Notes from the IRC meeting. 01/11/2005 Options

[Mancer]

For those that missed the IRC meeting, or just want a general overview of what was talked about during the meeting I have made a very breif overview. Much of this is directly quoted from what was said in IRC, mostly from Kathera, KevinMc, Mikhail, Mole and silmaril. If any of these people dissaprove of me using their words in this fashion, please don't hesitate to ask me to remove this post or parts of it.




Persistent world
Skill system
Player-run economy
Dynamic monster spawns
Wish-similar combat system
Dynamic quests


A hotly debated subject that was ultimately left open. It was acknowledged that a world of 10 thousand people
would be required to have a proper player run economy, however trying to achieve that number as the first step
is an unreachable goal. Starting small and increasing the size seems to be a smart way to achieve a difficult goal.


Joining with another MMORPG group was discussed briefly but it was seen that joining an existing project may lead
to some features of Wish not being able to be implemented or not being wanted by the existing project team. Using a
Free/Open Source engine is a real possibility and would provide a good head start to this project.

A number of existing engines were looked at and we were lucky enough to have someone with an understanding of a number
of these engines with us (thanks KevinMc).

Torque is a GREAT platform, very easy to use, very well documented, with multiple MMOs under development already, including Adellion. Bad side or Torque? It was designed as an FPS; the net code is superb, but needs to be scaled back for an RPG. There is no built in persistence, although many people have added it. It's all C++, and requires strong coding skill to use.

The community there is slow. Development is a snail's pace. And the community itself seems very ingrown. =/ If we stormed in with a ton of energy and started moving development ahead on things, we might get seen as trying to take over, or messing in their sandbox.
(Nevrax Library)
Nel is an option, but the code that was released under open source is fairly basic; a lot would have to be added, mostly in terms of tools for game design and management. From taking a one-hour look at NeL I'd say the code would be extended significantly or completely replaced for a final product. For a prototype, I think the engine itself would cope without too many changes

RealmCrafter is in beta. Assuming Solstar finishes it, RC will be THE way to go - fully integrated client/server engine and MMO-creation tool set. RealmCrafter bad sides: it's in beta; right now, it's not in a usable state, as not all features are in and working. It could fold; beta's can do that. =/ If it completes, it'll still be a few months before we can use it.

CrystalSpace already has an MMO developed using it.

It was eventually decided that a commercial engine is not a viable option, and for other reasons NeL and CrystalSpace were seen to be the most appropriate engines for the needs of Project Wish.


Anyone wishing to be involved on the project team should email their CV as an attachment to apply@projectwish.com or post some info about yourself in the message including talents. If anyone wants to come up with a comprehensive review of NeL and CS for Mikhail to post on the website please email the reviews to webmaster@projectwish.com. The Project Wish team will have its own forum, where we will post people who have joined the wish team, anyone is welcome to apply we will select based on skills. The Project Wish team will need members who can: story board, create models, create concept art, the team will meet Tuesday 1 week from today (18th January 2005) at 8pm CST.

--Mancer aka Zigzabus.

[andrantos]

To my understanding NeL is an all around set of tools (rendering, ai, server, etc...) Crystalspace, isn't that just a rendering engine? I think we should keep this thread stickied so we can continue to post information about other engines. The more engines we have to chose from, the better as I see it.

[Mikhail]

too much choice isnt nessissarily a good thing for this type of project. And we already spend 3 hours debating why the other proprietary engines will not suite our needs. I think sticking with what we have decided would be wise.

[Thorien]

You might want to look at the cipher engine as well. I have Torque and Cipher.

Torque will get you there a lot faster, especially if you use the NEL network stuff...

Or you might want to use this : http://conitec.net/a4info.htm

I am working with a group of folks that just formed up to make an MMO pack for Torque....

[KevinMc]

Player Economy:
I'm not sure why a playerbase of 10k would be required. There are plenty of MUDs out there with GREAT player-driven economies, having a max of 80-100 players on at a time, with maybe a couple thousand total players.

Economy scales very well. ;) Size doesn't really matter.


Torque, A6, and other for-pay engines are likely not an option. A6 requires $899 per 3-person license, $1798 for 10 people, or $2697 for 30 people. Torque is $100 per person, plus probably another $50 each if we used the (upcoming) MMORPG pack for Torque. Both of those are cheap by 3D engine standards as business expenses, but probably not viable for a joint community venture like this. Ditto for Cipher, which costs $100 per license, AND has inferior network code. Realmcrafter looks like it will be vastly superior to every other platform out there - but it'll be in beta for months, costs a per-seat fee of $100, AND requires knowledge of Blitz Basic to code changes (plus the costs of compilers for that language).

The problem with making volunteer developers pay for engine licenses and such leaves open source engines as the best option, really.

NeL is one good, strong option. Not one I know as much about, actually! I'm looking into it more. Cystalspace has Planeshift already developed to run on it, so we'd have working code for an already existing (beta) open source MMORPG to base our game from. While NeL does have an MMO made from it (Saga of Ryzom), Ryzom is NOT open source. It uses NeL, and then adds a great deal of proprietary code as well to achieve an MMORPG. Crystalspace also has a book of documentation in print, , which while it sounds very BFly.net focused, is actually more about using CS than anything else. ;)

Of the two, I lean toward CS, but I have a bias from experience and knowledge about the engine. To be fair, I think NeL deserves a better lookover than I have given it to date.

[Gredinus]

i know this post isnt abaut the engine. i wanted to ask if its posible to make a server system like bittorent has, like there would be a big server (like WISH) plus eavry one would be a litle suport server. it would solve the lag problem.

[Blacksmile]

As far as i see it this wont work for several reasons. At first client sided stuff could be easy to change by persons with some porgramming skill and thus would give persons running a modified client the possiblity to get themselves advantage or even worse destroy the integrety of game data in some way. Second point is, that this woul require much upstream from the clients which is not granted and could lead to client sided lag in providing needed game data.

[Hawkins]

Can we just make this game a sister game of Planetshift such that we can coorperate with Planetshift team for the sharing of the server technology and the like?

[KallDrexx]

I don't know, would teh PS team even let us use their technology wihtout merging?

[KallDrexx]

Wow, In reference to dsorrent's post (I dont' know if he can see these boards) but I took a look at the Irrlicht Engine and I definentally think we should put this on our list of engiens to look at.