[Help Wanted] - Realms of Forlorn Hope

Insomniacp · Post by **Insomniacp** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 6:59 pm

First post updated with new info on the game.
This includes the near future move to alpha testing and also changed the description and things around. We are still looking for graphics people that can join us and help out with that. Hope to have the game out soon.

Insomniacp · Post by **Insomniacp** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:00 am

i guess it would be considered a big announcements
We have started our closed alpha testing phase, the client is being distributed to members of the staff aswell as other people who are interested in possibly helping the game. Currently there is not much to do but it does show that the game is running and things are falling into place. The patcher has been relatively completed, it does its job quite well, receives compressed files and decompresses them. Though it does not look too good... Anyway the project is not dead as it may have seemed after the long silences. Hopefully a decent amount of features will be added in the following weeks and we will get some graphics for the game coming in from some volunteers.

The new GUI has been added, the bars are fully functional and will change size with an easy function call. Though the underlying system has not yet been added they will start to fully work next week. Also we will be adding actual buttons on the bottom instead of gray boxes.

lostclimategames · Post by **lostclimategames** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 12:53 am

hey, you care if I join the closed alpha?

Insomniacp · Post by **Insomniacp** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:15 am

Sure, I will be doing non staff releases this weekend when I have some time to debug everything and add some features so it isn't just chat and movement.

devsh · Post by **devsh** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 8:40 pm

youre making far more progress than we are.

Its a bit like me drawing art, I start of from the bottom right corner and go straight into detail. again some people prefer to draw the outline first.

We are perfecting our water:( and introducing online lobby, creating a new camera class and exploring raknet.

good luck

p.s. i want to sell you my idea i had before my team abandoned me and i had to find 2 more devels, basically we had an idea for a user-run MMO that would not have a game server run by the game developers. The users would add their own servers and while going from one part of the town to other, you would simply log onto another server. Guild Wars does that to some extent (but its not ran by users). If you wanna know more ask me.

Pyritie · Post by **Pyritie** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 11:04 pm

devsh wrote: p.s. i want to sell you my idea i had before my team abandoned me and i had to find 2 more devels, basically we had an idea for a user-run MMO that would not have a game server run by the game developers. The users would add their own servers and while going from one part of the town to other, you would simply log onto another server. Guild Wars does that to some extent (but its not ran by users). If you wanna know more ask me.

I wonder if it's possible to have a server-less multiplayer game. P2P maybe?

devsh · Post by **devsh** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 9:47 am

not quite

It all works bit like a lobby....

There is a server app free to download for all users, they download it and make their own realm. (custom buildings and other stuff). Then they register on a listings server (this is a public php server that keeps track of online servers, their position, adress and rating).

The players then log into the world on whichever server they logged in last (there would be cheat proof mechanism) and e.g. there would be a main town with many sky scrapers, the skyscraper's inside would be on another server for example. The user goes into it and he logs into another server (the one that runs the skyscraper), but as he loggs out the `outside' server, that server sends data about player's level, inventory etc. to the server that the player loggs into next. If the server owner made custom items with custom models and textures, the pleyer has to download them.

this way you can create an endless world created by users, if you put stuff in a cloud/cluster then your possibilities are endless. As server's are added, they are added around the outside of the WorlD. All servers would be rated on the central website and on the php server, to ensure that players are warned if they are about to log into an un-fair or low latency server.

P.S. it might seem that you need to upkeep a server anyway (the php one), but you are kind of wrong. Because there are many free-hosting websites that have mySQL databases, and you write your main server app in php and then have that running on your free hosted website.

Insomniacp · Post by **Insomniacp** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:02 pm

pending the bandwidth allowed by a free host you may run into a major issue once its all gone

. The idea is ok, my issue is if you have custom items all servers must obtain said items otherwise players that have not gotten them from a different server will not be able to view the items that a player uses elsewhere. For example i get a sword from server A, I then go to server B that does not have the sword. Any player that hasn't gotten it from server A will not be able to see what the item is. Sure you can atleast get the basic data, damage, and things but the model itself is lost quite easily. I personally see a large security issue with releasing a server app to people that could abuse it quite easily if they have the know how. That being said I have my server sitting next to me right now and it should run great and can always be upgraded and added onto without the need to confide things in servers that have no guarantees. I much prefer one large world instead of runescape approach of here is 50 servers go where you want. This way player interaction is more possible and beneficial. I have planned a way to allow multiple servers, each hosting a large piece of land so if we reach a point of too much drain on resources we can make it so half the world is run off of one server the other half on another and you would seamlessly load still based off of the two servers until you are far enough from border to just connect to one server. Players will still run the MMO being able to build towns and I plan to give a good amount of people the ability to expand the world itself using a multiuser live editor(year or two down the road), this way the game will be ever growing and with an infinite level system you can always be striving to the top of the charts. And will always have new areas and things to do. Anyway off to program it

Insomniacp · Post by **Insomniacp** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:11 am

Public alpha release,
http://rofhonline.com/RealmsofForlornHope.zip
You can download the client and patcher using the above link, make sure you install the redistributable as it won't work without it. Only other thing is registering will get stuck (till i make the char creation page) so just exit and re run the exe and login using the data you used in registration. Also the server is only online 7am-9pm GMT -6. As it is in my room and quite loud and annoying when I need to sleep. In the near future I will upgrade the server to reduce heat issues and stick the server in another room and then it will be on 24/7. Anyway hope you all enjoy. This week I will probably finish the NPC stuff which means a large client update sometime... which will include doing a version check. Anyway off to watch Shrek

Let me know what you think also jump on the games forums
http://rofhonline.com/forums

Volunteers are always welcome aswell especially in the graphics area as we don't have many people working on them and a lot will be needed soon.

EDIT:

Features:
movement
chat

Controls:
wasd to move
right click and move mouse to rotate camera
thats about it for now

Brkopac · Post by **Brkopac** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:23 am

I just continuously get "Invalid field" errors in registration screen and login screen.

Insomniacp · Post by **Insomniacp** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 3:43 am

make sure all fields are greater than 3 characters i think... also run the patcher to get the latest client (may fix the issue if you do have 3 characters).

Officially password must be 5 or more characters, and the username and email must be 3 or more characters. I believe the latest client has those as its reqs (latest means you need to run the patcher to get it.

Lonesome Ducky · Post by **Lonesome Ducky** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 4:01 am

This project looks great so far! I plan on registering tomorrow and testing out. Do you need any help with the project or are all the positions filled?

Insomniacp · Post by **Insomniacp** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:14 pm

Programming wise I think we are pretty set. We just got a guy to do some security work on things and I have been handling server and client which I plan on keeping in house till much later when the core of the game is done and there isn't large changes to be made. We do need someone that knows how to make shaders as I would like some nice looking shaders in the game and I currently don't know how to do that.
The main need I see us having is graphics since sydney just won't cut it for everything. Right now I use her for player characters and npc's (soon). So new models and things are in need. I am hoping the release will bring some people in since who wants to make graphics for a game that doesn't work yet?

You can always post what you want to do on the games forums and I can try and get some things for you to do but the above is my current stance on things, which can always change.

lostclimategames · Post by **lostclimategames** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 5:00 am

failed to connect to the network on both the patcher and the game.

Nox · Post by **Nox** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:38 am

possible reason:

Also the server is only online 7am-9pm GMT -6