[razz]Shame on you all!!!

It would seem the seasonal rash of trolls and pointless posts is starting to make members of this forum cynical and quick to find flaws. I understand that it can be frustrating to have to keep giving the same reality check to new members every couple of weeks but that doesn't mean we should assume the worst for every ambitous idea that comes up!

Anyway, Thesolitas, I think it's a great idea. One of my pet peeves with most MMOs is that you rarely ever feel you're making an impact one the world cuz nothing ever changes. And a really cool way to address that is to let the players personalise thier own buildings.

The first concession you'll have to make is that you have to use a grid system (like Jotaf mentioned). Similar to what was used in The Sims. This makes aligning walls and stuff much easier (and you will probably find it simplifies coding quite a bit).
The pieces should fit together like LEGO blocks. ie not matter what shape a piece is it's edges must always end pointing in either the 12:00,3:00,6:00 or 9:00 direction.(aka straight up, straight down, straight left and straight right).
Also the size of every objects must be entirely measurable in grid units. So if I want to put up an arch five units wide, I know I can always place it on two wall parts (each one unit wide) and a door (three units wide).

Just keep thinking 3D Lego. With lego at a glance you can always tell what will fit and what won't. The difference being that while Lego only supports up-down connections you have to support a up-down, left-right, and foward-back.

As for calculating stresses and support. What would reccomend (for simplicity) is that you have special blocks that act as 'support pillars'. So the walls, roofs, doors and stuff all have a weight based on size and material and they all have to be attached to a support pillar that can bear that weight. Since it's a game you can ignore things like rotational stress, the self stress etc, as long as you impose beleivable limits. e.g. A player may need one pillar every 50 metres (even if it can support more weight) You can adjust this according to the material being supported and other such variables if you want.

As for how much the building will be worth, that depends on how you will be simulating the economy in the game. Personally I prefer the idea of the building being worth however much someone is willing to pay for it (sort of like an auction) but in some economy implementations this will cause problems. Alternatively you could calculate worth based on things like amount of floor space, materials used, possibly location etc. However, this may lead to very expensive but ugly buildings or very cheap but beautiful ones.

You may also want to consider whether you want the character to do the work himself (which, depending on how long it takes, a player might find really boring), whether he has to hire NPCs or other players to do it) or whether he just pays the money needed and the building auto generates itself over the determined time period (a la warcraft).

As long as the structural rules are in place I wouldn't worry too much about how the buildings look. Afteral you have some pretty wierd buildings in the real world as well.

This is a very ambitious project though. And general advice around here (which may be why you got so many discouraging replies) is that if something is to complicated (even if it is perfectly doable) it won't get finished. If this is a first game, or major project, you might want to make sure you have the simpler and more central parts finished and working before trying to implement any 'great new ideas'.

However, all progress is the result of taking risks!

Wow. What can I say.

I've posted only a handful of messages on these forums so far, for example, some replies to threads started by wavinator, and I tried to be as helpful as I could.

This is my first thread on these forums, and what do I get?

For those that see no point in my idea (it's not an idea at all, just how to improve on an existing system), maybe you should ask yourselves why the Sim's does so well. Why SimCity sell's so many copies, why a small no name MMORPG called ATITD manages to attract a fair number of people with little to no advertising.

And for any comments about me being overly ambitious, sure, if I thought I was going to build this myself I could accept that. Right now, I'm only in the design phase, and I don't plan on implementing much if anything at all for at least a couple of years. When I do go to impliment this, it will be fully funded, so I can afford to be as ambitious as my companies checkbook allows.

So right now, I'm purely designing for the future, and for fun, since I DO find designing a fun past time on it's own. I figured I'd throw out an area of my design that I'm interseted in, see if I could get some feedback and help spur some design ideas. I guess I was wrong.

Thanks thelurch for the feedback you provided, its very much appreciated. Shame more people aren't like you.

I'd like to take a second not to make any party in the thread wrong (and I'm speaking as fellow designer here, not moderator) but to point out something vital that happened in this thread...

Thesolitas spec'ed out some ideas for a product design that I think might be well accepted in the industry in the wake of The Sims but maybe not by the hardcore gaming audience. The funny thing is that he described in detail a process for level customization and creation and got back responses which were very different from when I asked people about building starships inside and out a couple of months ago.

It's funny, but it points out how the spin of an idea completely affects our personal response. If you imagined "cumbersome" it might have been useful to ask for specifics on how it wouldn't be so. And if you have an idea that's risky to present, it might be useful to take the pulse of those you're presenting it to (heh, which is why I no longer post on Usenet [grin])

I personally like to keep in mind NASA's philosphy for project construction, which is not to imagine all the limitations in the way, but to vividly visualize the project built-- and then work backwards and ask what must be so for it to have been such a raging success.

On architecture, I'm reminded that the venerable X-Com had a very significant design aspect to the game. However, sold as architecture it might not have been appealing to the strategy-minded audience; sold as tactical enhancements to gameplay, however, and you had a winner...

Just one last thought: There may be a huge schism between the casual and hardcore gaming audience when it comes to why content exists in the game. We see this in the battles over eye candy versus gameplay. It may be that hardcore gamers MUST have a reason for taking an action in-game like creating a structure (tactical value, as in X-Com); whereas casual gamers may simply love to create for variety's sake.


Don't know if that helped anyone at all and it wasn't my intent to lecture, but for all of us I thought this was a good object lesson in not only how we design, but how we perceive and how we persuade.

Thanks for the comments wavinator. It's interesting, I read through your threads and found the question similar, but the responses night and day, I figure people are getting hung up on the word architecture.

I don't want Autocad in my game, I don't want complexity for the sake of it. What I do want, is to expand on the concept of Player Created Worlds, since I believe it's one of the best way's to solve the higher level content problem in MMORPG's. It won't solve the problem on it's own, but with a couple of other system's I'm designing, they all work together to keep people interested and having fun long into the game's life.

The overall concept of the game is the this.

A 3D Medieval/Fantasy themed MMORPG. The world is split into two specific sides, each side has starting cities a fair distance from eachother. Their are a number of starting cities for each side, but they are all relatively close together, forming a heavily guarded kingdom for player's to play in.

Outside of this kingdom is a no man's land. Unexplored, lightly populated by small group's, other race's, etc. It's this area that the different player side's will have to conquer to expand their side's power, both in terms of material and tactical resource.

Overall its a concept very similiar to Dark & Light, except I'm taking a different approach as to the two sides, and how players choose to join one or the other. I'm also taking a different approach in how the story between the two sides plays out.

Now, the structure system fits in to this nicely, since one of the overall goals of the game is to settle the land outside the starting kingdoms, I thought I would give alot of flexibility to the player's on how they go about doing this, and to what level of input they have in their buildings and structures.

Tactically every building they make will have a function. The world is being designed to have strategic strongpoints between the two sides, how the players conquer and build up those strongpoints has major implications. As an example, their is a mountain range running between the land's of the two sides, with valleys running between mountains connecting the lands.

A guild may be asked by the kingdom to defend a specific passage, and that's where the structural system shines. The guild would be tasked with setting up a small city to support their efforts, find and gather the resources they need, and then put a plan in place to defend their area from the attack. They could choose to build a small walled city, a full blown castle, or choose instead to build a great wall between the two mountains. The option is up to them.

Now I know a question raised would be, what if they guild just wants to fight? What if they don't want to build anything or gather any resources?

They have a number of options, use only common blueprints for their buildings, removing the design requirement, and use NPC's to gather resources. The game design includes an extensive hiring system to allow the player's to hire NPC's to do any job that they require, albeit not as effeciently or to the level of PC's. The best strategy of course would be have a mix of both fighters, and builders withen the guild, and as the fighters clear the area of any enemies (monsters, small enemy villages, etc), the builders can plan out the structures and get to work.

Since the buildings may come under attack, what you build them out of, how strong you build them, etc. will all have an impact on the battle.

That's the overall idea of the gameplay, though their is still a TON I've left out, I think this gives you an idea of why I want this feature in the game, and how it will play out.

Any comments on either the overall concept, or how you see the "Design and Building" of structures playing a role in the concept?

I don't know how you'd do architecture, but increasing freedom in furniture/object placement would be easy - just model the objects with real collision meshes and mounting brackets, and do it manually.

For the buildings, I'd just give the players predefined components they can build buildings out of - like a corner section, a hallway section, a tower section. Then you "decorate" the insides with paint, panelling, wall hangings, and objects. Include an external editor (maybe a max importer or something) for custom sections. Too much freedom makes it too hard.

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Original post by TechnoGoth Well, it sounds like a 3d architecture program, you seem to want to include lots of detailed and heavily involed architectural aspects. But my thoughts immeditely become why? What purpose does this detailed system serve in the game? Why does desigining buildings play such an important part in the game? What effect do diffrent designs have on the outcome events? As it stands you seem to want to create an extremely elborate system which has purely cosmetic purpose in the game. So perhaps you should elborate further on the purpose of this system, instead of merely telling the specifics of the system.

The purpose is to give roleplayers the tools to be "creative" & make & enjoy their own content instead of settling for the canned alternatives offered by most games. Many players enjoy the purely cosmetic aspects of this style of gameplay... not everyone is content with merely running around blowing things up with whatever avatar we are given. This is a growing trend in online RPG games, especially in MMO's where combat roles are about one-third of the total roles offered for players to try out.

I am playing SWG right now & I would kill to have something like this in the game. Even though I can decorate the houses with furniture etc. it would be cool to redo the interiors, or build the floorplans from scratch, or landscape outside etc. The same applies to players who want to build entire cities... they would like to be able to landscape building sites, place roads or pathways, or custom design buildings & gardens, etc.

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Original post by Thesolitas Thanks for the comments wavinator. It's interesting, I read through your threads and found the question similar, but the responses night and day, I figure people are getting hung up on the word architecture.

[smile] Yup, that's precisely what I mean by how you persuade. I've learned that the hard way myself... yeah... it's uh, "environmental puzzles" not "science..." :P


I'd love to actually see some magic used in building parts of a building, btw. It could explain some very bizarre structures (like a mages tower) and the shape itself could be appropriate to channeling certain powers.

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Original post by ToppDog I am playing SWG right now & I would kill to have something like this in the game. Even though I can decorate the houses with furniture etc. it would be cool to redo the interiors, or build the floorplans from scratch, or landscape outside etc. The same applies to players who want to build entire cities... they would like to be able to landscape building sites, place roads or pathways, or custom design buildings & gardens, etc.

Exactly. Let me ask you, games like SWG include some of what I talk about, but they're incomplete or have heavy limitations. Of the games you've played that have this feature, what are the most important limitations you'd like removed, or most important features you'd like added to it?

I've recently been playing the Sims II, checking out the building system in that to get some ideas of where I want to go. I decided I would check out some of the bigger Sims II forums and read through what people liked/disliked about the system, and found a ton of people spent more time building then actually playing "The Game". Most found many of the limitations in the building system frustrating though, some examples of what they didn't like were:

- Capped number of floors to a building
- Difficult to create floors at different heights
- No basements (can be done with somewhat of a hack but still incomplete)
- No curved stairs, or stair landings

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Original post by ToppDog I'd love to actually see some magic used in building parts of a building, btw. It could explain some very bizarre structures (like a mages tower) and the shape itself could be appropriate to channeling certain powers.

You know, this idea is worth the thread itself. Up until now I had written off magic in the building process. The reason is, I didn't want magic users replacing traditional tradeskills/resource gathering.

But using your idea, I could bring magic in not to replace anything, but to add to it, allow magic to remove certain "Restrictions" on the building design, to create the more far out designs.

Now to try to figure out what some of those restrictions magic could solve. If you have any ideas please let me know.




One additional comment I'd like to make. So far, many of the response I'm getting suggest scaling back the design, limit it in some way or another, go simple.

The goal in my design is to expand on existing concepts and go forward, not backwards. Please keep in mind this design is purely that right now, a design. I don't plan on actually implimenting any of this for at least a couple years, when I can fully fund it, and by that time technology will have moved ahead even further.

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Original post by Thesolitas Quote: Original post by ToppDog I am playing SWG right now & I would kill to have something like this in the game. Even though I can decorate the houses with furniture etc. it would be cool to redo the interiors, or build the floorplans from scratch, or landscape outside etc. The same applies to players who want to build entire cities... they would like to be able to landscape building sites, place roads or pathways, or custom design buildings & gardens, etc. Exactly. Let me ask you, games like SWG include some of what I talk about, but they're incomplete or have heavy limitations. Of the games you've played that have this feature, what are the most important limitations you'd like removed, or most important features you'd like added to it?

To be honest, this is my first MMO ever & probably the only reason I am playing it is because it's StarWars. In SWG there are various house types to choose from, but they are not able to be altered, only decorated with furniture items. Players may build cities as well, but this is also limited to placing houses or other player owned structures, along with city structures such as shuttleports, banks, cloning facilities, gardens, fountains, etc. They can be placed, but not altered, & there is no way to landscape or pave roads etc. so a city looks more like a collection of closely bunched individual structures & items in a field of grass.

One of the things players want (that directly affects gameplay) is the ability to build walls around their cities to protect them from players of opposing factions. The lack of this ability has prompted many cities to actually create makeshift walls by using the houses themselves in rows where they butt up against each other.

However, there does not need to be a direct gamplay reason for your idea to succeed in an online RPG or MMO type of game. Many players would consider this type of creative ability to BE the game, & would ignore all else. And as long as they're still willing to pay to play there is nothing wrong with that. I think a combination of what you proposed is a good idea... allow premade buildings & blueprints to be easily used by players who just want to get on with playing the game, yet allow the tools for the creative types to build their masterpieces.

This is how I want to design my idea for an MMO also. An architect would not be someone who clicked a screen so many times that he is granted a certain predesigned schematic, but it would be a player who uses the tools given him to actually create & design structures from scratch. The most successful architects would be the most talanted ones, etc.

As for what I'd like to see added? I would like to see it almost work like one of the home design apps with a lot of pre-made modeled componants that the players can simply combine to form structures etc. Then if the technology allows you could also allow players to use the design tools themselves to create new components etc that could be added to the library.

The same could go for weapon, armor, clothing, or vehicle design... or anything else you can think of.

Look into old DOOM geometry (vectored slopeless landscape system). Its limited (no over/under) but is still a very easy way to express nearly any building floor plan. Very easy to use. Just apply one DOOM geometry set per floor.