VectorStorm Forums » Forum: MMORPG Tycoon Discussion

VectorStorm Forums » Forum: MMORPG Tycoon Discussion - Recent Posts http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/forum/mmorpg-tycoon-discussion Discussing games, one brightly glowing comment at a time en-US Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:21:39 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/search.php thattrunkmonkey on "MMORPG Tycoon 2.0 feature musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings/page/2#post-497 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:20:44 +0000 thattrunkmonkey 497@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ I signed up just to check if you were working on 2.0, and apparently you are, which is awesome! I'm enjoying 1.1 and I can't wait 2.0. So good luck with your progress. trevor on "MMORPG Tycoon 2.0 feature musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings/page/2#post-496 Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:13:25 +0000 trevor 496@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Wow, I'm kind of surprised to find this conversation here! Usually the forum drops me an e-mail when a discussion is going on, but that's recently stopped happening for some reason. Odd. Anyhow, the current plan is that the version I'm currently working on (2.0) will be a single-player game, perhaps with some minor online functionality (leaderboards, etc), but that the big new feature for an eventual 3.0 release would be letting multiple players connect to a single world. Of course, plans do change sometimes. Like how I abandoned the 1.1 release, and started directly working on 2.0, once I realised that I couldn't fit everything I wanted into the 2D vector art interface. It's quite possible that something similar might happen with networking. But for right now, I'm not planning to do it for v2.0. Taurondir on "MMORPG Tycoon 2.0 feature musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings/page/2#post-495 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:53:48 +0000 Taurondir 495@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Option 2, and the people that want to play togheter across the net can use Hamachi, or the next incarnation of. At least with some LAN code in place, we can play! Poke on "MMORPG Tycoon 2.0 feature musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings/page/2#post-494 Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:56:23 +0000 Poke 494@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ I would have to go with 1, changing to 2 when desired token88 on "MMORPG Tycoon 2.0 feature musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings#post-460 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:11:16 +0000 token88 460@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ well after the latest updates on the home pageits sounds like its gonna be a really good looking game. the terrains look really nice, and i certasinly wasnt expecting to see curves as nice as those in the screenies. token88 on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-451 Sat, 09 May 2009 00:07:44 +0000 token88 451@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ the progress sounds great. with the zooming in thing maybe you can use a zoom like warcraft 3 or empire earth or RA 3 (they all use the same zoom type) i understood the other two points but im at a loss at how to help. i know nothing about dev work really. though all sounds great. the 3d structure stuff sounds awesome though. i am looking forward to trying it trevor on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-449 Tue, 05 May 2009 20:50:20 +0000 trevor 449@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Yes, the current plan is to have multiple terrain types available within your MMORPG world (grass, rock, ice, etc), though the difference between them is likely to be purely aesthetic. They ought to help remind you of which region you're looking at, when you're zoomed way in, though. wickedgenius on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-446 Mon, 04 May 2009 08:22:43 +0000 wickedgenius 446@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Yay progress, Sounds cool. Kris015 on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-445 Mon, 04 May 2009 03:06:36 +0000 Kris015 445@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ "there's still only one terrain type being used" Does that mean there will be more terrains you can use to comstumize your world? Like snow and sand and stuff? If yes, then try looking at the game Guild Wars, it has a lot of different terrain types... trevor on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-444 Sun, 03 May 2009 23:18:30 +0000 trevor 444@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Extra note. I've now got MMORPG Tycoon 2's basic terrain system working. It's a bit complicated, as it supports having an arbitrarily large world, but only keeps the nearest bits of it in memory at any given time. (You can consider it to be similar to most real MMORPGs; there's a huge world, but only a small portion of it is actually in memory at any given moment) There's still a little work still to be done on it; right now, there's still only one terrain type being used, and there's still a minor bug which occasionally leads to slightly incorrect surface normals at the boundaries between terrain patches... but by and large, you can now fly over a huge basic world mesh using the mouse and wasd keys. Next step is probably going to be bringing over some of the 2D UI classes from MMORPG Tycoon 1.0, to start setting up placement tools to let the player craft terrain and place structures in the world. trevor on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-443 Sun, 03 May 2009 16:30:14 +0000 trevor 443@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ I probably shouldn't have posted about the bloom question without presenting screenshots to let people see what I was talking about. :) I spent a bit of last night working on it, and am currently playing with HDR rendering... though that's probably a bit over the top for what I actually need. The basic goal I'm now pursuing is to have wireframe-rendered stuff still bloom brightly exactly as it did before, but to not perform bloom on regular 3D geometry.. with the possible exception of bright specular highlights. I don't have it quite working yet, but I don't really want to spend huge amounts of time on this just yet; too many bits of actual gameplay to get working, before I worry about fine points of presentation! wickedgenius on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-442 Sun, 03 May 2009 04:00:34 +0000 wickedgenius 442@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Kris: The saving of games and files has always been something I've had to look at because I do some programming myself (although I have found it hard learning some stuff so I mainly stick to web development). The problems I come across mean that I have different thoughts about it all the time, I often get up just before I fall asleep because I'm having some great ideas that I have to right down. As soon as I get the hang of some stuff I will start on a game of my own for which I have 3 or 4 very good ideas which I think would work well. One includes a Civilization type game, one a browser based MMORPG based on the Half-life world and another one which is similar but is a first person game. I just wish I had the skills Trevor has, and some time. Kris015 on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-441 Sun, 03 May 2009 03:30:21 +0000 Kris015 441@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Ups, i meant the Main Menu screen, not the interface, sorry :P Very good interface indeed.. I like your idea about the saving Wicked-G. wickedgenius on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-440 Sun, 03 May 2009 02:36:19 +0000 wickedgenius 440@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ My thoughts, 1. How about making it save the games with incremental names within the games directory and then reading in the save game files and listing them under a load menu. For example when you save you get a file called mmorpgtycoonsave#.* where # is an incremented number for each save and * is the used save game extension. So you would essentialy have a folder within the MMORPG Tycoon directory called save and within that you would have: mmorpgtycoonsave1.* mmorpgtycoonsave2.* mmorpgtycoonsave3.* mmorpgtycoonsave4.* Then you have a load menu which reads certain details from each of the files within the save directory such as the MMORPG name and lists all of them for the player to choose one the play. If that's not that clear then please say so. 2. I, like Kris, didn't really understand that. I'm guessing what you are saying is that when Bloom is off the whole thing is too dark in which case can't you simply increase the intensity of the lighting system. 3. I thought that the interface in MMORPG Tycoon 1.0 was very good. You would take the zoomed out overall look which was helpful in knowing what space etc you had to work with while also being able to zoom in to take a look at where people are. If you keep this and somehow factor in the 3D aspects then great although I can't think of how that would work right now. Maybe making it flatten out when zooming in (I think Lord was like this but I can't remember). As for water will your subscribers still wander aimlessly into it and drown? Thought that was rather irritating. -Wickedgenius trevor on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-439 Sat, 02 May 2009 16:55:28 +0000 trevor 439@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Yes, water is planned for mmorpg tycoon 2; oceans, lakes, rivers, and possibly waterfalls. I haven't really figured out how the interface would work yet (it's a lot further down my list of priorities), but bear in mind is that mmorpg tycoon 2 isn't trying to model the real world, so there won't be realistic rivers or water dynamics the way that you see them in (for example) Dwarf Fortress. They're likely to be map features that you paint into the map, and which will just stay wherever you've put them. Kris015 on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-437 Sat, 02 May 2009 15:39:33 +0000 Kris015 437@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Alright these are my thoughts: 1. Saved games: I think it would be nice with option 2 here, the one where it let's you save and load the games somewhere on your computer as this would allow millions of saves :P 2. Alright i have to be honest.. I didn't understand that 0o 3. How about a man with his hands in his sides looking satisfied up at his spinning creation/world/mmorpg (i hope it was something like that you were looking for) Also one more thing, water, will it be in mmorpg tycoon 2? It could be really nice... That was just my thoughts around the game :) trevor on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-436 Sat, 02 May 2009 14:28:46 +0000 trevor 436@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ First issue: Save games. VectorStorm, as a library, was built around the idea of emulating a fictional vector graphics game console on the PC, complete with a basic game engine wrapped around it. You can see this behaviour in many places, particularly how most of my games refer to the "A" and "B" buttons (which typically are mapped to the <space> and <alt> keys on the keyboard), because they're thinking about this fictional game console. Similarly, in the original release of MMORPG Tycoon, it had three "save slots", exactly as used to be done on old cartridge-based games. For MMORPG Tycoon 2.0, I'm thinking about saved games again, and how they'll be handled. I see two possibilities; either I can continue with the way things are done now (which can lead to conflicts under certain multiple-user-accounts-on-one-computer issues), start storing the saves in per-user directories (maybe somewhere inside the "My Documents" directory under Windows, and the "Documents" or "Library" user directories under OS X), or else actually use a standard file selector box to save and load your saved games to wherever you want. This would, of course, mean that you could have as many saved games as you want, and put them anywhere you want. It would also mean that the standard OS GUI would encroach into the game.. so I'm a little hesitant about that. I guess I could also do a FPS-style "we pick a save directory somewhere and have an in-game file browser that lets you pick from anything inside that directory". Second issue: The bloom visual effect. I really like the "glowing vectors" bloom pass that's automatically present in VectorStorm games. However, making that effect look good for glowing lines drawn over black has caused some problems for games which don't draw over black.. the issue is that it makes absolutely everything on-screen about 50% brighter than it would otherwise appear to be, so if anyone plays the game with bloom disabled, then the game appears extremely dark. I'm thinking about seriously toning back the bloom shader, to make bloomless-rendering appear closer to bloomed rendering. (On the other hand, I still want some glowing-wireframe-over-black sections in MMORPG Tycoon 2.0, so I'm not quite sure how to reconcile the two. Maybe I just require people to support bloom, in order to run at all?) You can see the problem if you go back and run 'Lord' with bloom switched off; it becomes a very dark game, because most of the light shades were only appearing due to the brightening of the bloom. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Third issue: I'm arguing with myself over the user's interface to MMORPG Tycoon 2.0. Whether to give him an interface much like he had in 1.0 (omnipotent deity looking down upon his creation), or whether to give a more up-close interface; put him closer to the ground, looking forward. The big benefit of being closer to the ground is that you get more bang for the buck out of the 3D terrain and constructions, which can be much larger on screen, and can tower upward into the sky. The downside is that it really isn't what people expect from a "Tycoon" game.. and maybe it'd hurt gameplay, compared against a facing-downward, north-oriented view that can simply be panned across with arrow keys, as happened in MMORPG Tycoon 1.0. Anyone have any input on any of these things? Am curious to hear any thoughts, to maybe kickstart something in my head. :) token88 on "MMORPG Tycoon 2.0 feature musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings#post-430 Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:52:35 +0000 token88 430@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ let me get my wise ass comment done first.. "nothing is a waste of time" very debatable comment. Anyhow... I liked all three ideas but for now and given the limitations (1dev, minimalcash)aybe option 1 who'd be the main consideration for 2.0. I didn't understand most of the techno babble ( I'm no techy) but could a server be hosted like one host a ra3 match or w3 game. Giving access to alimited number of players only when the host chooses it to be up and running. Allowing him to acts as a sorb of dungeons master for the peeps in the game. Hope this adds to the concept, I only part understood u so sorry if I missed the point. token88 on "MMORPG Tycoon 1.1p1 Available for Testing" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-11p1-available-for-testing/page/3#post-429 Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:34:53 +0000 token88 429@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ as will I. MeerkatOfLulz on "MMORPG Tycoon 1.1p1 Available for Testing" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-11p1-available-for-testing/page/3#post-427 Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:53:06 +0000 MeerkatOfLulz 427@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ As will I.