I think the game should just be saved on the server and only when the player''s visiting a planet.
The game knows the player is visiting the planet and nothing can happen to them.
The only problem is, when some players find longer time to play than others. But this might not be such a big problem if the players can set up their own servers. Then they can choose who can participate in the game.

quote: Original post by Airhead Zoom
I think the game should just be saved on the server and only when the player''s visiting a planet.
The game knows the player is visiting the planet and nothing can happen to them.

Yeah, this makes sense. Possibly, in frontier systems, there could be the danger of a port being captured by pirates. You may be charged randsom for the release of your ship, or not get your ship at all. In civilised systems, this danger wouldn''t exist.

Also, if you can fit suitable defences to your ship, it may be reasonable to let the player disconnect when they aren''t in a port. (Of course, if your ship is a port, you shouldn''t ever need to worry.)

All your bases belong to us (I know. It''s irony.)

Hi there,

thank you for all the inspiring posts. This positive response to my post makes me want to continue.

I believe I was unclear about the state of the project: I''m trying to get the 50K feet view of the project. Here we can be creative; let''s do so. Discussing details of handling is a task for all those guys who commit to implementing the ideas (nothing personal, Airhead: zoom out .)

quote: Original post by jonpolly99
Hi there,
You have read my mind. I have been thinking about getting some people together to have a go at designing a networked version of Elite for a few months. However, I''m a beginning programmer and decided to wait until the end of my course until I started.
I think my idea was slightly different though.

A project like this could be a great possibility for you: after all, errors won''t hurt . I had a look at your profile and found you''re learning C++, XML and Java in a master''s degree, that''s better education than most people I personally know have.

quote: Original post by NewDeal
Didnt read your entire post, but you might wanna take a look at Jumpgate. Its a MMORPG based in an Elite-like universe.

For all who want to check out: a good URL to start is
http://jg.stratics.com/
but you''ll still have to search a little. I''ll have a look at that.

quote: Original post by Ingenu
I''m also working on a similar game called : hypernovae.

Could you point out the main concepts? Pure sci-fi or science fantasy? How far are you? Can I have a look at it? Are you working alone or in a team? How big? Could we coordinate our work? All in all, could you elaborate on your project? I''ll not be mad at you if you do it here.

quote: Original post by DeltaVee
I can''t remember the link, but there is a group out there that is ''cloning'' the original Elite for DirectX.

Have you talked to them?

No, I haven''t. I didn''t even know of them until I read your post. Anyway, I had a bigger, or at least different picture in mind. With all those great games written entirely in Java, I made planned to write the game, server as well as client, in Java, but this is, of course, still open to discussion. A discussion that should take place when the game is defined and the requirements on it are stated.

Nevertheless, if you can remember the link, we could have some inspiring talks.

Of course, you are invited to continue the discussion.

Again: at this point, I''d like to create a clear 50K feet view of the project, with as much input from everyone of you as possible. With major parameters fixed in the genre (3-D universe, major part of the action takes place in space err... ships, client-server based multiplayer game), now questions like this should be addressed:

1. Story-driven vs. "Status-driven" (like Elite): what are advantages/disadvantages of both? Could it mix well?
2. Are quests (like those in MUDs) possible in a game like this?
3. What other MAJOR questions/problems are there to be considered? Remember, this is about a 50K feet view, so creative ways of disposing nosy players'' ships aren''t interesting at the moment (although all suggestions will be retained for later consideration.)
4. Please consider my first post and Mayrels'' excellent reply to it. That''s about the level of discussion that furthers this project at the moment.

Thank you all. Keep up posting ideas!

Ive gone over this with many many many... many people... Timing in mmorpgs can change. I could be driving a car in a mmorpg and time could double for me and stay the same for another guy and that would be just fine. Now after you ignore that part I can tell you why it is ok. In frontier(the one I played the most) it stopped you from going in 8x clock mode(or whatever it was) when you were attacked. All you have to do now is if there arent any non-players in the game, just check to see if he is in a battle, if he isnt, and there is no ship within a certain distance, then let him speed up his clock. When he comes within a distance of a ship it goes back to 1x. The second thing you want to do is make traveling a little faster, as someone said, since most people are impatient then I would say take no longer than 5 minutes to ever get out of the way of anyone.

It is weird though. I would play frontier online if it had a couple more features, even if it didnt have the clock speed up feature. Say when we left it just ran us on an ai. I''ve played strategy games that take days to play, only playing 2 hours a day at most(that was actually a rule)Anyhow that is just me, other people are impatient and backstabbing little thieves by the way(not all of you of course). If you can kill other players I predict one of the following.
1. There will be protected zones which most people will usually stay in(other than inside a base that is).
2. Everytime you turn your back you are getting lazerbeamed. The instant you leave a base you are hit.
3. Unbalancing leads to unnecessary deaths/not enough deaths.
Try to avoid these. Besides killing games where you can''t kill, killing games where you are overkilled by anyone with a weapon, and killing games where people can walk out of a fight while getting hit constantly and live safely, only a game I play that has killing in it and one of these is more annoying.
In addition, I would like to state another portion of balancing that flees everyones mind, money. I play infantry. I got about 300k cash in just a couple hours of play. The most expensive thing in the game is 20k. And don''t water it down the one allpowerful expensive item, make a couple and make them EXPENSIVE!!! I wanna play a game where I must save for a year to buy an item I want.
There are other things that I wanna say but my show is on and I have to go, plus I forgot what this post was about.

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

quote: Airhead: zoom out

Cute OK often I just can''t help jumping into details deeper and deeper.

But what you''d like to know:
Quests: I would like it if people could create their own quests.
For example: You could have traders who give rewards to people for finding a particular relic or such, weaker people who reward tougher people for killing off pirates who have been hurting them etc.
Of course the game could also create random quests (kill player X or get relic Y) and maybe not so random like huge rewards for killing players who are cheating or backstabbing (there is your camping problem solved) or when a weaker player enters a port giving him an easy quest which gives more money.
This way, the game could help weaker players and giving the better players a fair challenge.

Story or status driven: I think status driven would be a better approach since players can then generate their own stories (check the recent article about ''Low level stories'' here on Gamedev) by roleplaying. Also as noted before: a story is finite so it has to end and when there''s still time to play (consider servers which run for months) the game''s fun factor would drop considerably.
You could initialise the game with quests which are created at random so all players can get a starting capital (is that a correct English phrase ''starting capital''?) and become (in)famous and then the game and players can start to generate quests and the REAL fun starts

---
Allow me to clear my head for once...
Stop polluting the air!

quote: Original post by erdbernd
Again: at this point, I'd like to create a clear 50K feet view of the project, with as much input from everyone of you as possible. With major parameters fixed in the genre (3-D universe, major part of the action takes place in space err... ships, client-server based multiplayer game), now questions like this should be addressed:

1. Story-driven vs. "Status-driven" (like Elite): what are advantages/disadvantages of both? Could it mix well?

I don't know about MMORPGs, but a lot of MUDs use what they sometimes call an 'arc' system. An 'arc' is a general storyline that is about what's happening the the world at that time. It would effect the behaviour of NPCs, and random evenst related to the arc would be more likely.

For example, lets say a planet has an 'invasion' arc. A nearby planet is invading this one. An invasion would no doubt consist of taking over ports and stealing cargo. When all ports are taken over, the invaders now control that planet. They may now be able to charge a levy on import/export, or even set the prices of goods.

When the invasion is settled either way, the arc is over. There may be many arcs running at the same time: some will be limited to a system or cluster, and some may apply across the entire galaxy.

The good thing about arcs is that the end of the arc isn't the end of the game: it's a storyline with a definite end (or several definite ends), so it has the advantages of a conventional storyline, but it also has the advantage of a more RPG-based system, because new arcs can be created by the players themselves, rather than being forced upon them by the game.

In my experience, it's quite acceptable to mix story-based and status-based games. RPGs do it all the time. It's just important to remember that you don't need to give each player a fixed role in a story. With well-planned control of NPCs and other random elements, you can force players into going along with a particular arc without them realising that they're being manipulated.

quote:
2. Are quests (like those in MUDs) possible in a game like this?

Certainly. Frontier had quests - transfering passengers/goods to other planets, assassinating people, looking for people.

Clearly the quests could do with more. For example, if somebody hires you to assassinate a person, you could instead warn the person about the contract for a bribe (naturally, this would effect your reputation as an assassin, but might make you popular with the police).

In a multiplayer game, players could easily assign their own quests. I might buy something too big to carry myself that I need to transfer to another system (perhaps because somebody else wants one) - so I'd post an advert on the bulletin board. I might want to threaten a port manager with assassination if he doesn't sell me stuff on the cheap.

We should have ranks in different organisations (you might be able to earn an Elite Organisation, Police, Union of Merchants, or United Pirates rank, for example). I'd refer to these organisations to guilds; it sounds a bit medieval/Dune, but I don't know of a better word.

quote:
3. What other MAJOR questions/problems are there to be considered? Remember, this is about a 50K feet view, so creative ways of disposing nosy players' ships aren't interesting at the moment (although all suggestions will be retained for later consideration.)

Timing is an issue. Scale is an issue (you can control a single ship, but can you lead a fleet, or control a port, planet, system, 'guild', or even an entire empire).

There's an interesting post about p-killing and jerkiness in general, and I'm sure there's a lot more articles around.

quote: Orginal post by King Russ
Ive gone over this with many many many... many people... Timing in mmorpgs can change. I could be driving a car in a mmorpg and time could double for me and stay the same for another guy and that would be just fine. Now after you ignore that part I can tell you why it is ok. In Frontier(the one I played the most) it stopped you from going in 8x clock mode(or whatever it was) when you were attacked. All you have to do now is if there arent any non-players in the game, just check to see if he is in a battle, if he isnt, and there is no ship within a certain distance, then let him speed up his clock. When he comes within a distance of a ship it goes back to 1x.

You can't do this, you really can't.

Firstly, any Elite-clone should obey the laws of physics. If I'm moving 8x whilst you're moving 1x, then I might be moving faster than the speed of light.

Secondly, speed isn't only important when you're fighting. The reason you can't go at 8x when you're in a fight is that you couldn't possibly win. Lets say you have a race from one planet to another. You might get caught in a fight and have go to 1x and then back to 8x when you win. The other player, who isn't slowed down, might finish the race first even though according to your clocks you arrived before he did.

Thirdly, not every one will agree about what time it is. Although that is exactly the situation in reality, it isn't because people can speed up their clocks at will.

A simple rule: no time compression, except as an expensive piece of equipment. Frontier time compression isn't impossible because it isn't real. In a multiplayer game, time compression would have to be real.

quote:
It is weird though. I would play frontier online if it had a couple more features, even if it didnt have the clock speed up feature. Say when we left it just ran us on an ai.

The AI would have to be incredibly good. It'd have to figure out what to attack, what to protect, what to buy and what to sell: all based upon what you would do, so when you come back you think 'yes, I would have done that '. The other option is just to dock somewhere when you disconnect, in which case you don't need an AI.

Now, having an automatic fighting system as well as the autonav would be a good idea. Reasonably, you could leave your ship in deep space and put the autofighter on defensive mode and hope that nothing too powerful came along when you were away. Of course, if you ran out of fuel when defending, you'd need to have an autonav that could get you to a friendly port. Sophisticated autonavs and autofighters would cost much more than normal ones.

quote:
I've played strategy games that take days to play, only playing 2 hours a day at most(that was actually a rule)Anyhow that is just me, other people are impatient and backstabbing little thieves by the way(not all of you of course). If you can kill other players I predict one of the following.
1. There will be protected zones which most people will usually stay in(other than inside a base that is).

How would that fit into reality? The Doctor's TARDIS has a Temporal Grace field that prevents death within it. Conceivably there could be fields of a similar kind dotted around the galaxy, erected by an ancient race. In Simon Greene's (I think) books, there are diluted forms of these called Sanctuaries. Such a place would be a good location for newbie players to start out in.

quote:
2. Everytime you turn your back you are getting lazerbeamed. The instant you leave a base you are hit.

The article referenced above uses a bounty system: if you are attacked without provocation by somebody then you can put a bounty on them. If you don't have enough money to pay for the bounty, if your reputation is relatively good it might be paid for by the planet on which you claim it, but that would effect your reputation - that might help prevent players from inciting others into attacking them just to place a bounty on them.

quote:
3. Unbalancing leads to unnecessary deaths/not enough deaths.

The bounty system aught to solve this kind of thing. You may feel free to kill pirates in civilised systems, because they won't be putting bounty up in that system (because they're pirates and will be arrested when try to register with the bounty people). On the hand, killing pirates in pirate-controlled systems is a recipe for death.

quote:
In addition, I would like to state another portion of balancing that flees everyone's mind, money. I play infantry. I got about 300k cash in just a couple hours of play. The most expensive thing in the game is 20k. And don't water it down the one allpowerful expensive item, make a couple and make them EXPENSIVE!!! I wanna play a game where I must save for a year to buy an item I want.

I don't want to save for a year. A couple of months, maybe.

It's also worth noting that the penalty for buying a powerful weapon shouldn't just be that it costs a lot. It should adversely your reputation to use the most powerful weapon. The police guild will want to arrest you for using what is probably contraband, the pirate guild will want your weapon, and the merchant guild will aid the police because they're scared that the pirates will get to your weapon. It should emit intense, hard-to-shield radiation, damaging the rest of your ship and making you stand out like a sore thumb on the radar. It should use some exotic fuel that can only be bought on a handful of planets for almost as much as the weapon itself costs.

All your bases belong to us (I know. It's irony.)

Edit: Evil

got it wrong.

Edited by - Mayrel on November 14, 2001 1:32:48 PM

the theory of relativity covers time dilation with respect to high velicoties:
the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes for you. so, if you are travelling at 50% the speed of light, and you travel for 1 hour (from your perspective), everyone else in the universe will see it as you having traveled for 2 hours.
so, a solution to your time probelm could go as follows:
only allow the speeding up of time when travelling faster-than-light (and even then, you do not control it, it is just a function of your speed). i am no physicist, but i AM a big sci-fi fan, and since this is a game you can tweak theoretical physics for your own purposes. let''s assume that once you reach the speed of light, and pass it, the time-dilation function flips signs (untestable, but why not? Isaac Asimov did it with gravity in Nemesis!) so, when a player travels at twice light-speed, their personal time perspective doubles (rather than halves at sub-light speeds). players can travel at 10x light-speed (if they get a good enough engine), and it will only take them a few moments of the player''s time... but the character will age more than if they flew slower.
for example: player 1 flies to a planet far far away at 5x light-speed, it takes him a minute, and his character ages 5 minutes. player 2 is just sitting around enjoying the scenery. he sits there for a minute, and the character ages a minute. now, both players spent one minute in real-life time, both characters are again sitting at one minute later in game-time, and the only difference is that the first character''s age has increased abnormally (which WILL matter if you allow natural death at an old age, which you should anyway).
this is counterintuitive, and most likely not a good model of real-life physics, but hey! it''s for a game!
the only important parts are (a) time-dilation only occurs when flying at extremely high speeds (not during normal gameplay), and (b) you explain this sci-fi version of physics to the players somehow, just in case they care (some will, because they are physics geeks who want immersion, and others won''t because they just want to play; for this second type of player, the only important thing they have to remember is that going faster = faster aging).
if you don''t like my idea, oh well, i was just trying to help. you could always make up some other reasoning for it (as long as it is explained, whether with my method or with some super-expensive device, it will work fine in the game).

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

Hi there,

thank you for all these high quality posts. There were some major points addressed:

1. Temporal scaling

I think this issue can best be coped with by avoiding it. Say you have three drives: an interstellar ftl drive that brings you from jumppoint to jumppoint, an interplanetary ftl drive that can''t work if there''s a heavy object around, and a tactical sublight drive that can achieve top speeds of ~6000 miles/sec. Result: two drives with parameters entirely in our hand and one drive with negligible relativistic effects. Don''t make it too complicated.

Thanks to krez nevertheless.

2. Handling storylines

The article Airhead zoom referred to was educating, really. I think this concept combines favorably with the story arc concept. Player-generated quests are a great idea, too.

3. Pking

I don''t think this is a problem. In Elite, you know you risk your life (sort of) whenever you leave the station. Flying through a harmless universe would be boring. In Elite are systems where that is tolerated and systems where the police will hunt you down relentlessly. I think that''s a good solution in multiplayer, too. Plus, pirates are always worth great bounties.

With all the opinions, I think the "great scale" aspects could be fixed soon. I''ll read some articles on the necessary game documents, all your posts again and start working on the game docs. As until now, all help is greatly appreciated. One more personal word: I do this for the fun of it and to build up some experience.

I have an image in mind, of a game with a background taken from Mayrels'' first post, where several universes coexist and, in long term, only one can "survive" (not during the server''s existence.) The players are pirates and policemen, merchants and miners, traders and soldiers, try to live their lives, achieve there goals and sometimes get a glimpse at the background, opening roads to new adventures.

quote: Original post by krez
the theory of relativity covers time dilation with respect to high velicoties:

It does, but not in a way that''s useful.

quote:
the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes for you.

A common misconception. In fact, time moves at the normal speed for you regardless of what speed you move at: what changes is your apparent ''speed'' through time from another observer''s point of view.

quote:
so, if you are travelling at 50% the speed of light, and you travel for 1 hour (from your perspective), everyone else in the universe will see it as you having traveled for 2 hours.

As it happens, it''d be 1.15 hours.

quote:
i am no physicist, but i AM a big sci-fi fan, and since this is a game you can tweak theoretical physics for your own purposes. let''s assume that once you reach the speed of light, and pass it, the time-dilation function flips signs (untestable, but why not?

Einstein equations predit that if one travels faster than light speed (which is, of course, impossible), then one should begin to travel through ''imaginary'' time. This is unquestionably not time speeding up, but could, for example, be a way to move from one universe to another (assuming the universes are situated in different positions in imaginary time).

quote:
so, when a player travels at twice light-speed, their personal time perspective doubles (rather than halves at sub-light speeds). players can travel at 10x light-speed (if they get a good enough engine), and it will only take them a few moments of the player''s time... but the character will age more than if they flew slower.

With imaginary time, you''d travel roughly 10 ''imaginary seconds'' for each real second of your time at 10x light-speed. Exactly what that distance would mean is unknown.

quote:
for example: player 1 flies to a planet far far away at 5x light-speed, it takes him a minute, and his character ages 5 minutes. player 2 is just sitting around ... and the character ages a minute. now, both players spent one minute in real-life time, both characters are again sitting at one minute later in game-time, and the only difference is that the first character''s age has increased abnormally

If dilation was reversed at 5c, then the moving player would have aged only 0.2 minutes - you''d have to travelling at 0.97c to age 5 minutes.

quote:
this is counterintuitive, and most likely not a good model of real-life physics, but hey! it''s for a game!

IMHO, one of the main things that made Elite great was that it obeyed the laws of physics. Any game that claims to be space-based should, as far as I am concerned, also obey the laws of physics. If it doesn''t (like it has a maximum speed), it should be marketed as a submarine-sim, because that''s basically what it is.

We should avoid relavistic effects: they don''t make sense in the real world and cannot be correctly simulated in a multipayer game: if I travel at 0.86c, things outside will appear to moving twice as fast; but, from the point of view of somebody on the outside, it is me that is moving twice as fast. Clearly, it isn''t possible for that to happen in a multiplayer game.

All your bases belong to us (I know. It''s irony.)

Ok, this might be one example where time might make a difference. In any other game I''ve talked about, it would have been fine. Now you have to go and get all technical on me... Well in real life as you wanna define it, people have different equipment. One of two thing could happen. You could either let players travel from one place to another fast and come up with an explanation, or let us travel at the speed of your physics, even though this is a space game, and we aren''t that advanced in that area here on Earth. I know physics are supposed to apply everywhere in the universe, and they are true until proven false, but like I said, we haven''t traveled that far in space. What if beyond our system objects that are not in motion tend to go into motion without an outside force? Enough of my lies, time to get to the game.

And whoever was talking about speed of light travel got it backwards(I think). They take an hour out of their day and its 2 hours in ours. They age less then the rest of the universe because they cheated. That would mean that When I warp in space, I am at my destination, now I just have to wait in real-life for that time to go by, so the server can have correct time. Although I do question your need for time. In frontier you had to deliver stuff by a certain time, yes, but If I had to deliver them in one week, My one week would be my one week. Besides that of a race, in which you could still check the times to see who got there first, and having a race in space is pretty ridiculous at 1x speed(several reasons) there would be no reason to keep time other than to hold the story together. Those arcs if I understand what you are saying, sound nice, I planned on having those, I just wasn''t calling them arcs, in my game. Having NPC''s attack another planet with their own directives in mind and having an actual outcome is nice. The next step was mentioned(I think) that people could then interfere with those directives by attack them and thus affecting the outcome of the war.

While frontier/Elite would be a nice multiplayer game, it would have to be overhauled quite a bit in order for it to be a game. The story aspect... if you have a big story, it becomes a little less of the game it once was. Oh, Mayrel most of my posts are overexaggerated. I just wanna get the point across. About saving up for a year, while a couple months would be acceptable, my problem with games that have money is that I always get the money way too fast and get that item, then I have nothing left to work for in the monetary system(usually). I meant for the average player anyhow. Average players meaning that they only play for 1-3 hours a day at that game. You playing about 5-8 hours a day would have the item much fast(in your months). After conquering the monetary system I am forced to move on.

About the AI, I was just suggesting it control us if we have to leave while in space. It should then take us to a docking port(if there are different costs, we could define one)and basically log us off, pending if any actions could be taken against us. While the bounty system is a nice idea, once again it is within my game, it is not a solution. Their whole solution(the article above) mentions that even if this bounty system is intact that powerful people, the ones with the ''big guns'' will be able to take down all the bounty hunters and live. They suggest you weaken him if he is attacked by several small people. While in my game you don''t gain relative xp by fighting smaller people, to say that you would lose xp by doing so leaves another loophole for those ddi''s he was speaking of. My and a group of friends could thereby create level 1 characters with no powers whatsoever. By continually attacking the strongest people there are, we weaken them. For someone who has no control over who attacks them, it would be a pity to lose xp just because you were attacked. Which leads to another part of my discussion. How are you supposed to ''weaken'' the character in a space mmorpg. His spaceship could take damage, but he could pay to have that fixed. If he lost some sort of skills, that wouldn''t seem right, depending on how you raise you skills. Skills like haggling won''t go down from fighting people weaker than you. However your aiming skills(Ha like we will aim weapons ourselves in space wars, games now even have aimbots). But as long as they don''t stand still then you are still practicing aiming. And unless you deter those powerful people in some way, the system loses its affect.

Speaking of the issue of newbies. Since you plan on having interaction with npc''s in the game, You can have newbies start at the same place others have before(don''t get confused here). If you don''t then you have to do something else. Anyhow, newbies so to speak, should no longer be newbies after a certain amount of time. Thus, they would have to leave their protective area after a while, and be restricted to areas outside of it. Also, this is a sci-fi game. Who says everything has to be explained in a serious matter. The field of protection could be caused by an ancient race that evolved beyond bodies and now protect new potential around the universe, or perhaps an advanced race that left that field as their gift to the galaxy. That reminds me of space cowboy, a genius left warp-gate technology to the space federation and then got into an accident without ever revealing how it worked, he is now insane or brain-damaged and the federation uses the gates, without knowing how they work, to travel from place to place and it doesn''t even take much time(just time enough to get in line and warp).

As much as you want it to be this game isn''t gonna be out soon, even that guy said so. But to say that a game that takes place in the future must adhere to the rules of today isn''t exactly right. It can follow the rules to a ''T'' but don''t say it must. Sometimes a game should be a game, not a true realistic version of life, because even in life we have cheaters. Of course, these big posts sort of let me go barreling off point. I have done that once again. Can someone retreave me from the forest?

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"