I''m trying to come up with cool ideas for my tile engine, so that the game evironment is a little more interactive and realistic. Here are some ideas: - Override objects: Dynamic server-side objects that allow the client to override some objects in the "permanent" game map. Uses: when players cut down trees, these override objects could create stumps, and have trees replenish over time; some buildings might be deformed if attacked (and even make some of them disappear if a sort of "ignore everything on this tile" object is utilized). - Weather: Each graphical terrain tile could have 4 versions, one per season, that could be used to approximate snow removal, ice effects, and anything else relying on seasonal, visual changes. To blend: use transitional tiles, or even attempt alpha blending between tiles using interpolation between two set "season-change" dates. - Clouds for weather: Create approximately 1000 very large cloud objects, and have them roam randomly around the server. They show up on the client''s side as alpha blended objects that darken the tiles over which they appear. (Ultima 7-style) - Vehicles: Not sure how these will be accomplished without making them look ugly or get them stuck in "compass" mode. I might skip these entirely, or make them very simple. Ideas are particularly welcome for these. The engine is an isometric tile engine. The renderer is using Direct3D 8, and will utilize the gamer''s graphics accelerator to draw the tiles. So yes, cool effects are possible, and will be rendered rather fast. I''m not using 3D sound, but I''m planning positional audio panning. I also have EAX support in the game. This is also a MMORPG engine, with a dedicated server doing the grunt work. Any and all ideas are welcome! Feel free to e-mail me. MatrixCubed
http://MatrixCubed.org

How juiced is the server? For all that stuff you''ll need a lot of power...and for vehicles, if it''s a futuristic game you could look at Sid Meier''s Alpha Centauri. The speeders look cool...

Well, if you have a godlike server, go for it. It would definately be cool to see if you can get it to run without immense lag .

"Finger to spiritual emptiness underlying everything." -- How a C manual referred to a "pointer to void." --Things People Said

http://druidgames.cjb.net/

These ideas are great but I''ll agree about the server.

Anyway, I just thought I''d mention that the first three were ideas that were going to be implemented in the second Zelda 64 game back when the N64 Disk Drive was still a likelihood. It would have worked something like the day/time system in Pokemon Gold/Silver but actually spanned the whole year instead of just the week.

Frankly I think ideas like this would make many games much more enjoyable (online or not). Similarly, it could be so that certain events are only possible during certain seasons (example: you can get to Island X only when Lake Y is frozen in the dead of winter).

Well, yes, sounds great.


-Goku
SANE Productions Homepage

Hmm, I love the ideas (been thinking about a few of them myself when I actually get good enough )

I would actually disagree on the idea of the server needing to be all that powerful (although for any MMORPG you''d need some beef right there)

The only real bandwidth hog would be the override objects. But, UO seems to do okay with them and player-placed housing. You''d still need something fairly strong here though.

Weather could easily be timed by the client. This could cause some strange hacks (walking on lakes that aren''t frozen) unless certain catches are placed (sync the time and season every 30 seconds or so, requiring very little bandwidth)

The clouds can be done very simply. Have them on a cycle, and update each clouds vector only once every minute or so, in a loop. Granted, the clouds wouldn''t move randomly, but when''s the last time you''ve seen a cloud dance across the sky randomly anyway

Well, hope this helps.

Well the way to deal with high server load, is to implement multi-server architecture, which I''m working on as well. Since this is a tile-based game, the map can be managed in ranges of tiles. So setting up 4 servers effectively reduces the average load of each server to 25% (assuming factors like equal numbers of players / activities per server).




MatrixCubed
http://MatrixCubed.org