Sauerbraten M/MMORPG Full Conversion Mod

by Sauerbraten M/MMORPG on 06/21/2005 06:24, 54 messages, last message: 10/10/2005 22:20, 16457 views, last view: 05/17/2024 12:39

It Strikes me as odd, that we have the code released to the public, yet there is not one M/MMO Project started for this game.This is the Perfect oppertuinity and tool that we have to get a community project going to MOD this game into a total conversion.

This is the most mature version of \"cube\" weve seen yet.The Perfect 3D engine for making an M/MMO and yet noone has even said anything about it yet.I am going to launch a project to create an M/MMO based on the Sauerbraten Engine.We are currently using the latest version of the engine and are in need of coders.

Well, I have no coding experiance, but me and a friend will be creating the models and World. I would like any coders that have the ability to help us with this project,Please Contact Me Via AIM at Pbrisend or My partner Via AIM at nvrbored88.

If you would like to get involved in this project You can also reach me Via Email at Pbrisend@hotmail.com. Thank You and I hope we can get a decent M/MMO out of this.

I know its a difficult project and the engine is incomplete, but we would really appreciate feedback be it negative or posative.We would also like to know if anyone is interested in helping us model weapons and/or build the world.Keep in mind, this is NOT a professional project, it is just for fun!

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#15: Re: sigh

by Aardappel_ on 06/22/2005 05:31, refers to #15

well, then have a look how my engine/game seperation turns out.. you'll be free to make plugins on top of the game code, as that is the part that will get duplicated.

I'm not concerned with maximizing FOSS, as it generally doesn't work. I just want to accommodate people who truely contribute to the engine, such as eihrul and gilt. If I was writing this engine 100% by myself, there would be zero incentive to seperate engine and game.

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#16: Re: sigh

by Aardappel_ on 06/22/2005 05:45, refers to #16

There is no design. I do not believe in top down design for software. Keep refactoring and the perfect design will automagically emerge.

In practise this means there will be a gameplay class, of which there can be multiple in the engine, and one will be instantiated on engine startup. I will move code from the engine into this class with the following constraint goals:

- keep as much code in the engine (shared), and as little in the gameplay class (unshared)
- keep the interface between game and engine as simple as possible
- allow for the widest range of gameplay genres

probably in that order, should they conflict. Actual design of the interface, as I mentioned above, to emerge through refactoring.

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#17: Re: Pre-thoughts on the "gameplay class"

by Aardappel_ on 06/22/2005 08:09, refers to #17

they have to be part of the sauerbraten project, initially. This is because it is impossible to design the ultimate gameplay interface that will cater for all situations.

That means that after my initial efforts factoring out the FPS game, implementing the RPG game will cause additional refactoring in engine or game interface which needs to be modified in parallel with the FPS code. As time goes on these kind of modifications will exponentially decrease in amount, but will still be necessary.

Since people working on these game projects will be responsible for keeping the whole sane, I will restrict which projects go in here. Initially just 2 or 3 projects I presume.

The effects for all the mod makers which are not part of the core game group are not that severe. First of all the seperation benefits them tremendously already. Second, as thing calm down in terms of interface changes (which I expect to be after the initial start of the RPG project), upgrading an external project to the latest version of the engine will be relatively painless. Certainly compared to the current situation with Cube where a new engine means a complete nightmare to upgrade.

Enigma: what will end up in the game module will be slightly less than you envision. For example, the physics will be part of the engine, not the game. You will be able to modify physics parameters (player speed, friction etc), but not the base physics code. If someone fixes a problem in the collision detection, that should benefit all games equally.

And hey, remember that Sauerbraten will still be 100% open source. That means that its goal is not necessarily to allow ANYTHING without having to touch the engine, just as much as possible. Again, the goal is to support all the main projects the main sauerbraten contributors have in mind without having to fork the majority of code. A side effect of this is that the majority of external people wanting to make games can do so without touching the engine, but it is no guarantee.

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#18: re: mmorpg

by Flamie on 06/22/2005 09:30

what you are planning to do with sauerbraten (dynamic content, flexible world etc) for a mmorpg a group in sweden is up to doing and hasn't decided on what engine yet (I'm part of that group).

we are considering sauerbraten, but as of now it lacks a few things we need, so we might go with embrace & expand / fork.

If we'd choose to use sauer, we'll start helping out with the maplinking part at first, making it preload the maps that belong on each of the sides of the cube you are in (3x3x3-1 cubes) so that you can seemlessly walk between then without noticing any change.

After that we'd propose a change of minimum cube-size, to make it much smaller, allowing the content creators to model small objects such as vases, plates, books etc.

If you're interested in sharing ideas or just want to discuss you can reach me at roze@roze.mine.nu.

Perhaps it might even be beneficial to join teams (we are ~15 people active now)? (that is, if we share the same goals)

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#19: stupid question

by CC_Machine2 on 06/22/2005 20:06

i know this is a bit of a stupid question but what does MMORPG mean/stand for?

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#20: ..

by makkE on 06/22/2005 20:08

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

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#21: Re: stupid question

by Pxtl on 06/22/2005 20:08, refers to #19

MMORPG is Massively Muliplayer Online Role-Playing Game - AKA an over-ambitious project that for some reason every game-dev n00b thinks they should make as their first project.

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#22: Re: mmorpg

by Aardappel_ on 06/22/2005 20:26, refers to #18

do you have a website? anything your team members have already produced?

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#23: Re: mmorpg

by shadow592 on 06/22/2005 22:44, refers to #18

flamie - the minimum cube size is at 2 right now and can only go down one more level. for vases and such it would be much easier to just use mapmodels. i would be happy to make mapmodels for you guys as well as help with mapping.

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#24: ..

by makkE on 06/23/2005 01:20

I thought "I want gridsize 1" at the beginning, but 2 is just fine.. for any detailed objects, mapmodels are far better anyways. In sauer you can just slap one of those textures on.. works fine for simple stuff, but if you want it to look fine, a mapmodel is just the better choice.

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#25: MMORPG

by jean pierre on 06/23/2005 13:53

I hate it for lags it has extreme big lags

I love becouse it is very cool and talk with each other :)

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#26: Re: stupid question

by tentus on 06/23/2005 17:43, refers to #23

Naw, a MOG is a half man, half dog from Spaceballs (funny movie).

It seems to me any person or team that wants to use Sauer for modding should be helping out with Sauer developement, right? And let's face it, any person or team that's really gonna get Anywhere period has got to already have or need to learn some coding. I offer myself as an example: CL is a "weak" mod, really a resource mod, because there has been so little source change. In a nutshell, to have a decent Mod like Death Illustrated you need to have not only a good idea (such as DIs comic scheme) but also some new gameplay (and hence code) to offer.

Which means i'm back saying that modders need to be helping the main sauer get finished before they try to go in different directions. But all this has been said hasn't it?

oh, one last thing: mapmodels have one massive advantage over Sauer modelling- they have skins. try making some ivy to see what i mean, or perhaps a sci-fi looking bit of machinery :) of course, that means an increase in size...

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#27: sounds all good

by Flamie on 06/23/2005 22:42

I've talked with the project lead for imonia (the game we intend to develop), and the coders are going to make a comparison between sauer and crystalspace.

we need simplicity and speed, but also good physics and detail (we want to be closer to reality than most).

it seems the coders want to do a embrace & extend, so if the choice ends up with saur we're starting out with whatever sauer has on it's timeline.

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#28: server

by crandor on 06/25/2005 16:24

is there a server for this thing??

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#29: Sauer MMORPG...

by HopFrog on 06/26/2005 02:08

I'm with Aard on this...an MMORPG would be, in fact, suicide.

Morgaine: you're right. In Second Life, people do build their own stuff. However, do you really want to play an MMORPG that looks like one of the Sauerbraten demo maps from months ago? The reason I ask is because if you have even a few devious people out there editing away, they can uglify a lot of the world.

Plus, an MMO makes necessary some serious server power, if you intend on it not sucking a lot because of lag.

I hate to say it, but MMORPG and Open-Source project just don't go very well together unless somebody knows someone with money who doesn't care about losing it. They'd be much better off writing a game that doesn't require continuous cashflow, has a more manageable scope, and can actually be finished by about a dozen people.

Done is good. You can be a walking encyclopedia on video game development knowledge, but if you don't have the ability to finish anything, then what good is it? To their credit, Aard and co. have done that 1.9 times now (Sauer seems to be about 90% done, which translates to half done because the last tenth usually takes as long as the first nine.) You'd be wise to listen to them.

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#30: Re: Sauer MMORPG...

by HopFrog on 06/26/2005 06:44, refers to #30

You seem to misunderstand me...I'm not anti-open-source...far from it, in fact. I do see where it can be useful/successful. There are also places where, at current moment, it hasn't quite taken hold. The video game market, unfortunately, is not one of those.

So let me go down the list, and make my counterpoints on each of these:

i.) You're absolutely right, client machines are pretty powerful now. However, you're overrating the internet connection of the average internet user quite a bit. The reason that the server-client system in today's games works the way it does is that client connections typically don't have very high upload capacity yet, whereas servers do. This is an issue of dollars, until things change significantly. I doubt it happens any time soon.

ii.) Potential for profits from games IS immense. Games with huge art budgets, franchise attachments, etc. Do you know exactly how small of a percentage of unfranchised, low-budget games have any sort of financial success? Probably about 1% of all commercially released games. I guarantee you that any venture capitalists interested in this are going to do their homework. Now with the editing system, middleware vending is a possibility. But, that's not nearly in the ballpark of what you're thinking.

iii.) Metaverse, huh? Somebody's been reading Snow Crash. :P

iv.) Open-source software has exploded in arenas where a large userbase or amount of content is already accessible. GAIM has a slew of instant messaging mediums to feed off of. OpenOffice would be dead in the water without support for MS file formats. Firefox has...the whole internet (except for CandyStand and a few other select sites that whore various Win-only plugins. Grr!). In other words, what separates this proposition from other open-source projects that have been successful is that essentially you're attempting to build a large userbase from the ground up rather than plugging into one that already exists.

Now let me add a fifth element to this, one that doesn't involve Bruce Willis. (that was horrible. I am sorry.) The MMORPG genre has just a handful of games that have weathered an extended stay. For the amount of work it would take to get one going, the odds of it succeeding are pretty low, whereas with an RPG the chances of it succeeding are pretty high because the quality of play is in no way reliant on a high userbase.

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#31: Re: mmorpg

by Sparr on 06/27/2005 08:23, refers to #23

gridscale (?) is an exponent. 2 means each cube is 4 units wide (the current minimum), 3 means 8 units, etc. there is no real reason that 1 (2^1=2), 0 (2^0=1), or even -3 (2^-3=.125) wouldnt work, except that a few spots in the code do comparisons and math on the exponent in order to draw the grid, and you get /0 and other problems

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#32: ..

by kaczor on 07/03/2005 17:14

i think Sauer engine would handle MMORPG game ... but what a huge server u sould have to handle 900 users or so ... but good idea ...

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#33: ..

by Blunt Eversmoke on 07/11/2005 19:28

Now, now, the terrain editing whorage could easily be reglemented gameplay-wise, say, by different textures corresponding to different materials. Wanna build a brickstone wall? Go get - i.e. make or even buy - yourself the bricks first. Wanna make a hole in the wall? Use a sledge- or a jackhammer, a load of expen... uh, explosives or a powerful spell. Wanna build a dungeon or a bunker? Prepare yourself for facing immense costs. Even if you want to dig a foxhole, prepare to spend some time on actually digging it - and then carrying all the earth away.
At least the building part is thus easily managed. The destroying shouldn't pose any problems, either - at least in a fantasy world. In modern or futuristic worlds it could be harder, but, then again, what (MMO)RPG does even offer weapons and explosives powerful enough to destroy anything but monsters or other players?

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#34: re: construction

by Flamie on 07/12/2005 07:23

I agree fully to 100% that if you're gonna build something in an rpg it should be just as troublesome as in the real world. the secret to not make it boring is to let your character work on the boring tasks when you're offline. quite simple :)

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