Time to make some decisions?

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Originally Posted by botmeister

The idea of grouping servers together would be much more controlled than you may think. The formation of linked servers can be done based on a stable and similar ping (between all linked servers) to keep the game play performance similar across servers. That way when you go from server A to server B your ping will stay about the same. Also, server ops would have to authorise the links as a means to create a bigger game, otherwise there would be no way to keep meaningfull team scores, stats and so on. Effectively, you'd be playing on a coordinated and grouping of servers, who's server ops all agreed to the hook up. Of course ad-hoc links of servers can also be allowed between server ops who allow for it. The ping level tolerance, chosen maps, and so on would be left up to the individual server oporator. A server admin could simply choose to remain isolated (as we see now with games such as HL) or decide to join a group of servers, specifying the linking criteria.

Great on the hyping guys, this is really a neat idea indeed, but consider this:
The idea of a boundary between servers is useful when it comes to halve the load on a particular server for large virtual worlds. However, while this can apply fine to a RPG game (climb up that mountain and by the other side of the mountain you land on another server), it'll be a furious headache for a FPS game, where interaction between servers must be *flawless*. Bullets and projectiles, mortars, vehicles, everything, must cross INSTANTLY the boundary from one server to another. Planes must be seen in the sky from a server's point of view while they are flying over the battlefield in another server. Players and military units must be in sight when players use their rifle's lens or any other zooming device.
Again, the idea to share the gaming field between servers is meant to halve the load. Here I'm afraid it won't halve anything but instead DOUBLE it.

And more than that I tend to agree (or a minima say nothing) on ideas as soon as I have the slightest feeling of how they can be implemented, but here I'm fucking clueless on how to do it.


The only feasible thing is the separation of the battlefield in several CLOSED areas! Example: take a train in Baghdad and you're in Bassorah. Or grab an APC with several of your teammates and it drives you automatically to another area of the city where the battle also rages on. Take a lift and you climb up 20 stages in a building which is taken in assault, and you land e.g on the highest part of it.
This is a very restrictive and very limited feature, and I'm not sure it's even worth it.

[Onno Kreuzinger]

this would need a decent hand-over strategy, e.g. you would need to connect to the next server in advance, before you leave the area of the old server you are on, so that your actions (still controled by the old server) would be known on the new server, and probably the new server must be able to relay information (you are hit/dead) via the client to the old server. i think server2server communication in this case would lead to mare problems than relaying information via the client.

cheers

[stefanhendriks]

I willl keep my preferences more general as i see some in-depth discussions going on already:

a team based game, for sure
perhaps even with more then 2 teams. GOOD vs BAD is already so known, it would be cool to have some more teams. Like, let me give you the Dune Universe, where you have 4 Houses which are all interested in 1 goal (planet) for the spice. Some houses ally together to get what they want, when they have it, the alliance is not really 'needed' and conflicts arise there too. I don't know how this should be done practicly in a game though.

You definitely want a single-player mode with a good story btw. And thats where i can help, with the story and single-player aspect. Multiplayer would not be as easy for me due to my 56k connection >. You also want good AI with single-player vs. CPU maps like with CS bots ( ). I have more thoughts but they are all mush right now o_O

[FrostyCoolSlug]

As i've said before, maybe it would be wiser to find a way to have multiple maps running on 1 server?

obviously the server admins would have to decide how big the overall map would be allowed to be..

However, not all maps need to be loaded at once, only the maps North / South / East and West of the players location need to be loaded.

I've created a very simplistic image of what the erver would be doing. Red cells are 'No loaded' sections of the map, green are 'Loaded'

But i cant see this working too well with under 50 players :/

--
However, the 'implementation' of something like this is off topic :p

[SoUlFaThEr]

i am beginning to think thats just too much.......multiple maps multiple servers

sounding like a ping nightmare .....and who said with 50 players! think of your ping. nothing about changing from one server to the next is going to be "smooth".

i think we might be jumping up to an area we cant actually jump to.

[FrostyCoolSlug]

my point being, this would be nice, but when it comes to practicality, its not the best of things to do :p

[botmeister]

The multi map/server talk is an interesting thought to consider, but not as a first version of the game - I agree it's too complex to start with as some of you guys are suggesting.

We should get back to deciding on the type of game to be supported, then select the game engine. The complex stuff can be decided on later.

I think we all agree on an FPS game

Should we allow vehicles + aircraft?

We won't consider support for multi maps+servers. Ok?

I like the idea of modeling a game after real world conflicts as far as the physics and weapons are concerned. We should see typical weapons depending on the conflicts, everything from car bombs, suicide bombs, IED's, RPG's, rusty AK-47's, hand genades, mortars, and the modern weapons typical of whatever nation (or nations) are doing the fighting. Agreeable?

Most if us come from a CS background, so we like a lot of action mixed in with skill based realism, we're not really into slow paced tedious games so the pace has to be a little faster than realism would dictate. Agreeable?

We could allow for a few standard realism settings, a selection of higher or lower realism could be set by the server operator. I always found that CS was either not realistic enough for some folks, or too realistic for others. New players would like the game to be easier, but experienced players like it to be as realistic as possible. A compromise will satisfy no one.

Unlike CS, I don't think we should support 250+ different settings, but we can support things such as instant respawn or not, FF on/off, etc.

Finally, the game can be structured in the same manner as the united bot, allowing a great deal of configurability and alteration of the original. Different versions or "mods" of the original game would be relatively easy to make, and improvements to the official version can be made by anyone with enough skills and time on their hands.

A component based game would also mean that we would not have to build everything ourselves all at once.

comments please

[SoUlFaThEr]

THAT makes sense to me. from beginning to the end of it. the instant respawn thing is suggesting that its more like BF than like CS or UT/Quake?

how do you see it being displayed ......first person, third? oh yes....... both!

also the respawn is giving me this feeling that its either
1. not directly team based
2. like BF where the team objective is on a much larger scale then just winning the "round"

all in all its sounds like it will be good
can we at least make sure we can use .map technology with the mapping part......that i can take my .map things and place them into the terrain LOD like.....(i did this for a MOD on the TORQUE engine until they showed me that they didnt want to work on it really...lazy...the mod is dead now)

[stefanhendriks]

Actually when i am thinking of this, i'd almost say, wait for HL 2 to come out and lets create our own mod for it.. but thats just a very evil thought at the moment

Anyway:

- team based (2 or more)
- round bases perhaps
- objectives
- 32 players (or more?) servers
- vehicles and the like are not really needed unless they are truly a 'key to success'.
- nice gfx (atleast better then HL 1 )
- teamplay should be encouraged. However, if someone has a sort of 'sniper role' in order to cover the team, it should also be awared. Somehow detect that it is helping its teammates
- definatly needs voice communication, would be super realistic if i could talk (not via radio) and only nearby players hear me (friends and enemies). WHen i use radio everybody can hear me, but with disturbtion or something
- use light effects, this brings in a whole new world of stealthly things

the biggest question is, what will it be? Will it be a CS like game? Or a CS like game with DOD elements? WIll it be a game in WW2 ? (i don't like that very much btw).

Somehow we have to make something we LIKE, i also want to stress out we should not try to be original in a way, because its about gameplay. Even when this game will look like many games nowadays, if its good, it will outrule the others.