I've had an idea for a new type of MMO combat system. My main concern is if this system would cause tremendous lag, or if this system would be impossible to program/create. It would work as follows: It would be a MMO game, played through the browser (browser-based). It would be a real-time combat system. NOT turn-based. Players would exsist in a 2D world with minimal graphics. To navigate, players would use the arrow keys. To fire a weapon, a player would click in a certain direction, and the weapon would fire a shot in that direction. For each time the person clicked, the weapon would fire a shot. http://img128.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shoots.png ^here is an example picture of what the combat would look like, and what the game's graphics would resemble. I was wondering if this system would create too much lag. The ideal situation would be to have a world that could support 500 simultaneous players. Also maybe this system could work through isometric projection rather than just 2D (or it might make it lag even worse/be harder to code) Please tell me if I was unclear on any aspect of the system [Edited by - DEVwanabe on March 25, 2009 1:27:16 AM]

I don't see there being a problem with too much lag. Players moving about with projetiles moving about is commonplace in MMOs and most will handle 500 concurrent players without major issues as long as there aren't too many avatars in a small area. Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue either as again there are many MMOs out there doing the same things. Lag client side generally isn't an issue with modern hardware.

I do however, see an issue with making it browser based AND realtime. Browsers work on a request/response paradigm. The traditional way a browser worked was that it sat there until you did something like click on a link. That click would send a request to the server which would send a response (typically a new webpage).

Technologies such as Ajax takes that a step further by doing pushes from the client to the server behind the scenes for you. In that case the client (your web browser) can keep sending requests to the server without you doing anything.

The problem for making a realtime browser MMO is in doing server pushes to the browser. There are ways (read: hacks) to allow a server to push to a browser, but they are really running against how browsers work.

I have seen numerous methods for pushing data to browsers from servers, but they aren't very clean solutions IMO.

You could do something like make a java applet game which would run in your browser and run in realtime. There are probably other browser plugins (such as flash maybe?) that may do the same.

Runescape is a browser-based realtime MMO running as a java applet. That's proof it can be done.

regards,
~don

Could java-applet handle my version of combat?

Btw Runescape was my inspiration for this lol.

Flash supports sockets so you can do real time multiplayer with a Flash game in a browser.

Quote:

Original post by DEVwanabe Could java-applet handle my version of combat?

I don't see a reason why it couldn't.

An example of the type of game you're wanting to make is Graal. (www.graalonline.com)

It's a download game but it originally was a zelda clone that could be played online with other people. It has servers where hundreds of players play at the same time. Though I do think there is some lag when there are a lot of people in the same area... I think that's more of a problem with the scripting. (the game is like seven years old) The interesting thing is that it also started out as a java game. (someone has hosted it here: http://www.xoria.org/javagraal/graal.htm)

You can use the arrow keys to move. A key grabs, S key swings sword, D key shoots arrows.

So yes, it can be done. (though I don't think the java game was multiplayer...)