32 replies to this topic

[Dave101]

Quote

I totally agree because most of the games that are played now are more about fantasy.

Most of the games are really about fantasy there are no reality... users like it base on what they find interesting.

[Blaxill]

Forgotnglory said:

anyways it got outlawed in several countries and I think one of them was the UK.

I think you are referring to Manhunt. It was not outlawed in the uk. It was considered to be re-reviewed and have its age-rating taken away (which would mean shop can't sell it) but even that didn't happen in the end. However, many shops did stop stocking it after a particularly violent murder in which one of the attackers was said to be obsessed with the game. (Police said they didn't consider the link to be of any value and said the crime was the result of drug-related robbery but of course the media didn't see it that way.)

[Hobbes]

I have made my own MMO, I wish I had read through this list earlier, some real good points there.

[Hobbes]

TaggM said:

I could be wrong, here, but what about using dead reckoning, ray tracing, and physics?

When the client sends a clicks-event, a display coordinate should be sent to the server. The server should track location, orientation, rotation, velocity, and acceleration for all objects, along with each client's display dimensions. Ray tracing from the client's object, and along the paths of projectiles, should trigger a collision event if another object lies within the collidable chunk of time-space.

Latency would be an issue; no?

[Reedbeta]

Hobbes said:

Latency would be an issue; no?

Yes, definitely. In order to be fair, the server should keep track of client latency and, when it processes an attack, ideally should back up time by the client's latency to look at whether the attack *would have* hit a target if it occurred at that time. It may then have to "rewrite history" a little bit based on this attack having happened. This can lead to weirdnesses when a player has high latency, but IMHO it's better than requiring people to "lead" their shots, etc.

Here is a good article on the subject from Valve, who introduced a technique like this in TFC...10 years ago now! http://developer.val...nd_Optimization (look at the "Lag Compensation" section).

[}:+()___ (Smile)]

I think client side prediction is better as it lessen server load (crucial in MMO).

[DewiMorgan]

A lot of the questions in the list are malleable - that's why they are questions, not rules.

As it turns out, there are only three hard-and-fast rules for networked games:

1) Never trust the client side.
2) Never trust the client side.
3) NEVER trust the client side.

Complex though they are, once you understand these rules, you'll understand why missile attacks that use physics are considered a Hard Problem.

for a start, they make it trivial for users to script bots with ingame item scripts or with third party apps like AutoHotKey, that give them guaranteed headshots every time.

This is why so many MMOs just work on the "select a target, and where you hit and what damage you do is calculated on the server based on their dodge, size, cover, etc; and your skill, weapon, proximity, etc" method. The client is just responsible for showing the pretty arrow flying wherever they clicked, but the foe's stats are affected only by the server.

Other online games violate the second rule, or occasionally the third; they trust the client, then try to jump through hoops when people reverse-engineer the mechanism and figure out ways of scripting it with AutoHotKey or something.

Once one person has scripted it, you must assume that your entire player base has scripted it, since scripts are easy to pass around. You might as well distribute the script with your game.

At that point, your rules have changed from "click on a monster and potentially do some damage to it" to "click on a monster and automatically hit, and automatically do max damage to it". In which case, you really ought to have started with that rule in the first place, and saved yourself a bunch of work.

[Vee]

Hey,
Just a quick question. What if I have all the answers u are seeking in the first post ? I mean the game that will be sold. But there's only one problem. Who will put his/her trust in me to give it a hearing. I mean this thing that I have in mind can be done either in a big company or a small company. In theory it should change the perspective over gaming. Sort of a phenomenon as LoL, derived from DotA which was a mod of War3 and so on and so on. So it's evolution basically. What do I do in that case? I haven't really started coding because ... aaa .... I don't know any coding. However I think I'll be able to explain my idea so detailed that it will be so close to the actual one. I mean every detail not copy/paste terrain, algorithms, and so on. Eventually cuz of the world, you will have to copy paste some terrain as per productivity / h ratio ;).
Anyway, I'm hoping to get an answer even if the post is old.
Thanks,
Oh, I play games since I was 6, I remember even now the sounds of the cassette loading a game on my Ancient Cobra, ssssss !!!
Cheers,
Victor

[DewiMorgan]

It seems like:
- you're starting out as a Game Designer, but have no experience,
- have never made a game before,
- you want to make an MMO, and
- you want people to pay you to make it.

Everyone - and I mean everyone - has a game idea. Just like everyone has an idea for the greatest novel ever written, and everyone has an idea for a great invention.

So, no: nobody will pay you for your idea. Ideas are ten a penny. Not just that: worlds are ten a penny. Haven't we all spent hours, days, weeks of our time designing a world down to all the races, languages, careers, economies, landscape and maps? Anyone who's been a roleplaying GM, or a fantasy/sci-fi author, has done this at least once, and probably several times. And story arcs and plots are ten a penny - anyone who's ever spun a tale has more stories than hairs on heir head.

If you make stuff with your mind (game designer, novel author, inventor, photographer, clothes designer, whatever) your first work will probably need to be made in your own time, on your own dime. People *might* pay you afterwards, which might pay for the time you invested there, but they'll do that only if the end result isn't crap.

If it's your first effort, though, it almost certainly will be crap. So you'll throw it away and start over. Maybe several times. Nobody will ever pay you for these "learning" attempts.

But eventually, you need to make a finished prototype. Not the whole game. Maybe even a completely unrelated, smaller game. But you need a prototype, a portfolio, to show what you can do, to show what you *could* do if you just had the funding and time.

On the flip side, the fact that ideas are really cheap is a very good thing. It means you can discuss your idea freely with anyone, and the chances of it getting stolen are about zero. I've seen a lot of people holding their ideas closely to their chest, as if they were treasures to be protected from prying eyes. That's no way to get other people interested in the dream! Why would anyone else steal your idea and work on it for years, when they have fifty ideas of their own that they want to work on first?


All that said: if you have a great idea, and want to be paid for it, you could try one of the sites like Kickstarter.com - set up an account, tell lots of people about your idea, and if it sounds good, then some of them will chip in a small amount to support your project. If enough people hear about it, that might be enough to fund you. What's the worst that can happen? :)

[Vee]

If this is true Dewi, how come that all the games that are coming out aren't "new ideas" ? If every1 has very good ideas, know how to make it so that it doesn't fail, how come nobody does it ? If u had an idea of a game that would make tons of money, bring satisfaction on both sides ( both the user and the company ), how come we still have so few games out there meeting that criteria ( I mean extreme man EXTREME SATISFACTION )? My idea is not something that you might reply to : Heh man, plenty of ppl thought about that already. Cuz if so, I don't see any problem with applying it and creating something at least close to my idea. But it ain't happening. To me it seems that the ideas ( or the companies ) are limited. What happened to the imagination of ppl ? Are they this limited? Blizzard opted for following the same 3 stories for quite a while now ( as an example ): SC, Warcraft and Diablo. Hell, I agree, they were good games etc. However, their imagination failed when it came to the point of continuing the WoW storyline ( again as an example ). And once you run out of ideas on a subject, why don't u change it ? There are so many imbalanced things going on in the game world these days. If people find Angry Birds a cool game, this should make the huge companies wonder...

And now a question: What are the limits considering the tech we have today? What's the next level? What's the trend of gaming ? They were 3 i know :)). From my point of view we're going backwards. Having this technology the best thing we can come up with is Diablo 3 ? CoD ? Limbo ??? LoL?

As for my plan, I'm still gonna finish writing the game, as much as I can, register it as Intellectual Property, then share the idea with every1. Why ? Cuz lots of PROFIT$$$ can come out of it. And I wouldn't want to create a game which can be used in an "evil, greedy, f^$# the user, praise the money" way. Why ? Cuz this is happening nowadays ;)

[alphadog]

Vee said:

If every1 has very good ideas, know how to make it so that it doesn't fail, how come nobody does it ?

Because there are dreamers, and there are do-ers, but a dreamer that also does (and does well, and to completion, and without failing along the way) is very rare indeed. It's stochastic too; even with the best of what is obvious, the project may still fail.

Ideas are definitely not limited. Spend some time in a large studio, you'll see that ideas are definitely not limited. In fact, IMO, it's one of the common reasons to fail...

Vee said:

What happened to the imagination of ppl ?

It's still there, but not everything you can imagine will sell.

And, furthermore, from the subset of imaginative ideas that will sell, some will not sell enough to get the investors' ROI so it doesn't happen.

Vee said:

What are the limits considering the tech we have today?

Real, immersive 3D, not the shitty "windowbox" 3D we have now.

[Malgorzata]

There's an article about player behaviour in MMORPGs. He discusses aspects like the number of active players, session length, session composition, player movements, long-term behaviour, etc. It would be good to take those into account when designing your own MMORPG game to make it successful. Unfortunately in free teaser there's only first page for download (along with full article on game design). The magazine, where it's published is paid. If you'd like to see, here's Link to Teaser

[mahaprabhu]

Thanks, good posting