Vega Strike Forums

I know the mmo portion of the code is still very incomplete but hw well does the deathmatch code work? I ask this as we may want to split the two. Vegaserver can become solely for deathmatch play or we can integrate deathmatch directly into the vegastrike client and keep vegaserver as a strict mmo only server.

So, time for a little debate.

I like having the death match feature, as I think it's great for future tournaments, friends, etc.

As an EVE Online player, I'd love to see Vegaserver be a free "comparable" game. I'm all for efficiencies, however, and if it's easier to develop them at once in one binary, then we should do it. If it's easier to do development separate, with one group working on a client binary and one on a server binary, then we should do it.

The thing is, deathmatch is pretty much done. For DM play all you really need is to select what kind of system you want, or what kind of enviornment (open, asteroids, etc) and engage in naval warfare.

For an mmo there is a lot to deal with and as such it would be easier to not have to worry about making changes that might break DM related code.

Besides... for most multiplayer the game usually plays the part of client and server (normal setup) or a match making service is used (Kali, mplayer, gamespy). Either way doesn't really matter but I prefer keeping deathmatch as part of the game not the mmo.

After thinking about this for awhile I still say to seperate, but I also forgot about the current crop of games that have seperated deathmatch out of the client and into a single server application that can be hosted either on someone personal PC or through a web hosting service, usually running a dedicated server (though virtual dedicated server would also work)

So, with that aside.. would could retain vegaserver as a deathmatch server and just start up a mmo server that would not be bundled with the main vegastrike download. I think most of those who plays VS probably only need something for deathmatch.

Another thought... what about coop play? Some games offer coop for single player style capaigns. I have not seen this done much and suspect the added cimplexity is too great even for commercial projects.

Anyway, just a few other thoughts ive have...

I personally like both deathmatch and coop type games quite a lot, but couldn't care less about an MMO style of play.

pheonixstorm wrote: Another thought... what about coop play? Some games offer coop for single player style campaigns. I have not seen this done much and suspect the added complexity is too great even for commercial projects.

Actually I think it is quite popular in commercial games. It's popularity isn't the question and neither is it a commercial versus free games thing, methinks.

The question is what style(s) of coop could and should be implemented in a nonlinear and quite dynamic game like VS. The two main decisions are whether you allow players to separate freely and travel to different star clusters and how to handle saving (since unlike an MMO, you probably don't have a persistent universe, yet it takes many hours of play to get anywhere in the game).

Nock nock , anybody still here? Not sure how to vote, I suspect the most used would be a deathmatch so buddies can blow each other up. The most interesting would be MMO. This would require the universe to be stored on the server. The more realistic economy would be even more dynamic in multi-player. However, story as such must be abandoned in MMO. You are a fresh pilot who just got the scratch together to buy a small shuttle. The only story is how you progress and possibly get caught up in the politics. Guilds and pilots associations would also come into play. It would be nice for a player to: start a corporation, higher out as a wingman, post and accept cargo missions, post bounties on players. If it's in the game, you can do it.

I would think with MMO you could start with one of 3 ships, a basic mechant ship, a basic hunter ship, or a cross between the 2, some thing that can haul some cargo or fight some fights

If the coding wouldn't be to much of a headache, start with no ship. Buy a basic one now, or hire out as a turret gunner and make some more cash. But then why buy a ship at all? Buy some cargo, and pay someone to hull it! If a starting ship is a must, then a small, cheep, general purpose one. That way everybody starts out the same, where you go from there is the story.

I disagree mainly because people want to fly a ship when they play this game (thats the main point of this game), I think giving them a option to where they can start with one of the three, maybe like Gran Tourismo, you get enough starting money to buy a ship, some basic upgrades and start flying

I'd tend to agree that you play to fly, my point is why lock you into just that route? Giving the player X amount of credits and a few ships in that range would work. Anyway, first things first Deathmatch included with MMO as an option, MMO included with deathmatch as an option both included?

for sure, whats the point of having modifing the heck out of a ship, and not fight a worthy fighter capable fighting back alot better than the AI ever could. Question is, if your ship gets destoryed in Death Match do you have to start over with a new ship, or maybe wager some credits, or maybe the winner takes some parts off the loser? In MMO I would like to see it run like most MMO, if you die, you have to start over again from scratch, at least that would force people to eject incase they have alot of credits

What I would really like to see is a not-quite-so-massive version of the Vegastrike universe for multiplayer. I ran the Vegaserver with the Killer Mod as an experiment; all of our extra ships showed up in the menu eg. Condor.stock (a player flyable Thales w/ cloaking) and I was able to 'join' my server...but there was only one base, and no npc's except when I launched a mission to kill specific targets.

It seems I was running DM mode, but there was a 'save progress' button in the 'Network' menu in the mission control screen.

In my experience with the Antares Mod for Freelancer, the bigger the universe got & the more systems and bases got added, the sloooowwwweeeeerrrr the server got. So unless someone springs for our very own Cray, I don't think an MMO with all the systems is going to work. Not to mention the probability that the players would wind up scattered so far from each other it would take hours or even DAYS to get to a common system to interact.

Is there a way to set up one's Vegaserver configuration so there are say, a dozen star systems complete with bases and a MUCH smaller number of npc's than the single player loads? That way traders would have somewhere to go, and us pirate types would have something to hunt while waiting for someone to show up and 'interact' with. My rig at the moment is probably too anemic to run this smoothly, but with a couple of upgrades she could probably handle a mini-mmo/expanded dm version.

Current system:
Asus motherboard
Dual core AMD
3 Gigs of RAM
500 G HDD

There was some talk of using a shards system to lighten the load on individual servers ie: each shard would host a fixed number of systems all this is assuming that all those severs exist But I tend to agree let's get something that works first

Enjoy the Choice

I was actually considering running a temporary 'server' off my pc, featuring the Killer Mod...maybe on weekends (I have an abominable rotating shift at work, so 'nights' for me is different times of day....2 weeks of Day Shift, 2 weeks of Afternoon Shift, 2 weeks of Night Shift).

I experimented with running Vegaserver, and with only one planet to land on in one system, and no npc's to hunt it seemed a bit barren....but there's no way my machine could handle the myriad of systems in the full version re. the MMO thing. And then again even if had had this beasty maxed out, having a few hundred systems to cruise would have players scattered hours or even days apart from each other.

How would one go about modding the Vegaserver config so we would get a few systems, with a few npc's mucking about? (I've always found the skies in the sp game a bit overcrowded for that matter...thought about looking into an abbreviated npc generation for the Killer Mod anyways)

At one time I experimented with a 'cargo wingmen' base....as I recall I added a docking point to an asteroid fragment & made it magically inflate into a full sized asteroid base after ejecting it. Then again just adding temporary bases wouldn't improve Network System so very much....they disappeared when I logged out, as did any ships I 'parked' by bailing out in the escape pod....

Actually A lot of the MMO play can be single shard. We only need to worry about active system with players in them. A lot of the mmo interaction we can borrow from EVE though for smaller mini-mmo games more akin to NeverwinterNights we could very well limit the number of systems to those along the border regions where fighting is heavier or to pirate infested regions. Break things down into various quads/sectors that can be loaded at server startup.

First though... need to get deathmatch working better, then we can ramp up the mini scaled events followed bu a full universe shard. If we can thread the server each system could be a new thread loaded and unloaded as players enter themm (or some such). Using a cluster would also help out at the high end but that is beyond our requirements for now.

But srsly, How/where adjust presence/no of NPC in MMO? and the amnt of it rendered as the "shard" (instead of whole usniverse)? would that not increase the No. of users applicable?