I''m working on a small online game, somewhat similar to www.warriors2.com if anyone has tried it. You will be walking around, fighting with monster, gathering gold, solving puzzles etc. You will be walking a little like Myst or Heroes of Might and Magic, in steps. You have a map and every location is a room. The world will gradually get bigger and bigger while I build it. Originally I begun working on the game with Flash MX, since it is very easy to use and most people have Flash installed. But the hardware issues are simply too great. I can only have 20 particles on screen at one time! So now I''ve begun looking at doing the game in OpenGL (c++). I plan to use a very thin client, only 50-100kb that the user can download. Then the rest will begin to download from the internet. Only the closest areas are downloaded, the room you''re in and the area around you. It''s extremely important that the game is very easy to install. The best would actually be like with Flash, that you don''t have to install anything. *What do you think about the step movements? The fights will have much more sword wieling than usually and a magic system were you actually weaves the spells, but the user cannot move in the fights (unless he runs). *Do you think it might be too negative if the user has to download the thin client instead of running it with their browser (and also that they must use a 3d card)? I''m really afraid I will lose a lot of casual users this way. The main bonuses when I don''t use Flahs is: - I can cache the graphics so you never have to reload graphics, impossible with Flash. - Graphics will be a zillion times better looking Thanks for you help! /Andreas www.fusion-wave.com

You''ll lose some users that way. No idea how many. For one thing, if it''s aimed at casual online players, that to me suggests people who play a bit from work. Often that means they can''t download anything... They probably won''t have 3d cards either... But that shouldn''t stop you...

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Life is like a grapefruit. It''s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It''s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast

Yes, playing from work is important. Hmm. I thought I would not let it install like normal programs. No entering in the registry etc. Only downloading an exe and running it in a directory and it will download evertything into this directory. This should work from our school at least. What specific problems do you think I will have when people play from work?
Can you stop users from downloading files totally?
/Andreas

You could have an uncached mode for people playing from work - NO downloading of stuff at all, except for the exe. It might be laggier than using caching, but you give people an option.

Just an idea...

Yes that''s an idea. The whole game might be fairly large, a few 10s of MB since you will be able to move in many areas.

Are there many problems when it comes to e.g. sending data to a server from work? I would like to save the persons data on the server occationally.

/Andreas

Oh, what do you think about that you move in steps instead of smoothly?

/Andreas