MMO FPS - [Thankfully halted before wasting more time]

[devsh]

Project Ninja Star is not working out well, and not many people gave me something to do.

Because I cannot count on artists etc I think i need to work on something that doesnt require as much high detail modelling / or can be done with programmer art.

I will be doing a lot of wonky GUI and models, but i think its going to work out.

The game is set in a world after WW3, where corporations rule the world. They wage constant wars but thankfully the consumers (normal people) are never harmed. Factories and the Corporations' people are though. You are one of them.

Currently I thought of 4:

BDB
AG&F Corp.
EA&S Corp.
RIC

The world map and area will create an illusion of the game having the size of the WHOLE world. But this of course being too large
The thing is you will have a map of the world... After Global Warming... with 50-60% of britain under water. Your position will be marked on it, the map will be divided further and further down. If there are no playable areas in that section of the map you wont get to zoom in... If there is you will get to zoom in.
Once you zoom in enough the map will start blending into the game world. For the areas too far away from your character, there will be like a "broken TV antenna" effect where you get loads of grain and stuff so you cant see.

For now due to ease of development, there wont be as much content. Meaning only 3 playable areas. Icy winter in finland, over at lake bodom. The sahara desert in a BDB base. And a little fishing village in a Pakistani nuclear wasteland.

One of the cool features is that the whole game is instanced like GuildWars meaning all players on same realm.
Also a GM may launch a nuclear armageddon, on some place (realistic nuclear explosion (60k sphere-like particles) with physX and soft particles)

The goals for next Month (and I think the month after that):

Non Irrlicht Stuff:
-set up my laptop as gateway/record tracker
-keep track of all realm/playable area servers (one for lake bodom, one for desert and one for the fishing village.
-develop an app for hosting playable areas and loading my map editor xml and rofha files (almost done on the editor, I just need a lib for client)
-account creation application in the client (and possibly some "code on the image" bot protection)
-make a player query possible (i.e. when someone wants to know if someone is online)
-make data exchange between server and gateway possible so player data and save files are saved and up to date.
-character creation
-p2p between players and VoIP chat for players using RakNet or something
-VoIP testing
-GM account creation on the gateway app.

irrlicht Stuff:
-ressurect my map editor
-add physx settings in map editor
-add color selection and deferred shader material selection
-possibly a deferred shader editor?
-modify the client and make character creation possible
-loading up/ logging into the world and moving about with a capsule representing the character


The client will be opensource along with the editor. But the server will be split into libraries which will have different licences. Due to cheating and hax0ring the anti-hacking speed-hack, weapon hack etc. lib will be closed source.

I wont start from scratch, I will just modify Ninja Star. And keep that one going if I can get some artists. But stuff I am doing now is general purpose and not even specific to that game.

24 hours game time == 24 minutes real time

If you want to join that is cool, but I dont expect anyone to do so.

P.S. the reason i started this is because i can get a laptop to use as server.

[Dorth]

Ok, I'll only target one of those. If you release all libs so ppl can recompile, including cheat protection (as a close source), that means people will have access to both input of the lib and output. What that means is that a simple brute force analysis would beat it extremely quickly (as far as finding what you do, maybe not a way around). At that point, your only chance is to either have such a good defense it doesn't matter if people know what you do (in which case close source is irrelevant), vary that library constantly while avoiding patterns (constant updates and people can on any old server could be attacked) or obfuscate a lot more, like the entire server (in which case, reverse engineering can still give you the code, but you can make that step way harder than 1 and less frequent than 2).

[devsh]

i take the advice on board. And I will make systems for cheat protection detached from internet and not depenedant on any input that can be messed around with.

ie.

get player position
compare with last player position and time elapsed
if the step too big *kick* and notify a GM and write to kick log
save last player position

unhackable if on server side (unless you get a virus, which is near impossible on linux)

[devsh]

coming back a few more ideas.

Unlike WoW etc. there will be following features:

-Your job is illegal, so you have a unemployment benefit equivalent of $50 BDB every day.
-However every corporation has it's curency....
just to mae life harder
-Depending on the wealth of every player in the faction we calculate exchange rates...
ie. total welath is calculated money*exchange+items*value
so possesing money in its pure form is hazardous, since the value might go down.
so possesing items is the safest option, but!!!!
if the value of the currency keeps going up then you will make money
exchange rate = (faction's total wealth)/(BDBfaction's total wealth)
Factions with more players will have better exchange rates...
This way we get to have all kinds of fun stuff, like economic crisis and stuff. Then we can have global Bank aid and frauds to keep the currency value up.
-Export goods that are sold abroad will be more expensive.
-You can Trade with enemy players.. no more is the enemy player a thing just to kill. Even more you can make friends and complette quests together as long as you dont show in public.
-The final point... if you buy at home. meaning if you buy diamonds in africa (BDB) and wood/gold in america (EA&S) then they are going to be cheaper when you buy with their currency.
This will spawn a whole series of cool things like, "change money?" (china 20 years ago) from local players, and currency exchange (this will officially be illegal).
-Even Better if you are trading money on a corporation's terrain/area which is not the corporation's currency... if you get spotted you are chased (and possibly killed) by city wardens.
-You wont be able to tell what corporation people are from, you will have to work it out using their language skills (visible when you inspect a player)
-Language and accent will play an important role in gaining trust from NPCs (NPCs in contested areas i.e. between Asia and Europe will tolerate most accents and factions, however people in the main cities and important millitary parts of the faction will pay more and more attention to your accent and giving you less trust)
-You will get to train languages
-Enemy guards will not attac you straight away, if you are not too explicitly different.
-Shopkeepers will only sell stuff to you in the currency that they want and trust will bring prices down (not enough trust will mean a shop keeper wont sell you stuff).

Targets for VoIP:

-this year you will be able to click on anyone and try to VoIP them
-hopefully this year you will be able to add people to existing VoIP conversations

[Lonesome Ducky]

Hate to burst your bubble, but this seems much too ambitious. Have you finished other irrlicht projects yet? It's always best to start small. Have you thought about the implications? Constantly updating, fixing bugs, an so on. Even if you get it up and running it will never be complete. If you're dead set on doing this, then by all means do it. Even if you fail it will be a learning experience. Try checking out some of the other mmo's that were attempted with irrlicht, see why they failed, and take that knowledge on board. This is a lot of work you'll have to commit yourself to.

[Armen138]

Unless you have a really, really good reason to use the word 'genocide' in your title, change it. It offends far more people than you might realize.

[devsh]

yeah lonesome....

I thought about it... and i thought i cant get anywhere with ninja star because of the model thing. but it will be same here? wont it?

[Lonesome Ducky]

You could just do boxes, and get models later. If you really plan on making this, maybe it would be best to start it as single player. And if you can't finish it, at least you learned something right? But honestly, I know that if you ask for help on it here or on irc someone will be willing to help you.

[B@z]

You could just do boxes, and get models later.

well that wont work.
i tried that amountless times, but just wont work.
graphic artist are not programmer, so they wont be happy because it has beautiful physics, but still, boxes shooting each other. they'll still say its a crap. because they dont know, how good is your program.

but in opposite, if your games looks good, even if the system is crap, they'll come, and tell you they wanna help.

i think makin game with boxes is just waste of time. try find at least one modeller, who does the job, then make a game, and you have a chance to complete it. with boxes, you have no chance (or rather 0.01%)

[Lonesome Ducky]

Never did I say that he should keep the boxes. Of course that wouldn't work. I mean to say that he could do boxes just as placeholder art, and later he could get an artist to make the models or spend more time on them himself.

[fennec]

I'm an artist, and I like seeing working code, and a comprehensive, well-written design. My dream game to work on is something that is already playable with placeholder graphics, and can sell in months (still looking ).

The thing that -really- scares me off is lack of planning or an over-ambitious design (ie. anything with MMO in the title).

If an artist -is- willing to work for free for an indeterminate period, they are probably not competent, so it's natural that you had troubles.

[B@z]

lonesome: of course, but there are very few artist who willing help with a project what runs with boxes... its a devilic circle. you cant replace boxes because you have no artist -> artist wont come because boxes doesnt look cool -> no artist cant replace .... etc

fennec: wow u like seeing code? XD
and yeah workiing for free is ahard thing, but for example for me, i have an "artist" who generally had the idea of the game, so we are both motivated :3