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

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.

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 :-)