If u were writing FL2, what would u add?
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w0dk4 wrote:
I do agree that you can easily lose focus when wanting to implement too many things at once, but I see no reason why you wouldnt want to be original and try to mix genres.
The critical point is always accessability. If you concentrate on making a shooter or an RTS but dont make it accessible, it will fail. But that doesnt necessarily have to do with mixing genres.I think you’re right. A cool aspect of FL, in fact the most appealing of it imho, is the ‘lack of specified purpose’. The player is (at least in MP) free to do whatever he wants to, to go wherever he wants to. So it would be great if LancerSolurus could manage to create a game where this freedom is even bigger.
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w0dk4 wrote:
I’d urge you not to get sucked into trying to combine an RTS with a shooter, pick one genre and plough everything you have into making it the best it can be in that field of play.
It’s called being original. I do agree that you can easily lose focus when wanting to implement too many things at once, but I see no reason why you wouldnt want to be original and try to mix genres.
The critical point is always accessability. If you concentrate on making a shooter or an RTS but dont make it accessible, it will fail. But that doesnt necessarily have to do with mixing genres.There’s a reason it would be original to mix these two genres, nobody has been able to pull it off in a multiplayer game. Single player, fine, like X2, but multiplayer, no way.
Essentially, as we all know, RTS multiplayer is a single map with a finite number of resources usually with a maximum of around four players, once the resources are gone, provided you’re not already dead, you will play to the last unit standing. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. You can’t log out of an RTS universe and come back tomorrow to continue your game.
You can’t have 256 players with infinite resources all marching an army around the battlefield, I can’t even begin to imagine the server required to handle the task of 10 of those players going into battle against each other, never mind 256. I would also imagine your average computer would scream and die a death if the units and environment had any amount of quality to them.
A shooter like freelancer is one man one ship, just like any FPS game really, you can throw a hell of a lot of these single units at a server or your average computer without any issues.
EVE is the only multiplayer game that’s done anything like it, in the sense that it features massive amounts of players online at the same time and battles over territory. But having said that it’s one man one ship all the same and there’s a huge universe where players can grow without getting stomped into the ground by corporations. Even with their considerable infrastructure, the servers have a real hard time when any large number of players decide it’s time to blow each other to pieces.
That’s just one small difference between the two genres that gives you probably your first massive problem, there’s a shed load more where that one comes from.
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Sorry for double posting but this is a slightly different point.
We’re talking empires here right, lot’s of time invested in character development etc.
This belongs in an MMO environment where you pay for a guaranteed spot in a persistent universe.
If you’ve got a limit of 256 players per server, even if the model is feasable at that number, say I invest time on server 1 and build myself an empire, what happens when server 1 is full. How can I take that character to server 2 where someone else already occupies that area of space with their own army?
I can’t think of any way that could be possible, can you?
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Essentially, as we all know, RTS multiplayer is a single map with a finite number of resources usually with a maximum of around four players, once the resources are gone, provided you’re not already dead, you will play to the last unit standing. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. You can’t log out of an RTS universe and come back tomorrow to continue your game.
Thats why its called a mix and not a combination.
You cannot simply combine two different genres, but you can mix elements of them both.As regards this has never been done before, do you live under a rock?
Meanwhile, I know a dozen of games that mix FPS with RTS elements. The oldest game being Allegiance by Microsoft Research (www.freeallegiance.org). -
Actually it has been done many times. Also it is limited to 256 online, not per server. The number of players per server is limited to the amount of HD space you have.
Resources won’t be limited. But it does take time to mine and process them. Also when making finished goods those raw materials are used up there by removing them from the economy. Only special items such as artifacts won’t be destroyed.
I’ve never intended on it to be a MMO and have yet to mention that would be the way it would be. The main reason is it isn’t a distributed networking model, that might happen in a later game if I ever write another one.
For your previous post about the SQL stuff, that would be better done in an external program. Dumping stats into a file to be processed is already done, a perfect example is the dynamic market files. They are all saved in plain text INI files.
Hehe, it may or may not be possible to make this work but I’m very intent on trying to make it work.
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You could always lay it out, explain your game model so I can understand exactly what it is you’re trying to achieve. I’ve really got a negative feeling about what I “think” you’re trying to do, but I could be misreading the situation. You’re a great guy who’s done many great things around here and I’d hate to not say I see a floor in something and let you just carry on regardless.
When I said 256 players, I did mean online not files. Building and grinding things out in the online world is usually reserved for MMO’s, persistent, where your character is always available to play on the same server. Imagine how confusing it would be having a few different accounts with empires scattered around various servers all at different stages of development, half of them might not even exist by the next time you log on, or at the very least look nothing like the way you left them. Do you see what I’m getting at?
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I mean, “massively” means number large than FLServer lol. OK i made mistake, i don’t know MMO means Massively Multiplayer Online before if “Massively” must large than 256.
Purely FPS game is boring for me and i hate ALL RTS game…. Just try to make a Action mixed Strategy Game and that’s enough.
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i’ll explain eve ships fitting mechanics as it’s not too big and other things i mentioned are sufficiently self-explanatory by their names (i think) %)
eve ship fitting (equipping a ship with modules) mechanics have less restrictions (or smthing) than FL, and that gives a lot more of different combinations (excellent and awful (darwin award fits) ones ;] )/
basically there’re only two restrictions:
1. ship resources: cpu and powergrid (pg). each module can eat up 0~100 cpu and 0~20+k pg.
2. slots: each ship has different number of high/med/low energy slots which are used by different groups of modules. quick breakdown:
high: guns, missiles, capacitor(energy) warfare, all kinds of probe launchers, remote repair mods, stuff like that.
med: all shield tank and capacitor mods (except 2 special types), all electronic warfare (EWAR) mods (there’re a lot of them, huge part of the game), active propulsion mods.
low: all armor tank mods, weapon upgrades mods (damagemods), some passive EWAR mods, cpu and pg boosting mods, passive propulsion mods.and that’s that! no other restrictions at all. of course not everything is written here, i don’t think i know everything about eve fittings
there’re rigs, tech 3 subsystems fitting (modular ships), overheating, but they all are expanding not restricting the fitting system.this allows things like 100MN AB Tengus when a battleship-sized afterburner is fitted onto a T3 cruiser-hull (Tengu being one of them) and makes nice things in hands of a good pilot.
compare this to the FL system where you just have to pack all the slots and have like 1-2 mods that you’re really considering to fit, because you have an AB slot for instance, and you can’t put some crazy EWAR there, you just go and buy the best AB, because you don’t want to leave that slot empty too. And you can’t switch you repair module (yeah, i know noone uses nanobots, but whatever) to damage mod. Or change your shield for some mod that increases CD velocity.
Well i guess you got the idea.As for eve in general, i think everyone designing space games should try it. Even if you don’t like combat or ship control style (i didn’t for a long time) it’s just beautifully balanced and variable game mechanics.
ps sorry if i sounded too fanboy here, i just love the complexity of it %)
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I wouldn’t use sur files!
They cause too much ruckus!
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It will be based on the style of play of FL for anyone starting out, You will have to make money just like in FL to get anywhere. It won’t be simply space-based, it will be on the ground as well, you just won’t be in a ship.
Another thing each ship has it’s own personal inventory, so do you and every persistant npc. If I add non-persistant npcs they most likely won’t have an inventory since alot of it will be random mission related (a simple drop fuse will suffice).
As you get more advanced and start collecting alot of money, you will eventually have enough to purchase mining equipment or other items to help with increasing your wealth (or empire). This will lead to being able to purchase bases to start manufacturing finished goods (aka crafting).
Also you will be able to purchase ships from manufacturing bases in the game. This will increase the amount of work you can get done, you simply give it the orders on what you want it to do (if you have an autopilot installed). You can have multiple ships but you are still limited to being a single individual. This means you will only be able to fly a ship manually one at a time.
You will be able to battle for planets, moons etc using your ships but in this case you will need to have npcs controlling your ships. The autopilot is for simple robot commands, nothing else. This is one thing that has been asked for many times over the years for FL.
One thing about FL is that it is ‘grinding’ unless you give your players alot of starting cash. It’s not as bad as other MP style games but it is definitely part of the game.
About the logging in an your empire is different, that is to be expected. It is a persistant universe. You will also be able to buy defensive weapons to protect your possessions, if done right there is a good chance they will avoid you and go after uninhabited planets, moons etc. There is always a chance someone will come after your bases but if well defended then they will suffer some serious loses.
Hehe, yeah MMO is commonly used to describe servers with 1000 or more players online at one time. Mine is just a MO.
FPS in FL is called PvP or missions. Unfortunately I never saw any real strategy in FL, it was simply repeating the same thing over and over. Nothing every changed, the bases still belong to the same factions, more npcs will be spawned after a few sections (same factions again), mission types are very limited (pretty much go here, kill this). My goal is to have alot more depth of gameplay than that.
That sounds alot like GE 2. GE 3 is player centric so alot of that won’t work.
No SURs, watch the video…
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w0dk4 wrote:
As regards this has never been done before, do you live under a rock?
Meanwhile, I know a dozen of games that mix FPS with RTS elements. The oldest game being Allegiance by Microsoft Research (www.freeallegiance.org).Very interesting w0dk4, I guess I was living under a rock because, I never knew of this before and can’t see how I’ve missed it? Thanks for posting this link. I think I will look into this a bit further.
Thanks again,
HK
