Bioware MMOG Likely Slated for 2009

InformationWeek is running an article looking at a piece of technology Canadian developer Bioware will be including into their in-development Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The still un-announced project, the article also lets on, is likely to launch sometime in 2009. The technology, called StreamBase, is a form of complex event processing. Bioware plans to use the ability to change the codebase on the fly, while the game is live. "One of StreamBase's functions is to analyze events and make sure no intruder is trying to disrupt the game's logic, make malicious movements against the activity of other players, or activate the hidden Easter eggs that are sometimes known to lurk in the game's logic. An Easter egg might make a sound that was not consistent with the game's design, show a message, or cause a character to move out of the logic of his role, Dalton explained."

Comments

How about taking the eggs out before shipping?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

...make sure no intruder is trying to disrupt the game's logic, make malicious movements against the activity of other players, or activate the hidden Easter eggs that are sometimes known to lurk in the game's logic.

How about taking/commenting/compiler-directiving the "Easter eggs" out before you ship? This lack of control over the finished product makes me think this thing will really be in beta (if not alpha) long after they start selling it to marks who see the "BioWare" brand and start parting from their money...

Re:How about taking the eggs out before shipping?

[Aladrin]

Someone has obviously been told not to call them bugs, and was looking for another word. They chose 'easter eggs' with having any bloody clue what they were saying.

Obviously, it isn't an 'easter egg' if the developers did not put it there on purpose. And if they did, they would indeed remove any exploitable ones before shipping.

That aside, the whole 'change the code live' thing is a programmer's wet dream. As such, there's probably a reason it's not very common. Like, oh, it's a nightmare to actually use. Updating a cute little Lua script is easy, updating a library or even a big nasty lua script is not easy at all.

Re:How about taking the eggs out before shipping?

[Tofystedeth]

It's worse than that. They referred to Easter Eggs as logic bombs for exploiting and stuff. Easter Eggs aren't exploits, they're just something silly programmers put in to reward people who do obscure stuff. It can be something as simple as an NPC with an odd or referential name in hard to reach location. The Secret Cow Level in Diablo 2 was pretty much an Easter Egg.

Re:How about taking the eggs out before shipping?

[Ubergrendle]

Bugs, errors, variances, failures, abends, crashes, defects, deviations from spec, undocumented features, grits...tsk tsk tsk those just don't sound right.

I know, lets call them easter eggs. Everyone likes chocolate!

Re:How about taking the eggs out before shipping?

[myowntrueself]

The Secret Cow Level in Diablo 2 was pretty much an Easter Egg.

There is no cow level.

Re:Hidden easter eggs?

[ajs]

On the other hand, it would be interesting to see a game which encouraged the players to try to beat the system. I'd envisioned a game, back in 1990, like that, but the technology didn't exist to implement it yet. The core concept was that magic in the game world was a set of pre-defined routines in a programming language that more advanced users would slowly gain access to, turning the game into more of a test of "crafting magic" than just pressing the "1" button 70 times to kill the bad guy.

Modern MMORPGs sort of do this. They present a variety of complex mechanics, and let the players determine how best to use them all together. I see the math that folks crank out for World of Warcraft, and I'm constantly amazed that such a simple game can be so complex.

So when you have a deja vu....

[aicrules]

they can swear it's not lag...it just means they changed something. Seriously, changing on the fly to me means high probability of entire realms going down for hours on end because some codemonkey forgot a semi-colon.

Matrix?

[dreamchaser]

Am I going to see the same black cat cross a threshold twice when they change the live code? Deja vu?

Re:Too Much Tinkering?

[Bieeanda]

Gott in Himmel, they're coding the bane of gamers everywhere: the over-controlling DM. I can see their scripting now:

if { questNPC.avoided = true

spawn.goblinHordeRing(5000);

if { goblinHordeRing.defeated = true

spawn.rocks(1000).altitude(500);

drop.rocks(1000,playerCharacters);

Sys.out("Rocks fall, everyone dies!");}

}

*cough*Eve*Cough*

[Greyfox]

Doesn't Eve encourage you to try to beat the system? Every story I've read here seems to indicate that's the case but they don't have a Mac port so I haven't tried it...

I'd like to see a game with a "programmable" magic system like that. Given a base set of simple spells that affect the environment in some way and a mana pool that gets larger as you level up (Allowing you access to longer and more complex spells) I think it's quite feasible to do. It'd probably be interesting to a grand total of 3 of us, though. I suppose that if you could trade spells once you created them then you'd have two distinct classes of magic users -- the ones who just use other people's pre-crafted spells and the ones who actually write their own.

You'd still have to account for the people who want to play other classes as well. If you spend that much time in the magic system you'd probably want to do something similar for combat system and the abilities for the various other classes. Plus I'd hope that you'd be able to come up with more than "Go kill 14 things then come back here for some bling. That gets old real fast. And actually having the same NPC back 10 minutes after you kill him is rather off-putting too. I'd go for thousands of distinct quests which get applied to randomly generated NPCs in the world. NPC might want you to deliver something to another NPC. NPC might want you to kill one or more other NPCs. NPC might want you to do something your character class is good at (Assassin's guild, anyone?) NPC might want you to herd his goats while he runs off for some hanky panky with another NPC.

And as long as we're on the subject, I'd like to see NPCs much more interactive. It's easy enough to write a chatbot that is difficult to distinguish from human as long as you limit the scope to one field. So have the blacksmiths be able to talk to you intelligently about blacksmithing and the tailors be able to talk to you about tailoring.

That'd be a game I'd like to play :-)

Cheesy article, but might be useful.

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The article makes it sound like they'll be using this system basically to track down the people who type in IDDQD and activate God Mode, but it seems more likely that it'll be used largely as a GM tool. Looking at some of the exploits in other MMOs, it's easy to see how this could be used to track down exploits, from botting to teleportation hacks to bugged mobs that give too much loot. ("Hmm, why has Lesser Bog Rat been killed 700 times more often than any of the mobs around it?")

It could also be a valuable tool for GMs. If it really does keep a detailed log of everything that's happened in-game, they should be able to track down lost items, punish bad behavior, and so on much more effectively.