Ok this may probaly been done before, but anyway on wih the post If any of u have seen the help wanted forum last week, u may be aware I''m building an RTS/RPG game. One aspect of the game I''m keen to develop (mainly for multiplayer) is that of individuals being able to add to the game world. (Before I go on, I would like to point out that this is a concept more sutible for MMORPGS than anything else, however I do not have the resources to implement it as such, but it can be used for small groups of people to have "deathmatches" on) Ok, enough babbling... Background to the idea.. i.e. how the game world looks. The game universe (I''m using universe here to prevent confusion later, but basically I''m getting at the game world here) for my RTS/RPG (RPSG? (Role-Playing Stratergy Game) is a network of worlds connected to each other by portals, not every portal connects with every other portal, and so not all worlds are accessable from each other. And now... the idea... What I thought would be really good is to allow people to create thier own maps, thier own worlds in essence, and then plug them into the system, which (of course) allows other players to visit them and creates an ever-expanding world. This does of course create one or two (big?) problems (from a MMORPG standpoint at least). 1) Who has control over these worlds? The creators themselves or the (hyperthetical) team that runs the servers. 2) Server space and uploading. The worlds need to (obviously) be stored on the servers, this would be a big problem, and probably the biggest thing against the idea. Ok having typed all that it''s not quite sounding as good as when I first thought of it.. but what''s everyone elses opinions and suggestions on my idea?

The world thing has been done - its called ''active worlds''.
Its pretty damm huge btw.

rgds

What he''s saying sounds more like the expansions for those old BBS doors. Anybody remember "Legend of the Red Dragon," more commonly known as LORD? Damn that game was addictive in its prime.

Active worlds BITES. Well it does. And from the sounds of things this idea sounds more like some sort of portal engine with people adding areas (Counter strike map with a Zelda twist?).

As Mr Cup always says,
''''I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.''''

Ok, there seems to be some debate asto what I''m getting at here..

Hopefully this should clarify somethings...

Each "world" is self contained, to leave the world you must goto a set point in the world (the portal). Worlds are linked together like a giant jigsaw puzzle (an ever expanding one), but any world can be linked to any other world, which allows people to build thier own universes from thier own as well as other peoples worlds.

I''m pretty sure that this kind of design is the future for massive-multiuser-rts''s (mmrts?) and it will be interresting to see if sovereign that uses a shared map will succeed.

I have been thinking about a game that would be a combo of web-turn-based game (ala archmage), traditional rts and a massive scaleable world (as your are).

In this game the players would start with one map and grow like a pyramid (from top to down) - you can only attack the lowest level of maps and only attack players with approx same size.
(i might be better to re-present maps as planets)

Player vs player conflict are played like traditional rts''s.

Resource management are turnbased (ala archmage) and players can build on any of his planet anytime - and it will be possible to ''buy'' the first few planets.

Yeah.. I was planning to use this in a D&D style RPG come RTS that I''m developing with a group of people... (if you want to help let me know.. the more the merrier as it were) Where there''s a network of worlds that you can visit at any time (the network and rules for "world jumping" would be slightly different between single and multi-player, to prevent higher level people trouncing the lower levels).