If u were writing FL2, what would u add?
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That’s where the title sort of misled me
I questioned the use of external cameras and whatnot as, to me, I thought this was a “what should FL have had”, and not “If you had your ideal space strategy game where you can command dozens of players in intergalactic warfare…”To me, FL is near perfect in many respects - there are deficiencies, but overall it is one of the best games I’ve played.
- It’s simple.
- It works like a dream online (no levelling up for months, no major issues or being forced into roleplay roles etc).
- You could play for 5 minutes and still have massive fun, or you could play for hours. You didn’t have to invest hours in order to enjoy the game - 20 mins could see you across the universe.
This is, along with the thread title, why my post features on aspects of FL that were deficient.
I can understand the focus onto some sort of command and coordinate lots of player features - all I will say is if this game is heading into a real nice release realm, please don’t forget us folks that like a casual gameplay and so on.
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LancerSolurus wrote:
It is about that if you had the ability to actually write your own space game in the same genre as FL then what would you add. Please click the GE link in my sig to see what this is about. I am writing just such a game an like to hear my fellow FL users ideas on what they would add even if it isn’t possible to reasonably add.
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I have modded FL for many years and know of many places it should have been fixed, since Im writing the game, I can make it work like I think it should.
Very cool!!!
Does it use .ini files in a similar way as FL? Maybe even the same way?
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Chips the game will be quite similar to FL in many respects. You don’t have to role play if you don’t want to. Also a server owner can force either PvP style or RP style by adjusting what is bought and sold. For PvP they could simply limit a player to a single ship. For RP they can simply leave it as is. As for myself I prefer a mixture of both. I want to keep the same playability that FL has but extend it in many ways such as having FPS play as well (see the video in the GE3 thread). I won’t forget the casual gamer, not planning on wrecking it like the JGE team did. The main parts will still exist such as trading, mining, exploration and NPC fighting.
Moonbeam yes, almost everything is INI based, here is an example of a light in a scene
[light] nickname = spawn_sun model = white_light pos = 0,3000000,-7000000 range = 50000000 spin = 0,1,0 flare = default_flare color = 290,290,290 ; normal range = 0 - 255, its a float so you can oversaturate it as done here ;ambient = 64,64,64 ;vel = 0,500,0 -
There’re two ways i personally see.
One is “EVE Online way” which includes an open market, manufacturing, system sovereignty, station building, etcetctetc.
Another is more classic-FL-shootery-style which is basically not far from original FL, but with good tools for automated “deathmatches” between groups of people that eventually get won by some group and don’t last forever.And better graphics and UI with ways for modding/improvement, obviously.
edit:
Oh, and eve or similar ship fitting mechanics for both cases. -
If that’s true, i want the engine & engine tool License to allow me create my own game and share it freely and free.
And i want the game engine support:
Database based data store(to support complex function like station cargo data and factions data, char data and more.) and player based economy system is good for me. Player production system is good, and ….
Well, my idea: just support all EVE functions to the game, and without the dull battle system for fighter.
AND MUST include a Easy Structure to mod the game.
In real, so i don’t care about the planet land system. Almost all planet in space is not good for human, we just need few planet to “land”.
And as DwnUndr says: I like:
- glitch-free pathing system
- built-in anti-cheat
and
MMORPG
Good graph
Using double to store cash and system range and more large number.
AND
- Don’t sell it to Microsoft Games (by Crazy) LOL i like this one function LOL
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Uh, I readed the full topic, and looks you looking for idea for your game? That’s alright but …. Can we have authorization to use the engine?
This is my idea if you really think about:
I recommend you use database to store anything, include system data, base data, player data, market data, traffic data and more and more. Because data in database can be edit Real-time and Simple.- System can be change by player’s action. For exp: If player destroye a base, this base will take sometime and something to restore or be destroyed permanently.
- Player can build base in any system (You can set a number limit for it, or use a sovereignty system to limit it)
- Dead punishment, Like EVE. But i don’t like clone system.
- Skill system is not need. It’s just for commerce game and wasting your time.
- “Infinite” map size so we can add system freely. Use map like EVE.
- Add all unfinished Freelancer function: Cloak, Jump etc.
- Good graphic, better than Freelancer at least.
- “Limitless” Vehicle, Equipment class.
- System security level
- Free PRG function. Player can create a function, and with NPC support (NPC can join that group if it popular)
- Add things using the real size.
- Strong Anit-Cheat system
- Player register system so players will not care about how to remember MPID.
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Outcast I’ve never played EVE so I don’t have a clue what you mean. By what you described though some of those aspects will be in the game. The main goal is to keep the player immersed in staying in their character. Being able to control a civilization will be earned, not given to the player when first started.
The player’s will be able to conquer others but the downside is that they control the more unruly the population will become. This will create a cap on the size of any specific faction or clan. No server ever needs a faction so powerful it can’t be defeated.
Better graphics, yes indeed, it’s a full HLSL 3.0 shader implementation. Since the shader is a .fx file it can be modified easily. There are 2 shaders so far, the main one and the one for mesh cloning. The main one supports a base texture, glow map, specular map, normal map (bumps), a detail map or a triple masked 3 detail mapping (these 2 r exclusive, as in one or the other). The clone shader only supports a base and glow texture. Once I finalize the main shader I will add those features to the clone shader.
NeXoSE
1 - the SP side of the game is free so you are free to pass around any mods for SP mode
2 - if you mean SQL, not going to happen, SQL is way to slow for a real time game
3 - never played EVE
4 - you also need to mine planets, not just travel around on them
5 - easy mod structure, that is subjective on a person to person basis
6 - pathing will be based on A* which gives fairly good results
7 - anticheat, yes
8 - MMORPG - max is 256 players atm
9 - good graph?
10 - cash is stored as a 64 bit unsigned number, which is a maximum of $18,446,744,073,709,551,615, plenty?
11 - if they offered a million, I would have to consider it -
- Hehe, i think i will lost many interest if it cannot be mod for MP.
- Almost all SQL server will give response in 0.5s even mysql. It’s fast than any file handle if you have many sessions. And note that you can load all data to RAM then update it.
- You should try that. EVE is a very good space game if you don’t care about the combat system.
- Mine not mean land. You should know even in our solar system only one planet can make life sustain. If you want to mine, just build a station in space and keep the station running.
- I like this
- I believe this not actually a max number. Hey, why don’t give a Free 256 players permission and keep 1024 players for pay?
- Yes, updated graphic to support DX9,10 and 11?
- Not only cash. But also something like pos we headache about LOL.
- Don’t give a undervalued value for yourself. I believe almost people here don’t want to see after years some people petition for Galaxy Empire’s Source Code LOL.
BTW: Hey, If that’s true, you successfully developed Galaxy Empire, long years before you get bored, want to close the game to make zone for other your game, some people petition for Galaxy Empire’s Source Code, will you give the source code?
BTW2: Topic Hijack: LS, i still cannot get go with curve creation. Maybe i using a wrong calc? can you send me one or upload a good one to DB please?
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The MP side will be moddable as well but the server isn’t free. If you own a server you can mod it however you want.
256 players is the limit right now, I will be modifying the code to use dynamic arrays soons so it will depend on the amount of memory on the server.
Supporting the max in DX9 for now, not everyone has Vista or Win 7 yet.
GE will most likely become a freeware product after a few years, in the mean time only the server will cost money.
- Curve calcs?
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How much money are you going to raise for a server?
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You’ve lost me, at first it seemed you were making a game in the fashion of freelancer, now you’re talking about controlling an empire. That sounds more like an RTS. What exactly is it going to be?
In all the reviews for games I’ve read over the years one thing has become clear, if you try to make a game that mixes different types of gameplay it will at best be average at any one of them.
You don’t want to be making a shooter which requires any form of micro management for example, people play shooters because they want fast paced blow #$%% up action.
Freelancer is a shooter, EVE is micro management, they’re worlds apart and if it were possible to combine the two it would have been done long ago.
At the same time, Homeworld, Galactic Civ, Sins etc are RTS, lots of zooming in and out, tactical views, management, construction, assigning tasks to fleet groups and so on, there’s no time for a dogfight in a single ship in between all that.
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 freelancer or it’s homeworld, homelancer would be the offspring of a cheetah and an elephant, slower than a cheetah and weaker than an elephant.
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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. -
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.
