Hello! New to the community.. Happy to be on board!
by Scott Kearney · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 07/17/2003 (10:00 pm) · 4 replies
Just purchased a Torque license tonight, and finished my checkout. Unfortunately, I probably won't have time to look at the code until this weekend, but I've spent a few hours reading the forums and I read a lot of really interesting things and helpful responses to others' posts that played a part in my decision to license.. And of course, I'm pretty excited about toying around with the engine, too!
What I'd like to try to do with the engine, instead of making an all-out MMORPG or MMORFPS, is to make a 3d MUD server/client. It would be released free of charge, so my focus is going to be on creating ways for in-game modification of the environment so that players can customize things, with more extensive in-game and out-game possibilities for the server admin. Ideally, it would be possible to construct an entire map from within the map itself...I don't know if this is really possible without massive modifications to the Torque code, but I've seen the effect before in games like Magic Carpet and Populous... Molyneux seems to love deformable terrain.
I've always found MUD's and MUSH's to be the most entertaining form of online entertainment overall, and I think that MMORPGs are great ideas, but that their scale, cost, and inherent time-obligations prevent them from becoming as fun or as popular as they could be. Just to clarify on why I think their scale hurts them (the second two should be obvious), I think that since they are so huge and have to maintain consistency on a large scale, it limits local flexibility, for example, you can't escape the general fantasy genre on Everquest. If you want to do that, you need to pay for another game, like Anarchy online, which you're probably not going to do if you're already on Everquest, because of the aforementioned time and cash requirements.
MUD's being free also has led to a large variety of servers and and choice in what kind of game you want to play. PvP, consent-based, RP, fighting, sci-fi, fantasy, social, etc..
One question I do have, is whether or not I'd be liable in any way if somebody downloaded a program I made and created a Star Wars 3dMUD. I'd assume that, with a proper EULA, I'd be exempt from any infringement suit, if the responsibility was the end user's... Any thoughts on that? I'm not sure, with the GG EULA stating that I cannot put any illegal content in my games, whether or not that would extend to end users putting illegal content within my games. I don't plan on extending the 128 player limit (not significantly anyway), so hopefully people would still be able to host their own copyright infringing fan-games without stepping on MMORPG toes, but you never know..
Anyway, I should disclaim this all with the statement it will probably never get done, but hopefully I can make some contributions and learn a lot while I'm at it! If anyone has any previous experience with any ideas like this, or any comments or opinions on it (or more ideas), I'd love to hear them before I start endeavoring away or wasting my time (take your pick).
What I'd like to try to do with the engine, instead of making an all-out MMORPG or MMORFPS, is to make a 3d MUD server/client. It would be released free of charge, so my focus is going to be on creating ways for in-game modification of the environment so that players can customize things, with more extensive in-game and out-game possibilities for the server admin. Ideally, it would be possible to construct an entire map from within the map itself...I don't know if this is really possible without massive modifications to the Torque code, but I've seen the effect before in games like Magic Carpet and Populous... Molyneux seems to love deformable terrain.
I've always found MUD's and MUSH's to be the most entertaining form of online entertainment overall, and I think that MMORPGs are great ideas, but that their scale, cost, and inherent time-obligations prevent them from becoming as fun or as popular as they could be. Just to clarify on why I think their scale hurts them (the second two should be obvious), I think that since they are so huge and have to maintain consistency on a large scale, it limits local flexibility, for example, you can't escape the general fantasy genre on Everquest. If you want to do that, you need to pay for another game, like Anarchy online, which you're probably not going to do if you're already on Everquest, because of the aforementioned time and cash requirements.
MUD's being free also has led to a large variety of servers and and choice in what kind of game you want to play. PvP, consent-based, RP, fighting, sci-fi, fantasy, social, etc..
One question I do have, is whether or not I'd be liable in any way if somebody downloaded a program I made and created a Star Wars 3dMUD. I'd assume that, with a proper EULA, I'd be exempt from any infringement suit, if the responsibility was the end user's... Any thoughts on that? I'm not sure, with the GG EULA stating that I cannot put any illegal content in my games, whether or not that would extend to end users putting illegal content within my games. I don't plan on extending the 128 player limit (not significantly anyway), so hopefully people would still be able to host their own copyright infringing fan-games without stepping on MMORPG toes, but you never know..
Anyway, I should disclaim this all with the statement it will probably never get done, but hopefully I can make some contributions and learn a lot while I'm at it! If anyone has any previous experience with any ideas like this, or any comments or opinions on it (or more ideas), I'd love to hear them before I start endeavoring away or wasting my time (take your pick).
About the author
#2
That's a really good point about consulting a lawyer on the EULA. I would imagine that visual depictions of potentially copyrighted things, in the context of a 3d fan-run MUD, would fall under the same category as, say, a fan-site, which inevitably also carries images and/or sound bites from whatever material the site is about. Of course, lately, certain parties have become very sensitive about infringing materials anywhere on the intenet, for example: music.
Obviously, a lot of fan sites still exist, and while it seems like there is an occasional wave of copyright-holder induced fan-site shutdowns, that the practice as a whole is not being wholly outlawed, or even necessarily discouraged. Even some of the copyright holders who have shut down fan sites, like Paramount, have come back and said they encourage fan-sites. They just have rules you need to follow, which are maybe a bit restrictive, but what's legal is legal, so you do what you can.
As far as bringing assets to a 3d MUD, that's a big problem. I think the best solution is to take a Sims-like approach in offering a wide variety of objects, and maybe going a bit further by allowing custom skins. Character customization should also follow the sims...allowing different body types and heads..and maybe other parts as well (arms, legs?). A lot of what I'm trying to do here is tie together concepts present in the following:
- Morrowind (large, scenic, explorable areas, pretty interiors...lots of objects to buy/wear/use)
- Animal Crossing (nintendo) (lots of decor options for your house, real-time, persistent relationships)
- The Sims (lots of options for customization, good builder/painter UI)
- MUDs and MUSHes (the main paradigm I'd like to adapt the above things into)
My goal is to make it as easy as possible for user customization, which will hopefully relieve me from having to work on massive amounts of skins and texturse, and to a lesser extent: 3d models. Just like with current MUDs, most content should be developed by the MUD admin(s). I just want to make some (really effective) building blocks.
Everything would need to be doable in-game. Worldcraft and Milkshape are complete no-nos, as they're too complex for casual gamers to deal with. I know from reading these forums that if you modify the map, you need to relight it, so that's a problem that would interfere with dynamic construction. I was thinking maybe I could make "building blocks" in both worldcraft and milkshape..and when in-game, people could build things in real-time with 3d-models (from millkshape), and then at a specified time, the map can be processed, those 3d models replaced with worldcraft models, and then relit. Not the most graceful thing in the world, but maybe the easiest way to start. I wonder if it's possible to relight a portion of the map, dynamically. That way, you could avoid reloading the entire map, and just relight a small zone that's already loaded in memory in real time.
Another concern is frame rates and bandwidth requirements. It's unlikely that this game would be ideal for nitty-gritty FPS, skill-oriented combat, except on really well situated servers (fat pipes). It should be able to scale to poor bandwidth well.
07/18/2003 (1:18 am)
Hi Nauris!That's a really good point about consulting a lawyer on the EULA. I would imagine that visual depictions of potentially copyrighted things, in the context of a 3d fan-run MUD, would fall under the same category as, say, a fan-site, which inevitably also carries images and/or sound bites from whatever material the site is about. Of course, lately, certain parties have become very sensitive about infringing materials anywhere on the intenet, for example: music.
Obviously, a lot of fan sites still exist, and while it seems like there is an occasional wave of copyright-holder induced fan-site shutdowns, that the practice as a whole is not being wholly outlawed, or even necessarily discouraged. Even some of the copyright holders who have shut down fan sites, like Paramount, have come back and said they encourage fan-sites. They just have rules you need to follow, which are maybe a bit restrictive, but what's legal is legal, so you do what you can.
As far as bringing assets to a 3d MUD, that's a big problem. I think the best solution is to take a Sims-like approach in offering a wide variety of objects, and maybe going a bit further by allowing custom skins. Character customization should also follow the sims...allowing different body types and heads..and maybe other parts as well (arms, legs?). A lot of what I'm trying to do here is tie together concepts present in the following:
- Morrowind (large, scenic, explorable areas, pretty interiors...lots of objects to buy/wear/use)
- Animal Crossing (nintendo) (lots of decor options for your house, real-time, persistent relationships)
- The Sims (lots of options for customization, good builder/painter UI)
- MUDs and MUSHes (the main paradigm I'd like to adapt the above things into)
My goal is to make it as easy as possible for user customization, which will hopefully relieve me from having to work on massive amounts of skins and texturse, and to a lesser extent: 3d models. Just like with current MUDs, most content should be developed by the MUD admin(s). I just want to make some (really effective) building blocks.
Everything would need to be doable in-game. Worldcraft and Milkshape are complete no-nos, as they're too complex for casual gamers to deal with. I know from reading these forums that if you modify the map, you need to relight it, so that's a problem that would interfere with dynamic construction. I was thinking maybe I could make "building blocks" in both worldcraft and milkshape..and when in-game, people could build things in real-time with 3d-models (from millkshape), and then at a specified time, the map can be processed, those 3d models replaced with worldcraft models, and then relit. Not the most graceful thing in the world, but maybe the easiest way to start. I wonder if it's possible to relight a portion of the map, dynamically. That way, you could avoid reloading the entire map, and just relight a small zone that's already loaded in memory in real time.
Another concern is frame rates and bandwidth requirements. It's unlikely that this game would be ideal for nitty-gritty FPS, skill-oriented combat, except on really well situated servers (fat pipes). It should be able to scale to poor bandwidth well.
#3
So, "creators" should have to balance various parts carefully as certain parts could annihilate each others stats etc.
Lots of testing. Lots of testing, but if its freeware, you can get whole lot of players as beta testers and they even have no reasons to complain:)
But your concept now lacks the focus. I mean - why should players create new things? what's in it for them? In MUDs, if i recall correctly, it was a priviledge of godlike characters. but it lacked the goal nevertheless. it was more becoming the op of your favourite chat room.
if you create new places and new monsters, you have to get out something of it. if every player was some kind of supernatural being, for example, god of small willage of npcs, trying to expand the influence and fight other gods, forge aliances with them and so on, it would make sense. seems kind of Black&White concept although I havent played the game.
maybe god can possess bodies of his NPC worshippers. so it makes sense to protect them, let the level maybe.
dont know, this sounds complicated.
07/18/2003 (1:59 am)
The way I see how it would be doable (although, it would require lots of initial work, then again, what doesnt) is - create sets of initial elements. Kinda primitives. Separate monsters primitives (such as bodies, legs, arms and heads), architectural primitives (walls, arches, stairs etc). Each primitive (for monsters for example) could have its own statistics, based on stats and skills in the game, one positive and one negative for example.So, "creators" should have to balance various parts carefully as certain parts could annihilate each others stats etc.
Lots of testing. Lots of testing, but if its freeware, you can get whole lot of players as beta testers and they even have no reasons to complain:)
But your concept now lacks the focus. I mean - why should players create new things? what's in it for them? In MUDs, if i recall correctly, it was a priviledge of godlike characters. but it lacked the goal nevertheless. it was more becoming the op of your favourite chat room.
if you create new places and new monsters, you have to get out something of it. if every player was some kind of supernatural being, for example, god of small willage of npcs, trying to expand the influence and fight other gods, forge aliances with them and so on, it would make sense. seems kind of Black&White concept although I havent played the game.
maybe god can possess bodies of his NPC worshippers. so it makes sense to protect them, let the level maybe.
dont know, this sounds complicated.
#4
Anyway, you ask "What's in it for them?" I think that the answer would have to be one directed at the server admins, since I plan on leaving most of the actual game creation work up to them. A good MUSH or MUD server (in the text-based world) is one that provides an admin with maximum flexibility to create the game they want, while providing a high level of abstraction, so very little programming knowledge is needed.
I am not aware of any decent product out there that provides this in 3d for free, although I know there have been attempts. One that comes to mind was a MUD client named Pueblo, which allowed some static graphics to be embedded into muds (only using the pueblo client, of course).
Anyway, this never succeeded. I think one of the big reasons it did not succeed was that the client was windows-only, whereas a lot of MUD players used telnet via a unix box at work or school. Windows is more dominant in both of those environments now than it was back in '95, so that disadvantage may be gone. However, aside from that, the Pueblo MUD client was first and foremost a text-based client. And it wasn't even a very good one. There were far better alternatives, if the only advantage that Pueblo offered was the ability to display some static resources off the web in tandem with certain events on the MUD, I don't think that's worth the trouble of a difficult UI. Also, there was a cost for Pueblo, not sure if it was shareware, or what. I forget what the deal was, but it was not entirely free. Another reason is because people didn't want to make lots of graphics themselves.
So I guess Pueblo wasn't really in any way related to 3d, but I think it was a good lesson in how not to get something to succeed. If you don't have a budget, you really have to go grassroots, and they don't let you on the hippy bandwagon if you ask them for money. That being said, I don't want to immediately sour myself to the GarageGames company. If this thing ever catches on, I'd be very keen on making a "pro" version of the client, which would allow for greater customization and maybe some much improved UI's for creating things in-game.
In terms of what powers the players should have, I think it should be the following:
- they should be allowed full access to scripting, to make their own 'mods' for their own server
- there should be a robust in-game method to build structures and terrain
- there should be a robust in-game method of dynamic polygon morphing and skinning, to allow people to create custom objects
- there should be some sort of in-game way to take advantage of scriptable events, either some sort fo direct access to the scripting engine, or a further abstracted scripting langauge
- the admin user would get full reign over all of these abilities, and would be able to limit non-admin players
- all game data will be persistent, in a database, so when the game is reloaded, the state of all objects and players will be reloaded
My most recent exposure to MUD/MUSHes was with PennMUSH and TinyMUSH/MUX, and in these servers, there exist a large number of commands and abilities that allow people to replicate certain behaviors. For example, anybody can teleport into any publically accessible area. So people were able to code things like air transports, which instead of having an object move through some conceptual "airspace", you would instead enter an object entitled "helicopter" or something, and then it would teleport into a single room called "above the city" or something, and then it would stay there for a few minutes, and then teleport to your destination, at which point you could disembark.
A lot of fudging went on, which is easier to do when everything is text based, since it's a lot easier to create realistic descriptions of behaviors, rather than actual behaviors, but my goal is to find some method that will serve as an effective, graphical substitute for this.
07/18/2003 (2:02 pm)
My reply got killed by me forgetting to pay my internet bill. Back in action now!Anyway, you ask "What's in it for them?" I think that the answer would have to be one directed at the server admins, since I plan on leaving most of the actual game creation work up to them. A good MUSH or MUD server (in the text-based world) is one that provides an admin with maximum flexibility to create the game they want, while providing a high level of abstraction, so very little programming knowledge is needed.
I am not aware of any decent product out there that provides this in 3d for free, although I know there have been attempts. One that comes to mind was a MUD client named Pueblo, which allowed some static graphics to be embedded into muds (only using the pueblo client, of course).
Anyway, this never succeeded. I think one of the big reasons it did not succeed was that the client was windows-only, whereas a lot of MUD players used telnet via a unix box at work or school. Windows is more dominant in both of those environments now than it was back in '95, so that disadvantage may be gone. However, aside from that, the Pueblo MUD client was first and foremost a text-based client. And it wasn't even a very good one. There were far better alternatives, if the only advantage that Pueblo offered was the ability to display some static resources off the web in tandem with certain events on the MUD, I don't think that's worth the trouble of a difficult UI. Also, there was a cost for Pueblo, not sure if it was shareware, or what. I forget what the deal was, but it was not entirely free. Another reason is because people didn't want to make lots of graphics themselves.
So I guess Pueblo wasn't really in any way related to 3d, but I think it was a good lesson in how not to get something to succeed. If you don't have a budget, you really have to go grassroots, and they don't let you on the hippy bandwagon if you ask them for money. That being said, I don't want to immediately sour myself to the GarageGames company. If this thing ever catches on, I'd be very keen on making a "pro" version of the client, which would allow for greater customization and maybe some much improved UI's for creating things in-game.
In terms of what powers the players should have, I think it should be the following:
- they should be allowed full access to scripting, to make their own 'mods' for their own server
- there should be a robust in-game method to build structures and terrain
- there should be a robust in-game method of dynamic polygon morphing and skinning, to allow people to create custom objects
- there should be some sort of in-game way to take advantage of scriptable events, either some sort fo direct access to the scripting engine, or a further abstracted scripting langauge
- the admin user would get full reign over all of these abilities, and would be able to limit non-admin players
- all game data will be persistent, in a database, so when the game is reloaded, the state of all objects and players will be reloaded
My most recent exposure to MUD/MUSHes was with PennMUSH and TinyMUSH/MUX, and in these servers, there exist a large number of commands and abilities that allow people to replicate certain behaviors. For example, anybody can teleport into any publically accessible area. So people were able to code things like air transports, which instead of having an object move through some conceptual "airspace", you would instead enter an object entitled "helicopter" or something, and then it would teleport into a single room called "above the city" or something, and then it would stay there for a few minutes, and then teleport to your destination, at which point you could disembark.
A lot of fudging went on, which is easier to do when everything is text based, since it's a lot easier to create realistic descriptions of behaviors, rather than actual behaviors, but my goal is to find some method that will serve as an effective, graphical substitute for this.
Torque Owner Nauris Krauze
this way the submitter would be kept responsible in case of legal mess.
You'd want to make a one-time visit to lawyer to phrase the agreement right. Those bucks could be well worth later on if some l337 dudes decided to add LotR and SW thingies.
But I have a question about the overall 3D MUD idea - in early MUDs there was no problem with art assets, after all, it was all text descriptions. in visualized MUD...wouldnt it become quite a problem? For example - if player decides to add some enemy class, he cant just give them a name and basic stats, he has to create 3D model as well... If that has to be done from scratch, at least "modding members" will be small bunch of people.
Maybe somekind of in-game editor, allowing to modify existing templates and adding to them?...
I havent seriously played MUDs so maybe there's somthing I dont know or simply cant imagine.
Edited: And yeah, welcome aboard:)