Game discussion

[Neko]

Originally Posted by Darkflame

I think at some point there should be no? Best plan ahead.

I am thinking raids where you are with 3 people fighting through 100 clones in just one map

or teams where you can fight eachother

[Rincevent_123]

Hi guys, i am currently designing the future features of the game.
I am trying to put everything on paper and to think of the best way to implement it.
But do not get too hot about it for now, it is only the design, do not expect stuff to be ready tomorrow
Here is where I arrived so far, it would be good to get your feedback on it and you opinions:

concerning fights:

• by default player can not fight each other
• there will be different kind of NPC:
  • aggresive: they attack you directly when they see you
  • neutral: they attack you if you start to attack them
  • pacifique: you can basically not hurt them, and they will not attack you
• once a monster started to attack someone it will not change target anymore
• it should be possible to do duel between players
• in some specials maps, fight between player will be allowed

concerning inventory and loots:

• monsters will not drop anymore heart or mana directly, when they die they will drop a box. The box need to be open and can contain money, mana/health potions or other objects.
• Mana potion and health potion will not be directly consumed, they will appear in your inventory. you can decide when to use them.
• I am not sure i will keep clovers. Since this game is multiplayer, i think the easiest way if you die would be to reapear in the beginning of the map. There is no more notion of game over.
• you can drop stuff from your inventory to the ground. In this case a box will appear in the same way than when you kill a monster. However not every object will be droppable.
• you can create small text parchment. They will then appear in your inventory. You can then drop them on the ground.
• you can trade stuff between 2 players. However not every object.
• the horse and the dino fly will be special objects, you will need first to get them somewhere before being able to use them.
• box on the ground will be tagged: when a monster die, the box belongs to the player having hit the monster the first. The box will be tagged for a few minutes, after that eveybody can loot it. It is the same for the object you drop on the ground, it will belong to you for a few minutes in case you made mistake.

concerning interaction:

• the action key will still be in use to interact with your environment. You will use it to:
  • open boxes on ground
  • read text on walls
  • talk with NPC
  • use ladder (will not be automatic)
  • interact with certain object of maps

concerning quests:

• quest can be started by talking to people or from object.
• quest can have some requirement before activating (having done some quest before, having some object in your inventory, etc.)
• environment might change depending of quest (NPC will say something else, map will be different, monster will be different, etc)

Yes, it is a LOT of stuff, and as I said I am only trying to put things on paper for now, do not expect to see that in game soon

[Darkflame]

All good ideas.
Some would take quite awhile to implement though.

For now I'm strongly concentrate on the engine itself and the methods of interaction with things before working on enemy's and ncp's.
One of the original design ideas (as specified in the LBA1 manual) was to make the environment was lifelike/interactive as possible. You should try to reflect this.

This also fits my own philosophy as regards to game play as it gives as much opportunity for user-created game play. That is, gameplay players can make between each other without the game creator (you) having to make every last bit of gameplay and keep updateing.

* As well as picking stuff up, players should be able to hide stuff in the environment. (like in dustbins).[/B]
- For a bonus idea, it would be fun if players could help themselfs in certain items in the enviroment. Obviously much harder, but it would be fun for "sneaking missions" or just hiding from other players, only to jump out of a bin at them

* Players should be able leave notes about for other players to find. I think this should be fairly easy to impliment and could lead to fun possibilitys. However, players should have a limit as to how many they can leave, or purhapes they disapere after a set time. (else it would get crowded pretty quickly).
- Again, for a bonus possibility, it would be great fun to stick notes on other players backs (obviously you dont have to see the note, just a little white square). Players can remove notes from each others backs, but not their own. Again, this should lead to some fun/silly gameplay between players.

* Player created challenges. This one will be hard to implement. I'm thinking a little shop or notice board where any player can post missions for eachother.
The missions will be a short description/story, and then they have to specify an "answer" for the mission. So, a codeword, that tells the game the player solved it. Later this could be expanded to finding items, or something, but a simple question/answer thing would on its own lead to plenty of possibility's (when combined with the above ability to hide stuff and post notes).

* Non-violent NCPs walking about is a must. Both to make the world more lively, but also for use with the above ideas. (eg, you sneak a note onto Baldinos back, and then post a mission to find out what is written on it).

* Players should have their own achievement/stat list. (makes more sense to implement later once theres more to do).


Basically, I like stuff that encourages more creativity between players, rather then purely fighting hoards of monsters all the time. (nothing wrong with that too, mind you, only by itself its not very lbaish).

[Kitarii]

Surely for the hub it would be better to have lots of telepods going to all sorts of places? But then I guess you could simply change the teleportation centre to accomodate more telepods, then the hub would actually be a place in the world as well which would make more sense. But I agree on the simplicity part; the current teleportation centre is a bit too "interesting" to have lots of players in it at the same time.

[Darkflame]

Perhaps the lobby could simply be adjacent to the teleportion centre?

Could also be purhapes some stats/data in the lobby. (Little computer, tv, or board showing how many players logged in and what maps they are in)

[Kobold]

I already expanded the teleportation center grid to have four additional telepods in it. And I don't feel like programming all those into a new grid altogether when you can just teleport to the teleportation center and move on from there. Creating exits is still a little bit too much hassle for me to completely dump the work done in the teleportation center and do it all over again.

[Rincevent_123]

Sorry guys this weekend was a bit busy and i am still struggling with making LBANet run under linux.
Anyway, the server is now on!

[lba1&2]

Originally Posted by lba1&2

Hey, great progress on this project so far
I am wondering if this program needs OpenGL to run?
If so what version is required?

[Kobold]

Afaik it does need Open GL.
I have no idea what version though.

[Rincevent_123]

lba1&2: yes it needs opengl.
On windows, the standard opengl library installed is enough as long
as you have graphic driver supporting it.

[Rincevent_123]

Hi there,

Finally I made it compiling LBANet under linux, you will find the files attached to this post.
You will first need to download the windows version to get all the Data files, then just copy the LBANet executable of the attached package into the game directory.

There is a text file in the package explaining which libraries you will need to install in order to be able to run the game.

I have compiled and tested the game under ubuntu and it works well. There is only a little animation problem but I did not have time to fix that yet and the game is anyway playable like this for now.

I could however not test the connection to the server, so it would be great if somebody could try and tell me if it works.

Thanks

PS: if you have any issue running the game under linux just let me know I will try to help
PS2: I am switching again to windows so for the following weeks the game server should be available again from 20:00 to 00:00 and during weekends.

[SebZ]

could you upload the code? i wouldn't mind trying to compile it on mac.
the linux code might do.

[Rincevent_123]

Hi SebZ,

Sorry but I am afraid I will not be able to release the source code of the project for now, and that for the following reasons:

• The code is currently a bit messy and I would like to reorganise things a bit before releasing anything. The project is still in too early stage for now.
• The code contains source parts from other LBA projects and I do not know if the people programming them would agree on showing it to everybody.
• I did not decide yet on which open source liscence I will release it, and I would not like to see my source code going around whithout any proper liscence on it.

However, once I have sorted out all those issues, you can be sure that I will open source the whole code of
the LBANet project and release it on sourceforge with the proper liscence.


PS: server is on for today

[Rincevent_123]

New release v0.29: http://www.mediafire.com/?ym0mmaalgxb

content of this release:
- increased the animation speed (but now I am wondering if it is not too fast)
- added the protopack (use F7 key)


Now I am entering a bigger implementation phase in order to prepare for a smooth integration of the new planned game features.
This means that there will not be any new release soon. However the good news is that the next release will have a lot of changes integrated.
Just wait and see.

[Kobold]

Yeah, the animation is definitely too fast now.

The proto-pack is cool.

[Rincevent_123]

I know I said that I will not do any small releases anymore, but I decided that since one of the feature
is already there and works stand-alone I would still do a small release including it.

So here you go, release v0.3: http://www.mediafire.com/?mwmntedy2ey

Content:
Added a connection to the MBN irc channel. People in the game can now talk with people on the IRC.
By default the fonctionnality is desactivated. In order to activate it just edit your new config.client file and replace "IrcOn=0" by "IrcOn=1"
The good point is that you will still be able to connect to irc even if the lbanet server is off

edit: found a small bug, updated the link with the corrected exe

[Rincevent_123]

New release v0.31: http://www.mediafire.com/?tnihg3z0mxy

When testing this release, you might not notice so much changes during playing but actually the game went into a lot of internal modifications:

- complete rework of player moves. Now every PC wether they are slow or fast should have exactly the same move speed.
Also in multiplayer now you should see the other player moving at the same speed as you.
In addition I reduced slightly the speed of the horse and dino-fly because they were too fast.

- better handling of multiplayer information exchange. In practice, you might notice now a slightly different way of displaying and updating other person on the screen.
It should also correct the bugs were animation of other players were not correctly shown or when you were still seeing people even after leaving a map.

- small change on irc feature in order to display when somebody join/leave.

- modified the way changing stances works. Now it is more conform to the way LBA1 was doing it. Also added animation when falling down.

- prepared the ground for the jump feature, I will release a new patch as soon as it is ready


PS: I had the update the server code also in order to do this release, so the old clients will not work correctly with the new server any more.
You will need to download this patch to make things work again.

[Darkflame]

All sounds like great work.

This is just a random, probably impossible idea;

But could the movement data be exchanged ver an IRC channel itself? Effectively removeing the need for any game sever to be on? (obviously, in the long run thats not a secure system, but I wondered if it was possibly anyway, because Ive never seen it done and it seems a method for decentralised multiplayer games to exist)

[Rincevent_123]

In theory, it should be possible to do it, as I actually use a similar concept of channel inside of my game server to transmit information.
However, there is several issues:

• this would be too slow (for real time game you need to be able to send info as fast as possible or else it will create a lot of glitches)
• I am not an expert at irc. What I know is that irc is good to exchange text messages, but I do not know if it would be any good at frequently broadcasting a considerable amount of binary data to everybody.
• the idea of decentralized multiplayer game is nice. It has been tried a lot of time but in practice it as never been successfull, mostly for security reasons. Without any control server, it would simply be too easy for anybody to cheat or transmit erroneous information to others. That especially if you do not use any encrypted protocol to exchange information.

[Kobold]

The transition between scenes does not work as properly as before anymore. When I exited Twinsen's house, I found myself at a completely wrong location on the other side of the neighbour's house. Also, when entering a new scene I see myself starting way too far away from the edge of the scene. There seems to be some problem with the new animations conflicting with the exits and spawning points. It was accurate before this update, but now it's quite lagging.

[Rincevent_123]

Hm looks strange, I will have a look at it tonight.

[Darkflame]

Originally Posted by Rincevent_123

In theory, it should be possible to do it, as I actually use a similar concept of channel inside of my game server to transmit information.
However, there is several issues:

• this would be too slow (for real time game you need to be able to send info as fast as possible or else it will create a lot of glitches)
• I am not an expert at irc. What I know is that irc is good to exchange text messages, but I do not know if it would be any good at frequently broadcasting a considerable amount of binary data to everybody.
• the idea of decentralized multiplayer game is nice. It has been tried a lot of time but in practice it as never been successfull, mostly for security reasons. Without any control server, it would simply be too easy for anybody to cheat or transmit erroneous information to others. That especially if you do not use any encrypted protocol to exchange information.

ah, figured as much.

I asked because Ive been looking at appropriate pre-existing protocals that could be repurposed for use in Augmented Reality related technologys. IRC seemed like a good one as a means of having a publicly shared 3d space.
But speed would indeed be a problem.

[leoboe]

The new Version is great
I like the new speed and animation, although my forced Nvidia-AntiAliasing an Antis. Filtering makes the textures flickering.
But there's a huge bug when you press jump.
At first you'll see lots of different model-animations rapidly changing and then the game simply crashes.

I'll write it on bugtracker too, in case I find more about it.

[Rincevent_123]

Originally Posted by leoboe

The new Version is great
I like the new speed and animation, although my forced Nvidia-AntiAliasing an Antis. Filtering makes the textures flickering.
But there's a huge bug when you press jump.
At first you'll see lots of different model-animations rapidly changing and then the game simply crashes.

I'll write it on bugtracker too, in case I find more about it.

Oops, I was using the jump key for testing purpose and forgot to remove that one, thanks.

edit: sorry guys, lots of bug in there, please dl this new version: http://www.mediafire.com/?tnihg3z0mxy

[Rincevent_123]

Ok guys new release v0.32: http://www.mediafire.com/?mzmzotyi5mz

- corrected few bugs
- new skin for the GUI created by leoboe (thanks a lot to him!)
- fixed exits from the giant citadel world by kobold
- jump feature

Enjoy!