Why would it have to be halo? Actually, most people couldn't do the math to make a decent halo capital ship battle. Not to mention that one shot destroying your big ship would make many people cry and be really bitchy.
Your comment about the human dungeon master something I have thought about.
Imagine a game world styled like EvE, just as large, and just as expansive. Now smash together EvE and planetside. Space ships in space, marines on the ground and fighters and bombers in air and space. Now of course the game should start off structured. You want to be a marine, you join your respective factions AI or possibly human/employee/game master controlled military. Your opening story denotes a time of peace, and thus your initial job as a player is to do thinks like eliminate a pirate base inside your factions space. Now you could be the only player within your group of 20 marines, or you could be leading a fire team of 9 other players or 4 players and 5 ai marines. So you get your "briefing" from an Ai mission dispenser who is a superior officer.
So you and your buddies or your men or you by yourself go towards the mission. Well you can't attack a pirate base with just your transport, so you get matched up with either some Ai fighter pilots or a mixture of players and Ai. The problem is, the pirate base is in an asteroid belt that is about 4Au away from your assigned station. Well you need a ship with jump drives to get there so you and your fighters get loaded onto a small corvette that might have an AI crew with some humans, or it could just be a single Ai Captain with an Ai crew. Then you attack your target and hopefully win, if you lead enough successful operations, the men below, above, and beside you could also note you for leadership, thus allowing you to move up in the ranks.
Say you don't want to be part of the military, say you want to be a miner or an explorer, you would start out in your respective structure and work you way up. Slowly as players moved up in the structure, you would allow them to take over things to an extent. You wouldn't give complete control over a factions military to a single player, though you could allow them into the very upper echelons of power. There will be people who stay within their factions structure, and those that abandon it for their own structure of choice, they could even make their own.
Slowly let the players take control, then after say 2 month of play just long enough to let people get into it introduce some chaos using your game masters (Think of them as a race of loki like aliens, make them killable too, cause frankly the hunting them would be neat), have a major NPC leader get assassinated by what looks like the other faction, put another NPC in or let a player take those reins, then let the war begin.
Do what you think you need to do to keep the game going, assassinate, impersonate, and manipulate.
Let the players write the story. It's rather interesting what happens sometimes.
Odd I got moded informative, I also didn't type "I think" like I meant too.
Anyways, I have anecdotal evidence too.
At my college our "games club" has about 21 360 owners, 9 got theirs at launch (day 1 till late about December 05), 8 of them got their boxes at various times from February till around august 06, the other 3 got their boxes this year.
2 people who got theirs early on (1st run, maybe the second run) have had theirs break. The ones who bought their boxes later on, all but one poor bastard has sent there back, most of them more than once, always the 3 rings of death issue. 4 of them got it back and sold their boxes in disgust. The first problems started happening in july of 06 for our little group.
Not to mention the fact that I constantly hear see online "My launch box is still just chuggin away." or things to that effect.
I'm just finding it funny. One guy in our group is convinced it is something to do with the Solder used and RoHS compliance. I think its a possible reason, but MS and its manufactures should ahve had plenty of time to solve the problem.
So by then I won't be such a pain to upgrade the hardware on a laptop right? I'll be able to pick my hardware in the same way that I can pick my hardware for a PC.
I would suggest freespace 2. Its in the same vein and it was a rather good, actually a damn fine game that both played well and looked good for its time. Too bad no one ever played it, thank god it got an Open source project keeping it alive.
Its not always easy to get it running, but it worth the work. I actually think they have a X-wing or Tie Fighter conversion based on the old games.
Um... I most defiantly kill animals for food, its actually fun sometimes, well no cleaning a deer is actually rather disgusting and frankly well not something i look forward too, but hey deer meat tastes pretty good.
I was told that because of rising costs for making games that making a custom engine in house was a costly waste of time when you could go out and license a working engine from someone like Id, Epic, or Valve (I'm not going to name them all.)
I always thought this was odd. What if your game is going to directly compete with a game made by the people you license your engine from. They make money from the engine being listened and from whatever royalties system they implement, but in the end they still make way more money from there own games. They sell more if your game looks bad.
Unlike a middleware developer like the guys who make Havok or Kynogon they have a possible conflicting interest. hmm
Your assuming that its going to have teleportation again.
Teleportation worked because of the linear nature of the games, a lateral movement within the game would never cause a level load, only movement towards or away from the goal would advance you past a point where a new chunk of data would be loaded. If the game is no longer as linear, then the teleport system could be troublesome, if not down right frustrating. Imagine if the brutes have semi fortified a block in a city and you ran into it. You can't find a way in and if you fall back and flank it they will just move and defend against you attack. You and your buddy then split up. he remains at the original point of attack and keeps them occupied while the other player goes possibly with a few marines or elites, with the goal of attacking on a weaker flank, forcing them to split forces. However the fight is taking place near the edge of a map cell. As you make the flank, suddenly your buddy who was attacking is teleported to you.
You also have issues with things like precedence, if 2 people run in opposite directions who will get teleported to who? When you have a linear game like the first 2 you teleport the person farthest from the goal to the person whio is going towards the goal, when the game is less linear that doesn't work as well.
With split screen you could trade data between 2 instances because it doesn't leave the system so it can remain rather fast.
On your typical gamer ethernet setup, you have 2 boxes connected directly or in a very small temporary lan, then again even a slightly congested lan will give you more bandwidth and better latency than most internet connections.
Because it works in splitscreen and Lan but not internet, it leads me to believe that this is a bandwidth and latency issue.
The only thing that will really tell if this is true is if tunneling programs allow 2 people to play coop by tricking there boxes into thinking they are on a lan.
Yes, but do you write software for one of the whiniest demographics on the face of the earth? The halo fan base consists of some of the most fucking stupid walking attempts at preserving meat that walk the earth. Do you think they are going to care if the manual says "This might not work"? No they will bitch and so will reviewers who will then claim the game has broken features.
As for it being "BS", what takes more bandwitdh? a server sending only that which is relevant to a client, or 2 servers sending everything back and forth because they don't know what will be relevant to the other in a moment. Not to mention that things like latency will also add to this problem.
If the game retains the linearity already present in the series then I doubt this would be an issue unless they are shitastic programmers. However if they have changed how the game the game and made it more open then this might be a problem. IN the last 2 halo games when you in one area, there were only 2 possible areas that could be loaded. The one infront of you and the one behind you.
If halo has suddenly stopped being linear and has become more open, ex you have a city that is divided in to squares. You are here and your objective is on the otherside. Well if your in one block you can have can have 8 blocks around you. So you preload all of them for quick access or maybe just the 2 closest too you. In single player thats rather simple, its much easier to guess.
Now imagine 2 players. Okay they are in one block, possibly in opposite corners of a block, okay so you now have blocks to preload.. now comes the issue. Do you teleport one player to the other every time a player crosses a boundary and a triggers a new loading point. Well that can get annoying, and it doesn't work they well in the end, especially if your trying to get around a group of enemies while your team mate keeps their attention. Suddenly he is right next to you during the flanking attempt.
Okay to fix that you don't implement the teleporting, so you allow them to venture apart. Okay now they can travel apart. Okay now your loading more blocks then single player, that means you need a bit more ram (Since most of your at is going to be consistent throughout an area and more processing. However theoretically the number of AI's could double, the amount of collision detection needed to be done could double, ect ect ect. But your on the same box and the data isn't having to leave the system so it can be done with good programming, challenging but workable.
Okay now you have 2 people on separate boxes on a lan. Now we notice something about halo since 2. If the host is dropped then, the game can continue because all the clients know whats going on. Game rebuilds and picks a new host, and your back. Now you have 2 people running around in separate areas doing there own collision detection, AI, ect ect, for their own area, however, they have to tell the other box everything that is going on in there area in the off chance it might affect the other players area.
That can be a surprisingly large amount of data. Its also very noticeable when its laggy. ON a lan you can assume that you will have a good chunk of bandwidth and its going to have a fairly low latency.
Same situation on the internet, uh oh. Not nearly as much bandwidth and worse latency. Damn.
Also, if you really are all that bothered, use one of the inevitable tunneling programs that are going to start popping up in the weeks after the release. If your thing about subnets it true then you shouldn't have any trouble using the tunneling program.
NOTE: Before anyone jumps on me and says I got details wrong, I'm a beginner programmer with fairly limited understand of all the inner workings of game engines. Stated here is my simplistic understanding of how the halo engine works. I kept it in simpler terms so i could express myself better and more clearly.
Slashdot Mirror
2.4 million.
I made a char while drunk, so I look like a fairy and I have broken stats for what I want to do. Didn't really notice till about 2 mill.
EvE sorta has what he is describing, though I would say its a bit more ruthless.
Why would it have to be halo? Actually, most people couldn't do the math to make a decent halo capital ship battle. Not to mention that one shot destroying your big ship would make many people cry and be really bitchy.
All I've got is the design document... and a dream... that one day..
Wait Im at work, I don't have time for the next part. With any luck I'll call you sometimes in the next 10 years.
Your comment about the human dungeon master something I have thought about.
Imagine a game world styled like EvE, just as large, and just as expansive. Now smash together EvE and planetside. Space ships in space, marines on the ground and fighters and bombers in air and space. Now of course the game should start off structured. You want to be a marine, you join your respective factions AI or possibly human/employee/game master controlled military. Your opening story denotes a time of peace, and thus your initial job as a player is to do thinks like eliminate a pirate base inside your factions space. Now you could be the only player within your group of 20 marines, or you could be leading a fire team of 9 other players or 4 players and 5 ai marines. So you get your "briefing" from an Ai mission dispenser who is a superior officer.
So you and your buddies or your men or you by yourself go towards the mission. Well you can't attack a pirate base with just your transport, so you get matched up with either some Ai fighter pilots or a mixture of players and Ai. The problem is, the pirate base is in an asteroid belt that is about 4Au away from your assigned station. Well you need a ship with jump drives to get there so you and your fighters get loaded onto a small corvette that might have an AI crew with some humans, or it could just be a single Ai Captain with an Ai crew.
Then you attack your target and hopefully win, if you lead enough successful operations, the men below, above, and beside you could also note you for leadership, thus allowing you to move up in the ranks.
Say you don't want to be part of the military, say you want to be a miner or an explorer, you would start out in your respective structure and work you way up. Slowly as players moved up in the structure, you would allow them to take over things to an extent. You wouldn't give complete control over a factions military to a single player, though you could allow them into the very upper echelons of power. There will be people who stay within their factions structure, and those that abandon it for their own structure of choice, they could even make their own.
Slowly let the players take control, then after say 2 month of play just long enough to let people get into it introduce some chaos using your game masters (Think of them as a race of loki like aliens, make them killable too, cause frankly the hunting them would be neat), have a major NPC leader get assassinated by what looks like the other faction, put another NPC in or let a player take those reins, then let the war begin.
Do what you think you need to do to keep the game going, assassinate, impersonate, and manipulate.
Let the players write the story. It's rather interesting what happens sometimes.
Now if only computers could do this now..
The characters in Deus Ex were awesome too, especially the Ai constructs.
Really wouldn't it be more polite to wait till he replies to add the "this is slashdot" (Kick)
oh damnit
Awesome, I transferring to Ga Tech at the end of the year, now I have an even better reason to go.
1 season per book
Gegorovitch I think Riddle kills himself because once again his spell rebounds.
It would have made a much better television series, the movies just leave out far to much.
We have finally brought the joys of the internet to those less fortunate.
Odd I got moded informative, I also didn't type "I think" like I meant too.
Anyways, I have anecdotal evidence too.
At my college our "games club" has about 21 360 owners, 9 got theirs at launch (day 1 till late about December 05), 8 of them got their boxes at various times from February till around august 06, the other 3 got their boxes this year.
2 people who got theirs early on (1st run, maybe the second run) have had theirs break. The ones who bought their boxes later on, all but one poor bastard has sent there back, most of them more than once, always the 3 rings of death issue. 4 of them got it back and sold their boxes in disgust. The first problems started happening in july of 06 for our little group.
Not to mention the fact that I constantly hear see online "My launch box is still just chuggin away." or things to that effect.
I'm just finding it funny. One guy in our group is convinced it is something to do with the Solder used and RoHS compliance. I think its a possible reason, but MS and its manufactures should ahve had plenty of time to solve the problem.
So by then I won't be such a pain to upgrade the hardware on a laptop right? I'll be able to pick my hardware in the same way that I can pick my hardware for a PC.
I would suggest freespace 2. Its in the same vein and it was a rather good, actually a damn fine game that both played well and looked good for its time. Too bad no one ever played it, thank god it got an Open source project keeping it alive.
Its not always easy to get it running, but it worth the work. I actually think they have a X-wing or Tie Fighter conversion based on the old games.
Actually its funny, but launch boxes appear not to have as many problems as boxes made in 2006.
rule 34 I believe?
You insensitive clod, my pill is green.
Um... I most defiantly kill animals for food, its actually fun sometimes, well no cleaning a deer is actually rather disgusting and frankly well not something i look forward too, but hey deer meat tastes pretty good.
Goram bleep guy sitting in that booth.
Where the hell am I going to get enough quarters to fill a sock?
"X" "07"
Look at the 'X' now look at the MS products, Xbox, Xbox 360, DirectX.
See a pattern there?
I was told that because of rising costs for making games that making a custom engine in house was a costly waste of time when you could go out and license a working engine from someone like Id, Epic, or Valve (I'm not going to name them all.)
I always thought this was odd. What if your game is going to directly compete with a game made by the people you license your engine from. They make money from the engine being listened and from whatever royalties system they implement, but in the end they still make way more money from there own games. They sell more if your game looks bad.
Unlike a middleware developer like the guys who make Havok or Kynogon they have a possible conflicting interest. hmm
Your assuming that its going to have teleportation again.
Teleportation worked because of the linear nature of the games, a lateral movement within the game would never cause a level load, only movement towards or away from the goal would advance you past a point where a new chunk of data would be loaded. If the game is no longer as linear, then the teleport system could be troublesome, if not down right frustrating. Imagine if the brutes have semi fortified a block in a city and you ran into it. You can't find a way in and if you fall back and flank it they will just move and defend against you attack. You and your buddy then split up. he remains at the original point of attack and keeps them occupied while the other player goes possibly with a few marines or elites, with the goal of attacking on a weaker flank, forcing them to split forces. However the fight is taking place near the edge of a map cell. As you make the flank, suddenly your buddy who was attacking is teleported to you.
You also have issues with things like precedence, if 2 people run in opposite directions who will get teleported to who? When you have a linear game like the first 2 you teleport the person farthest from the goal to the person whio is going towards the goal, when the game is less linear that doesn't work as well.
With split screen you could trade data between 2 instances because it doesn't leave the system so it can remain rather fast.
On your typical gamer ethernet setup, you have 2 boxes connected directly or in a very small temporary lan, then again even a slightly congested lan will give you more bandwidth and better latency than most internet connections.
Because it works in splitscreen and Lan but not internet, it leads me to believe that this is a bandwidth and latency issue.
The only thing that will really tell if this is true is if tunneling programs allow 2 people to play coop by tricking there boxes into thinking they are on a lan.
Yes, but do you write software for one of the whiniest demographics on the face of the earth? The halo fan base consists of some of the most fucking stupid walking attempts at preserving meat that walk the earth. Do you think they are going to care if the manual says "This might not work"? No they will bitch and so will reviewers who will then claim the game has broken features.
As for it being "BS", what takes more bandwitdh? a server sending only that which is relevant to a client, or 2 servers sending everything back and forth because they don't know what will be relevant to the other in a moment. Not to mention that things like latency will also add to this problem.
If the game retains the linearity already present in the series then I doubt this would be an issue unless they are shitastic programmers. However if they have changed how the game the game and made it more open then this might be a problem. IN the last 2 halo games when you in one area, there were only 2 possible areas that could be loaded. The one infront of you and the one behind you.
If halo has suddenly stopped being linear and has become more open, ex you have a city that is divided in to squares. You are here and your objective is on the otherside. Well if your in one block you can have can have 8 blocks around you. So you preload all of them for quick access or maybe just the 2 closest too you. In single player thats rather simple, its much easier to guess.
Now imagine 2 players. Okay they are in one block, possibly in opposite corners of a block, okay so you now have blocks to preload.. now comes the issue. Do you teleport one player to the other every time a player crosses a boundary and a triggers a new loading point. Well that can get annoying, and it doesn't work they well in the end, especially if your trying to get around a group of enemies while your team mate keeps their attention. Suddenly he is right next to you during the flanking attempt.
Okay to fix that you don't implement the teleporting, so you allow them to venture apart. Okay now they can travel apart. Okay now your loading more blocks then single player, that means you need a bit more ram (Since most of your at is going to be consistent throughout an area and more processing. However theoretically the number of AI's could double, the amount of collision detection needed to be done could double, ect ect ect. But your on the same box and the data isn't having to leave the system so it can be done with good programming, challenging but workable.
Okay now you have 2 people on separate boxes on a lan. Now we notice something about halo since 2. If the host is dropped then, the game can continue because all the clients know whats going on. Game rebuilds and picks a new host, and your back. Now you have 2 people running around in separate areas doing there own collision detection, AI, ect ect, for their own area, however, they have to tell the other box everything that is going on in there area in the off chance it might affect the other players area.
That can be a surprisingly large amount of data. Its also very noticeable when its laggy. ON a lan you can assume that you will have a good chunk of bandwidth and its going to have a fairly low latency.
Same situation on the internet, uh oh. Not nearly as much bandwidth and worse latency. Damn.
Also, if you really are all that bothered, use one of the inevitable tunneling programs that are going to start popping up in the weeks after the release. If your thing about subnets it true then you shouldn't have any trouble using the tunneling program.
NOTE: Before anyone jumps on me and says I got details wrong, I'm a beginner programmer with fairly limited understand of all the inner workings of game engines. Stated here is my simplistic understanding of how the halo engine works. I kept it in simpler terms so i could express myself better and more clearly.