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You want something like EV but online multiplayer? Go here: (url="http://"http://alienorb.com/celestium.html")http://alienorb.com/celestium.html(/url) for some very basic graphics, but I have been talking to the lead developer for it and the game sounds so insanley cool its not even funny.
"Badges? We no neeed no steeeenkin badges!"
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Parsec is completely different from EVMP as we (will) know it - EVMP as a concept is a complex, player-interaction oriented game that's a far cry from the massively multiplayer shoot-em-up of Parsec. And Parsec has ludicrous hardware requirements - you need a G3 with powerful 3d acceleration to play it. Admittedly, it's a great concept on its own, but in no way is remotely similar to EVMP.
What I meant was the way Parsec handles the distribution of the status of the galaxy - i.e. connected gameservers. Plugins could be distributed in the same way; hosted at gamervers, and their data distributed to clients. As for the graphics requirements - it's easier to go from 3D to 2D than the other way around. In other words, leaving all other features of Parsec alone, the MP aspect could be adapted to EV.
------------------ We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill...
Knucklehead wrote: **Primarily, I have a problem with what most people think when a planet is dominated. First of all, when a planet is dominated, you do not own that planet, you just recieve money from it every so often. The original government still owns that planet and system. Therefore, in a multiplayer setting, eveyone could dominate one planet and everyone would get money from that planet. No loss of tribute when the next player demands tribute for himself. This is a major source of confusion. For a network game that feels like EV/EVO, this is what I feel should be done.
**
I agree that domination does not deliver control of the planet, and this could simplify some of the problems we were discussing earlier on, such as control over upgrading shipyards, upgrading deffences, etc. It would be interesting if you could control planets, however. Although I think that this would add a lot to the game, this would add a lot to the size of the game, and the requirements for data transfer as well, since spöb information would have to be transfered as well. If we (the servers, the game controllers, etc) had really good, high bandwith connections this would be a worthwhile feature. For the current time, however, I would delay it untill a future version after servers and software is established on the internet.
------------------ Zitchas
Obormot wrote: **Have any of you guys heard of Parsec? (www.parsec.org) I don't think that was mentioned. That is, in essence, multiplayer EV. It solves most of the problems that have been presented, except that it doesn't have missions, or interaction with spobs, or plugins. (Yeah, I know, that is the bulk of the problems.) But the thing is, that could be added. E.g: plugins could be hosted at, and distributed by, each gameserver. Missions and spobs aren't that hard; in fact, they're being planned for a later version of Parsec. So apart from the fact of it being totally 3D, Parsec is the answer, more or less. **
For starters, the tactics and strategy is vastely different in parsec from EVO. EVO, combat is realitively simple. you can dodge on two axis (north/south and east/west on the galactic plane, and combinations of them) parsec adds an entire new set of directions (up/down compared to the galactic plane). This makes simple flight about ten times harder to find and/or travel to any specific point, as well as about ten times harder to aim. It would transfer the main point of the game from the missions to the combat. And if we are doing that, we'll start competing with mainstream commercial games like Descent 3 and such likes. Perssonally, I do not beleive that a shareware game can seriously compete with a game like that.
Why not just make two options for when you go to take over a planet. One option would be to demand a tribute from it (you should be able to do this no matter what your combat rating is) or you could conquer it :>(your combat rating would have to be really high). Demanding tribute would be just like it is now, but if you conquered a planet you would be able to rename it and maybe create a new government or something. This is something I wished from the start that Matt would do for EV or EVO.
------------------ "I was under the influence of medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes."
Richard Nixon
Email -- SmashMaster18@hotmail.com AIM -- JolJvik
Zitchas wrote: **For starters, the tactics and strategy is vastely different in parsec from EVO. EVO, combat is realitively simple. you can dodge on two axis (north/south and east/west on the galactic plane, and combinations of them) parsec adds an entire new set of directions (up/down compared to the galactic plane). This makes simple flight about ten times harder to find and/or travel to any specific point, as well as about ten times harder to aim. It would transfer the main point of the game from the missions to the combat. And if we are doing that, we'll start competing with mainstream commercial games like Descent 3 and such likes. Perssonally, I do not beleive that a shareware game can seriously compete with a game like that. **
Zitchas, didn't you read the follow-up post? Read this:
Obormot wrote: What I meant was the way Parsec handles the distribution of the status of the galaxy - i.e. connected gameservers. Plugins could be distributed in the same way; hosted at gamervers, and their data distributed to clients. As for the graphics requirements - it's easier to go from 3D to 2D than the other way around. In other words, leaving all other features of Parsec alone, the MP aspect could be adapted to EV.
On a completely different note, planetary domination could be pretty simple to handle - you can command an invading army and capture a planet for the govt. you're working for. For demanding tribute, just send a threatening message to the head of the govt., if they take you seriously, they'll pay you to stay away, if not, they'll blast you up with their defense fleet.
------------------ "Be quiet. I'm inspiring you." -my Spanish teacher
I apologize for this small tangent but...
We seem to be in a mental rut regarding structure. We are thinking very hard about going from system to system as if that will be our primary method of travel and action. How about thinking in other terms. Think of plugins which had multiple destinations in a system, and think of how the sol system was set up in FH/FF and that is a start.
My idea is a single server is a single system. Within that that system are many destinations, from fuel dumps to trading stations to asteroid refineries, colinies, solar power stations, planet, stations, and other locales. The system has a set size, but it would take a player a long time (probably 3 days, realtime) to traverse its boundaries by "normal propulsion" which all ships have. Within certain areas, like in orbit above a planet or asteroid settlements in clusters, normal propulsion is fine for any character. For traveling far, you have to travel in a hyperspace capable ship and do a local hyperspace jump to a destination/beacon in that system (done much the same as EV does now, you accelerating a bit then poping out at the other end). Because it is a local jump, you aren't leaving, and nothing really changes except your position in the 2d map. For going to other systems/servers, you need to initiate a big jump, with appropriate realtime lag to load new data from the new server. By making the local area more dense and interesting, you make the players want to stay and explore/play. By making the local area one large space, instead of many independant ones, it should solve some aspects of the server load issue (it knows all player positions at all moments) but adds complexity (managing far more interacting players). One possible solution may lie along the idea of the client only requesting info for the area the player can see, while the server keeps tabs of everything and sending the data the client asks for only. Isn't Everquest done somewhat similarly to this?
It just seems like making the story/activity more local would be just as interesting if not more so to players than jumping all over the galaxy, because each system has so much to offer that you want to hang around.
In response to what hawk wrote.
I agree that making fewer huge systems, each on one server could help simplify the hyperjump problems. If we had a large enough severs, we could expand the system/per server to include, say, all of voinian space. In this situation, it would probably take about a week to fly across, for a shutle. In this case, it would make the UE space seem more remote, and the entire universe would seem much bigger, even if it wasn't. For in "server" hyperjumps we could actually have something like a warp drive (like the hyperdrive in Ares) This method should take about 10-30 min(depending on ship mass) to cross all of voinian space. Hyeperjumps could be massive things (10-30 secs, depending on the size of ship) only for transfering between servers, and would actually have grey blur backrond to save on graphics data. You would be able to send messages while in hyperspace.
Nice sugestion, Hawk
I think it is important to make the distinction that this would be an unwrapped 2d space, and that if a player was gunghoe enough, they could travel by "normal propulsion" to any point on the server, if they can put up with the wait. Also, only the publically known destinations are autoloaded into the client upon entering a server/system, and you can add to your"local knowledge" buy bying maps of the local area (set map distance) or of interesting destinations not auto loaded (mercenary hangouts). For private meetings and privateers/pirates to get together, there should be the added capability of setting the autopilot to a specific 2d grid reference so you can meet out in "deep space" or go to a destination not listed but provided by a mission text, "graffiti", or by a fellow player. This sort of gets into another issue of player communications. No one can know you're whereabouts in the server, but you can message directly someone by name . You can choose to release your coordinates to others (a little ticker shows your grid refernce). This is in ship mode, which can get annoying if you are fighting and need to reply to someone (a suggestion was made to allow users to record standard replies in the preferences of their client, mapped to function keys). In destination mode, there is a chat space on the lower part of the screen, and a a graphic allowing you to go to various mission computers (general for "special" missions and standard trader fare and government missions, company computers to pick up delivery/retrieval missions, guild computers for merc guilds, spacer guilds, trader guilds), go to the bar for bar missions and a general chat area, and the spaceport lounge rooms, where there are "private" chat rooms. Shipyard link will send you to the shipbuilders and outfitters. I am of the personal opinion that in battle, you are first disabled and exposed to boarding. If you are boarded by others, your cargo and your outfits, if not your ship is up for grabs unless you installed an internal security system outfit, have enough crew to fend off a boarding, or hit the self destruct. If you fend off a boarding by crew or internal system, you are disabled until a set time limit, where you get no weapons, shields are at zero, until you limp into port. If your ship is taken, the ship you got dumped on is boobytrapped (shields at zero and no weapons until you put in to a destination). If you are still shot at and get destroyed, or pull the self destruct, you auto eject. You can also abandon ship, and set for autodestruct if anyone besides you attempts to board, though certain outfits may defeat such a system (leaves the interesting concept of hoard ships containing valuable cargo you dump into while flying a faster/better ship, then take the hoard ship into port and cash in). All ships have an escape pod that eject automatically, but you don't get a new shuttle. You can get rescued by others, but at that point you are a slaved client, just watching your rescuers ship until they pull into a real port with a shipyard (will need to be able to have rescuers give money to these poor folks as they probably lost it all). Save points are only at destinations, as that is the only place to logout.
This would provide a EV-esqe interface, chat support that isn't terribly intrusive, and some interesting possibilities, such as being a simple merchant (carrying outfits to other places can make money), a raider, a merc, a governmetn lackey, or a passenger line pilot.
Certain requirements such as a standardized set of ships, and how to deal with local ship types and outfits that are unavailable at other servers are issues to be addressed, as well as cheaters boosting their ship while logged out by hacking their resources.
A couple of ideas from someone new to this webboard-some of these have already been proposed
1. bars/mission computers-what if spaceport bars functioned as chat rooms, and mission computers functioned as bulletin boards like this? Anyone in that bar could chat or watch the news. The computers would serve for people to leave messages for each other, and to post missions. For example, if I wanted to tell something to my friend halfway across the galaxy in his ship, I would land and post a message only retrievable by my friend. When he landed at a different planet, he would find that message. For another example, let's say that I was a rich merchant, and there was a pirate who really annoyed me. Because my ship was not powerful enough to take him on, I could post a bounty. A warrior who needed cash could kill that pirate and then get the reward, and we would both be happy. Hiring an escort would also be handled through the bulletin boards or chat rooms.
2. missions-the primary focus of gameplay is the missions, right? how about if anyone could post a mission. Simple deliveries and such would be made by the computer or by GMs. However, anything more complex would be made by a person, not a computer. I believe that people should be able to form orders/clans, such as the Zachit or EVFF's Stellar Salvage. The founders of these groups would design their own initiation missions/membership tests. Then, if someone wanted a package delivered somewhere, he would make a mission available only to members of a reputable courier service. This raises the questions of whether these organizations should be able to own/buy ports and function as governments (in the role of GMs). I believe they should. Thus, the line between GMs and players would be blurred. In conclusion, missions would be both individually tailored missions and human-created but computer-generated missions based on human-created mission schemata.
3. legal standing, points, karma, etc.--Each government would assess legal standing in its own way, probably programmmed by a type of scripting language. (this is why the actual programming of the internet game engine would need to be modular to an extreme) In addition to legal standing and combat rating, the game should track something along the lines of karma. You would lose karma for shooting down those with good karma, or taking certain missions. Organizations/gov'ts could decide whether to hire you based on these factors.
4. who says it has to be in the EVO universe? Also, pleeeeeeease no ground combat-keep the game true to its purpose.
5. Real real time, delayed hyperjumps (30 seconds for a cruiser, maybe 8 for a courier-type ship) are definately good ideas.
"The date is out of such prolixity"--Mercutio (or was it Benvolio)
"We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world"--Dan Quayle
I really like Hawk's ideas... They would make the game far more strategically oriented, sorta Bolo like If the multi-player gets to a bolo-esque stage then EVMP would be an instant clasic. How about a new set of outfits relating to sensor tech. You could specify how much range the sensor would have, what types of interference it could punch through, maybe even detect different levels of cloaking... Turrets and the autoalign key would of course be linked to the sensor system. Weapon error would be calculated as a deviation from the angle that the sensor provides. Increased sensor resolution could be achieved by creating more subdivisions between angles, etc. allowing for long range accuracy. That would be sorta cool, once a ship passes out of your sensor range, it would simply disappear.
Hacked player files... simple encryption or checksumming would easily defeat any attempts by almost anyone to modify their player file. The checksums could be stored server side even.
I like Hawk's ideas on outfits realting to boarding/fending off boarding, and all of that stuff. It would give added realisme to the game. (as well as giving a reasson for having a self-destruct button) How about engineering pods that decrease the time you'll spend disabled? The length of time you're disabled should probably be based on your armour repair rate, since, repairing ship systems isn't too far from repairing the hull. However, I think that you should be limited to about 1/2 speed, and 1/2 sheilds, and say 1/4 of your primary weapons. These should increase to about 2/3, 2/3, and 3/4 over the course of time, say about half a day (say about 1 day game time = 1 hour real time, we can debate this, but I'll just use it for now) for the speed and sheilds, and about a full day for the weapons. Secondary weapons should fire at about half rate untill you find a planet with a shipyard. I's say landing on any inhabited planet or station should boust everything to the 2/3, 2/3, 3/4 mark, BUT, you'll have to get to a planet/station with a shipyard or outfiting shop (and thus proper repair facilities) to get full 100% capabilities again.
Another thing, relating to the sensers and turrets, would be that you can't lock onto a target that is outside your radar screen, and you couldn't scan ships that are more than 1/2 the width of the radar screen beyond the edge. Then, there would be uprades that enhance the range that your radar screen covers, the detail and precision of your radar (and thus your turets and missiles) and the efficiaty of your radar (resistence to interference).
On a similar note, it would be neat to have jammers that actually cause interference on the radar screen. Like having a secondary weapon, that instead of dropping a flare, it baths the area in heavy duty radiation (while draining fuel). I think that all jammers, and such likes should increaes the latent interference in the area aound the ship by about 5 to 50 points, depending on its stregth. This effect as well as it's jamming abilities.
Zitchas wrote: ... Then, there would be uprades that enhance the range that your radar screen covers, the detail and precision of your radar (and thus your turets and missiles)...
Turrets, OK... But missiles usually have their own independant guidance systems. Of course interferance systems should affect missile guidance, but they should for the most part be unaffected by whatever sensor upgrades your ship has. This also creates the possibility for remote guided missiles that would function like how you describe. They would attack whatever you currently have selected in your targeting system. Thus, if you shoot one of these missiles off at an enemy that happens to get destroyed before your missile reaches him, no problem... change targets and it will similarily adjust. If you pass out of range of the ship then the missile loses it's target and flies off. If the missile flies out of range of your ship then it becomes disabled.
How about this. Make ships systems far more modular A ship, on it's own, would have no sensor capabilities, no jump capabilities, no weapon capabilities (same as now), no jamming, stealth, or cloak capabilities, etc... When you design the ship, you specify which outfits will be built into it. There will be highly customisable outfit templates for everything neccesary... sensors, jump engines, just like weaponry is now. This rather simple shifting of resouces would allow a great deal more flexibility, and allow those people who are trying to do Star Wars/ Star Trek/ and other sci-fi universes to create a far more convincing environment. For example, in Star Trek, larger vessels usually have much faster warp times, since they have larger engines and thus more power for their warp drives. Some vessels have no warp capabilities at all. To create this, all you would have to do is create a different jump engine for each ship you that requires one, specify the fuel/energy usage, the maximum speed, etc. and make it unpurchasable anywhere. Then you assign each of these drives to their respective ships and you're done. Nice and clean, and allows for all the flexibility that we only have with weapons systems right now. Just look at all the hacks that have been created with weapons alone to create different effects ;). Now think of all that flexibilty in almost every aspect of the game...
In response to kBerg, I think that the missile scenario he described would add to the game a fair bit. However, some missiles should be "lauch and forget" missiles that will not change targets when you hit the scanner key. As well, players would probably want a seperate scanner. Thus you would have a scnanner and a weapon lock. The weapon lock scanner would be what guides the missiles, turrets, etc. The regular scanner would just give the player the opportunity to see who is in the area, as well as target for the com. system, and none weaponry things. As well, there should be some way to "lock" your weapons scanner so you don't accidently shift your fire to someone else. (warship has large stream of missiles heading o pound a voinian cruiser, his bay sister comes up and pokes the keyboard, and BOOM sudenly an innocent human freighter gets blown to smithereens.)*** replace "little sister" with any other potentiel distraction.
Anoter thing, is that, being humans, the computer can't instictively say that this ship or that ship is hostile. So, using the above system for scanners, you could say that a hostile ship is any ship that : a)is locked onto you, your escorts, or any ship allied with you or the govt for which you are working. any ship that belongs to a govt that is directly opposed to yours. or c) is locked onto by you, your escorts, or any ship allied with you or the govt your working for. A dull red dot on your scanner would indicate hostile, but not actively attacking, or targeting anyone. bright red would indicate that it is actively hostile and has a lock on someone. pulsing would mean that one of your escorts or a ship allied with you has a lock on it, while flashing indicates that you have a lock on it. Maybe also have different icons for different ship types. small cercle for small freighter types (shutle, courier, light freither, scout, etc) a large cercle for lager freighters (heavy freighter, miranu freighters, etc) square, small and large, for warships, and triangles, small and large, for fighters and simmeler craft. Sort of like the system used in Ares. Green would indicate escortes, and allied ships, blue neutral, and grey disabled.
kberg, I'd like to add one thing to your development goals that I think is important - implemeting interactive control of you financial resources. In other owrds, being able to transfer your money from your account to someone else's.
This could be used as follows. I, say, am a renegade. A government hires another player to kill me for 100,000 credits. As he starts firing at me, I hail him and say: "I'll give you 50% more than you're being paid if you leave me alone." Player takes bribe and aborts mission. By the way, you'll have to do something like this anyway to let players offer missions, I'm just suggesting making it more versatile.
Oh yes, I just thought of something else. How about the option of storing your money in a good bank, because otherwise when people disbale you and board you, they'll be able to take your hard-earned cash. Also a cargo storage option or something similar.
Heh, I hope Dave Leservoy is reading this... I asked him (since he's a professional graphic designer, what the heck) to do some interface mock-ups for me. Right now, as I envision it, when you land you there would be significantly more to do. There has to be a mission related comm center, the bar will turn into a social comm center. The bank idea... wow, good fix! I was thinking that it would be rather harsh for a person to lose all their hard earned millions to the first pirate who comes along. Maybe planets could generate interest off the amount of money deposited in their local bank... Adds another feature to gameplay for those whom want their own economic empire... Tribute then could be a one-time payment of maybe x% of all the money invested in the planet. This also goes along with the idea of a planets admin having to actualy buy and upkeep their defense fleet. As they make more money, they can buy more ships... They can guarantee people that their money will be safe, they deposit more money on the planet, round and round... I think player should be presented with a dialog box similar to the one you get when you capture a ship whenever they purchase another ship from the shipyard. This rather simple patch would allow people to buy their own defense fleet. Pretty consistent with the existing EV/EVO interface. Escort ships would keep their upgrades, and this way you could modify and upgrade your defense fleet. When you try and board an escort, it would transfer your command to that ship...
Also, does anyone here know if SpriteWorld and DrawSprocket will play nice together??? If anyone here has experience combining the two, let me know.
All of these things are great but no one has satisfied the central issue at stake: Server capacity, organizeation, and genneral game control by GMs/admins.
Because so many people will want to play and there will be only so many servers the following system could be employed:
The game starts off with an EV sized Gallexy. People sign up for the game and among those that sign up a lottery is drawn and those people that make it are allowed to play. They then download the game, pay for it, and play. (How the game is matters not) They are given unlimited access to the game. After that, a second group of people are selected that do not have to pay for it and can play only if their is a slot open. If people in the first group play for less then X amount per Y amount of time they are lowered to the second group. As the capacity of the server(s) increases more people from the second group are allowed into the first and both groups get bigger. The idea is to slowely increase the size of the game by adding more planets and systems to keep in proportion to the server capacity and number of players. Depending on how the finances work out the makers (who ever they are) may have to also charge some sort of continious fee for use but hopefuly that can be avoided.
Some sort of variation on this is the best way to do things.
-Walter- into the second and
Another issue that would have to be decided - how are interstellar data communications handled (within the game context, that is)?
In EVO, although this isn't clearly spelt out at any point, most of the aliens have access to ansible* like devices, but the humans have to carry all information being passed between systems around by ship (thus officers like d'Erlon get a lot of free rein, since it would take more than a week to consult with High Command). As for EV, I'm not sure, although it seems to be implied at certain points that this sort of communication is possible.
Anyway, for a single player scenario, the only real effect is (and was) in a few mission descriptions. For a multi-player game, the potential implications are enormous. A few examples:
- if ansibles are common-place (ie. every ship and stellar has one), then you could chat with anyone, anywhere at almost any time. You could post missions that would appear everywhere in the galaxy. You could give orders to fleets from a distant command post far from the battle, etc. IMO this sort of thing would give too much control over things to a few powerful people - the game should retain a free-wheeling, frontier, atmosphere. I suspect this would also be hard to program, since it would entail (a lot of) real-time communication between people running on different servers.
- if ansibles are rare or non-existent, many new options open up for ship captains. There could be missions to take messages between systems, to go around placing advert broadcasting pods all over the place, to leave mission notifications at various places (eg. telling everyone you can find how much someone will pay to see ship X destroyed) and simply to carry the mail. If you wanted to communicate with another player they would have a mailbox at a certain stellar, and you'd need to find a ship to take the message there, or do so yourself, and they would then get it the next time they checked in at their home port. All these are quite nice ideas (and I think it would be quite good being fred@freeport.ind, or mcpherson@luna.ue, or whatever) but unfortunately players would have access to their own sort of ansible - e-mail, and boards like this, which would rather circumvent all these elaborate methods.
- the best idea IMO, is for ansibles to be fairly common but that only stations and planets have them, and not ships (for whatever rationale is thought up). And also access to them is limited. This way the player is entirely independent and his own master while on his ship, but once on a station the galaxy is at your fingertips and communication is much easier - you would be able to post missions anywhere, and send messages to people anywhere, but only chat with those at the same port.
Another issue this would all affect is how money works. If, for example, two worlds have good relations and good ansible communications between them, then there is no need to 'carry' your credits with you when travelling between them - you could have an account on one world which the other would check with by ansible. This means of course that pirates wouldn't be able to steal your cash - since you're only carrying the equivalent of plastic - and pirate ships would have to make sure they had good-sized cargo bays to make a profit from raiding.
Conversely (and this is what is assumed in most of Override), if two planets don't share a currency, then you'd have to carry some small, convenient, valuable cargo (like gold or gems or whatever else is likely to be valued everywhere) - which could of course easily be stolen. - What is decided early on in questions like this would have a great effect on how any final game would end up playing.
I'm sure you can think of lots of other effects the presence or absence of things like this would have, this is mainly just to get people thinking about it.
Peter Cartwright
------------------ ... you wonder if their eating of the eels isn't a little too overt ...