Topic: Source code?

[Mwaza]

Hi!
Your project seems quite interesting, so I would like to see the code, but I can't find any cvs or similar.

Or is the project closed source?

I could maybe join the development, depending on what you think and what time I've got, but even if i won't become a dev here's my first impressions:

"MMORPG that will eventually have a single player mode".
Let me say one thing: That is impossible.
You must limit yourselves; it is possible that you will sometime get to the 1.0 release of the MMORPG, but after that you will need more than 50hrs of work per day to keep the game up.
And I think a MMORPG is quite enough..  

And I can't think of a MMORPG with BOTH FPS and RTS. Maybe it's possible but no one has succeeded in it yet. Seriously, if you ever want to reach 1.0, I would suggest limiting yourselves to one genre, (MMO)RPG.

Limiting to first person OR third person would also give a more unified gameplay.

It would theoretically be possible with both on-planet and in-space gameplay, but don't forget that it will be EXTREMELY hard to balance the game; try to focus on either space or land.
I think a land-focused MMORPG which limits the in-space gameplay to travelling, trading and maybe fighting would be best; It is very hard to make people communicate well if they just travel in their space shuttles, land is an easier platform to start with.
And you must work much with making the travelling system well-balanced: no one thinks it's fun with one-hour waiting just to get to another place, but on the other hand it would get boring with instant-travel.

And instead of focusing on models I would consider the possibility of generating worlds. It IS hard, but not AT ALL as hard as doing them all manually, especially if ppl can destroy them (it would be such a waste of work )
But the worlds must be alive; empty planets are never fun. (maybe not all, but many)
(You will need very much computer power at the servers, but thats a problem of the future)

[EDIT: The crystal space HAS an octree scene manager (I thought it was only portal based), so this is irrelevant..
Ok, now I have probably managed to get you angry enough, but I have one more question:
Is CS really the best engine? It is portal based, which means it is ideal for indoors FPS, but space..
I know it is a HELL of work, but it will be an even more insane lot of work if you need to switch later...
I would recommend OGRE, a more extensible (at the scene management point of view, at least) engine. Or if you get a sudden attack of megalomania (storhetsvansinne in swedish, i just looked up the word in a dictionary, so it might be wrong.. ), I think G3D C++ might be good because this game needs a so specialized system.
]

oops, this post got longer and i also sound a little more than I intended, i apologize for that..
/Mwaza

EDIT: Fixed a smiley-error..

[Mwaza]

Hey, I almost forgot..
Nice web design you've done. (The PNG transparency in the menus doesn't work in IE though. I haven't looked why, but I see that you have tried to apply the filter fix)
And the phpbb theme fits very well, I know how hard it is to find a suitable theme..

And one more thing..
If you lose your char when you die, an FPS (quake or hl2 style) is not possible. In FPS games you SHOULD die. I don't know if you thought of FPS as a First Person Shooter or just First Person Game, but a traditional FPS.. I don't think that will work.

But of course, one more thing I forgot to say last time:
That's up to you guys. If I should be a dev, I should NOT go and force you to change the game to what I think would be good. If the designer wants it like that, he should have it like that.
I just wanted to help prevent some future headache.
/Mwaza

[Morgul]

Well, let me start off by saying thankyou for the input! It's nice to see someone other than myself or Dave posting on these forums, and it's also nice to see someone taking al look at the game!

Now, to adress your concerns:

Source Code:[/u]
Yes, the project is closed source. There are a number of reasons for this, but I'm not the best person to answer the 'why' of it. (Even though I'm the project head, I left that decision up to Dave, and he opted for closed source. We talk about why a few months ago, but I really can't remember most of his reasons. With any luck he'll reply to this post.)

Single Player:[/u]
Ok, I can see your point here, but it isn't impssible. However, some clarification is needed. The MMORPG will be released before the single player version. If it helps, think of the single player version more as a second project then part of the initial game. You're right when you say a MMORPG is quite enough....      

...for now.

Game Modes:[/u]
Ah, this is something I've heard before. Right now, with just Dave and myself working on this, it seems hard to imaine us ever making a game that encompases more than one genre, and ever pulling it off. Then again, if you take a look at where we are right now, it was hard to imagine we'd even be this far last september when we started. It hasn't even been a year, and we've already released an alpha... seems pretty good to me.

Now, limiting ourselves to one mode might very well make it easy, but the point isn't to get the game out in a year or two; the point is to get a game that does things people have never seen before out the door in something more like five years. (I'm trying to be realistic here.) Even if it takes twenty years, imagine how impressive it will be? (I sure hope it doesn't take that long!!  :P

Balancing very well might be an issue. However, the modes are very seperate. Also, RTS is simply a special case of flightsim (there won't be any real balancing issues here; balance flightsim, and you've balanced RTS). FPS vs Flightsim might pose soe interesting problems, but then again   when will the two ever interact? Should someone hop into a starfighter, the certainly are going to do some damage if they start shooting people with it's weapons. That's not imbalance, that's real life!

As far as the traveling, we've got it figured out. There are two modes of travel: normal space, and sub space. Normal space is exatcly like the real universe. If you start traveling in one direction, eventually you'll get somewhere, but it may take years... litterally. That's why they invented subspace. Subspace is a shortcut: basically warping space around youself, and translating in the fourth dimension. Without getting into the phsyics, it allows a trip from one planet to another to take a few seconds, and traveling across the gallaxy would only take weeks. (Now, we're not sure how that will work in game play; we might shorten the amount of time it takes. We'll see.)

Generating Worlds:[/u]
Defintitely. That's what I've been thinking for a while now. We need more content, and worlds are one of the largest. (As a side note, the ability to destroy a planet may exist, but almost no one will have it. Kinda would unballance things a tad ) Now, something I've been trying to figure out is how one would go about generating planets. I don't even have any real ideas o this, mind sharing some?

Game Engine:[/u]
I was asking Dave this the other day. Honestly, CS might not be the best choice, however it's something Dave is familiare with (and I'm gettin there) plus it has a good deal more infrastructure to it than any other. You see, with CS and CEL about the first year of our development is done for us already. Sure, CS might not be the best interms of raw performance, and/or total grpahics quality, however something I've found is that games that are fun, and have a huge playability factor are seldom ignored because they don't look like doom 3.

FPS:[/u]
When we say FPS, we mean mostly camera mode/game style. It's not going to be a deathmatch. Think of it more like Neverwinter Nights, or MorrowWind. (But FPS, not 3rd person). Sorry for the confusion.

I'd very much like to see what you might eb able to offer. I'm going to talk to Dave (who may be out of contact for the next two weeks, I'm not sure.) and in the mean time, I'd be interested in more of your ideas, and in talking about some of this in more depth! Feel free to respond on the forums.

--Chris

[Morgul]

Almost forgot: Thanks for the comments on the site! We've tried to make it looks as good as we can. As far as the PNG transpearance... it's not supported in IE. That's why we recomend Firefox.

Also, the phpBB theme is temporary... we're making out own eventually. This one will be the default till then... and we'll keep it as an option. Personally, I like it.

[Mwaza]

For the png transparency, I've got a javascript for that. It might need some tweaking for this site, but the principle is the same:
(I've put the files together with some other useful scripts here: http://www.shell.linux.se/edev/js.zip. Unless otherwise stated, i own the copyright of these (not the browser detect script) and I allow you to do anything with them)
You will need to add the fixTrans method to the onLoad on the page, either by setting
<body onLoad="fixTrans()"> or using the onLoad event script in the zip file.
pngtrans.js:

Code: [Select]


function fixTrans() {
// Get the img elements
var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName("img");
// Loop through the results
for (var i = 0; i < imgs.length; i++) {
var img = imgs[i];

if (img.src.indexOf(".png") == -1)
continue;

div = document.createElement("div");
div.style.filter += "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader"+
"(src='"+img.src+"',sizingMethod='scale')";
div.style.width = img.width;
div.style.height = img.height;
div.style.position = "relative";

img.parentNode.insertBefore(div, img);
img.style.display = "none";
}
}

if ((browser.isIE55 || browser.isIE6up) && browser.isWin32)
addOnLoad(fixTrans);

You will also need this script for the browser check (you could probably come up with your own, but this works, so I took that:
browserdetect.js:

Code: [Select]


// Browser Detect  v2.1.6
// documentation: http://www.dithered.com/javascript/browser_detect/index.html
// license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/
// code by Chris Nott (chris[at]dithered[dot]com)


function BrowserDetect() {
   var ua = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();

   // browser engine name
   this.isGecko       = (ua.indexOf('gecko') != -1 && ua.indexOf('safari') == -1);
   this.isAppleWebKit = (ua.indexOf('applewebkit') != -1);

   // browser name
   this.isKonqueror   = (ua.indexOf('konqueror') != -1);
   this.isSafari      = (ua.indexOf('safari') != - 1);
   this.isOmniweb     = (ua.indexOf('omniweb') != - 1);
   this.isOpera       = (ua.indexOf('opera') != -1);
   this.isIcab        = (ua.indexOf('icab') != -1);
   this.isAol         = (ua.indexOf('aol') != -1);
   this.isIE          = (ua.indexOf('msie') != -1 && !this.isOpera && (ua.indexOf('webtv') == -1) );
   this.isMozilla     = (this.isGecko && ua.indexOf('gecko/') + 14 == ua.length);
   this.isFirebird    = (ua.indexOf('firebird/') != -1);
   this.isNS          = ( (this.isGecko) ? (ua.indexOf('netscape') != -1) : ( (ua.indexOf('mozilla') != -1) && !this.isOpera && !this.isSafari && (ua.indexOf('spoofer') == -1) && (ua.indexOf('compatible') == -1) && (ua.indexOf('webtv') == -1) && (ua.indexOf('hotjava') == -1) ) );
   
   // spoofing and compatible browsers
   this.isIECompatible = ( (ua.indexOf('msie') != -1) && !this.isIE);
   this.isNSCompatible = ( (ua.indexOf('mozilla') != -1) && !this.isNS && !this.isMozilla);
   
   // rendering engine versions
   this.geckoVersion = ( (this.isGecko) ? ua.substring( (ua.lastIndexOf('gecko/') + 6), (ua.lastIndexOf('gecko/') + 14) ) : -1 );
   this.equivalentMozilla = ( (this.isGecko) ? parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('rv:') + 3 ) ) : -1 );
   this.appleWebKitVersion = ( (this.isAppleWebKit) ? parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('applewebkit/') + 12) ) : -1 );
   
   // browser version
   this.versionMinor = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion);
   
   // correct version number
   if (this.isGecko && !this.isMozilla) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('/', ua.indexOf('gecko/') + 6) + 1 ) );
   }
   else if (this.isMozilla) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('rv:') + 3 ) );
   }
   else if (this.isIE && this.versionMinor >= 4) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('msie ') + 5 ) );
   }
   else if (this.isKonqueror) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('konqueror/') + 10 ) );
   }
   else if (this.isSafari) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.lastIndexOf('safari/') + 7 ) );
   }
   else if (this.isOmniweb) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.lastIndexOf('omniweb/') + 8 ) );
   }
   else if (this.isOpera) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('opera') + 6 ) );
   }
   else if (this.isIcab) {
      this.versionMinor = parseFloat( ua.substring( ua.indexOf('icab') + 5 ) );
   }
   
   this.versionMajor = parseInt(this.versionMinor);
   
   // dom support
   this.isDOM1 = (document.getElementById);
   this.isDOM2Event = (document.addEventListener && document.removeEventListener);
   
   // css compatibility mode
   this.mode = document.compatMode ? document.compatMode : 'BackCompat';

   // platform
   this.isWin    = (ua.indexOf('win') != -1);
   this.isWin32  = (this.isWin && ( ua.indexOf('95') != -1 || ua.indexOf('98') != -1 || ua.indexOf('nt') != -1 || ua.indexOf('win32') != -1 || ua.indexOf('32bit') != -1 || ua.indexOf('xp') != -1) );
   this.isMac    = (ua.indexOf('mac') != -1);
   this.isUnix   = (ua.indexOf('unix') != -1 || ua.indexOf('sunos') != -1 || ua.indexOf('bsd') != -1 || ua.indexOf('x11') != -1)
   this.isLinux  = (ua.indexOf('linux') != -1);
   
   // specific browser shortcuts
   this.isNS4x = (this.isNS && this.versionMajor == 4);
   this.isNS40x = (this.isNS4x && this.versionMinor < 4.5);
   this.isNS47x = (this.isNS4x && this.versionMinor >= 4.7);
   this.isNS4up = (this.isNS && this.versionMinor >= 4);
   this.isNS6x = (this.isNS && this.versionMajor == 6);
   this.isNS6up = (this.isNS && this.versionMajor >= 6);
   this.isNS7x = (this.isNS && this.versionMajor == 7);
   this.isNS7up = (this.isNS && this.versionMajor >= 7);
   
   this.isIE4x = (this.isIE && this.versionMajor == 4);
   this.isIE4up = (this.isIE && this.versionMajor >= 4);
   this.isIE5x = (this.isIE && this.versionMajor == 5);
   this.isIE55 = (this.isIE && this.versionMinor == 5.5);
   this.isIE5up = (this.isIE && this.versionMajor >= 5);
   this.isIE6x = (this.isIE && this.versionMajor == 6);
   this.isIE6up = (this.isIE && this.versionMajor >= 6);
   
   this.isIE4xMac = (this.isIE4x && this.isMac);
}
var browser = new BrowserDetect();

/Mwaza

[Mwaza]

BTW,
I don't need the source code, I was just curiois about the design of the software. (do you have a design doc?)

And,
I've thought a little more about it and now I think like this:
If you design the game so that you have all the actual game data in entities (like CEL), you could design the software so that the single player mode is the same thing, but with NPC:s instead of human players, so it would at least be theoretically possible
The problem then is to make things happen even if you aren't on that planet.. I mean, things must happen in the entire universe, still a single computer can't do that plus the rendering..

And now I think I understand a little about how you think. A BF1942-style gameplay (at least the way you switch gameplay modes) could be possible.

I think some in-game concept scenes would help a lot when trying to figure out how the game is going to be, (a menu scetch, a first-person on land scetch etc.)

One last thing.
You might have saved time now for getting the first screenies up by using CS+CEL. But keep in mind that for creating a MMORPG you will need 120% control over the entire system, or it will collapse. I'm pretty sure making a custom entity system would save time in the long run.
(I've been making up a basic software design for a server/client+entity based game which would work pretty well. I could make a basic design doc over it to give you an idea of what it's all about)
/Mwaza

[Mwaza]

For the game modes:
I have maybe seen a little over-pessimistic with this. I like hard challenges, and I understand how you think.
I think you may succeed, but don't overdo it, the controls and interface must be consistent and easy to understand.

(And for the flying, I think you don't have to do the flying easy, if it's going to be a MMORPG, it's probably good making it a little hard so that pilot could be a proffesion)
/Mwaza

[Morgul]

Thanks for the png transparancy trick. I'll get Dave to put it on the site (since  I don't know much more than basic html, and even then I'm not too good with it.)

As far as full control over the system, we've actually been rewritting some parts of CEL to suite our needs, and atually getting them commited to CEL. As of right now, we have full control over everything we need.

Unfortunately, our 'design docs' and skethes are all in a notebook about five hours from where I am. Most are just quick things I've done up. We don't have an overarching design doc, although we've been doing some work on it.

The basic idea is for us to use xml definitions for things lik ship systems, weapons, etc, and then use iPcInventory to attatch them to the entities. We've done some testing and the system works really well, and will work for everythign we need to do in the game.

Oh, about single player... there's still a bit of confusion. The single player is going to be storyline driven, which means that it's not really going to be like the MORPG. The interfaces will be the same, but think of HL's singplayer mode. We're not going to have to worry about what's going on in the entire universe, unless it's part of the story, and then we simply make changes to things when the player reachers a certain part of the story.

(Oh, in thinking about it, I think I very well may post some sketches I do for the different modes. We already have the flightsim screenies on the site, so I'll do FPS, and RTS. Anything else you think might help?

--Chris

[Mwaza]

Nice..
Now I think I've got rid of all my prejudices about CS+CEL+multigenre MMOG... (hehe )

Actually I think CS and CEL has a quite good design, the only thing that irritates me in these is the chaotic filesystem layout. All plugins dlls in the base folder... This is probably easy to fix, but it is annoying to need to search for the main executable..

Now for some more questions:
Is the game going to support more than Windows? With CS, porting should really not be a problem, but have you decided anything about that?

The reason I'm asking this is that I have a mac, so I won't be able to play the game if it isn't ported
/Mwaza

EDIT: The reason I could test the game at all was that I got my mac last friday.. (my little brother takes my old PC, and he doesn't use the computer often, so I will probably be able to use that computer some also, but I can't use it all the time..)

[Morgul]

Ah... IC. Well, we do our development on linux. (There's no linux build up there, because so far all the people we've talk to about testing run windows, or have access to it.

I plan on getting a mac sometime in the future.. but I don't have access to one now, so we can't build it. However, if I talk to Dave, he might be willing to let you build a Mac version for us. (The way our code is written, the only thing we need to do is to build our source on a mac. That's it.)

Final version will be Window, Linux, and Mac.

Oh, about the dll's in the main directory... they've been working on that.. and some of the recent changes should have fixed that. It's a major annoyance to me, and I can assure you if it isn't already, it will be fixed inside the next few months, since I hate having all those dll's in the main app dir.

--Chris

[Mwaza]

Ahaa...
What build system do you use?
Jam? Scons? autoconf/automake?
Just curious..
/Mwaza

[Morgul]

Jam. It's sooo much simplier.

--Chris

[Mwaza]

Well, I guess I have to learn that then. But when I tried last time I couldn't find any good documentation for it, so I used scons instead.

But the first step is compiling CS (which I'm doing now..)
/Mwaza

[Morgul]

Ah. Jam is VERY simple. For example, to compile CS with it, you simply type in:
'jam'

:P.

Basically, it boils down to:  'jam' and then the target... like 'jam apidocs' or something like that. (most typically, I use it to do a clean/distclean: 'jam clean' )

Like I said, it's pretty easy.

--Chris

[Mwaza]

err..
The perforce ftp server (where jam is) is REALLY slow.. 1K/s..
/Mwaza

[Morgul]

Ouch. Never seen it that slow before....

/me wonders if there are any mirrors....


Hmm, I just downloaded the mac osx version in like a second..... (600k/s for me)

Not sure where the hold up is for you...  :?

[Mwaza]

Okay, it might be our ISP. Sometimes it hangs at extremely slow, but this forum wasn't slow, so I don't think it was that.

Might be my comp, there must be a memory leak somewhere in some of the programs I use; there is something wrong when you type faster than the computer can show it...
/Mwaza

[Mwaza]

to become entirely offtopic..
Your avatar.. Why isn't the black transparent? It would be a little cooler... (sry, it is the newly-discovered "webdesigning perfectionist"-syndrome )
/Mwaza

[Morgul]

Haha. It's black because... well, because it's a scaled down version of a 1024x768 wallpaper (svg :-D) I had. I wanted an avatar, and figured I'd take 3 seconds to make this one. I could make it transparant... but not right now... doing a re-write on the first chapter of the story this game is based off of.

Speaking of avatars... you need one.

--Chris

[Mwaza]

D'oh..
I guess I'm just forced to make one now..
But I'll need gimp first, and I may need to go to bed before I'm ready, but tomorrow it will come..
/Mwaza