(make that; Recruitment FOR SciFi MMORPG project)

Can't believe I blew the title which I can't edit. LOL!

Hello fellow GameDevs,

I've been working on this for a while.

https://www.gamedev.net/blogs/blog/3054-gnollrunner/

While I think I could probably take on most programming tasks, I simply don't have the time to do it. First just so there are no illusions, this a long slog of a project and I am fully aware it sounds like a bit of pipe dream, especially since I'm not using a game engine. While I'm not adverse to using one, this project has some requirements that make using an off the shelf engine difficult. That being said we can always incorporate some available libraries where it makes sense. For instance, from my reading I think AngelScript would be a good fit and we could possibly make use of ozz-animation and also a good networking library.

The project is currently in C++ and DirectX11. The DirectX code is minimal and isolated so it should be easy to port to something else if we want.

So what exactly is the project?

My original goal was to do a Fantasy MMORPG, however with the world generation I now think it might be better suited to a SciFi MMORPG, something like a star empire sort of thing. The key technology here is procedural generation. There is no way to design a thousand planets by hand. That being said I think we can somewhat customize worlds by the use of a relatively small set of functions and keys.

As is stated in my blog we are using voxels but not Minecraft like voxels. We are using them to generate smooth terrain by the use of marching prisms. We will also add marching cubes which are better suited to buildings. The idea is to make things look as natural as possible, although I'm not settled on an art-style yet (suggestions are welcome). The main reason for using voxels rather that height mapped terrain, is to support underground caves and also more interesting terrain features with vertical walls and overhangs. Since we are using voxels it would be nice to add some player built stuff at some point but I want to leave that for later.

What about the setting and the Lore?

I don't have lore yet but I do have some general ideas.

1) I would like to have a universe with spacecraft. These would be larger craft like starships that would obey laws of physics, at least when out of hyperspace. The way the code is currently set up, I can have a system with planets and obits. The physics for these is “faked” since I want planets to stay in their orbits. However, I think we can easily apply gravity from planets to ships as it's just a sum of a few vectors at each time iteration. I think ship to ship combat could be more like submarine warfare over long distances and not so Star Wars-ish. Also we would enforce some kind of fuel requirements so ships just can't just hover low above a planet for long periods of times. This is so that ground exploration by players on foot or in ground vehicles would still be an important aspect of the game. Also there will be no gravity plates in ships to add a bit of realism. You are either strapped in, wearing some sort of magnetic boots, or you fly across the ship and slam into a bulkhead if the ship accelerates.

2) Of course in an MMORPG like most games, players die. This often seems unnatural to me as players come back to life which somewhat breaks immersion. However death is still necessary in most 1st and 3rd person computer games. I would handle this by adding it to the lore. … While the universe is filled with creatures, a select few i.e. all PCs :-) would be born with ability to be reincarnated after death though some (as yet to be defined) SciFi trope. I want to make death a lot less common, BUT I want to make death traumatic,. One thing that made the orignal EverQuest interesting is you actually feared death at times, especially in bad locations as it could have some really bad consequences.

3) PvP ……. I don't feel the need to have special PvP zones. I think open would PvP would be great and again breaks immersion a lot less than battle grounds. That being said unbridled PvP can destroy a game fast. We would need to have some system of allowing willing players to engage it, but not ruin the experience for more PvE oriented players. I have some ideas on this, but I'll leave it at that for now.

The rest of the lore is up in the air. I'm very open to new ideas and even the stuff I wrote above is not set in stone.

So how can you contribute?

For now I think what we need is another programmer or two or three or …… We need someone to work on animation, someone to work game play / combat perhaps starting with text based programs, and someone to work on networking. We can work relatively independently at first and combine things later. I think this will enable us to make faster progress.

Also we need to bang out a complete lore for the game and also the game play aspects. That means, Races, Classes, Stats, Combat, Skills, Crafting, etc, etc, etc.

I will mainly be concentrating on the world building and engine and I'm really not set in stone on any of these things. I have played a lot of table top RPGs so I have some ideas, but this is a place were everyone can contribute.

At some point it would be nice to build a website too. My web programming skills are about 12 years out of date and I only did it in JavaScript and Visual Basic for about a year. If someone whats to take on that part, they would be welcome to it.

Why are you doing this, are you crazy?

Yes I am! It's a bit of dream for me I guess. I'm not working a full time job so I work on this most every day now. I'm hoping to find others that have some enthusiasm for the project and maybe get some funding at some point. It seems that MMORPGs have fallen out of favor but IMO that has more to do with the lack of a really great game. EverQuest was groundbreaking and WoW took it to another level. Hopefully we can take it even further.

One technical point I'd like to make is there is a perceived problem with procedural generation and NPC pathing since there is no persistent world. But I think this is solvable given my experience with Just In Time Terrain. We can do Just In Time pathing and I think the mesh format that I'm currently using CPU side, is well suited for it, since mesh faces are generated with adjacently information. Also pathing will be done on the server so we can assume some minimal hardware level there.

The working title is Zemili Drakona which is a holdover from the Fantasy MMO idea. This can be changed later, or we can somehow work the name into the lore :-P

If you're crazy like me and want to contribute ….. well …… you have my number :-) BTW I live in Russia if that's a pro or con for anyone, just so you know.

As always, thanks for reading!

This sounds very interesting! By any chance, do you have any room for someone to do: Storylines, game concept, puzzles, Dialogue, Character sketches and personal sound tracks with a Flute?

I have a question that may impact stories or mechanics:

So if the ”universe“ is auto generated, is a world Auto generated upon arrival to that planet or it’s all auto generated upon start up of game. (It might be a dumb question, but I don’t code so haha!)

Also, upon death, I’m assuming the world(s) generated will maintain original generation and not go through a new cycle of being generated.

I‘m not sure if this is just a given for programmers. But it caught my attention, so I figured I’d see what synopsis was.?

Talk soon,

~Ryan

@BlueFlute Hello and thanks for your interest. I think at this stage detailed story lines are a bit premature, however banging out an overarching story-line would be something to work on. Even that's probably not imperative development wise, except for the fact it's a way to attract more attention to the project. Possible players get excited about that kind of thing if you can make it attractive to them. That being said I don't want to do a bunch of fake cut scenes. We should at least do them with the actual universe engine when we get that far.

As for the story, I think we need to answer questions like this:

Where and when is this universe?

What relation does it have to earth and it's humans?

What is the main SciFi aspects of the Universe?

What are the extend rules of physics? Jump space? Hyper space? What kind of sub-light drives are there?

What is the society like?

Is it dystopian?

Are there different casts and classes of people?

Are there factions and/or competing empires?

What is the history leading up to the current game time?

A think there should be some clever hook that makes the universe unique. Like if you were writing a book about it what would make the story cool? Perhaps we could do a lot with the PCs reincarnation ability and make that one of the main themes. If you want to contribute in those areas that would be cool. My main goal is to make it as immersive as possible while still being a playable game.

I don't think we are ready for music yet but at some point that will be something to consider.

So if the ”universe“ is auto generated, is a world Auto generated upon arrival to that planet or it’s all auto generated upon start up of game. (It might be a dumb question, but I don’t code so haha!)

No it's not dumb at. You have to be familiar with pseudo-random generation. In our case what that means is worlds are defined ahead of time with a small set of parameters, such that you could store 1000+ worlds on your client. But the terrain and placement of assets and so forth are all (or mostly) pseudo-random. That doesn't mean a world changes every time you visit it. It means that you don't have to draw every polygon and place every tree by hand. It is done by algorithms. It's like what No Man's Sky does. But to make it an MMORPG you need to take things father.

Also, upon death, I’m assuming the world(s) generated will maintain original generation and not go through a new cycle of being generated.

Yes the same world will be there when you come back. Otherwise I don't think it would be very satisfying for players as you would quickly break immersion. One thing I was thinking about however, is maybe when you die you reincarnate in some far off place and part of the adventure is you have to find your way back. I want to try to avoid a lot of the standard endgame stuff you find in some current MMOs. I'm leaning towards a more sandbox feel. I still do want to have some theme-park elements, however that stuff we can add closer to the end of development.

Thanks for the clarification!

Yes I totally agree with you on the development aspect. It seems like it’ll be awhile until storylines will be needed, etc.

Also, that actually is a really good idea to start them in a whole new area when they do die. How about this spin. Each player has 5 unique characters to choose from. They get to customize them according to their desire; so as to not have all players running around with the same characters. When the player chooses 1 of the 5 characters in the beginning. They can not switch between the characters with ease. The only time they are able to switch to another character is when they die. It auto picks out of the 4 characters they weren’t just using. The main concept would rely upon completing tasks on all 5 characters to complete ”said” achievement(s).

The annoying part about dying is that if they do die and don‘t get some sort of a check mark before dying. All of their work could potentially be forgot / wrecked. (It’s really dependent on whether or not you have a save menu or it’s auto saved and everything can and will be reset if you die without getting a save / check point. But, to throw things even deeper! What if you actually don’t have a save feature at all! That means the worlds are saved but player “inventory“ is not. Hide your loot and make a map. Now with that whole twist, every time they die, not only do they lose their inventory. They now also have to play another aspect of the story without a choice. This could be a result of some very very exciting gameplay.

Your thoughts?

Hello, since this is not another unity/unreal project and it is based on c++i think I am interested to join in, I have a lot of c++ experience and 3d programming, what are you exactly looking for , from a programmer point of view ? consider that i mainly program in opengl and i am considering swithcin to vulkan soon.

If you are interested , please contact me at mailto:vp8671@libero.it​ since i rarely check gamedev now.