VS an MMORPG?

[Dunkelheit]

the last day I was playing, I really enjoy being abusive of uln Faction, but then all the fun just went away from my mind when I realised that they are only bots from a computer program, the insults I gave to him is like insult to a wall, so I though about the lot of fun if VS were a MMORPG, yeah a Masive Miltiplayer Online Role Play Game.

Could it be posible?, tha we were playing in an online universe all together, real time fights against real people, something like this would make VS a really really really amazing game, yeah but it's posible that the work for programers would be as amazing





excuses if my english is not so good

[loki1950]

Welcome Dunkelheit sorry no MMORPG, yet still making baby steps with multi-player but that is definitely coming.We just have to wait for it have a look around lots of dreamers here

Enjoy the Choice

[safemode]

no to mention that an RPG Vegastrike is not. the potential for MMO gaming is there, but if we start having level 19 paladins and crap this project will fork faster than you can inflict +20 damage to your opponent's mana ... heh.

[charlieg]

RPG is short for Role Playing Game, not fantasy game. Case in point: Vendetta is an MMORPG.

[safemode]

I wouldn't consider VS an rpg (despite it's backstory) until it's character you play is persistant and unique. I know technically it is, as is 90% of all computer games.

And in our multiplayer setup, you aren't assuming the character of anyone. It's basically a flight sim where you shoot eachother. That's not an rpg. Single player may be, but not multiplayer.

to use the term rpg in such a broad sense is useless, why even mention it, every game would fall under it's definition. what MMO game wouldn't thus be an mmorpg? tetrinet?

[chuck_starchaser]

There's a forum specific to vegastrike mmorpg.

[safemode]

yea i know, it's a misnomer. There is no aspect of characterisation in multiplayer mode as far as i know. it's a deathmatch. I know that's just the initial programming, but it will likely be another major release before we see persistance, and things resembling single player play in multiplayer mode. doing that stuff in multiplayer is extremely complicated.


edit:
yes i was quick to dismiss rpg aspects of single player mode. The game does change due to the details of the player and a campaign could be written around the specific details of the character you're supposed to play in the game. Wing Commander, definitely RPG. It's a lot harder to see the same aspects that make WC an rpg in VS, because you have so much more freedom, and the game doesn't emphasize the character the player is supposed to be at all really. It does react to the character you basically create, but not in a real individual specific way so that you feel the NPC's are reacting to you individually.

[chuck_starchaser]

There's some RPG-style elements I think vegastrike could benefit from, even in single-player mode:

• As I mentioned elsewhere, email or letters (i.e. long distance communications, which could expand the possibilities when writing plots, as then you wouldn't always depend on meeting a guy at a bar to start/continue a plot or side-plot).
• Quests. Well, plots and subplots ARE quests; but "quests" includes other kinds of plots, like finding an item; taking pictures of a secret base; searching for a missing person; exploring unexplored systems; solving a mystery.
• Characters that fly ships and "join your quest", not necessarily for the entire game, but perhaps temporarily, during some particular quest.
• A personal inventory, separate from the cargo hold, for such things as documents, a notebook, or a card or device that can bring a hidden ship on-line after boarding it...
• Magazines or even electronic magazines one can read that include news, but also articles, advertisements, personal ads...
• Books one can read at bases and learn about the history of the Forsaken, for example, rather than have to open a document off-game. Thus, if you go to the most important planet of the Forsaken, you could have a library room where you find this book (and other books, eventually)

[Xit]

Magazines or even electronic magazines one can read that include news, but also articles, advertisements, personal ads...

Books one can read at bases and learn about the history of the Forsaken, for example, rather than have to open a document off-game.

I agree with this very much, I remember the Ultima games, FFE, Morrowwind and others all had a great deal of books and magazines in game to document the history and odd concepts, with some odd irrelevant but amusing asides here and there too. I feel there should be literature to represent all factions and races, and these sorts of documents/data/news could be a cargo item of sorts for special transport missions (since it is presumably difficult to send data without any carrier through jump holes).

[SwissPow]

I really don't want to see vegastrike as an mmoRPG. I perfer to see it as an mmosf which "sf" means space flight.

I really doubt vegastrike will ever become an mmo because the following problems:

* Everyone has to be limited to flying small twitchable space ships. Think freelancer. Nobody wants that idea because flying a small ship claims that its very little that the player can do in the universe. He wants to fly big ships and rule everything I guess. So if capital ships were to be made availible to fly + being able to control an entire AI fleet in a multiplayer universe, 98% of these players would not wanna stay flying in a starfighter alone.

* Attempting to have hundreds of people in one single universe network is prohibitively expensive.

* The game being required to make it made opensource encourages cheating. I don't know how that can be fixed it has been debated thousands of times.

* You need to throw in some MMO mechanics to find out how it will work in VS.

You could try and do that if you want to.

[safemode]

cheating happens in closed mmo's too. no matter what method you made to verify clients, a method to bypass it would not be extremely hard to do. The main way to protect against cheating, is to remove the majority of local functionality and consolidate on one trusted server. Only give the clients the absolute minimum info to display and render what should be on the screen, and keep the rest from them.

like it's been mentioned above, the reason why deathmatch is the way online mode works now is because it's the easiest method of gameplay. A persistant or even non-persistant, first person player style game done online would be extremely difficult to keep fair and difficult to program at all, much more so if you want to make it persistant or allow players to save their player.

[chuck_starchaser]

http://img58.imageshack.us/my.php?image ... rpgqj4.swf

[Dunkelheit]

so now I see that the actually under devlopment (I think) multiplayer mod, would be a deathmathc, obviusly this is far away from RPG, but talking about the normal mode of VS, I think it is a RPG in its own way.

I know that it is almost imposible (almost) to run the development of the MMO system, but I'd really really love it, the thing I'm saying is playing in the normal gameplay VS has now, but that those pirates I've just killed were other real players like you and me, taht they are playing who knows where in the planet, or maybe that the pirate were me , tha one could make an army, or only a party (I think this point wold be exelent even if the members of the army were bots). I don't know what else, but you understand me, right?
It's probably only a dream I have




I have to say I'm a newbie in the game relatively speaking.

[loki1950]

Good find states the facts but still encourages participation .

Enjoy the Choice

[ace123]

I intend it to have the capability to be an MMO... in fact someone has donated a server for the Gemini Gold mod (and I might be able to use it for some preliminary Vega Strike testing since it is pretty low overhead).

But I don't know the full extent of what it will be like. Some people have suggested it to be a multiplayer VS (you can still do campaigns, missions), and others want it to be more MMO style (upgrading, seeing other users).
I'm hoping for some combination of those.

[Rabiator]

I'd suggest taking it step by step, with deathmatch in one system being a good start. It implies some basic features (being able to see other players in space, interacting with them if only through guns...) that will be needed for any kind of MMO anyway. If I read the comments in other threads correctly, this already works more or less.

Follow-up steps could be (just a few suggestions)

1) Multiple systems accessible to the players, and trading available as in single player mode. Persistent universe including market data. At this point, VS would be similar to Freelancer feature-wise. Sounds like a nice accomplishment for a project done by hobbyists

2) More realistic markets with supply and demand being influenced by players. This is already discussed in other threads, and might be orthogonal to multiplayer development.

3) Economy more strongly driven by players, including mining and crafting. Supply from NPCs reduced to basic items, so only players make the high end stuff. Multiple space stations that act as auctionhouses.
At this point, the economy would look a lot like in EVE Online, which has the most convincing economy I have found so far in MMOs.

[legine]

I see differnt points here.

- First a good MMO needs time. They talk 5 years development in the Proffessional sector here. (Thats from a interview with a developer from guild wars that did development in WoW before that).

- MMOs succeed in the offer of Content. They need to have easy ways into introducing new content in order to keep ppl busy

- Professional MMOs need huge ammounts of money. WoW did cost 40 Millin Dollars until release. I dont think we need that money we have other means here. But money gives a feel what work lies in such an aim.

- Look at our release dates. VS is declared pretty dead from time to time. I dont know if we did any advances in the last month concerning OGRE port. Thats not critsism. Thats a fact. And to be a real mmo we need to get some development speed.

So at this point VS MMO or MMORPG is a fart dream.
I would like to see more a RPG VS with campaigns and Stories and stuff. Thats something VS is at the hearth of it. VS is more a game in the tradition of Wing Commander and Freelancer then it is in the Tradition of Eve Online or Vendetta.

I am not saying that VS should stay away from MMO Dream. I just say we have a long way to get there. And we dont need to focus on MMO to get a MMO one day.

[bgaskey]

I dont know if we did any advances in the last month concerning OGRE port.

Since I've been watching and using the SVN (a few months now) I haven't seen any move toward OGRE at all. but I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing as there have been more improvements in other areas. I don't know if VS can be a real MMO because of server requirements etc, but it can have a lot of fun online play

[legine]

but I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing as there have been more improvements in other areas.

Was not ment as critisim. I know that there is progress. But OGRE is a big thing VS is chewing on. And MMO is an even bigger thing to chew on. Thats what I want to point out.

I don't know if VS can be a real MMO because of server requirements etc, but it can have a lot of fun online play Wink

Agreed. But one day the jump for VS will be smaller and then we will jump for sure At least thats another dream for me

[bgaskey]

Agreed. But one day the jump for VS will be smaller and then we will jump for sure Razz At least thats another dream for me Smile

The dream is what keeps open source software development open. Isn't it great. We will all keep dreaming, and maybe, one day, the dream will be reality . Can't wait for that day personally

[klauss]

Ogre isn't as big as people tend to think. It's the other stuff I included as part of the "ogre port" that is. A lot of features I saw the oportunity to add. Many of them could be left aside.
It's not the case with MMO. MMO is BIG no matter how much you try to simplify it.

[legine]

Well it shows how difficult something big is to chew on. As long as we can not chop something into smaller parts we have diffucults to put it on fast.
And what makes MMO realy big is that you cant chop it and time is critical for a success.
Look at the Planescape Project. It is hard work they do and long time it was just dissapointing from a players view. They are very tight organized to get the game working.

[bgaskey]

the mmo capabilities can (and are being) implemented bit by bit over time. However, as long as there are still rapid changes occurring in the engine, we cannot have a mmo server because client version conflicts would cause an utter mess. So that is a dream for another year...

[ace123]

There's actually a development server running for testing purposes.

I'm trying to design the code to keep in mind older versions. Of course there are still possibilities for bugs, but for the most part it's working fine... (for example, you should be able to use a 0.5.0 Beta client on the svn Server)

Basically for each version-incompatible change either it doesn't matter because it has additional information, or else there has to be an if statement saying whether to branch or not.


As far as the M (massive) in the mmo goes, probably not right now...

[dust]

i think it is good if vs doesn't switch to ogre.

http://www.openscenegraph.org/ is also used in http://www.magrathea-engine.org/v2/ with their space simulator http://csp.sourceforge.net/ combat simulator http://www.flightgear.org/ civil simulator and several other projects.

for network have a look at http://www.globus.org/ and other grid software.

whatever the future brings, it is a huge task, thanks to everyone who is doing something at vs.