Online beat 'em up

AnonymousPosterChild · 2006-03-18T19:54:40

First things first, this IS an MMO I am actually working on, but before you turn away, there are some things I should explain first. 1. I am aware of the hardware requirements of an MMO, both client and server side. To allow for this, I am drastically reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent both ways. For one, in a lot of MMOs these days, movement seems to be pretty complex, with a lot of range of motion (WoW, wtf lol) up to and possibly over 256 different directions. I have 8 different directions the player can move in. While this does really make what comes across as over simplification, I don't exactly have a lot of dedicated resources. Since I don't give the player metric assloads of directions to move in, I can do one of two things now: further decrease server load by lowering the updates per second, or I could keep them the same and implement my next idea: command queuing(sp?), but I'll explain that later in the post. 2. I am aware that, even with all my reductions I have planned, that self-hosting an MMO is highly impractical. I'm not even thinking about hosting this myself. My main plan at the moment is to host a miniature version of it with a player cap of about 30 - 50 just to mess around. Given the size of the world, though, a 30 - 50 player cap would be barely noticeable. What I plan to do with the client and server is basically just toss a download online and let people do what they want with it. Now that my disclaimer is officially over, I can begin the bulk of my post. Basically what I want is help with hammering out a few ideas I'm working with in order to get a better grasp of how to implement them before I begin the bulk of coding. The first of these ideas is "command queuing". COMMAND QUEUING Basically, I thought of this idea as I was trying to further reduce the amount of information that had to be sent to and from the server, and also may allow me to implement a basic combo system. The primary idea is that the player can enter a sequence of commands (probably a maximum of 5) that would then be sent to the server in a single message, as opposed to an individual message per command. Since I'm using a single message, I could havethe game automagically find combos in the sent commands, asllowing for more elaborate attacks. The good: 1. Allows me to reduce server load by sending more information in a single message. 2. Allows me to very easily implement a combo system, furthering my goal for an MMO that rewards skill over levelling. 3. Pretty easy to implement as a whole The bad: 1. I'm using UDP, which means its possible that the message will not be recieved by the server unless I put in some sort of verification system. 2. A verification system would probably increase server load, and is one of the reasons I'm not using TCP. 3. Depending on how much I dedicate to the client, it could be VERY easy to hack. Now, that explains nicely my command queuing system, but I would like other opinions on it, and information on how I can get over some of the shortcomings. Also, if anyone here has any idea on how I can further reduce the need for levels, I'd be glad to hear them.