Hello everyone, I'm trying to implement something new into a project that I'm working on right now, and its turning into a huge pain in the butt. I'd appreciate it if you would be critical of the feature that I'm working on, and pretty much tell me if it's worth the huge amount of effort it looks like it's going to be taking. WHAT I'VE GOT NOW : A functional [but currently highly unsecure, and intolerant of error] server/client pair for a very small scale persistant world, using an isomentric engine with [truely bad] self-drawn art. I've left room to expand, and it could easily become very large, if i made the contet for it. Unlimited connectable players [within reason of course, as the number increases I'll need to increase the number of machines to support it, but it segments very well], one player type, about a dozen items, and 3 kinds of enemies, and a crude NPC system. One city, one tiny dungeon, and a room-based environment [go from area to area, makes it really easy to spread accross several machines, instead of have to deal with server lines and breaking single large maps among several machines]. I'm actually quite happy with how it's turning out, but what i really need is content, and enforcment of network rules and othre rule sets so i can actually let people play on it without breaking the world :P WHAT I'M TRYING TO ADD : Customizable player-run environments. A player can purchase an area of X by Y dimensions, and place doors, rooms, cooridoors, containers, ect. The most notable feature is the payers ability to interact with it, by creating sections that are allowable to certain players, but not others, to implement chat commands to interact with the custom area. For example, the test run I'm doing right now is the phrase "Lockdown", when coded into an area, triggers the locking of all placed doors, thus restricting movement. These commands won't be hard coded, but will be implemented as a cause->effect script system, to do everything from booting players from the area, to teleporting within the area, to locking doors, to restricting certain commands and defining regions as protected/unprotected, and editing the access list of who is able to enter the area at all. Pretty much opening a beefed-up version of the map editor up to the player, accessed through text commands and some light menu work. The point is, I get the feeling that I've bitten off way more than i can chew in this endevour, and I'm now viewing this particularly cool [in my view] feature as the behemoth that will prevent me from ever finishing. Is this worth the huge amount of time it'll take to implement? and the huge extra server load that will be required to introduce editable text parsing into every little player run area? Is this feature just a waste of time? I need input, either abuse the idea or support it, because I'm seriously loosing sleep over this issue, and I really cannot decide. Do I: A: Cut this stupid feature, work on content, and get this thing up and running. B: Keep working on it, since it'll be so worth it by the time I'm done putting in all the time and sweat needed in doing it.

I think it would be worth the trouble, maybe start of with something simple. In either case the content needs to be created and stored on the server, whether it is you who creates the content or a player.

As for the server, if it takes text commands anyway why not add some extra cases to it to add a building to a map and storing it.

If you start with a simple extendible scripting engine and start of with a limited ammount of features i think it will be a great added value to your game.
But if you want the complete control from the start it might be too much to chew. I would just start with some simple commands for generation of content and add more exciting features as you go.

Good luck & Greetings, Eddy

If you see it as the main draw of your game, then by all means work on it.

If it's just a miscellaneous feature that has gotten out of control, then by all means question it.

Of course, if it turns out to be a great feature, you might better attract artists.

But on the other hand, if you focus on PvP and strategy (honestly, I'm attracted to any isometric game with a bit of strategery), then work on the design.

It's up to you if you want to spend time on this or not. It sounds as if this feature would attract the community oriented player more that the strict "gamer." Depends on what your emphasis is.

You asked "Game Design" so I'll tell you. If you're mechanics aren't fun, your game sucks. With a good community system, you might have an excellent glorified chatroom. But the game is the thing, eh? This is my opinion, I don't know your goals.

Just some brain droppings from one of the top 10 lowest rated posters at gamedev.

What are the player-run areas going to be used for? If they're just to display the player's treasures or art skills I don't think locking them would be very useful. But if they are going to function as guilds or player-run shops then you would probably want to be able to keep insiders out and give owners/moderators the ability to boot disruptive members.

This system is supposed to be my solution to town building/user property. Something that'll cover everything from guild forums to bazaars to the 'glorified tresury', to a means for players to design their own little dungeons. Think an extended version of housing, where a player is capable of owning a tiny city, or have complete control over their own little dungeon [even with spawn points, custom drops that will draw from a user-fed stash, and whatever].

The game mechanics have great potential [even without the system mentioned above], but the bulk of the content I'm needing to make is stuff like animation sprites, tilesets, and graphical doodads and thingies. Also flesh out some of the skill systems a tiny bit. The feature in question truely is just an 'extra', something that i think the game will stand alone without, but it sounds like a pretty cool extra.

All in all though, its just an extra. [and yes, my heart too has a special soft spot for isometric games, which is the reason I'm actually doing it isometric, even though 3d would be easier on me as a crumby artist.]

Thanks for the input though, perhaps it's not enough information to simply ask you all to decide for me [even if just so i can claim that the issue is out of my hands], and it IS something that i can likely implement later, but I've been working on it lately, and it just seems to grow larger and more complex with every moment i spend on it.

The reason I limited my description to what I did, was to explain all mechanics is of course too tedious, but wanted to give you enough to know that, if i drop this on the ground completely, i'm literally a few months away from an actually playable game, if i can get the art churned out, which I'm a really bad artist, and am ending up doing it all myself : /

I'd do what a lot of MMO's do... get the basics up and running and polished a bit and then release as early as you can with the promise of "future updates" that will include player housing and customization. The main reason is that the longer you work on something without ever getting to a workable and fun game, the more you will lose interest in the project. On the other hand, if you think you'll have a lot more fun doing the player customization code, and are willing to find others to help with the parts you don't want to do, then do that.

Hmm, your idea sounds alot like Furcadia, players can make and script their own custom maps at will in that game, and you can find some pretty impressive maps made by the community. Though Furcadia is more of a glorified chatroom.

I think this system can be a really good thing later on depending on what you plan on doing even though its difficult. Giving the players the ability to add their own content can save you a load of work of having to make it yourself, and also saves you alot of trouble of having to make it further down the line to help keep the game fresh. One of the problems that might pop-up however is that you may not beable to fully control the content the players choose to make, such as vulgar images or designs and content that doesn't match the theme of the game.

But if your finding it to difficult ATM, then maybe you should put it aside for now and work on getting the game out. You might also try only implementing a basic scripting and editing system now and work on fleshing it out when the game is released, so that at least the groundwork is in place to expand upon.

The Programming mentality is to look at everything like a puzzle, a challenge.
The Designer mentality is more like a writer: Anything in doubt should be cut.

You seem to have a bit of both, but since it's causing you headaches, I say lay it down for good.
If at a later time you feel the need to tackle it again, that is still possible, but until that moment comes, put it out of your head.
Let your subconscience work on it by not thinking about it.

This sounds similar to what we use in Tearsol, although perhaps a little over complicated? Our system splits the world into 'rulesets': region, zone, area and local. They work in a hierarchy, where the more localized a ruleset is, the higher priority its version of the game rules are. Certain rules are not available for change at lower levels, such as weather control and day-night cycle, but we can allow things such as a world which has PvP off with a zone inside it with PvP on, which has a town sitting inside it with PvP off, which has a house inside it with PvP on. If you catch my drift :). Players are notified of critical ruleset changes by simple graphic indicators in the GUI. The intention is to allow all manner of easily identifiable building types, shops / arenas / crafting zones etc.

I understand this doesn't offer exactly the same level of control as you intend but I think it's a very player friendly system and is relatively simple to build. Giving the player a toggleable GUI list to control over their town or house ruleset is trivial and means you can avoid parsing all that command gumph on the server.