I finally decided to spill the beans on this secret project Descent Pilot and I have been working on. Underground Resistance (UR) Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing game. 2 versions are being developed (Very similar) as one is private for the RPG group UR, and the other is for the public. The first of the two is more updated, and contains more storyline, and is backed up in storyline, as the public is not.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game / Server System
With the use of a Dedicated Server (Provided by Gammasts and Ober) and GBK’s Thing Creation System, a single level (See topic ‘Worlds, Traveling, and Massive Level’) with an immense and deep RPGing experience will be achieved with JK. Those familiar with the Underground Resistance storyline know where and when the story takes place. With a dedicated game server, players information and data will be stored within the server, allowing for a true RPGing experience, the only problem is the fact that only 32 players can participate in JK at one time.

Player Development
Since player stats are savable, players will be able to develop their characters to their little hearts content. With statistics and skills (See topic ‘Skills’) ranging from weapon accuracy, to speed, players can create their player to their perfect specifications.
-Morality System
Killing a well known bounty hunter could prove you a skilled assassin, and your knowledge of the trade would be well known by others in the world, but perhaps you yourself could be assassinated because of it. Doing good usually gets help for you, making others mad, usually can get you killed. (See Topic ‘World AI’ and its sub-topic ‘Events’)

Worlds, Traveling, and Massive Level
We’ve decided on including 9 worlds in the MMORPG, but have not decided the exact name and types of planets we plan to include. How exactly would we include entire worlds!? By GBK’s amazing TCS, giving us the ability to make nearly as large of levels as we’d like (Within the barriers of JED) and have generally less lag then most multiplayer levels. How will you get from planet to planet, and across the large planets? Drivable vehicles. (See topic ‘Ship, Weapon, and Player creation‘)

Ship, Weapon, and Player Creation
Ships and weapons can be personalized with certain tools and skills. Using barrels, cartridges, compression tubes, scopes, barrel attachments, and handle/trigger types, players can create there own weapons. As with starships, where-as more of the internal portions of ships are bettered, as with foils, elevators, engines, etc. Players are also created from one of the following races.

Human
Rodian
Wookie
Gran
Trandoshan
Bothan
Twi'lek
Mon Calamari
Aqualish
Gamorrean
Noghi

(See topic ‘Realistic Player Character’)

Realistic Player Character
Players can create there playable character not only physically, but mentally as well. With a system that measures what things a player is good at in comparison to their Race, age, and player description. Players who are smarter then others may be more skilled at piloting, and may have quicker reaction times, while a less intelligent player would have small durations in turning at which the ship stalls. Players have different accuracies, specialties in weapons, and specialties in items.
-Endurance
Virtually like any other stamina meter in games out there. The more you run, the harder it is to keep running. The lower the stamina, the worse accuracy, jumping, and other physical deeds. Once a certain level of damage is reached, blood loss begins. The lower the stamina, the quicker blood is drained, the quicker more damage is done. When stamina is at its fullest, health regenerates until blood loss stops. Bandages, and other health items can be consumed at this time to help stop the bleeding.
-Skills
Skills are usable with the appropriate statistics full, plus the correct tools needed for the job. Not just anyone can build a speederbike out of old parts, but someone who is high in intelligence, and has perhaps been trained, or taken classes (Time consuming events done while offline) could possibly do it. This section is being developed more and more as ideas are brought up.

Real Time Strategy System
High ranking players of the Imperial, Republic, or Resistance can command AI on the battlefield. Commanders do this from the comfort of large ships, etc. When viewing a holographic screen, the commanders get an overhead view of the actual battle taking place, with actual players moving within. soldiers can be concentrated at certain areas, and more soldiers can be dropped in.

AI
The NPC artificial intelligence in the game is far advanced, with keyword recognition for speech, area specific ‘T’ commands, detailed enemy AI. Bar-fights, street stores, haggles, muggers, bounty hunters. All coded into the game.

World AI
Interaction with the world, like snowstorms, sandstorms, fog, etc is calculated in the game. Players can expect it to stop raining once indoors. Accuracy is effected by the weather, and can be vital to a teams actions. A player moves faster on a wetland, then in the desert.
-Events
If a war is won by the imperials, the game changes. If a battle is lost by the imperials, it changes even again. Gebohq and I plan on creating a detailed hierarchy of the storylines, with several if else situations, allowing for the players interactions to control the path the game physically takes in storyline.


So, I understand that all of this is next to impossible, but it's meerely a group of obsticals, that technically are possible to overcome, and once have been, is simple in relativety.

Please don't let this become the 'OMG THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK' thread. If you don't think it'll work, ok, but at least you could comment on what we've got in mind. Ideas? Etc.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

Pretty good sounding

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<Ishionu> haha, if theres one more thing more pathetic then imaginary girlfriends its imaginary girls you cant get to go out with you ;P

This sounds very sexy. If you actually finish this, in addition to buying you a pizza [NOT!] I will actually play this game. It looks freaking awesome so far.

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Death is just a friend you haven't met.

Ex-Council of 14

June 16 - A night that will live in infamy.

I know, I know, this isn't supposed to be a thread for saying it won't work, but.. Seriously.... It's a peer to peer network configuration. And a bad one at that. You may need to rethink things here. Perhaps just call it an ORPG? 'Cause the whole "massively multiplayer" dog just won't bark.

Also, everyone else should post things like: "Kirby, you are very sexy" or "Kirby, if I wasn't already pregnant by Gonk, I would want to have your manbabies" and other encouraging things.

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Death is just a friend you haven't met.

Ex-Council of 14

June 16 - A night that will live in infamy.

Wow, didn't even have to ask you to say that Mike... kind of creepy, actually.

That's true, it really isn't Massive, but it's still on the same level. 34 player max isn't massive, but it's a lot.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

And where can i get my copy??? Is this the game you were telling me about, (NOT the one that you were taking my ideas) the one that you "created" for yourself?

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If man was in the forest and woman was not there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Jammie, this is for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. You should go buy one from the mall at software etc, it's only a 5 dollar game, and if you've still got a game card, it's only 2.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

You havent meat kirby in real life, trust me, you dont want his kids, lol. 34 is alot of frickin people compared to the 8 im used to playin with at a time.

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If man was in the forest and woman was not there to hear him, is he still wrong?

But you're no MMORPGer, you hate RPGs, remember?

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

...Do you already have a functional Jedi Knight server emulator, or is this just a pipe dream?

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[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited April 1, 2003).]

Did you understand the Server section at the top at all Jon`c? It's not done, but that's probably one of the most simple parts about it.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

So, it still sounds fun. Just because im nothing but a racing game fan doesnt mean a thing, i still in joy the the first person shooters and crap like that every once and awhile. I'm just really good a racing games vs others.

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If man was in the forest and woman was not there to hear him, is he still wrong?

If you pull it off, i'll be beyond impressed. But in all honesty you will just end up wasting years of your life.

At this point you'll be about to say something like "it won't take years". So i'll just say, if you manage to solve all problems and issues first time everytime, are a master coder and can anticipate how everything will fit together right from the start so you never have to delay for thinking and rethinking... then you MAY just about manage it. Of course for all this to happen your entire team will need the forsight of grandmaster chess players.

Sounds interesting though

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Watch out for this guy => :banned:

forsight?

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If man was in the forest and woman was not there to hear him, is he still wrong?

sorry, that should be "foresight".

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Watch out for this guy => :banned:

Is that even possible?

Anyway, sounds like it should be a lot of fun when done.

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Look for my current project, The Force in Your Soul.
Last week I cudn't evn spel grajuat, but now I is one.

*Takes out his blaster and fires shots at the wall, the blastmarks leave the words "S-TROOPER WUZ 'ERE!!!"

foresight?

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If man was in the forest and woman was not there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Poor Jammie. Get a dictionary Jambags.

Area specific 'T' commands are possible, easy almost.

Descent, I know you're out there, care to explain it?

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

The lag alone will be the downfall of this project. There is no possible way that JK will run GBK's thing system, and a 32 player game.

Second problem. GBK's system is great for removing unused things, but if there are 32 people in the game, then many of the things GBK's system is trying to remove would not be removable, since they are within a player's range. Thus, JK would hit the thing limit inside the game, and cause very many bad problems. I don't think GBK's system was meant for such a use.

Of course, I hope you prove me wrong. It sounds like a solid plan, just with a bad engine to back it up.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...

[This message has been edited by Cool Matty (edited July 18, 2003).]

foresight: n. wise forethought; prudence; (Mil.) front sight on a gun [O.E. forexeon].

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If man was in the forest and woman was not there to hear him, is he still wrong?

*claps for jambag*

I do understand this CM, but we plan on lowering the range of the TCS, and the thing is, JK can have 32 people. If 32 people will all be on at once, I don't know, and doubt it. Not to meantion, that there will be a lag checker ran through the server, sending multiple packages (Not the buggy JK defualt ping checker) and checking the return time. Packages are also sent through other players to gain an even better respect of a players ping. If a ping falls over a certain managable point, the server boots that player.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

Wrong.
The JK server emulator would need to function as a fully-working JK client, and that includes the ability to execute COG scripts. Are you sure your pet programmers are up to the challenge?
Don't be foolish and dismiss this so easily.

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[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited April 1, 2003).]

Wait until DP comes back from dinner, he'll tell you what he's got in store.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

Ok, this and DBZ:TDIR have forced me to buy JK. You had **** well better finish this, as I needed that $5 for donuts...and stuff.

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I'm not promising that this will be finished, but I and descent have agreed, we'll do our best at it. Who knows, we could finish all the code, and all of the models, etc, but have no one willing to make the levels. We'll see.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

i might as well get it too, now i have to drive my a$$ up the hill the mall get out of my car, walk into the mall and into software ect. I BLAME YOU FOR THIS BRANDON!!!

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If man was in the forest and woman was not there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Haha! I'll send you all my personal favorite mods, just e-mail me.

My little jambag is all grown up, and buying actual games for a change!

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

I recomend that instead of starting HUGE and working yoru way towards it, cut WAY down on what you have in mind, and start that. Once you are finished, you will see what it takes and then EXPAND your already done project. That way you wont just disapoint yourself.

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Restless 2

Sanctum de la Mort

We are completely ready to accept defeate, but we won't take hobbles towards our goal in fear of it.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

So apparently I signed up for writing the storyline... I'll see what I can do

Here's hoping it becomes a success

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Check out the following stories over at the Interactive Story Board:
The Never-ending Story Thread or visit the new webcomic version!
The Vision Cycle series
Featured Story: Ideal Nightmare

Quest into new worlds or question the deep parts (and not so deep parts) of life at Merlin's Citadel!

Jon'C, what are you exactly talking about? lag is lag and that is caused by data having to flow through one persons computer over to the others and being processed. The ability to run cog scripts is solely up to a person's processor, not the slowest modem of the fleet on at the current game.

There is the only drawback that 31 (1 more for the server) can be on at one time, but that is the only one. Thats the only thing that will not be a good thing But hopefully there might be a way to work around it. I dunno, that will come last.

That's all I have to say on this at the current time. So yeah.
PS - A TCS and triggers work wonders.

edit - 1 more thing, on the T-command, what we're going to do is rip out and replace JK's with a little concoction and act like we're keytrapping, more or less. What will happen is printing 5 blanks and if we need to print something else, use a trigger.

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The Sniper Missions. Current project, The Sniper Missions

The Magician Saber System.

The 2 riddle!

[This message has been edited by Descent_pilot (edited July 18, 2003).]

Descent_Pilot: The standard JK netcode is a peer-to-peer model, which means the data flow will increase geometrically. Keep that in mind.

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[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited April 1, 2003).]

I think this is a solid idea in theory. In practice...what Jon said.

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http://www.cantinacloud.com
Corrupting the kiddies since '97

Good grief, sounds like a tremendous amount of work... if you get it working though, that would be very sweet.

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"Gotta love the part when 20 guys come out of that Jeep Wrangler." -THRAWN

As Jon`C said, it's going to lag. Badly. Just a cable game in JK barely gets you under 100 ms pings with a few players, and you think connecting to 31 other players in a peer-to-perr game is going to fly? If you have any ideas about combat, forget them, because it will be impossible on anything short of a 10 Mbps LAN.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

I'm going to be blunt. You don't know what you are getting in to. You have no idea how much work something like that takes. You say you have it worked out in your head, well that doesn't always work. You'll experience dozens, probably hundreds of complicated problems that will spawn problems themselves. This is especially a problem with JK since it's so erratic and has hardly any debug output that's really useful, or any good debugging commands.

Cut down your project to a simple mod, and if you suceed with that, expand it to something else. You won't get anywhere with the community thinking it's just another TC dead from the start, but you will get somewhere if you make smaller releases that will help gain the community's support. When I see something like this, I think it's another newbie who doesn't know what he's getting in to. Alpha, beta, etc. releases are your friend. I think if you get the community to really believe you know what you're doing, you'll have more support, which means you have more reason to work on it.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

And your biggest shortcoming is the fact that in order to fix many of these problems, you'd have to change the hardcoded engine, with is completely illegal. I'd like to see someone write up a new netcode for JK completely in COG, but we both know that isn't really possible.

The server can have a dual processor T3 line, and it'll still lag, because the game doesn't act like that. It doesn't run on a server-to-client type of network, as mentioned before. The only purpose the server has in the game is controlling modifications, levels, and other global settings. Otherwise, he's just like any other client.

Also, cogging does get processed on a person's computer, but that's not what causes lag. It's GLOBAL cogs, ones that send information to cogs on every other person's computer, via triggers, that causes lag.

Watch how quickly this lag will build up:
1. GBK's system checks for the thing radius and creates/destroys things. Normally, this would be processed on one single person, as that was what it was intended to do. But now it has to check and see if there are other players close by, requiring triggers. Then, it has to make sure it doesn't destroy 3do's that the other player can see, requiring more triggers. Then it has to make sure it doesn't destroy the actual player, because that would be VERY BAD. Now, times that by over at least 16 players, and you got some serious lag on your hands. And that's not all!

2. Your pinging system. First off, its flawed, because kicking people because they are lagging is not their fault most likely in this case. What you are basically trying to say is that 56Kers cannot play this game. But anyway, if your pinging system does work, this is what will happen. The server will send the pinging packet out to the other clients, to check lag. But of course, you will be using JK's system, which requires bloated cog trigger packets. Your server will send the packet to all the other players, then record that. Now, my interpretation of what you said is, that it allows packets to flow through multiple clients first to get a better interpretation of ping. This basically means that other clients will be doing the ping testing also. So you'll be just adding lag with this.

3. Drivable vehicles online. First off, this is going to be hell on earth for every player, since the location of the vehicle will have to be reported to other players all the time. That's just added lag. Then you have multiple people flying. That'll cause even more.

4. Elevators, doors, etc. Unless your not going to synchronize them, which would be bad, this would be horrid lag. Doors opening and closing all over the place. Elevators lagging and dropping players under them.

5. AI. The more AI, and the more players there are, makes it increase lag so fast, it will be crazy. Every location of every NPC will be required to have triggers for telling all the clients where they are, and what they are currently doing.

I could go on and on, but I think that gives you a pretty darn good idea of how lag itself will be the downfall of this otherwise nice-sounding modification.


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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...

OK, after reading your post CoolMatty, I can see exactly what you mean, so I've got a spare of the moment idea.

If it's possible to specify a specific level to skip to, we could have seperate levels per city, or maybe world. This would allow way more then 32 players to play at once. It would make GBK's thing system still lag, yes, but it would lag on a much lower scale, as 32 players would be horribly impossible to see playing JK at once, let alone all in the same area of this universe. Since the levels would be considerably smaller, we'd be able to cut down on lag greatly. The only problem with this idea, is worlds couldn't interact very well, unless of course all of these levels were being hosted on the server, and the server computer edited what happened on the other levels to sync with a particular level. Even if this isn't possible, it'd still allow players to be in this large realm. Ideas would be helpful. The biggest question; can I specify a specific level to go to if I walk into a sector or past a vertex?

Another idea to sync the levels would be to manually do it weekly, or daily, simply because 'News' would probably take that long to effect other worlds or areas.

Just ideas, so help me out.

JediKirby

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Epic: Episode I TC, Epic: Podracing Mod MP/SP, Epic: Starbattles Mod MP/SP

I hate to be even more of a reality check, but your idea of having player's information "stored" on the "server" is a nice idea, but will never work.

1) JK can't write files to do this, so it would all have to be done with memory. THis may sound easy enough, but think about the amount of indevidual players that will play. unless you plan on having all 31 players connected at all times, you will need an infinite amount of varibles available to store any joe shmoe's info, regardless of if he will come back to play again or not.

2) You have absolutely no way of knowing who is who after they leave and come back, player name's are about hte only thing that is the same, and that wouldnt be hard to "hack" into someone else's player "account". not to mention devising a system in COG that stores player names and checks against them would be really fun too.

2.5) Along with the idea of it being impossible to write files with JK, and store them in memory effectively, you have the idea to have multiple levels? No, that IS impossible. There is absolutely no way that JK can send data from one GAME to another without writing to a file (save game files) and that only happens in SP, very poorly at that.

3) people have said it before, lag. Ever notice how much JK lags on its own with only 4 players and no mods? well, triggers lag like 10x more than that, plus you have 32 machines to send info to over p2p. have fun with players running in place, rotating around and around, and continuously falling and re-falling off of a ledge. You'll be lucky if you can get to level 2 in a year if you don't shoot yourself first. PLus, with all of this lag, the accuracy and reaction time modifications would have absolutely no point.

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I'm just an old man with a skooma problem.