GG what is the deal!!!

#1 Yes, you get the source code to the engine and can modify it to add support whatever your game requirements might be -- even ONE HUGE MAP. The many of source code components we provide will be directly useable in many games others will need to modify them and/or add components. Regardless, having the source will save you countless months of work.

Just to be clear, the terrain engine that we are providing (the one that shipped in Tribes2). Is a 2 kilometer repeating tile it is not an infinite map.

Just to throw in my 2cents, if I was to do a MMPG game I would use zones -- zones will greatly simplify object ghosting and object ownership issues. I would make the zones transitions seamless, unlike EQ's "please wait loading new zone" crud.

--Rick

#2 Rick first of all to get this straight there's a reason theres' a wait period while zoning. It's because it's transfering you to another server. That's the point of zoning. I don't want zoning. Zoning is stupid. Zoning takes random pieces of the world and randomly puts it together. Zoning is not in any way realistic even if you were to make the zoning process instantaneus. The main point of zoning is to easily spread the job of the different areas andusers and calculations in between many server machines. At the beginning i'll have 1 server machine.

So let me ask you this. My teamand I DO NOT want to use zones. Does this mean V12 cannot server our pupose untill someone comes out iwth a modification that could allow us to do it? I knw i get the source but i don't know anything about engine programming nor does my team.

#3 If you try to load a single server with one huge map containing all the players, items, creatures etc... it'll most likely crash instantly.

My advice would be to create a fixed sized map, plan out the terrain for the map and divide it into managable sections. You said that zoning takes random pieces of world and sticks them together. Generating it as one big map and breaking it into zones will make them fit into eachother as they were oringinally made as one large map. Then if a player walks down a street in one zone he'll continue walking down it in the next.

#4 Thanks Jonathan. Zones are a programming thing they should never be apparent to the user. To the user it should appear to be one seamless world as they transition from zone to zone and possibly from backend server to server. I think that is exactly what you are trying to achieve, I apologize if I misunderstood the requirements.

If you're looking at purely scripting/mod'ing a MMPG then no we are not going to be an out of the box solution for you. The current V12 code supports up to 128 players, to add more you would need to do a little coding. The terrain maps are 2k x 2k and tile, if you wanted enormous terrains you would need to do a little coding. We do not do server hand offs right now, if you wanted to do that you would need to do some coding. Basically Tribes2 was not a massively multiplayer game. There are a lot of people here on the boards that want to do a MMPG and many of them are good coders so many of these technologies may become available in the future.

--Rick

#5 Rick, are you saying the map is 2 kilometers (as you stated in your first post) or 2000 pixels? If they're kilometers forgive me for being stupid, but you're talking relative scale to the movement speed and size of a typical tribes2 player? Oh btw, what sort of scale conversion does the engine use for pixels to world units? I developed mods for a game called Myth (no, not Myst) and their terrain mesh was roughly 8 pixels are terrain map per one length of terrain triangle (1wu).

I guess this is roughly on target, but not really... Does anyone know if water height in a T2 map has to be set globally and to a single level or if it can be set so that water appears over certain varied heights of the map?

#6 Okay while I was sleeping I was thinking and I think i have an idea on how to do this. Basicallly since each tile is square we can technically make one huge map and split it up into tiles. Then while in game it builds the tiles around it....

I'll make myself clear. Would it be possible to (wihtout any or much modification) to have it one tile= one zone, but instead of taking that one tile and having ti create infinity amount of that one tile, have it make one tile, then build the tiles around it, then as the user enters a new zone, it builds all the zones around that zone as he's walking in it, in theory making a true realistic world with zones but without it appearing to have zones..

The only problem i can see iwth this though is load times but i don't have T2 so i can't tell about load times. If it loaded all the zones and built them all up at once i think it might be enough to crash it but if it builds what's around it and destroys (takes out of memory) what's not around it that SHOULD work shouldn't it?

#7 So what you're saying is to have one square zone that the players can interact with, and the surrounding eight to make it look more realistic?

I'm sure it's possible, but once again it would be a waste of resources. In your MMPORPG there would allways be a "fog or war" preventing the player from seeing miles into the distance simply to not overload the players computer, as there is in tribes 2. Instead of making zones around your zone, just take the maximum visable area the player could see of the surrounding zones while standing at the very edge of the zone and add that to it. It will appear realistic without having to load all the surrounding zones at once.

#8 no i don't mean to make other squares around to make it LOOK real. okay say you have a zone, made up of 9 zones. Each zone is one tile. Now say it's set up like this:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

Okay now say i'm in the middle of town (zone 5). I'll have the engine of course put in the zone i'm in but around it zones 1,2,3,4,6,7, and 8.

now say there are 3 other zones on the outside so...

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10 11 12

Now if i want to move to zone 8 I can go through and zone without any delay (or loading please wait or anything). Then as i move into 8 it destroys zones 1,2, and 3 from memory and puts in zones 10,11, and 12, sine those are now around the current zone i'm in. Therefore no resources are really wasted and you can walk any direction and your end up in a zone already made, but be far enough away so that it has time to kill zones too far away and build zones near.

Did that make it clear?

#9 Ugh this won't work >.< Client side it should work but server side it won't. It will take a lot of proccessing power because the ocmputer will have to keep track of EVERY zone. It will have to build the WHOLE map =(

any ideas?

#10 Do a different game. I'm not technical, but it is obvious that your idea is beyond your abilities. There is still a lot you can learn from the V12, but IMHO, you should aim a little lower.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#11 Well I now understand EQ... EQ's servers don't use the map at all but merely uses pure client side detection, and my problem is clearly the reason for it. But as far as i can see it will involve editing the netcode......

ugh =(

Oh and there's a reason I'm aiming so high. I don't like other types of games. Single player RPG's are so... unoriginal and the same, single player action games are ALL the same except for dues ex, or so i've heard... I'm just not interested in single player games anymore. In my spare time i play MUCKs, MUDs, and graphical MUDs like EQ. My friends and I have been talking about this ever since i found out about 3DRAD (even tho we soon found out that this kind of game is out of the question). WE have such great ideas that would set us apart from other MMORPGs....

I guess we'll just see =(

#12 > Single player RPG's are so... unoriginal and the same

Buy a copy of "Fallout." You shall eat your words. :-)

David W. Brown

#13 Yeah I made a mistake. What I really meant was making them is in a way unoriginal. If i make a game i know exactly all the tricks, puzzles, and how to get stuff etc... which makes it no fun for me to play. I want to make games to play for fun...

#14 wait a second. I would really appreciate it if one of you folks at GG would explain how the T2 dedicated servers work.

basically the dedicated server is the engine without sound, graphics, and such correct? If this is true it doesn't use that much processing power correct? Also if the server shares the collision detecting with the client that also takes some strain off the server. Therefore doesn't this add some room for expandability for something like a good amount of zones per server machine?

Also what if we were to scale everything down. so technically we could make it seem like 4km x 4km x 4km and such correct? This would also allow for more space in the world...

#15 Mathew,

We are here to help developers make games, but we cannot hold your hand. These forums are to help explain our position and to sometimes help point people in the right direction. The GG site is full of resources for game makers and the V12 technology is on the way. We will not be able to directly answer your specific questions unless we feel they can help the majority of the GG community.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#16 I know your not here to hold my hand and i'm not asking you to. YOU guys know the workings of T2 and V12 more than me. I'm asking about the technical parts. Do I have the engine? no. Do I have knowledge on how it works? NO. I"m simply asking questions about the engine's dedicated servers and asking if ideas about ways to get around these limitations would, in theory, work.

I know that a good amount of people are thinking of making MMOG and this pertains to them!

Also i'm trying to figure out if i CAN make my game with this engine. As stated above i have NO reason for buying this engine if I can't make this game, so i'm tyring to find ways i could do this, unless of course you don't want me to buy the engine...

I didn't know I wasn't allowed to ask for people's opinions anymore........

#17 The terrain has several scriptable parameters to control it scale. You could stretch the same mesh over a larger area (for example 4k x 4k) or make it smaller.

--Rick

#18 The things that would limit your server is bandwidth. I ran a T2 server on a cable modem that satuated the cable modem at around 12-15 people, and was only using 15% of the CPU time on a P2/400 with 256 megs or ram running Linux.

I think a T1 can supposrt about 32 players maximum, and even that is streching things a bit.

Massively multiplayer games require massive bandwidth. If you are not about to throw down $100 for V12, then I seriously doubt you can afford to put up the money for a T1 or better ($800+ a month), which you would need to test any sort of massively multiplayer game.

As several people here have said, perhaps you might want to set your sights a bit lower?

Also, I think a lot of your questions will be answered when people get their hands on V12. You don't have to buy it right away, they can always burn more CDs. I would prefer to have the GG people working on wrapping up the V12 release than answering 1,000,000 questions here. BTW, your questions are *not* opinions. They are questions that require a fair amount of time and effort to answer.

Josh

#19 Matthew Shapiro:

I think you are being a little harsh towards the GG staff. They are trying their best to help, they are only human. Not to mention the fact that they are trying to get a product out the door.

Like Joshua Goldshlag just said, wait until some other people have had chance to peer into the code a bit and maybe they will be able to give you some more insight into what the code is capable of.

#20 so T2 servers only take 15% of your cpu... wow that's great. If you don't mind me asking what speed processor you got?

To clear things up my game will start out as a MORPG. Right now i would say i got about near 50 players who are waiting for the game (I've been asking about ideas and such so they know about it). And since the game is for fun I'm not going to invest in a good bandwidth line just yet... I'll wait till things start needing it. I have 2 people who are currently donating their computer and DSL lines for the game (one for the game, one for the web site). I'm also trying to get cable and I may host it if i do get it (speed tests have shown 594kbps up/down during peak hours). It's not too bad (and I am aware about cable's slwodown problems and such). Anyways once it really starts to get laggy (due to more nad more players joining, which we predict), then we will start upgrading our bandwidth, and maybe go commercial (start charging and dedicating all our time to it, which most likely we'll do anyway but..).

BTW josh I was asking if my zone idea sounded feasable and doable, which I'm pretty sure after my years in english class, is an opinion.

I didn't mean to be so harsh but i really didn't appreciate being told I was asking for GG and everyone to "hold my hand" through making this game. I didn't realize that I was asking so much