]

The whole issue with distributed MMORPGs is the lag factor, as the parent said. You need to figure out which content is where, and that requires a centralized node. That node of course, subject to all the lookups and the likes. Clustered boxes are the closest you can really come to this. Certain zones are on certain machines. If you want to switch zones, you go into a load screen, and then your server connects to the new zone, you get your characater serialized and moved to the new box, and then your client sees the new zone.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[parc]

This was tried back in the 90s with text-based MUDs. It doesn't work really well -- nevermind the client understanding it, you've got to keep the user base synced on the different servers, You have to deal with different "zones" having different performance, etc. IT just sucks pretty badly all around.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on your implementation. NWN allows for inter-server gateways between worlds without any kind of centralization, where the interaction is arraged entirely between the two world-operators involved. Great if you want to go from the streets of some city to space to the moon in completely un-related game systems, but bad if you want centralization of such a relationship and editorial control over all content.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[bigpat]

I started working on the Varium MUD server with a couple other guys over 5 years ago, but frankly I wasn't a very good programmer at the time and I was supposed to implement the distributed stuff. It was written in Python, but we never got the distributed part working (my fault). But I had thought that we could put a graphical layer on top of the underlying game engine, to make a distributed MMORPG.

The goal was to have a server that could be distributed, so that say you direct your avatar to go through portals which would transfer your avatar and any compatible objects you were carrying to the linked server. Really the idea was to make the equivalent of hyperlinks, but that the servers would negotiate a transfer of the avatar and in game objects.

Some of the issues that came up (all solvable)

*security - ensuring that game objects could be transferred from one server to another without violating any rules of the local server.
      - we looked at parsing the incoming python for undesirable code in the same way that "Wizard" created code would be validated on the local server.
      - also having several levels of trust available between servers. (ie peered servers, trusted servers, unknown servers, banned servers and the ability to specify what individual privileges would transfer and correlate between servers)

*saving game state - assuming what if the remote server crashes, would we save any game state in the client (but what about cheats?) Probably just leave reliability up to the local admin and have a inactive copy of the avatar left on recently visited world servers so that you could just reconnect and pick up where you left off (more or less)

*also, game experience. What would you do about themed world servers? So, that if I was say on a Star Wars themed virtual world, and then went through a portal to a Barney themed world server, would my Chewy avatar suddenly turn into a Purple dinosour or would there be some sort of "Customs" border process where by you went through and specified preferences the first time you visited someplace. But that might really interfere with game play...

Anyway, those are a few of the things we talked about. The project is dead, codebase didn't include any distributable elements. Seems like distributed MMORPGs are wide open for an open licensed and non proprietary standard for connecting MMORPGs together to really create a workable metaverse.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[ciroknight]

If you've looked around any game creation forums, the idea has been mentioned at least a dozen times, but it ends up being too hackable, too bandwidth limited, and leads to fragmentation worse than a server split in IRC.

So no, I doubt anyone will ever get around to making a truly distributed MMORPG. Keep in mind that all MMORPGs are distributed by nature (as the client and the server both have a set of responsibilies), but as far as distributing the server part, it just gets too complicated.

But then again, there are different attacks to every problem, and distributing is just one way to deal with it. Others include clustering, and centralization, and both of the latter have proven to work better in the MMORPG case. Just because it works really well for sharing movies and high bandwidth items doesn't mean it'll work great for sharing game objects and such.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Lonath]

Blizzard sort of did this with Diablo 1. They allowed people load characters from their home computers to play against each other online. I don't recall if there were any issues with exploits or cheats, however.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[tabatj]

I wonder if anyone will ever get around to making a distributed MMORPG.

Im not certain, but I think that is the concept behind Guild Wars.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[MindStalker]

Just felt the desire to comment on the theoretics. Regarding Themed World, you simply wouldn't connect them, obviously one would only want to connect world that have similar rules. Sure I guess you could setup portals to other worlds more as a universal login/registration system. But gamestates would definatly need to be completly seperate per conceptual world. Think of it this way, say I travel to another country, I can probably bring with me something of value to trade with, but say I slip into a parrellel dimention not only would my gold be worthless but I could cheat and take thousands of pink tulips (their trade standard) with me.

Same with Security if you decided to allow untrusted servers, to connect you could theoretially send all their data with them when they leave, it would then be up to that server to decide if that data was worth something. Then when you returned said data can be accepted or dumped by you in which you would return them to their previous state.

You could even then setup an escrow service in which items of value can be traded into a central value store then reused in another service, any value at the new world would soly depend upon its creators and what it felt this central value system was worth.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Phae]

MMOGs already have huge issues with synchronization and lag even with servers directly connected to each other, it would just add a huge level of overhead for keeping everything together. Also, as soon as they don't have direct control over servers and all game information, the potential for cheating explodes. As it is, the servers only have to validate input from clients; if it became distributed, then calculations would have to be validated as well. Currently most games have worlds in multiple states/countries, so you can find a server with optimal ping. It makes the most sense to keep an entire world in the same area, so everyone on it has a consistent connection.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[C0rinthian]

Yup, this wouldn't be exploited at all. First rule of online play: Never trust the client software with ANYTHING important.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Baric]

that snark was nicely done. bravo.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Anonymous Cowpat]

yes, yes there were.
Since Blizz had no control over what people did on their home computers and there was no CD-Key system in D1 people could do anything they wanted, and they did.
90% of D1 players cheated, 9% were liars, 1% were foaming-at-the-mouth elitist-legit zealots.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[afidel]

I did this with a small group of server operators using NWN, the biggest problem was transfering character files. The world transition mechanism for NWN expected the character file to be available as soon as the world transfer mechanism started, but the file wasn't saved out until the transition began. This wasn't a problem on a local server or servers, but once you started using a distributed filesystem it didn't work so well. We tried hacking around it by using the SQL extensions for NWN but it ended up being unreliable. It was a real shame since we put lots of work into policy and policy enforcement scripts to allow for a lowest common denominator set of rules with local customization.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of MMORPG already exists. It's called IRC.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if anyone will ever get around to making a distributed MMORPG. Something where different parts of the game world would be hosted by different operators.

Something like this exists has already been implemented for Neverwinter Nights: the Confederation of Planes and Planets. It's a series of interlinked autonomous servers sharing a common hakpak and balanced according to common guidelines.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[bigpat]

Just felt the desire to comment on the theoretics. Regarding Themed World, you simply wouldn't connect them, obviously one would only want to connect world that have similar rules.

Actually I was thinking it would be more fun and interesting the more exotic the differences and if sometimes you could have arrangements between differently themed worlds to allow migration of items and characters with all their traits across worlds. Likely such linking could only be done across trusted servers, so that you would likely start seeing networks of trusted servers evolve. But ideally you could retain your original avatars identity similar to email you could just be known by your "full name" when you leave your home world. Really, there is a lot that can be drawn from the way that people travel from one country to another with different systems of laws and currency.

But the key is to make it easy enough to set up that people with very little prior knowledge can set up servers. Say on the level of setting up apache with PHP or some other type of application server.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoooosh! Did you hear that? That was the sound of Anonymous Cowpat completely missing the joke. The sound AFTER that one was him making an ass of himself.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[_ph1ux_]

The idea of the actual game world being distributed is a tough one sure, but the idea that the characters can be tranferable is not. I had come up with an idea whereby one could build an avatar and use that model in any game. I called the idea BinaryBeing - basically you would have a site where you have an account which stores your various avatars. You could have one that was a general avatar used in any games that allow your fully customized char. but you could also have theme-compliant avatars where a certain world/fantasy archetype is employed.

The ultimate goal is to allow users to build a character which they can carry with them in the long term. and be able to unlock certain character atributes based on the games they use that character in. For example, you might receive the ability to display certain physical atributes in your character or tatoos on your skins based on what games you have accessed with the avatar. Aditionally - if you and your peers guild together in one game, you could develop guild markings/styles/tatoos/apearances which could remain consistant in all games.

The development would be done in cooporation with the various game devs in an effort to ensure that the characters could comply with whatever base rules the developers designate.

All avatars would be hosted on a site and an in-game connection to your binaryBeing account would be made which would grab the avatar model to the game you are playing - or would show you the useable models to pick from...

One could provide a much more in depth character development UI - and the game devs wouldnt have to focus on that as much.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

We actually have a team currently working on a game that's in it's early stages based on this idea.

I'm sure eventually someone will run into us and slashdot us. ;) Currently we're doing everything we can to keep things in the dark untill we're developed far enough that publishers can't snatch things and do it faster. Seeing as we don't have millions of dollars to put into our development.

Instead of a city, or even a world, we've created a universe, where the different planets are run on different servers. Granted this has caused a number of hackable issues, and caused us to write some code that is, as a dev friend from EQ2 said "Beyond it's time in encryption, and uniqueness"

Untill we reach the point where at least two worlds are fully operational, I suppose we'll never know what will happen.

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Multiverse Corey]

> I wonder if anyone will ever get around to making a distributed MMORPG. Something
> where different parts of the game world would be hosted by different operators.

That's actually one of the more interesting things that we hope to enable. Here's a likely scenario:

How about instead of each indie dev team building a separate world, you have three dev teams who DIVIDE a world: "You guys make North America, you other guys make South America, and our team will make Australia." And then ALL of the teams share a common character database, ruleset plug-in, combat plug-in, et cetera, et cetera...

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

Re:Distributed MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspected that it was a joke. Others may not, it is for their benefit that the reply was made, not the entertainment of the original poster.
BTW, I still haven't developed hooves and a tail

This is nothing new

[Ninj0r]

This is nothing new. http://www.byond.com/

Re:This is nothing new

[Anarioch]

Except that BYOND is only 2D - Multiverse is 3D.

Re:This is nothing new

[geminidomino]

It's been a long time since I used BYOND (they still haven't realized that there are people who run linux on machines other than servers.) but I seem to remember them making some beginning strides towards doom-ish and 3rd person games. Too bad a similar OSS project doesn't exist.

Re:This is nothing new

[Ryan Prior]

BYOND is and always will be tailored to the creation of two-dimensional games. It's possible to create 3D worlds, but they are hackish and suck up more than their share of bandwidth and CPU as a result. Though BYOND and Multiverse share their goal; that is, to allow users to create online worlds without first spending years creating the software that supports them; they have different target audiences, different approaches to their software, and different capabilities. I'd like to see these two websites include links to one another; that is, if somebody comes to Multiverse looking to make a massively multiplayer game of checkers, they would be directed to BYOND (which would facilitate such an absurd idea quite facilly). Conversely, if somebody came to BYOND hoping to create a 3D MMORPG, they could easily be directed to Multiverse, which seems to be tailored to just such an enviornment. Being a BYOND user myself, I know that many BYOND users would be excited to try a system for 3-D game creation.

Re:Sound interesting

[DiGG3r]

Would rather have a virtual ChiaPet. Ch..Ch..Ch..Chia!!

Umm...

[ndansmith]

I guess by Massively Multiplayer they mean "like 5 or 6 of your buddies."

I just cannot see anyone getting a large community of players together without a large development and advertising budget. Large development budgets also lead to independent, customized systems with total control, which is the opposite of the Multiverse concept.

Re:Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's only a framework in the sense of the bare technical software to create an MMOG. If you want any sort of differentiation, say a Sci-Fi world over a Fantasy world, or one crafting framework over another, it'll have to be coded. I'd even say that the "important" aspects of an MMOG (i.e. those that sell the game) are exactly the ones that this software can't help out with.

Sure libraries are helpful and all, but what's to differentiate this functionally from a library?

Re:Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out www.urbandead.com

Re:Umm...

[swilde23]

I just cannot see anyone getting a large community of players together without a large development and advertising budget. Large development budgets also lead to independent, customized systems with total control, which is the opposite of the Multiverse concept.

Didn't people say the same thing about Linux (and its variations)? Look at all the different flavors, and then consider the select few that have a reasonable following. I imagine that's what will happen here, assuming the base code is worthwhile. We'll see a handful of good games emerge from a cool idea, but we'll also see several thousand others that die.

Re:Umm...

[Dukael_Mikakis]

And on top of that, the administration isn't addressed either. One of the most significant aspects of any MMOG is the tight control the GMs have over certain things in the world. Cheating is always (one of) the biggest issue in all MMOGs so if those concerns (content control, data isolation, cheater detection) aren't well addressed or fleshed out, then any boutique MMOG will never be able to launch outside of a group of friends who can all trust each other.

I mean huge for-profit MMORPGs are having a hell of a time trying to deal with these very problems, how can a custom MMOG deal with them and still hope to attract enough accounts to be at all entertaining?

Re:Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad that is far from true. Games like Runescape and small 2d mmorpg games made by small companies seem to be doing pretty well. May not bring in as much money as WoW (especially the free ones) but they still bring in players to play their game.

Re:Umm...

[podperson]

Plenty of NeverWinter Nights servers attract larger consistent followings with no advertising.

Re:Umm...

[eprieur]

I'm one of the dev for a small independant mmorpg called Star Sonata (http://www.starsonata.com/). We have about 400 subscribers (and maybe 100-200 active free accounts) and the game is growing slowly but steadily and it's been the case for the last year since we got out of beta. It's mostly semi part time work for 2-4 persons. It did take 2-3 persons working full time for at least a year to get it out thought, but nearly everything was done from scratch. I would say it is possible but take alot of patience. You also have to not really expect money from this and when it does come somewhat, you take it as a bonus. Eric www.starsonata.com

Re:Umm...

[_Sharp'r_]

Apparently I'm starting to get too old for the /. crowd.

I made it through the entire page of comments (ok, only 2+, didn't read the others) and not a single person mentioned where this has all been done before in the MU* (MUSH/MUX/MUD/etc..) realm. You know, hundreds of players at a time in a multi-user game. Game services that did nothing but rent game accounts for you to build and run your own. All of the software highly customizable, with the better ones (Like PennMush, TinyMU*, etc..) having an in-game programming language that still has list and string functions easier to use than most high-level languages today have.

You know, the things that today's MMOG are built on top of? Heck, if you looked at Everquest, you could tell it was just a MUD with a GUI thrown on top.

This "Multiverse" is simply bringing the current crop of graphical MUDs back to the previous realm of how things were before some big budget guys starting spending the cash necessary to stick a GUI on top of some MUD software.

Re:Umm...

[patio11]

And look at all those great open source Linux games. Like TuxRacer! And TuxRacer!

Re:Umm...

[swilde23]

I wasn't talking about those great linux games. I was talking about that great linux system.

Re:Umm...

[robnauta]

Runescape is a decent game. But nobody wants to play ugly tile-based 2D games that look like 15 year old PC games, when the XT with 640 KB and CGA graphics ruled.

Re:Umm...

[podperson]

Indeed -- very good point.

And again, no advertising or marketing involved.

Oh great

[jackcarter]

Just what I need: joining some guy's MMOG and start standing inside the goatse guy's ass.

Re:Oh great

[grimJester]

Just don't accept a Sony EULA without reading it.

Re:Yay...

[boog3r]

So it would be the most realistic MMORPG to date? Traffic jams everywhere, a bunch of factions fighting over limited resources and everyone else laughing as it spins out of control?

Sign me up.

Let Users create content

[glengineer]

How about an MMORPG wherein the users can create content? So, after I play a while and become famous, rich whatever, I can build my own dungeon, castle, create my own army, my own artifact, create my own quests that other players undertake... There are a LOT of users out there with good content ideas who cannot get past the large undertaking to create their own game system, but who would love to create their own content in an existing one.

Re:Let Users create content

[Dukael_Mikakis]

While it could be a nightmare to implement, I think that this sort of thing could be a breakthrough. Creating an entire world is too much to expect somebody to do, but if some established MMORPG let users create instanced or separate zones where user created content can be accessed then it could be like CounterStrike is to Half-Life.

Now, there will be issues with items and EXP. Either you have to have all EXP and items not appear in the common world or (less likely) force a computer generated cap on EXP and items (i.e. this enemy is this difficult so the computer calculates the max EXP and best items he can drop ... not an easy task), but the core idea is that allowing an easy way to plug in user-created content could keep the WoW (or whatever) ship cruising all on its own without having to have their devs kill themselves every patch for new content.

Imagine all the user instances you could hack at, though it wouldn't be worth it for the loot fiends I guess. And they'd need to include some applications to do this.

Re:Let Users create content

[xenoandroid]

I'd like to see an MMO that drops the EXP model for something less treadmill like.

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this the idea behind Wombat Games' Dark Zion concept a few years back? Developers create the world and its history, and the players -- survivors of a crashed colony ship (or somesuch idea) -- are free to roam, develop societies, whatever. Ah, pining for what could have been...

Re:Let Users create content

[Hillgiant]

You mean like Second Life?

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

What, like ActiveWorlds?

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this exactly what Neverwinter Nights allowed?

Re:Let Users create content

[Dukael_Mikakis]

True, the EXP model is perhaps the most outdated aspect in all of MMOGs, and user created content might just be the thing the push it forward.

If a certain MMOG consisted of a patchwork of user modules conventional EXP and loot wouldn't work as it is. To build off of my last post, maybe there could be some sort of economic or regressive reward system. Somebody creates their instance or whatever and a formula approximates the reward that each mob gives, or the reward for completing an instance or a quest in the instance, and this estimation would modulate as people run the instance. If people are having no trouble running the instance then the rewards and requirements become weaker, and vice versa.

This would also modulate things like Molten Core in WoW where people have it mapped out to be just loot farms. When an instance becomes formulaic like this, under my model, the reward formula makes the reward less and less appealing (as it is, Blizzard has to continue introducing harder mobs and better loot to deal with this).

And of course, it would help (in a way) to make all the modules "open" so obvious bugs or problems or impossible encounters could be fixed.

Re:Let Users create content

[John Hurliman]

Second Life

Re:Let Users create content

[neovoxx]

There is an MMOG somewhat like that already: <URL:http://www.there.com/>.
If I recall, it's something like $12/year.

Re:Let Users create content

[zoomba]

Sounds sorta like the dream behind Neverwinter Nights multiplayer where you could build your world and link it to other servers via portals. In theory it would create a zoned MMORPG if you had enough people working together to build and host content. In reality though, it never came to be since it required more work than the average user wanted to put in.

User generated content is only good if it's made so insanely easy to do that it's a no-brainer. As soon as you make it so users "design" the content, you're toast.

The general solution is to have pre-fab structures and templates for users to plop down and then to some limited extent fill in *some* custom content (usually smaller prebuilt objects the devs provide).

Player generated content is the holy grail of a lot of MMORPGs, but the trade off in a system like that is so much work has to go into making a workable world for players to create within, and a system robust and simple enough to make creation accessable to players, that there is almost always very little GAME built. Look at Star Wars Galaxies for an example of that. It's a beautiful sandbox system (prior to NGE) that allowed the users to define a vast majority of the game world through the economy, player towns etc... But there wasn't any gameplay or real content in there.

The portion of MMO players who want a toolset to create a universe is vanishingly small. Most people want a game to play, so devs like Blizzard don't bother with the player creation and focus solely on game content.

Re:Let Users create content

[ThosLives]

If you have a system where players can create content, experience and levels are not necessary. The driving force in the game becomes acquiring resources or whatever are necessary to construct that content, and to defend that content. "Prestige" comes from the amount of stuff that you have created and your ability to keep it. While this is still inherently a time sink, it's of a vastly different nature than experience / level systems, and it really does depend on player skill and creativity rather than the simple "I have been playing longer" effect. As an alternative to experience / level systems, turning everything into skills that increase in proficiency with use or training is better than a classed system. For instance - you pick up a sword and you suck at it, but after a while your skill is reasonable, then plateaus until you go to a trainer. Then you get bored, so you go pick up a staff...see how that could work? No experience at all, just practice - like in the real world! (which is probably why people don't go that route. *shrug*)

Re:Let Users create content

[aeoo]

Won't you want to get paid for creating content though? I can see creating some content for free, but if you want to make it your day job, you'd probably want to get paid for it. Level designer is a paid profession right now, and probably for a good reason. I said, "probably".

Re:Let Users create content

[xMilkmanDanx]

User content would be the equivalent of towns, not a starting point for enemy/ai/mobile attacks but houses, villages, defensive structures. Any of those would have to be generated as random attacks (ala invasions) or from game mechanics (enemies being simulated to grow/expand or from PVP style factions). Balance would come from making construction cost, some nontrivial cost of game money and/or time. In game economics have been poor at best, with players having either too little or way too much influence. For user material of a new area/dungeon, that can be balanced by having the mobs be automatically assigned or assigned by GMs.

Anyway, my point being there are ways such a system could be implemented without being a problem.

Re:Let Users create content

[lawpoop]

I think this would solve a lot of problems as far as content in MMORPGs. It costs a lot of money to hire people who can write decent quests, stories, and epics. You could have the users do this for free if you allowed them to build their own empires, strike deals, backstab, take vengance, etc.

Stories are always about the human element. It sounds like current MMORPGs are to restrictive and don't allow the full range of human interaction. Thus, we have no human drama. So MMORPG companies have to hire people to create the drama for them

Giant Fish King Says:
"Long Ago, the Elf King really fucked us over and burned our village when our enemies were attacking.."

Re:Let Users create content

[stiefvater]

Second Life lets you create arbitrary content.

Re:Let Users create content

[Syberghost]

See, making your game more boring and work-like isn't a selling point. People play games to escape their boring lives, not collapse them into two dimensions.

Levels have survived because they're simple. That's why 30 years of RPG design experience have resulted in d20 games outselling everything else in the pen-and-paper world, and it's why all the most successful MMORPGs still have levels; even the ones created by fans of point-based, skill-based systems.

Re:Let Users create content

[misleb]

Years ago, I maintained a MUD that had online creation. Certain players could extend the world and create items and such. Of course, it was all text based, but it really wasn't a lot of work to add the code to the regular MUD code. I can't imagine it would be too difficult to do with an MMOG. The trick would be in the user interface. It is one thing to build maps and items (a lot of single player games have this already). But scripting good quests could be a fair amount of work.

-matthew

Re:Let Users create content

[ThosLives]

I don't disagree; I was just offering alternatives to experience+level-based systems. As for the paper world: see GURPS for a good example. No levels at all, and one of the best systems I've ever seen (I have played AD&D - back in 1989 though, and Shadowrun) as far as simplicity and role-play-ability. Still based on a skill point system, but points are much closer to "practice" than "XP for a kill".

Incidentally, I don't think "practicing to get your skills up" is any less like work than, say, wandering around a field killing spiders to increase experience....

I guess it all goes back to the original discussion: some people like more realistic games, others want totally fantastic ones. But that's the purpose of something like the tools mentioned - ways to get people to be able to create things they like. The fact that things need "selling points", well, that's an entirely different discussion.

Re:Let Users create content

[misleb]

When it comes down to it, what is the difference between EXP and skill points? At some level you are going to have to be awarded some kind of points for the use of a skill. Whether you call it EXP or SP, what's the difference? It doesn't really matter how much skill the player has. His character still has to hack away with a sword, for example, to get experience/skill with swords.

-matthew

Re:Let Users create content

[Pxtl]

Nonsense. The D20 system survives because of it's association with the Dungeons and Dragons brand. World of Darkness's system is perfectly simple, requiring no use of levels. In many "level" based RPG's like Diablo, the levels are meaningless - they simply represent a number of stat-building points that are made available to the player once they achieve the level. The concept of the level could be eliminated trivially by just giving the player the stat-building points and not mentioning the level, as is done in many non-D&D RPGs.

Character classes are a similar anachronism. Other RPGs do just fine without them - D20 maintains theirs simply because D&D has always been class-based. With a single balanced player-creation system there's no need to pigeonhole characters into classes.

I mean hell, D20 still has rules to let players roll their stats randomly. That's the ultimate anachronism.

Re:Let Users create content

[ShakaUVM]

Yeah, they're called MUDs. Players create rich, detailed zones.

The problem with MMORPGs is 3D art is the barrier to most development. All the other elements besides art players are more than capable of doing.

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

Building things in meatspace is a lot more work than most people want to do. That's why they go out and hire a contractor to build it for them.

Why not just pay other players in the games to build things for you? An artisan class, if you will. A MMORPG could potentially attract more players by offering a different approach to the gaming world. Not everyone wants to build up characters and acquire funny sounding battle helmets. There are people out there who would rather just make and sell art in a virtual world.

Sounds like a lot of fun, actually!

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

NWN doesn't require the builders to be in-character to do the building, it's got a stand-alone toolkit (called Aurora) that's quite user-friendly yet has the ability to be incredibly sophisticated (the scripting language is basically a variant of C)

A lot of people actually do build worlds, the problem is mostly getting the world to span across servers seamlessly and other back-end problems that arise, not "make a world and host it on your home pc"

~ lilewyn

Re:Let Users create content

[TheYNH]

Sound an Awful lot like Second Life, which, as far as mainstream gaming is concerned, has gone under the radar.

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

WotC is the Microsoft of the RPG industry. D&D has survived as-is for analogous reasons to Windows. Levels have no mre to do with D&D's survival than wallpapers have to do with Windows'.

Re:Let Users create content

[Solder Fumes]

Obviously.

Scrolling through the comments, I see:
1. People who read about a similar universe in a book.
2. People who think this is a new great idea.

Seriously, guys, anyone interested in a collaborative freeform 3D world should have already registered an account at Second Life. It's been out there for a couple years already. The client *is* a 3D modeling tool, everything from clothes to massive Klingon spacecraft are built inworld. You can build anything you want in one of the sandbox areas if you don't own land. You can attach scripts to do almost anything to almost any object; everything from animating a sculpture to running a store or party game.

Second Life is now free. That is, you can register, have an avatar, get a weekly stipend, build anything you want, but you can't own land. No excuse not to try it out. One hint: turn off local lighting to speed up the framerate, Second Life is CPU-bound.

Re:Let Users create content

[Fjornir]

I mean hell, D20 still has rules to let players roll their stats randomly. That's the ultimate anachronism.

Damn. I liked that too. "Why does your mage have moderately high strength and health?" "Oh... He worked as a page in the university of magic library -- hauling all of those leatherbound tomes to their shelves..." or whatever. Random stats gave a character... Well, character.

Re:Let Users create content

[Fjornir]

...but why should swinging a sword at sewer rats allow me to gain mastery of the orcish language as in the 2nd edition AD&D rules?

Re:Let Users create content

[Fjornir]

But the existing games don't have "good quests" as you define it (ie: those that would require work to script). LPMUDs aside the most advanced quest I've seen in an MMORPG had you talk to a guy (after fulfilling a number of get-the-items and talk-to-bob tasks) who turned around and attacked you (with two of his buddies who'd been 'hiding in shadows') ..

Re:Let Users create content

[drsquare]

Because it's simple. A lot of the time it's better to have something unrealistic but straightforward than something more realistic but convoluted.

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

The only limitations are if you make something offensive. Second Life technically allows you free speech, but one too many people wandering around don't have a sense of humor, and when they see something offensive, instead of laughing, they scream for the Lindens to bring down the banhammer. Keep in mind that a good portion of the population on the servers are made up of furries, goreans, or other subcultures that would be outed in the real world. Does it seem fair, then, for them to judge others? The majority of the people using Second Life end up dictating, indirectly, what people can and can't say or do. Democratic? Yes. Fair? No.

The client itself is also known for exploits. A while ago, the whole grid was brought down by someone who made a "Greifsphere", which replicated itself indefeniatly. There was supposed to be a restriction on how many times the object could have replicated, but something failed, and the whole grid was brought down. Anyone who has heard of the "W-hat" group knows exactly what I'm talking about. I don't really think that the guy who made the "Greifsphere" really meant to damage anything, but that didn't prevent the witchhunts on the private SL forums.

The development team is also notoriously slow with updates. They have been promising a brand new rendering engine with increased framerates for YEARS. However, with each .x update, we seem to be getting less and less.

Second Life is a great idea. It's the people who killed it for me.

Re:Let Users create content

[Fjornir]

Hey, bozo, read the post I was responding to and it becomes clear that my post was answering the question "Whether you call it EXP or SP, what's the difference?" ... As such I'd like to ask you to keep your "Because it's simple." drivel to yourself.

The difference between an XP and SP based game is that SP-based systems tend to offer increases on the skills you use (DartMud and the Discwold mud are the best examples of this I've encountered online) whereas an XP game yields silly "Well, I just killed my hundredth rat, so now I am more healthy, can speak a new language, and play the oboe."

Re:Let Users create content

[misleb]

Because you probably spent half your time swinging swords at orcs who swore a lot and taunted you. That is how I learned German.

-mattthew

Re:Let Users create content

[Reapy]

I would like to see the dev's get thier stuff together for secondlife. It has great potential but they drop the ball on a lot of stuff.

There's been lots of promises of things that are supposed to be out in the next update, then it comes, and there is no mention of it.

These things include html on prims, new havok physics engine, and a new rendering engine.

Interestingly I don't see the new features being developed helpping the main features of secondlife. Building and socalizing. I see no mention of work on improving building tools. They are very simple to use, but also have some issues that make it a big pain in the butt.

They ought to work on the socializing aspect. A lot of people like to go on and chat and goof around with friends. Yet avatars cant realy intereact with each other. The current hack is to have an animation (bvh file) play from your avatar. It is impossible to move avatars where you want except when they sit on something. So you sit on a poseball that puts you in the right spot and plays the right animation, and if it isn't too laggy you'll end up having a dance, hug, or whatever with another person.

It is very clumsy, and I don't see anybody pointing out some developer changes to facilitate the process and make it easier. I'm not sure what they can add, and I can appreciate the techical hurdles (who knows what the heck the other avatar is going to look like in terms of shape and size), it still should be something they are working on.

The other problem is lag. SL has a great physics system where you can build some intersting cars, planes and boats. The problem is that anywhere you use it it is so laggy that the controls stink and you just end up ramming into some geomentry that just rezed in front of you which wasn't there a second before.

I have no clue how to fix this since the landscape in sl is as untame as the web, yet you still have to stream in all this content to make sure a wall might be there or not.

SL is a very cool 3d chat room, and thats about all I see it as. If you want to make something big and exciting, sl isn't the platform to do it on, but if you want to just get in and meet some wacky people and see some crazy stuff for free, it's a great place.

I really like sl for what it is trying to do. I'm just waiting for someone else to come along and do it better now.

Re:Let Users create content

[Syberghost]

WotC is the Microsoft of the RPG industry. D&D has survived as-is for analogous reasons to Windows. Levels have no mre to do with D&D's survival than wallpapers have to do with Windows'.

Ok. Then explain why Palladium had a 7% share of the market in 2003 with their level-based games, and Steve Jackson had somewhere between 3% and 1%, but Mongoose (who makes level-based games) had 5%. They had significantly more sales than Steve Jackson, whose company is far more well-known than Mongoose and has had books in mainstream retailers since long before Mongoose existed.

Explain why gaming properties such as Prime Directive fail with a house-built system, fail again with Gurps, and then suddenly start getting traction when they switch to d20.

Look, I love Gurps. I love skill-based, point-based systems. I have more Hero Games stuff than anything else, and Gurps is a very close second. Hero and Gurps combined are the majority of my very extensive collection. Nevertheless, level-based systems dominate every gaming market. They're easy. It's easy to say "well, WotC Hasbro TSR blah blah blah", but it leaves out the fact that skill and point-based systems have been around for every bit as long as Dungeons and Dragons, yet they've never been able to dominate the market the way class and level-based systems have.

Name a major games publisher that doesn't produce a d20 product. If we define "major" low enough, I can think of one. They get a whole 1% of the market.

There is a reason for this, and it's not that Wizards of the Coast sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus with a 43% share.

Re:Let Users create content

[Syberghost]

I mean hell, D20 still has rules to let players roll their stats randomly. That's the ultimate anachronism.

Random character generators for Gurps abound on the web, because of the demand. People ask about random generation on the Hero Games forums, and get pointed to existing sites. Most other point-based systems include a section on random generation.

At the same time, d20 games include point-based character generation, and the official RPGA campaigns use it as the preferred method.

Are you arguing that a system is inferior based on the fact that it provides more features than another system?

In any event, superiority/inferiority isn't what we're discussing here; it's popularity. It's telling that you can't stick to that argument; it's because you know you're losing.

As for not needing classes; Gurps had to add templates because they discovered that classes were EASIER. If you define "do just fine" as "sell a tiny percentage of the marketplace", then yes, they "do just fine". But we aren't arguing whether or not a system is usable. We're arguing what's more popular, and why that's so.

You tell me why City of Heroes banged their heads against the point-based wall for months, before discovering that classes and levels were EASIER and switching to that. Nobody's arguing that classes and levels are "better" here in any specific terms except easier and more popular. You want to say they're less realistic? Fine, I agree with you. So what? The most "realistic" systems on the market are all made by Greg Porter, and you could probably fit every single book he's ever sold into the back of a smallish U-Haul. Why? Because his beautiful, remarkable, ground-breaking systems, including the ever-awesome CORPS, are harder to use than a simple d20 class-and-level-based system.

If he released d20 Timelords tomorrow it'd outsell every other product he's ever produced combined, except maybe 3G3.

Speaking of Porter, the d20 edition of Macho Women with Guns sells really well. I wonder how its sales compare with the previous editions? Mongoose certainly appears to have a lot more money these days than BTRC.

Re:Let Users create content

[fleck_99_99]

Wouldn't a system like that drive all modules toward an "Average" level?

Re:Let Users create content

[drsquare]

Building skills by using them makes it too easy. Gaining xp by killing things is a lot harder and more dangerous than riding a horse up and down a road all day.

Re:Let Users create content

[Anonymous Coward]

It's far too late for anyone to read this, but I might as well post my idea somewhere:

Blacksmithing.

Now, obviously a lot of games have this. Everything from Ragnarok to Ultima.

However, the extent they're implemented is almost offensive. They don't really create anything truly great. The weapons are already prefabricated weapons you can get in the game elsewhere, for the most part. If not, they're rarely of that much value, and everyone else already has them. Smithing ends up being too expensive in the beginning, and too worthless at the end(as everyone by then is spawn-camping their favorite boss monsters to cash in on the 5% drop possibility of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac or whatever).

So, I instead offer an alternative for the item creation system. You get the basic forms for a weapon(that is: "I choose to make a sword") or armor or whatever, and then you can add your own bonuses/extras to it, which cost various items/magic/what-have-you. Trade-off: depending on the extent of the bonus and the amount of them added, the chance that the weapon/item will fail to be built increases. There are ways to decrease that possibility: higher-level blacksmiths, or adding negative effects to balance the weapon, or using specific items in the creation that simply have a higher chance of success, or even the idea of collaborating with other blacksmiths(that might be subject to abuse, but that's all up to the gamers). If the weapon fails, all/some of the items that went into the creation of the weapon/armor/jewelry/whatever are lost.

To make individualistic appearances for the items created:

1. People who create their own items can requisition the chance to either have an item graphic created or submit their own. GMs can check out what items they think are worthy of having their appearance altered, or the users can see the list and vote for themselves.

2. Each aspect causes an appearance change. For example, a sword modified to poison has a darker appearance, an axe with enhanced regular damage looks sharper, armor with high durability is, I dunno, gold or something. And varying degrees cause greater changes in appearance. You can also ask for specific changes, like an axe with a spearhead out of the top, which creates a weapon capable of piercing damage as well as bashing and cutting.

Problems with this idea are several:

a)Nigh impossible to properly implement in sprite-based games, for one. This demands either a lot of dedicated artists or 3-d graphics.

b)People who want their weapon to look a certain way aren't going to be happy when they HAVE to have their poisoned weapon look darker, or their axe look sharper, or whatever.

c)Weapons will all just look like modified versions of the same exact build if done wrong. Creates a sense of blandness that you shouldn't have with the Gorgon's Great Axe.

3. Also requires a 3-dimensional interface: Simply have a weapon-editor. This will result in every shitty weapon on the planet having its own graphic, though, and most of them will no doubt look ugly.

Re:Let Users create content

[Fjornir]

Riiight... Of course it makes absolutely no sense for my horsemanship skill to be based on something silly like how long I spend on a horse. It's clearly a better game mechanic to have the number of giant spiders I've cut up determine my ability to remain mounted.

And, for what it's worth both of the systems I pointed out have the difficulty of the task you're performing with a skill feed into the equation on if you get an improve or not. Too easy or too hard and you don't stand a chance of getting better. So instead of walking the horse up and down the road you need to go out and gallop along the edge of a cliff.

Re:Let Users create content

[drsquare]

And how exactly does the game determine what's hard and what's not? An xp/level system is used because it's simple and straightforward. I can just imagine people riding up and down along the edge of cliffs all day, it'd be hilarious.

Re:Let Users create content

[Fjornir]

I'll stick to DartMUD because I've played with its skillsystem more and am considerably more familiar with it. First, doing things quickly is more difficult than doing things slowly and deliberately. This is represented by the generic "Concentration" stat which governs your actions. Conc is burnt with every action you perform and regens very quickly. Mounting an animal, climbing a wall, casting a spell all burn conc. In combat the speed at which you are attacking (and the speed your opponent is attacking at) affect your conc as well -- attacking with two swords at a high speed burns conc quickly. Parrying with a shield/sword combination and foregoing attacks should let you catch your breath.

So the speed you're going has a rather large impact. Are you walking the animal with frequent restbreaks or are you galloping along as fast as you can? Terrain is going to add a major modifier as well. In town, along a road is going to be a lot easier than out of town crossing the mountains. Hills and plains will be somewhere in between and swimming the horse (mounted) across a river is going to be a real challenge.

Next up your size and stats compared to that of an animal. A gnome attempting to mount a wild elephant is going to find the gnome flying through the air and making a check against their acrobatics skill (with a conc penalty for their very recently attempted action of mounting the animal) to determine how they land -- there'd be a very real chance of it being fatal. A human character on a well-tamed mare is going to have a much easier time of it.

Oh, yes. Taming your mounts. An untamed horse such as you might find on the planes is going to be much harder to ride than a horse which has already been broken. Breaking an animal is a moderately difficult task -- and will likely have you bucked off the animal's back several times while you try it. Stallions are less docile than geldings and mares...

Other factors? Mmm... Well, there's weight -- Mounting an animal in full armor is going to be tricky. Probably wise to go hang it up somewhere while you're getting started. Your nightvision stat vs the brightness of the room (although, really, if you can't see you'll be unlikely to be trying to ride anyways). There are probably a few I'm forgetting and some that I don't know about.

Win* only

[Mind Booster Noori]

Their games are for Win* users only. I'm out.

Re:Win* only

[Anonymous Coward]

Your loss!

Enjoy GNU chess and Tux Racer, faggot!

Re:Win* only

[Multiverse Corey]

We do indeed plan on developing the client on multiple platforms. First comes Windows, but Linux and Mac are on the roadmap, as are other platforms. We aren't just former Netscape developers--we are current cross-platform zealots. (Some religions you pick up and you just can't shake.)

Our own game in beta-testing, Kothuria, is available on Windows only right now, but you can be sure that we'll be testing any new client tech with that game first.

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

Re:Win* only

[Mind Booster Noori]

Well, then it would be great if in the Operating System dropdown menu one could have a choice "Other", so we could do our beta testing when those client tech tests come...

Re:Win* only

[Multiverse Corey]

Good point. We were trying to strike a balance between what's actually being tested now, and what our plans are. We'll adjust the site to make that more clear. Thanks.

--Corey

Tech

[kevin_conaway]

What are the technical details? Platforms? What apis are available? In what language?

Re:Tech

[schon]

What are the technical details?

Don't know - you have to "sign up" to get that info.

Platforms?

They don't mention anything for the server software, but the client is apparently Windows XP only.

I guess I'll be sticking with NWN for the time being :o)

Re:Tech

[TheHornedOne]

Probably g*d-damn Windows only. Certainly the one example game they show requries DirectX, which bodes poorly.

Re:Tech

[Cyno]

This is News for Nerds, not News for Geeks.

Re:Tech

[Multiverse Corey]

Our server software is written in Java, so that gives you some flexibility with your server OS.

And as I mentioned in a different thread, the client that's in beta right is WinXP, but other platforms are on the roadmap. We are a bunch of early-days Netscape folks, so we've been pretty committed to the cross-platform thing for a decade or so.

We'll be posting more info on our tech specs at our site in coming weeks and months. You won't have to be an early developer on our beta platform to find out the important details.

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

Could you Buy virtual words?

[sylverboss]

I also read news about buying virtual worlds.. but can remember the website address.. It's getting as big as buying real "NON-VIRTUAL" lands !

Re:Could you Buy virtual words?

[Subrafta]

If only there was a search engine like Google that would let us find information in obscure publications like USAToday.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=buying+vi rtual+real+estate&btnG=Search
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife /2004-06-03-virtual-realty_x.htm

Too Late! Been done...

[glengineer]

Take a look at this pic: (It's a PG-13 rated pic of a Quake2 arena, goatse style.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Quake2gloomtemp leofgoatse.JPG

Nice press release.

[Minwee]

This sounds like the same sort of business model that companies like Kaneva are offering. "Play with our tools, build games, host them on our servers and we'll take a cut of the money."

It could be good if it works out. If not, at least it will let more people see that game design isn't about eating donuts and throwing darts at the "Nerf This" board.

Acronym translation

[Otto]

Sadly, I understood that and I've never played that game.

SWG = Star Wars Galaxies
CU = Combat Upgrade, which changed SWG in large ways, making it incompatible with previous versions. This led to pre-CU servers being made for people who preferred the old way
NGE = New Game Enchancements, which did much the same thing in terms of splitting the userbase.

I read too damn much gaming news.

Re:Acronym translation

[Anonymous Coward]

No pre-cu server exists

Re:Acronym translation

[VagaStorm]

Thanks, I just got to lice 10% straight of my geek rating :)

Re:Acronym translation

[cnelzie]

The CU (Combat Upgrade) lead to calls for Pre-CU servers, but that never happened and never will happen as SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) isn't interested in making pre-CU Servers available.

    The rest is accurate.

Re:Acronym translation

[Anonymous Coward]

that's the point of the parent post, that there's hope that someone will create one

Re:Acronym translation

[Glonoinha]

Cue the Snow Crash theme song in 3...2...1

Re:Acronym translation

[Jaruzel]

There's a Theme Song?

<obligatory /. question>

Has anyone got the .torrent for it?

</obligatory /. question>

-Jar.

I suppose it has merit...

[design by michael]

Somehow I think you'd be subject to a lot of loading screens -- like switching from a fantasy theme to say a WWII shoot-em-up setting. I can see how some things might be used centrally, like the engine itself; but other visual and audio resources?

Somehow I find it hard to imagine how they could provide enough universal resources to accommodate many possible different themes and gaming environments -- unless you don't mind using a "thud" sound for your AK-47 as you storm the beaches of Normandy on your shimmering unicorn.

Re:I suppose it has merit...

[osu-neko]

...unless you don't mind using a "thud" sound for your AK-47 as you storm the beaches of Normandy on your shimmering unicorn.

Don't give them any ideas!

Re:I suppose it has merit...

[cat6509]

you could implement choke points, maybe like a portal/doorway where to pass through to the other realm you must have certain client-side data or abilities that come with a download or paid service. You could mask the doorway with large physical boundries such as a vast sea, bottomless canyons, Space ( the vacum kind ) etc.

Re:I suppose it has merit...

[design by michael]

What fun would that be? Think about it. Go from some WWII setting, step into your TARDIS and ward off an evil group of Daleks.

Get bored with one genre, hop over to another seemlessly. ;-)

Standardization Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

What is really needed is a standard so that multiuser virtual environments can interact with each other and the communications protocols and graphics engines needed to implement server and client.

I say we should consider something like Ogre3D, some open physics models, take a look at various UDP based protocols and work out the multiuser framework.

If the Internet standards bodies don't take this up then Valve will end up owning the only viable engine that can.

If we ever want to have an open multisuer virtual environment like Neal Stevenson's Metaverse, then we better start now.

Comments?

Re:Standardization Needed

[Multiverse Corey]

Yup. We use Ogre. Axiom, actually, as the XP client is written in C#. We'll post more at our site soon about what we're doing with protocols.

And seeing how you mentioned Stephenson's Metaverse, our goal is to build the framework where *other people* can take up that charge. Too many companies have burned through too much money, thinking they can just build the Metaverse themselves. It can't be forced. It has to grow organically. (I'd say that we just want to be the garden, but that's too easy a setup for fertilizer jokes.)

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

They stole the idea from these folks....

[Anonymous Coward]

Damage Studios Reconstruktion.

Best MMORPG ever.

Re:They stole the idea from these folks....

[aposch]

best ...ever? Like Duke is best FPS?
It has never been and will never be released.
If you can read / understand german, just one click away:
http://www.golem.de/0408/32930.html

Spell Jammer?

[RingDev]

It the moment it just sounds like you can play multiple games on one client. But You have to wonder if the individual game developers would want to make client changes that would break that compatibility. Anyway, if the were to make it possible to 'travel' from one game to the next you could wind up with a really interesting Spell Jammer like multiverse. That could be entertaining.

-Rick

Re:Yay...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooo what you are saying is that you call dibs on the lair under the bridge?

Been Done Before... Sorta

[PepeGSay]

How much different is this than say Id releasing the Quake engine (I think that was what they released a while ago) and saying "Build games on this." If I remember correctly, there were some alright games built on it, but really most of them were bargain bin lookalikes. When FPS games got real popular I believe 2-3 different engines were released to be licensed... and can anyone name a game that was really all that good that was built on them? Maybe 1 game? Its just like movies, 1-2 companies come out with genre trendsetters, and then everyone else just machine pressing out lookalikes like some industrial size factory. The Multiverse will be the steel press of MMORPGS, rejoice... and prepare for deja-vu.

Re:Been Done Before... Sorta

[ThE0eNiGmA]

All I have to do is point to Half-life. It was made on a modified Quake-II engine, as I recall. And...um... what was that spy game featuring a woman? Never played it, but I hear some people liked it. But yeah, when it comes down it, not many blockbuster titles really used somebody else's source. Half-life is the only one I can think of that redefined gaming.

Re:Been Done Before... Sorta

[halber_mensch]

But yeah, when it comes down it, not many blockbuster titles really used somebody else's source. Half-life is the only one I can think of that redefined gaming.

Half life was built on a heavily modified Quake I engine (which still looks gorgeous to me). Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Jedi Knight II were built with the Quake III engine. Those were fairly popular games, as I recall. A good list of games derived from the engine can be found here.

But that's always how iD has been. John Carmack is a dyed-in-the-wool algorithm wizard. He writes very elegant and optimized code to solve problems, and researches data structures and algorithms heavily to build his tools the 'right' way. If you read Michael Abrash's Grpahics Programming Black book, he notes Carmack's obsession with optimizing his spatial organization routines and data structures - how he stayed up late nights trying out different data structures and algorithms to get the most optimal rendering time out of his engine. Unfortunately, while the engines are superb implementations of advanced concepts, for the most part iD doesn't push out the same kind of content that people like Valve can 'pump' out. They're just more programming-centric. But when a content-centric entity publishes a title built on one of iD's engines, it's usually pretty rad.

Re:Been Done Before... Sorta

[TheZorch]

Half-Life certainly changed things. The game showed that FPS didn't have to be run, shoot and shoot some more type games. It was a thinking man's game.

Another game, though greated underrated, is Deus Ex. It used the Unreal Engoine and introduced gamers to the world of Cyberpunk and to a form of gameplay that didn't revolve around hosing down room after room with bullets. It was also an RPG of sorts, though it wasn't the first RPG built to play like a FPS. That honor goes to The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall which used the Quake engine.

More innovative use of popular modern day engines can be seen in games like Splinter Cell which used the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine, and the MMORPG Lineage uses a highly modified Unreal Tournament 2003 engine.

Quake 3: Arena wasn't much of a game as compared to Unreal Tournament. UT offered many more gameplay features and better bot AI, but the Q3A engine itself was a decent graphics engine. It was used to make games such as the Medal of Honor series, the Call of Duty series, the critically acclaimed Star Trek Voyager Elite Force and its sequel, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein as well as Enemy Territory.

Now Warren Specter, the mastermind behind Deus Ex, is going to use the Half-Life 2 Source Engine in a new game project. Not to mention all of the real-world training sims that are in development using the Source Engine. One of them trains surgeons. Its the Source Engine's astonishingly good physics modeling engine that makes this possible.

Oh, and lets not forget America's Army, the game that doubles as a recruiting tool for the U.S. Armed Forces. It was built using the Unreal Engine and has been upgraded to the UT2k4 engine recently.

Re:Been Done Before... Sorta

[ThE0eNiGmA]

You know, I was thinking of Deus Ex, but I thought they built their own engine. I loved that game. And btw, I could have sworn that I had read that Half-life was built on a Quake II engine. II. 2. You get the idea. Maybe I'm wrong... But that is a memory from years ago.

Re:Been Done Before... Sorta

[CableModemSniper]

That honor goes to The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall which used the Quake engine.

Methinks you mean Ultima Underworld. Linky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Underworld

I miss the old days... and I'm not even twenty

[ThE0eNiGmA]

I could care less for new, shiny 3D graphics. I DO care less for the new not-so-innovative MMORPGS that get cranked out by big budget corporations. Personally, I would rather see a massive world with 2D graphics like Final Fantasy VI or Seiken Denetsu 3. I would rather have less attention paid to the graphics (and I LIKE 2D graphics, anyway) and more to gameplay, characters...the actual world. I wonder... could such a thing exist on a hand held? Somehow I don't see it working on the PSP, though the DS would be a good candidate. Btw, I RTFA, and even visited the website. Both the Kothuria and Multiverse. Nice idea, but I'm still not sure how far you can go with this. How far can you go with the graphics or gameplay revisions until you can no longer interoperate with the servers? If you can make a 2D game work with this system, then you have my attention.

Re:I miss the old days... and I'm not even twenty

[Plaid Phantom]

massive world with 2D graphics like Final Fantasy VI or Seiken Denetsu 3

Oh, you mean somthing like http://www.runescape.com/?

Re:I miss the old days... and I'm not even twenty

[dextromulous]

Ok, maybe I havent played Runescape in 4 or 5 years, but how exactly does that have 2D graphics or a look and feel akin to FF6 or SD3?

Re:I miss the old days... and I'm not even twenty

[Plaid Phantom]

Oh. Guess I thought faster than I read. Sorry.

TomeNet engine is open

[Lord Satri]

If you take a look a TomeNet, you get a MMORPG open engine. The sad thing is, you must go to the forums to learn anything about it because the website isn't updated often.

TomeNet is a roguelike multiplayer online rolepaying game based on Tolkien's work. The single player game is also getting closer to version 3.0, with a revamped game engine (open, with source code available). Great game and great community.

Re:TomeNet engine is open

[misleb]

For the last decade I dreamed of a multiplayer, online Nethack. Then I found TOME. Then I tried TomeNet... and I realized what a bad idea my dream was. The problem with putting a game like Tome or Nethack online is that they are turn based. Both games are designed in such a way that players are expected to sit back and think about certain moves. And when the player stops, the game stops. It does not map well to realtime. Each player is going to want to move at their own pace. Then you have to find some way to coordinate NPC movement with varying player speeds.

-matthew

Re:TomeNet engine is open

[Lord Satri]

Both games are designed in such a way that players are expected to sit back and think about certain moves. And when the player stops, the game stops.

That's not how it works anymore. You can also set automatic actions if there is lag, like auto-defense and auto-attacking. I can't tell you a lot more about it simply because you reached the limits of my knowledge. But read the TomeNet forums and ask questions there if you haven't found any answers. There's also an insightful Tome wiki linked from the site.

The single-player engine of Tome is way more advanced than TomeNet right now afaik.

Re:TomeNet engine is open

[misleb]

That's not how it works anymore. You can also set automatic actions if there is lag, like auto-defense and auto-attacking.

I know. I played it briefly. TomeNet loses much of what makes Tome so great to play. No serious Tome/Nethack player would trust "auto attack." Tome is more like Chess than it is like Diablo.

-matthew

Cheating...

[gubbas]

This will probably make it easy to have client side cheats run across your "Multiverse" too. All MMOGS are fun until the cheating gets out of control, wrecks the in-game economy and polarizes the XPS system.

Re:Umm... Right

[Esteanil]

Yeah, like for instance Planetarion, a small browser-based game with absolutely no advertising, which grew from 0 to 200 000 users in a couple of months.
Seriously, word of mouth is and remains the main way to recruit new customers.
Just make a good enough product and your customers are more than happy to do the advertising for you.

WoW

[cmburns69]

How long before somebody creates a knockoff of World of Warcraft (ala the bnetd fiasco), and this company gets sued by [insert Blizzard parent company here]?

But seriously, what's to stop people from implementing their favorite games here, and what kind of liability is assumed by this company for providing the platform? With the current legal climate, services (such as Kazaa, morpheus, even bit-torrent) have been held accountable for copyright violations despite not having any control over the contents.

How long until the same issue effects this system?

Blender

[LetterRip]

I would think that Blender would be an ideal match for this, since they need a way for potential users to create content - models and animations, cheaply and easily.

LetterRip

Re:Blender

[Hakubi_Washu]

Well, Cyan Worlds "Uru", which tanked commercially and was revived as fan-hosted servers has recently seen the creation of a Blender Plugin, so fan-made content is now possible... Read about it here http://www.cobbs.ca/ and get access here http://alcugs.almlys.dyns.net/wiki/index.php/Main_ Page. Just be careful, there are a lot of unwritten rules in the Uru-Community.

Re:Blender

[Indiana Joe]

I would think that Blender would be an ideal match for this, since they need a way for potential users to create content - models and animations, cheaply and easily.

I've tried to use Blender, and I don't think that one can create content, "easily" in it. I found it extremely hard to use.

(Yes, I know, it's open source, and I can recode the interface if I don't like it.)

Re:Blender

[FinchWorld]

Stick at it. Most of my modeling experience was in Rhino3d, then to maya to do skeletons for ut2k4 models.

Had to use blender for a course at Uni. For the first few weeks you want to kill the designers, for the next week you sort of get it, after that its easy to use (because you get used to the different and relatively annoying differences).

Re:Blender

[LetterRip]

Try the new release in about a week or two - we will have a quickstart guide. Also if you haven't tried blender since 2.36 or 2.37a they have a 3d manipulator so are much easier to use for newbies. Also the manual is being updated and other things that will make life easier for a new user.

LetterRip

Seiken Denetsu 3 you say?

[dextromulous]

http://themanaworld.org/ Yeah, it's still in development... and probably will be for a long time... but it's still awesome!

Re:Seiken Denetsu 3 you say?

[AndyG314]

I was just gunna plug that

Indeed...

[Svartalf]

However, one shouldn't count them 100% out; it all depends on whether they're interested in getting someone with experience on MacOS or Linux as a target platform as a contractor. The likelihood of them being just Windows developers is pretty high, even if they were founded by former Netscape developers.

Now, having said this, I'm not interested if they're not going to come to the table to discuss. There's enough projects that are really, really close to this in the first place that could be commercially supported in the same manner as they're doing. In a MMORPG (or MMOG in general...) the server plant's a critical piece and until P2P tech like JXTA is more robust for things like multiplayer stuff, it's going to be a massive expenditure to handle the server plant and network connectivity. Charge past a threshold of use or when they start collecting money (and help them do that).

Makes me want to ask...

[23skiddoo]

..what is available *now* in the server department for running small gorups of friends through a D&D-type setting? I'd like to build a Linux box, load it with an OSS RPG server game that my friends can connect to via a web client (so it would run on most any platform)? I don't need anything approaching EverCrack, but hopefully customizable and being continually improved.

And I don't have the skillz nor the time to roll my own...

Re:Makes me want to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

Look into Neverwinter Nights, and the soon to be coming sequel. With this game, you don't exactly have to "roll your own" they give you access to the same tools the game's creators used to make the game. But even with that, it takes a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG time to create your own adventures. However, there is also a lot of fan-made content out there that you could make use of.

Re:Makes me want to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neverwinter Nights isn't open source, but it meets most of your other criteria. There's a lot of persistant worlds built on the NWN engine.

It's pretty good for small groups of friends, if you don't mind the outdated graphics.

Re:Makes me want to ask...

[23skiddoo]

Thanks for the tip. Basically, I just want something I can host on a Linux box so that me and a couple of geographically-separated friends can do some good old D&D-type RPGing! :) Text-based is even acceptable (MUD?), so long as we can all play over the 'Net. And if I can customize my own adventures, that'd be even cooler! I could *try* to roll my own--if I can figure out how to do it in perl....

Re:Makes me want to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

If text-based is fine, you have a decent grasp of C and a good amount of time on your hands, go for the MUD codebase. There's so much shit that can be done with text that can't be done with graphics - mainly, because your head won't explode when you create cities of a few million in population. Your graphics card, however, will.

http://mudconnector.com/ is a good place to start. They've listings for a few thousand MUDs (most of 'em are desolate due to new-fangled nVidia cards and kids these days ;)).. More importantly, a nice section with links to code.

If you choose one of the more popular codebases (say, Merc or Envy), there's shitloads of code that's ready to be dropped right in. It requires little or no coding talent. You'll still need some, though, because a stock+snippet Merc/Envy MUD isn't going to cut it for ye olde D&D game. ;) You might also want to consider a MUSH codebase - they're rather better suited for roleplaying. They're a bit trickier to get the hang of, though, IMO - standard old school MUDs require a grasp of basic C, nothing more.

Of course, this is all probably too much work. Ever considering the age old solution?

IRC. Run an IRC server, have your friends join a channel, whip up a five-minute dice-rolling script for your own client, and away you go.

Re:Makes me want to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

IRC, Jabber, any IM client you like ...

Reply all...

Hasn't this been done?

[gtshafted]

I could be wrong, but doesn't Neverwinter Nights and Second Life already let you do this?

Re:Hasn't this been done?

[scheming daemons]

As an avid Second Life player, I can answer with "yes".

There really is not much limiting to what you can do in Second Life. Basically, you're only limited by your imagination and your pocket book. You make the rules.

It's really quite fascinating.

Re:Hasn't this been done?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Second Life doesn't let you have even close to absolute control over your own server, even with a private island (which costs a thousand dollars plus nearly 200 per month), and even limited control over a small parcel costs a monthly fee.

It is fascinating, but it isn't quite the same thing as controlling the presetation, rules, behavior, etc. of a MMO world from A to Z.

Re:Hasn't this been done?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really true, the scripting capabilities are pretty limiting, at least if you want to create complex in-world software with more than a few hundred lines of code. There are approximately 400 lsl functions to interact with the world and if you want to do anything not possible with one of those you are pretty much screwed at the moment. I am hoping this is going to change and that they'll provide an open API soon though. I am still waiting for the day where you can make complex things like in-world computers (emulators running on the virtual machine). Imagine having a virtual fully functional commodore 64, now THAT would be COOL. A first step may be when they now replace the current virtual machine with the MONO virtual machine so other software can eventually get ported to secondlife.

Re:Hasn't this been done?

[Anonymous Coward]

Second Life scripting language supports XML RPC. A (rather perverse) fellow interviewed by www.mmorgy.com managed to create a LSL script that drives a force feedback controller's motor.

If that doesn't suit your fancy, there are rumors/murmorings (and a slashdotting) about SL gaining an embedded browser.

Oh, and the C standard library contains far fewer than 400 functions. LSL is bloated by comparison.

Re:Hasn't this been done?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know about XMLRPC, I have used it a lot and it can be great sometimes for creating functions that have simple input and ouput values but require heavy calculations or functions that aren't easily implemented in LSL because of the lack of arrays etc. The embedded firefox browser will be an improvement, especially combined with mono. Still a lot of things are not possible, some of the reason being that everything runs server side and trying to run a complex application in addition to the server software just brings the server to a grinding halt. What is really needed is the ability to run client side scripts. Even relatively simple stuff tend to bog down the servers because all scripts run server side and a lot of people run scripts. Another big limitation is that there aren't any graphics function, you can't draw on the sides of objects, no functions like llPutPixel(int x,int y), while the embedded browser will broaden the possibilities for in-world UI design widely there are many cases where you want functions like PutPixel, drawLine, drawRect etc. Croquet is a 3d collaborative online world that allows a lot of this. You can make GUI applications on 3d windows in a really cool way but it too has a lot of issues.

Re:Hasn't this been done?

[Anonymous Coward]

The things about the standard C library is that you could use C to create those functions. A lot of the built-in LSL functions are not possible to create in LSL because they haven't open up an API to make it possible.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I had no idea what any of those meant... Thanks.

Talent wasted?

[Talrinys]

Am i the only guy who thinks that we would have some of the most creative, stable and fun games if everyone stopped doing all this stuff? Wouldn't getting every person who are using these "make your own game" programs a programming lesson give much better results?

The whole issue?

[bill_kress]

Maybe a part--but the biggest is sharing an avatar across multiple rulesets.

All you need is one renegade sysop handing out +127 boltlightnings or modifying stat points and the entire site is gone, all users have to reset. Do you trust others with that much control over your system?

I suppose if you really had to do something like that you could introduce realms where attributes didn't carry over (say, air, fire, water, spirit or some such garbage). The problem is that to make it work your stats and items can't carry over, but I'm sure that's exactly what people think they want.

Re:The whole issue?

[WhiteWolf666]

The secondlife model controls some of these things.

You can flag objects (avatars) with various aspects. Regions as well.

This land, that I own, does/does not permit combat. Avatars start killable/unkillable.

All you really need is a permissions system; think Unix :)

Re:The whole issue?

[bill_kress]

I kind of wondered about that in SL (Never played). How do they charge for materials and features?

How do you build a gun? There must be some cost in building a bigger gun than a smaller one, right? How does the company determine which is smarter?

And if you allow it to be really flexible (as they seem to in Second Life), how do you stop people from making killer toys really cheaply by combining unexpected traits?

For instance, say a lame gun costs 10 to make (assume the cost is based on what kind damage each bullet does) and a good gun costs 10000. Also say a dog costs 5. What's to stop a programmer from creating 500 dogs with 2 guns mounted on the back of each that can run behind a shield or something and attack from behind?

Or, create a gun that can auto-aim and fire it from a second gun... As it passes by the target, it turns and fires a dozen bullets into it at close range.

Or write a scripted item that slowly drains the users money into the creators account? (I'm sure that's stopped, but since sometimes it's allowed, how does the user ensure it's not happening with any given item?)

I don't understand how the building features can work without constant supervision. Asking the managers of the system for approval of every new item doesn't seem very scalable.

Re:The whole issue?

[tsm_sf]

For instance, say a lame gun costs 10 to make (assume the cost is based on what kind damage each bullet does) and a good gun costs 10000. Also say a dog costs 5. What's to stop a programmer from creating 500 dogs with 2 guns mounted on the back of each that can run behind a shield or something and attack from behind?

It's really, really too bad that won't fit on a sig.

Re:The whole issue?

[Gwala]

The limits in Second Life are not abitrary; most of the limits you will ever hit are either, limits of the platform itself (such as the 0.1m collision resolution of Havok1, which some day this century will be upgraded to Havok2).

If you want to make the ultra-powerful-uber-gun-of-doom, your going to need to learn how to write the code to create it. I'll give an example:

default {
    attach(key agent) {
        if(agent != NULL_KEY) {
            llRequestPermissions(agent,PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIM ATION);
            llRequestPermissions(agent,PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROL S);
        } else {
            llReleaseControls();
            llStopAnimation("aim_R_rifle");
        }
    }
 
    run_time_permissions(integer perm) {
        if(perm & (PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION | PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS)
            == PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION | PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS) {
            llTakeControls(agent,CONTROL_MLBUTTON);
            llStartAnimation("aim_R_rifle");
 
        }
    }
 
    control(key agent, integer held, integer change) {
        llRezObject("BULLET", llGetPos + (<1.0,0,0>*llGetRot()), llGetPos + (<20.0,0,0>*llGetRot()),llGetRot(),0);
    }
}

That (I think, top of my head) would create a very simple rifle script, however the projectile there could easily be avoided; by say, creating a giant invisible wall between you and the bullet object. So, you might want to make your bullet 'phantom' (bypasses collisiond detection) until it hits a soft fleshy agent target.

Basically, it comes down to what you know. The better coders within the game, will always have the edge; but PVP combat is something that's extremely rare in SecondLife. SL is more a platform for growth than anything else.

I'm 'Adam Zaius' inworld, drop me a line if you want.

Re:The whole issue?

[Gwala]

Heh, I should try compiling things before posting, llGetPos() is a function, not a variable; and hence should have parenthesis. *typo*

World of Warcraft

[everphilski]

[insert Blizzard parent company here]

Blizzard

-everphilski-

Re:World of Warcraft

[Russ Steffen]

Blizzard

You misspelled Vivendi Universal.

Not for everyone...

[BadMrMojo]

... but I like it.

http://dofus.com/

Slick 2D art and timed, turn-based, tactical combat - vaguely reminiscent of a simplistic X-Com meets Studio Ghibli.

How to make a MMORPG in 10 steps

[Potski]

This way is a lot easier. http://forums.gamemaker.nl/index.php?showtopic=147 613&hl=

What goes around

[Zatar]

You mean like so many text-based MUDs have done since forever?

I remember playing a MUD in the early 90s where when you hit the max level you could plant a dungeon somewhere (just connected your dungeon to an existing room node) and write object oriented code to implement monsters, puzzles and treasure. I always figured it would be a good way to teach OO design since it's a lot easier to think of a monster or a magical scepter as an object with attributes than it is to start with abstract data structures...

Anyway, like all games, MUDs have had a large drop in the ability for users to affect them as the graphics and detail went up. Back in the day everyone could easily make levels for Lode Runner or Wolf 3d without any training or learning curve. Nowdays you need a degree in 4th dimensional geometry and several days of free time to make a good FPS level, never mind a virtual world...

Game design

[Lando]

As a developer, I am always interested in looking at new tools. I went over to take a look and it seems that they are mainly soliciting ideas for games? I know that a genre or basic architechture of the game engine is necessary to code properly, however isn't this what is being made available? The specs for a engine, why would a designer look at these tools? Even if I was a game designer, I don't think I would be telling them what my game design would be...

Shrug,

Never heard of mods?

[Fluffy the attack ki]

Because everybody knows that Counter-Strike needed a massive development and marketing budget to become popular...

</sarcasm>

Really this sounds like a Good Thing(TM), and I'm really curious to find out what this is capable of in the long run.

What's To Stop Them?

[Petersko]

How long before somebody creates a knockoff of World of Warcraft (ala the bnetd fiasco), and this company gets sued by [insert Blizzard parent company here]...But seriously, what's to stop people from implementing their favorite games here, and what kind of liability is assumed by this company for providing the platform? With the current legal climate, services (such as Kazaa, morpheus, even bit-torrent) have been held accountable for copyright violations despite not having any control over the contents.

Good heavens. Have you ever - EVER - seen an open source game on anything like the scale of World of Warcraft? Or even anywhere near as polished from any standpoint? I haven't. What will stop them? Time, labour and money. There is no way there is enough of any of it to create an open source knock off.

Bnetd was a very simple server system by comparison.

Most open source game suck for a reason. The games made for this system are gonna look like hell because few people who give a crap about open source are decent artists.

I had thougth of something along the line

[aepervius]

I had (on paper) a world for which the physic/law would have been the following : * the profession would have a true incensitive to have other way than hack and slash. Builder (see below for dungeon) material researcher, cook etc... A way to do that is to have a few tools that each profession would be able to use (5 as far as i remmember) then a few dozen material and a few "law". Then each person would have a random matrix set by the system, unbeknown to them, setting how good they would be at using tools and law to set up product. So you could use the available receipt and make something average, or research and make something greater than average. * a real politic , war, peace, and "not static" at the local, regional and country level. You could make a real carrier at handling politic with other player. granted I have hit a stumble there because I could not see a meccanism which was not repetitive and involveed NPC... * no "respawn". Random mission "dungeoN" would spawn at random place, but they would stay there until somebody find them and "finish" them. Then they would appear somewhere else in the world. * Each mission could evolve depending on the environnement. A simple bandit firecamp near a city would slowly grow to a true bastion of thieves. A simple mage dwelling could evolve to a true archmage tower. A simple cemetery with a dark mage evolve to a necromancer crypta. They can also devolve. A dungeon plundered would go to ruin. Etc... * spells/attack weapon/tool of the trade/material would be available in normal form but for better form you would need to do your own research.

I had started to put a lot of thougth in it, but after a while I left the manuscript gathering dust. What I had put on paper was so complex (and a breathing world) that i doubt any server could handle the load for that... maybe I can interrest a MMOG company now :).

Re:I had thougth of something along the line

[Anonymous Coward]

No MMO company wants to talk to you because your world (however interesting) won't be fun to anyone except deviants who value some faux fantasy 'realism' over "fun gameplay". That said your manuscript deserves every single mote of dust which it has collected due to your heinous spelling errors.

PS: Take the time to format your text so people can read it, fuckwad.

How about 3D FPS?

[antdude]

Didn't id Software say it was going to do distributed parts of the 3D game FPS with its engine? Basically, each server would be run by an operator. Then, player can jump into portals to another server. This idea was like a decade ago I think.

Re:How about 3D FPS?

[CoolVibe]

Yes. They wanted to do this with QuakeWorld. The code was there, but nobody used it. You could use a teleporter to "teleport" to another server.

NeverWinter Nights?

[podperson]

The only real difference between this idea and NeverWinter Nights is that:

This product supports ANY setting (although it probably requires a ton of work to make it support anything other than the vanilla fantasy setting they first thought of)

This product supports ANY ruleset (although it probably requires a ton of work to make it not support something other than the default fantasy ruleset)

This product is MASSIVE whereas NWN isn't. Although NWN or a descendant probably will be before they ship anything.

This product provides developers with an SDK. NWN provides developers with a fully functional IDE allowing a person only one skill (e.g. writing / programming / art) to contribute to or create a world.

This product provides a revenue model for content developers. NWN kind of does (they can commercialise a module you develop) but so far this hasn't worked out well for anyone except the developers of NWN.

This product doesn't exist. NWN does.

The biggest problem is

[queenb**ch]

Well, the biggest problem is see is this..." free to use as long as you don't make any money from it..."

Considering that the largest part (time and effort) of the game development is in creating a story line, objects, quests, dialog, NPC's, etc. and all they're offering is an engine, there should be a one time fee for the engine and it should be free or nearly so. I would say that better than 90% of the total development effort is centered in these areas. These areas are also the ones that make or break a game, MMORPG or otherwise.

2 cents,

Queen B

My mistake

[Otto]

My mistake. Like I said, I have never played the game. I must have misread those calls for Pre-CU servers to be made as a news item or other information saying they were being made at some point.

Mac Support

[Zobeid]

The Multiverse website says nothing about Mac support -- in fact, I couldn't find where it says anything at all about hardware requirements or operating systems. However. . . There is something on the Kothuria website. Their FAQ says:

Q: Will your game appear on other platforms?
A: Currently we aren't developing for other platforms than Windows PCs.

Based on history, I would assume if it's not being developed for both Mac and Windows simultaneously, then it's highly unlikely that it will ever support Macintosh (or Linux for that matter). As a general rule, it's not economically viable to take an already-developed MMOG and make a Mac port of it. (That was the official answer to our question about a Mac version of Star Wars Galaxies, in fact.)

Almost all the MMOGs that have appeared on the Mac platform came out of a combined PC-and-Mac development process: WW2 Online, Shadowbane, Second Life, and World of Warcraft.

Of MMOGs that began on PC and were later ported to Mac, the only one that comes to mind is Everquest. It was so late arriving that EQ2 and WoW were already knocking at the door, and it lacked compatibility to allow Mac and PC users play on the same servers.

Another example is Neverwinter Nights, which is not quite really a MMOG but is similar in some respects. It was ported to Macintosh, but the whole Aurora toolkit was left out -- excuse being that it depended on some developer library provided by a vendor who promised Mac support but never came through with it.

Multiverse are setting themselves up to be the same kind of obstacle. Basically, they're creating an ecosystem that locks out Macintosh not at the consumer level, but at the developer level.

Re:Mac Support

[Multiverse Corey]

A Mac client is on our roadmap. We'll be building the Windows client first, as we're a small company, but our long-term strategy is absolutely cross-plaform. Our Multiverse site will soon be more obvious about making this point. Our Kothuria site, where our initial game lives, will probably always be a little more focussed on the near-term features for that game. (So if it's more than a couple quarters out, you probably won't see us mention it at Kothuria.com, while people expect and deserve to know more of our long-term vision at the multiverse.net site.)

We all worked at Netscape (if you've read my other posts, you're getting sick of reading that, I'm sure), so we've got a reasonable track record of delivering cross-platform products. Back then, we didn't always release the products on all the platforms on the same day, but we did a fair job. As I say, we're a small company, so the other clients are a ways off, but we're planning for them now.

--Corey

Corey Bridges
Exec Producer, Multiverse
http://www.multiverse.net/

Re:Mac Support

[Zobeid]

That is a very pleasant welcome surprise to me. Yes, obviously I'm a Mac user and I'm hoping that Mac support makes it into Multiverse sooner rather than later. It's great to see that the company is, after all, planning to move that direction. It's great to see someone from the company posting here, too.

I still can't help being a bit skeptical, though. Doesn't the client software use DirectX 9? Surely you must be aware that DirectX (and notably Direct3D) is not available on Mac and Linux -- OpenGL is the cross-platform standard for 3D graphics.

Now this following part isn't directed at anybody, it's just me rambling. . .

There appear to be a lot of game companies around, large and small, that are "thinking about" doing a Mac version of their stuff sometime in the future, but they never seem to get around to it. One reason is, they wake up one day and realize they've already build their software around Windows-only APIs and components like DirectX. And it's not because Direct3D is better than OpenGL: it's just because DirectX is what Microsoft promotes, promotes, promotes. It's what most game programmers are already familiar with, and Mac and Linux weren't even in their thoughts when they were starting the project.

Then they're stuck either going back and rewriting your client program almost from the ground up, or going through a DirectX-to-OpenGL translation process for the Mac and Linux clients. There are Mac porting houses who can do that, and I think there may be companies selling library components that can help with that translation. I wouldn't expect either route to be cheap.

By way of comparison, programmers at Blizzard observed that developing the Mac and PC versions in parallel made for a lot of advantages. It makes debugging go easier, since you can compare the two versions and figure out why a bug appears in one, or the other, or both. (I actually think I heard comments about that phenomenon first from the Shadowbane developers, but of course when Blizzard say it more people tend to listen.)

Re:Mac Support

[cedeno]

>> Based on history, I would assume if it's not being developed for both Mac and Windows simultaneously, then it's highly unlikely that it will ever support Macintosh (or Linux for that matter). As a general rule, it's not economically viable to take an already-developed MMOG and make a Mac port of it. (That was the official answer to our question about a Mac version of Star Wars Galaxies, in fact.)

Multiverse is built on top of the axiom engine (http://realmforge.com/) which has both DirectX and OpenGL support. Some changes to the Axiom DirectX code have been made, and corresponding changes in the OpenGL code need to be made for it to be fully supported. The idea of supporting OpenGL is very real. -Rafhael

I looked at this and was struck...

[Heavyporker]

This sounds SO MUCH like the Otherland series by Tad Williams, where basically it's a cyberspace Virtual Reality multiverse of games and worlds. Could be interesting if it ever comes off the ground.

Re:Umm... Right

[Anonymous Coward]

Also see www.urbandead.com

Next on the horizon...

[Xzisted]

I guess I'll have to move in to a Storage USA container and wait for the Snow Crash virus to hit. Sweet.

Worldforge?

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's not on-line, I think it has a similar concept? Provide a high level framework to expedite the process of getting the games coded?

just

[know1]

make sure it works with bloody linux

SuperNodes?

[bhsx]

The concept of trusted supernodes comes to mind. Let's say you require one supernode per ten servers. The supernodes update each other as frequently as possible, use secure logins, and store your encumberance, your portable items and your traits. Depending on the style of game, how much you can carry with you could develop with character. These servers would also keep track of themed worlds and out-of-theme worlds and your personal config for each. For those who use the "standard" rule systems and themes, they would all share the default info. Those worlds that defined their own rules sets would set those up on the supernodes and could decide weather or not and with whom to connect.
This also takes care of the intermittant server crash/take-down problems. Just start-off on another server, keeping perpetuance; this could even be automated to be less annoying to the player.
Hmm, I've always thought I'd be good at designing this sort of thing. Too bad noone would listen to me as I can't code to save my life. sigh

Ever hear of Second Life?

[JamesGecko]

It sounds like you might want to check out Secondlife (http://secondlife.com/).
While not exactly an RPG, it is versitile enough to let you create your own little fantasy subworld and invite other people in for some leveling up on orcs and trolls. While I don't play it, I'm thinking of signing up sometime soon, it looks pretty fun.

Same deadend path as Second Life?

[Anonymous Coward]

... so we've got a reasonable track record of delivering cross-platform products.
... As I say, we're a small company, so the other clients are a ways off

That's what Philip and Cory Linden of Second Life keep saying ... and it never happens. The intention appears good, but in practice, it's pure lip service, because they just won't let go of the reins.

If you are dev-resource constrained, simple, let the community do the development. Otherwise, as in the case of Second Life, it just won't happen, there aren't enough hours in the day. You're not Redmond.

Re:Same deadend path as Second Life?

[Zobeid]

Err. . . What's the problem with Second Life? It's been available for Macintosh since early on, as far as I know. Is it a Linux version you want, or is it some other development issue that you're thinking about? Seems to me that if it's running on Mac OS X, then a Linux client shouldn't be a huge challenge.

I'll be the first to say that SL has some problems and kinks that need to be ironed out. But it's not like any other MMOG out there, they are doing something unique and I might even say cutting-edge. It's still in the early days. So I cut them slack, and I wait patiently for those problems to be resolved.

Totally wrong approach to portability

[Morgaine]

Our own game in beta-testing, Kothuria, is available on Windows only right now, but you can be sure that we'll be testing any new client tech with that game first.

You are heading towards your product becoming completely non-portable, in practice. This is because it will cost you money to port it later, which you won't spend.

If you are genuine about multi-platform availability, there is only one approach that works. Compile, build, and test across all the major platforms as part of your standard development cycle, automatically, so that non-portable design and coding is caught during daily development. *DO NOT LET* any code be run on one platform only.

There is no "do it later" approach that works, in practice. The bean counters make sure of that.

No cheating possible if designed properly

[Morgaine]

This will probably make it easy to have client side cheats run across your "Multiverse" too.

Not if the designers understand the two golden rules:

- Everything client-side belongs to the owner of the client machine.
- Everything that protects the integrity of the game resides on the game server.

In particular, all game-resource management and player capabilities control, and all cheat detection and prevention, must reside on the server end, and NEVER NEVER NEVER on the client.

Under that 2-part strategy, it doesn't matter what anyone does to their client, good luck to them. And people with disabilities will be grateful for that. By definition it cannot be cheating, because anything is allowable client-side, as all the essential controls are on the server.

The only reason why client-based cheats are often a problem is because game designers put sensitive data on the client to improve performance and do not provide adequate cheat detection on the server end of the link. Thus are born the seeds of cheating.

Re:No cheating possible if designed properly

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but sometimes the problem is being able to *read* sensitive data, not edit it on the server. And aimbots are client-side hacks also.

They rippded off the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

An idea to do exactly this was posted on the WOW forums well over a month ago. Interesting that they have no content yet on their website, thats probably because it wasnt their idea in the first place.

Re: Users create content in Second Life

[nevermore94]

I am glad somebody mentioned Second Life. I was about to when I found this post. Yes, the graphics performance needs some work, but the freedom of content creation in unprecedented and more than makes up for it. One link that readers of this article may find interesting is the Second Life Games Wiki which details some of the games that have been created in world.

Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

BYOND.com lets you program your own games using their development tools freely. Not trying to advertise, but it allows you to host your game on the network so other people can join, pretty neat idea really. Seems like the same type of idea of this Multiverse, except you're not limited to only MMOGs on BYOND.