A persistent massively multiplayer RTS, is the basic idea... - X amount of ''factions'' are battling out in space/planet - an extra ''faction'' which is server controlled keeps the factions equal in power - an In game politics system is in play, people start as peons and slowly work their way to being leaders of the faction. Some sort of points system would determine this, - the factions may ally and or trade and or be at war with each other at any one point of time, - the technologies and perhaps UI of each faction would be disctinctly unique and at the same time easy to understand. --------------------------------------------------------- Main problem with Massively multiplayer online games these days is content and keeping the players interested enough to keep playing... thats where the "job board" would come into play... the leaders of any faction , or moderators of the game, can set jobs with perhaps honour or points resulting in the completion of these jobs, eg map out area x,y take out any hostile ships blah blah... Honour for job = "ZZZ" ... After a while people will advance so far up the political scale that they get points from the moderators of the game for keeping everything running smoothly, eg making sure newbies to the factions are helped and that the game remains balanced... there are many more little things that pop into my head however this is just a basic outline... what do yah think

It''s a project I''ve worked on, but we have still not finished the game, however there is one such game available : www.mankind.net



-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Well, matters on how you plan on implementing it.

Go look at http://www.shatteredgalaxy.com

I always wanted to make it so my RTSG was more like Quake than Age of Empires. Where a server is started and players leave and join the ongoing game dynamically.

This is conjecture at this point, but when a player joins they would get a server determined amount of starting units (or one unit). When they leave their units wouldn''t disappear, but would be taken over by the computer, becoming a neutral party.

There could be a limit to the number of people who could join over a certain time, say 1 new addition every couple of minutes. Maybe even keep track of the ip address someone joined under and not let them rejoin before a certain amount of time had passed.

Just some thoughts. Be kinda'' cool to have an ongoing game like that. Not with the complexity of one massively multiplayer perhaps, but still a step beyond conventional methodology.

Care,
Chris Rasmus

Florida, USA
RTS Engine in Development
http://www.knology.net/~heaven
Jesus is LORD!

quote: Original post by Heaven
I always wanted to make it so my RTSG was more like Quake than Age of Empires. Where a server is started and players leave and join the ongoing game dynamically.

The 3d rts game Ground Control developed by Massive Entertainment, published by Sierra features servers that allow people to join or leave at any time. It plays like a charm.. want to play rts for 15 minutes without worrying about getting players or do you want to play for 4 hours non-stop GC is your game.

Hey shaddowofadream, I am working on a game with very similar idea: www.star-fortress.com

however, I don''t intend to have "server controlled faction that keeps balance of power", I came up with some other ideas on how to deal with the wining majority.

Good Start.. got me thinking

How about not making it persistent for a couple reasons: A persistent faction based game is a problem mainly because of the evolving game status while you are away.. which for most normal pple is most of the time. Second, a persistent game tends to eventually become stagant and pple become bored, especially with contribution from reason one. Another point to allowing the "any ole joe" factor of pple just dropping in and out leads to an erractic game state and would cause more work for the admistrators to keep the game from going into chaos. This is of course for RTS type games, and not for RPG''s because of the nature of the game. RTS players are strategists.. they like some degree of finality so they can know that their strategy is the best: a peristent universe makes this difficult to achieve I would think.

Here is an alternative: Make your a central server a means for keeping tabs on all players rank, rating, and statistics as well as availability for hire, and make it a game browsing area where you can see games that other pple will serve. And instead of one persistent universe you could call it many "alternate" or "parallel" universe''s (for the game''s fantasy terminology) and make these seperate game long-term save game''s, and make the games by invite. Since the games are save game''s, they depend on a degree of commitment since the game will resume in the future at an appointed time.. pple who flake will be reported to the central server, thus lowering thier chances that others will "hire" them to play. You could use a point based monitary system.