NQ-Nyzaltar
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Posts posted by NQ-Nyzaltar
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Hi Astrov,
For those who will feel a bit lost with the Tag possibilities, there will be generic default tag configurations.
A player that don't want to dive in these game mechanics won't be forced to do so, in order to stay user-friendly.
But yes, the tag system will go further than the RDMS. For example, it will be possible to set some automatized defense systems to shoot at intruders, based on the tags they have (or don't have). It will also be possible to customize visual markers (based on tags) on players you meet in-game. And this will be only visible to the player who put the visual marker, of course. Welcome to Augmented Reality (and lots of opportunities for emergent gameplay).
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@Jared:There will be default existing tags implemented in game. BUT... Players should be able to create their own tags, opening a lot of possibilities...
@Klatu Satori:About "Hacking", this will be a whole activity by itself, and a wide set of skills related to that will be available to train. But this kind of activity will probably be implemented for or after the official release. But it's definitely on our todo list.And yes, contracts will have the same kind of flexibility than Organization Management.In fact, the feature will use a lot what has been developed for RDMS
@Saffi:We understand that "Hacking" game mechanics might seem blurry for the time being (as it hasn't been clearly explained in detail).But don't worry: This will probably be the subject of another DevBlog post in the future!@Comrademoco:Haha, indeed, this is quite a piece of data to assimilate, not easy to see all the implications from the first read.But we hope this will be a lot more intuitive and clear once you will be in front of it in-game
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Hi there!
Having battle scars or prosthetic limbs through cosmetic items is something we are going to think about after the official release.
There is a high chance this will be on our todo list as well
About having a Third Person View Mode, we are aware this is something wanted by... a lot of people.
It will probably not be implemented for the Alpha, or even the Beta, but that may be a stretch goal for the official release, in the upcoming crowdfunding campaign early next year
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(posted Thursday 21st of May 2015 on the DevBlog)
Today I want to talk about one of the most central mechanism in Dual Universe: how to manage the rights and duties of players against other players and organizations. We want a generic system that will be able to handle as diverse things as: territory management, asset renting, organization functional structuring, delegations, etc. All this with the same core mechanism. In fact, we need some kind of theoretical framework for rights and duties management. Let?s see how we plan to do this in the game.First let?s look at some basic definitions that we will use later. We call ?Entity? anything that is either a Player or an Organization (see the devblog on Organizations). Entities can, among other things, own Assets: equipment, ships, buildings, etc. We are going to focus our attention on assets that can be used to do something, which is represented by the fact that there is a set of Powers that are attached to them. A power represents a capacity to do something. For example: I own a container C, which is an asset that has the ?open? and ?read? powers. These powers represent the possibility to respectively open it and check its content. Another example: a territory, which is also an asset, can have powers such as ?the right to build on it?, ?the right to mine it?, ?the right to enter it?, etc. By default, the owner of an asset is granted all the powers attached to it. The problem we try to address is how can you grant one or several powers to somebody else, and how can you manage this when it gets complicated?The central idea of the RDMS (Rights & Duties Management System) is the notion of ?tag?. A tag is basically a string of characters that you can create. The owner of an asset can do two things: 1. assign some tags individually to each of its powers, 2. give tags to other players (or organizations). Thus, being granted a particular power is simply a matter of owning at least one tag that is assigned to that particular power. Example: I own my container C and I create a tag ?friend? that I assign to the power ?open? of C (this power might have already other tags assigned, it doesn?t matter). Then,I give the tag ?friend? to Alice, my friend, so that she can access the container C.So far, it?s simple, but it is already capable of doing quite interesting things: by using the same tag for several powers, I can grant a player with many powers in one shot, simply giving him/her this tag. Symmetrically, I can grant a particular power to several players at the same time, simply using a tag that I have already given to all these players and assigning it to the power I want to grant. Unlike simple hierarchies, tags can represent complex graphs of relationships between entities.Now, you might think, it can be very tedious to have to manually assign tags to maybe hundreds of powers (one by asset?) or hundreds or players (all my friends!). The way to get around this is that tags can be organized into hierarchies. For example, we can define for tag ?T? two ?subtags? called ?Ta? and ?Tb?.
In this case, whenever tag T is used (assigned to a power or given to someone), it implies Ta and Tb. If I own tag T, I am granted any power that is tagged with T, Ta or Tb. If tag T is assigned to a power, anyone with T, Ta or Tb can use it. Now, you can build a tree of tags to organize your partners in the game, put them into categories, group them, etc. At the same time, all powers are structured into a tree of powers (predefined by us), so that you have access to abstract categories of powers like ?military?, ?logistics?, ?containers?, etc (we might actually provide several trees of powers, to reflect various ways to categorize them). So, if I want to give all powers related to military assets to someone, I can simply give him/her the military tag (NB: tag names are actually scoped, so that ?military? here would in reality be ?power/tree1/military?, which avoids name conflicts with your personal tag also called ?military?, but which is in fact ?mypseudo/military?).So far, we have seen how to give rights to people, that is: how to grant them powers via tagging. The other side of the coin is about duties. When I assign a tag to a power, it can be attached to several duties. Duties are things like: a price to pay per month, per day or per use to be able to use the tag, a price to acquire it, a certain location that you must be in to be able to use it, etc.Another important aspect is the notion of warranties: when I give a tag to someone, I can also take it back at any time. I may agree to provide a warranty attached to this tag, which says that the removal will be done after a 24h or 48h notice, or that I agree to pay a certain amount when I remove the tag, as a compensation. Depending on who is the stronger in a negotiation, the warranties can be more or less important. But for sure, if I am given a tag that grants me the power to fly a ship in space, I certainly don?t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, unable to fly the ship, simply because my tag has been removed.Now, if you remember the way organizations work, members are assigned ?functions? (used to be called ?roles?, but this has been renamed). We said that functions are about rights and duties. In fact, functions are simply defined by a set of tags, with certain duties and warranties. Any member with a particular function will be granted these tags, as part of the function. The organization itself comes with many powers that are related to the ability to modify functions and set/remove tags inside them. There are some fairly advanced mechanisms to manage these rights of ?tagging? within an organization, based on votes, but this would drive us too far for the moment.The last notion I want to talk about is the notion of ?power delegation?. It is crucial to understand how territories work, which I will explain in another post. I said at the beginning that, naturally, the owner of an asset has all powers on it, and in particular he or she is the only entity allowed to modify the set of tags associated to these powers. What if you would agree to give this ?power of tagging? to somebody else? This is called delegation. If I delegate a power P to somebody S (like a clan or a guild, for example), I accept to lose the right to tag this power and I transfer this capability to S. I can remove the delegation at anytime (together maybe with some warranties), but while it holds, I?m not in charge anymore. S can administrate the power P, and can even remove the automatic ?owner? tag that is always attached to it by default. The ?owner? tag is a special tag that is used to say that the owner of an asset is granted all the powers of this asset. So, if somebody else administrates a power, I can even lose the right to use it. You know the drill: with great powers comes great responsibilities? Think about it: when you live in a country, there are a lot of powers that you have delegated to the government, sometimes losing the right to enjoy these powers. For example, the power to do your own justice. This is the basis of politics and, as we will see later, territorial management.The RDMS is a very sophisticated system. There are many other things I did not mention, because it would be too long for this post (maybe I?ll do another one about ?advanced RDMS?), like: power transitivity, roles, power management in organizations, tag composition, and more details about automatic tagging and hierarchies. What we try to do here is a system that can scale and adapt to many different situations, and that will ?infiltrate? all aspects of the game, from flying a ship in a team, renting properties, scripting automatic defense based on who is showing up, and even the chat system. All those things will use the tagging system to be able to flexibly describe just about anything you want to say about a situation, while making the game ?aware? of it and able to help and check. Emerging gameplay, emerging politics, emerging contracts system, what else? Let us know what you think about these!JC Baillie,Project Lead -
Hi Saffi,Hmmm... Justice Tribunal, like the system used for League of Legends then?Well, that's an idea. I will forward it to the devs to see what they think of the idea (because this will mean some work on their side, if the concept is accepted)We also try to find a way to give some advantages to smaller organizations to make them attractive compared to what is usually called "megaguilds". But so far nothing has been decided yet.Speaking of organization management... A DevBlog Post is coming tomorrow on the RDMS (Right and Duty Management System)!What is it exactly ? Well, you will be able to read a detailed explanation very soon
About the "immersion hooks" you're talking about, it is planned to define the main player activities on the official wiki here (in the Quick Links section). Of course, with emergent gameplay, players may find completely new activities not yet listed.
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Wow, lots of thoughts and ideas around wedding!
@Astrov: it feels like a Mass Effect player is speaking here!
Wedding features have been already implemented in several MMORGs with more or less success.
The team is going to study the question. I can't speak for my colleagues on the subject, but it seems that the most popular approach of such feature in a MMORPG is to avoid gameplay bonuses (otherwise players will marry each other ingame just for the bonus, and not for the goal of being married) and focus on social benefits (way of displaying the status, maybe unlocking some specific social features, etc). I will talk to the team to know how they see the subject and I will keep you informed
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A chatroom displaying the Player Character face?
While it could get messy with too many participants, that's definitely an interesting idea for private (one on one) conversations!
If the concept is accepted, from how things are piling up, that won't probably be for Alpha or Beta.But after official release, It might be a very popular feature to implement.
I will transmit the suggestion to the team
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Thanks a lot for the compliments and your encouraging words, Saffi!
To be honest I may seem quite active on the forum for the time being but this is mainly because the number of participants is still quite small. As the community will grow, my participation will seem less visible, spread among all the topics posted on the forum (while my activity will remain the same).And yes, we have a dream to make Dual Universe unique:As gamers we feel like something is currently missing in the MMO Field.That's why the team is making a game we can't play anywhere else... and a game we definitely want to play!
We are also aware that incredibly successful Kickstarter might overwhelm some people and make them do some mistakes about how to manage the money they get from backers. We have seen some sad examples, and we know that because of these examples, backers are becoming more careful, sometimes even suspicious (and it's perfectly understandable, especially when they participated in a successful kickstarter that went wrong). Traps coming with euphoria due to success have been noted. So we're preparing ourselves to many scenarios, even the least expected that comes to our mind, in order to stay cool-headed as much as possible regardless what the future has in store for us. And no planned scenario includes swimming in pools of Mt. Dew, that's a promise!
- AlexWright and jintzy
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Wait.. What? Are we under siege ?
Fortunately, we just went into stealth mode
Compared to many cities in USA, most streets are very narrow and often generate traffic jam. That's why most of us goes to the studio by train, tube, train or even on foot (for those living near the office)! With Tea & Cookie Shops, we have also a lot of Bakeries (Croissants we like. Yummy!). Minus the very sad events at the beginning of the year, major crimes are not that common (at least, not more than in any capital city that comes to mind), even if they are some districts safer than others. The main concerns are the Public Transport and Cost of Living.We have many people coming from various countries (Americans included) visiting the city and we are approaching the time where - each year - Tourism increases significantly
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Hi Kiklix,
There is still a long way to go before being able to back the project, but this should be possible something like the beginning of 2016 (probably a bit before the Alpha
) while Beta won't be before end of 2016. But these are just raw estimate if all goes well (with no unforeseen delays), not definitive deadlines on the roadmap as we are still far from being there in the timeline. -
Hi Astrophil,
This is an interesting question as we don't want to limit player interactions.
While social features have our full attention, we haven't planned (yet) something specific for marriage and such relationship.
For now, this will probably be something you mention in the biography tab on your player character sheet.
In Skyrim, this is mostly cosmetical (you can have some bonus through it but this had no deep impact on the gameplay) and it's between a player and a NPC, not between 2 players. So, have you some particular ideas of how you would see this implemented? And which impact this would have on the game?
Regards,
Nyzaltar
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Hi Julian,
Indeed one or even two years is a long time to wait.
But making a game takes a long time. Making a good game takes even more time
About making a pre-game app might be a good idea on paper, inciting players to prepare for the game. But it would mean taking some developers to work on the app instead of working on Dual Universe... which will slow the development and may, in the end, not the best choice.
However, what we might do in the future, once the game is released, is to allow third-party developers for apps related to the game.
Anyway, I will submit the idea to the dev team
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Hi Astrophil90,
Hacking as a game mechanic is definitely planned. But it won't be before the official release of the game (don't expect it in Alpha or Beta versions of the game).
The Hacking will be a game mechanic where skills learnt by the character will play a big role. This won't be a "real hack" by using a script language. LUA will be used to script a lot of elements ingame, and provide basic AI in some ways. But it won't be related to the "Hacking" gameplay.
I hope this answer you question
Regards,
Nyzaltar
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Hi ReadyForTheGame,
Well, as Beta won't be before end of 2016... it's a bit too soon to give details on it.
What is clear for now:
- Alpha will be indeed mostly for backers/supporters/founders, helping us in a crowdfunding campaign.
But it might be also possible to get access for very active community helpers. We haven't decided yet the prerequisites, nor even confirm it will indeed be possible. But we will keep you informed as the situation evolve.
- There will a closed Beta and an open Beta, that's also quite sure. About the modalities to get access, this is also still in discussion. And it won't be defined before we define all the modalities for Alpha access.
However, we want to be clear on one thing:
Alpha & Closed Beta Access are meant to help us building the game by giving feedback and reporting bugs. While a lot of game companies see Beta phase as some advertisement stunt and marketing strategy, we think differently, or more precisely we think the old way: As Alpha, Closed Beta has mainly a role to improve the game experience. It's not meant to just play the game sooner. While we completely understand that members of the community are eager to play the game as much as we are, if some are not interested in testing or bug reporting (which can be - and we agree - a very tedious task but a necessary one), then the Open Beta will be the most appropriate first experience to discover the game.
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Hi Astrophil90!
Nice to see a new face
We hope you'll find what you seek in Dual Universe.
And about building a Trade Federation... Well you will have the tools to make it. That will be completely up to you
Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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Hi ReadyForTheGame and welcome!
You will find the topic on the Organization Mechanics here.
There will be as well a detailed explanation on the admin rights an Organization Founder will be able to set in the next DevBlog post
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Gathering all the discussion in one place is indeed vital to avoid missing interesting ideas.
As you may have already realized, since the opening of the forum, each DevBlog post contains a button at the end redirecting to the forum.
The comments have been disabled on the DevBlog for the same reason: we want to centralize all comments, suggestions and critics on the forum
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@ spacelike:"A game that could never really beat" sounds like a sandbox MMO
The concept of going always farther without dying or beating a tremendous amount of (different) players or NPCs before being beaten ourselves could certainly be an interesting suggestion for creating some "player ranking", assuming this can be done with precise parameters. I will transmit the idea to the team.@ Kiklix:No problem, Kiklix. We perfectly understand how seeing unappropriate names can break immersion.However, this is a difficult topic as deciding when a name is unappropriate (or not) is tied to subjectivity. It extremely difficulty to define precise rules about when a name is ok and others are not. Of course there are obvious names that can be considered unappropriate. But many name are also in the "grey" area, where opinions may be divided: being unappropriate for some players, but not really for others. Individual sensibility on this matter can vary a lot from one player to another.The idea to allow character renaming controlled by players is interesting (by relieving customer support from extra work), but again, that doesn't really solve the problem. Anyway, there will probably be a more detailed discussion on this subject later.Thanks to both of you for your feedback!
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Hi Kiklix and PetdCat,Thanks for your feedback!Indeed communication is a tricky thing and should be constant, but should also be graduated according to the situation: it's important to listen to all feedback, but it's also important to bring extra attention and communication to those who back a game project. That's just common sense. Furthermore, social medias are good to attract people that might be interested by a project, but not the best way to discuss extensively about it. This is more a "one way communication": even if it is possible to discuss with the community on it, forums are more suited for long, detailed discussions. Social medias and forums are complementary.About putting the game on Steam: even if it's planned in the long run, that won't be before the Alpha version being polished (and therefore having a solid Beta version).
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(Posted Friday 23rd of April 2014 on the DevBlog)
Many people have been asking questions about how we plan to finance the development of Dual Universe, which is an ambitious project and would seem to require some heavy funding. Even though we are in many ways fairly different from them, as I will explain below, we have sometimes been compared to some of the current very big budget productions, and asked to explain how we could compete. I thought it would be nice today to share more about our plans and strategy, while stressing the peculiarities of our game, so that we can start giving you a clearer picture of the financing side.How much does a game like Dual Universe cost to produce? The first thing to notice is that, unlike non-MMO games, there almost never is a definite final version of the game. It is constantly evolving and so if you look at the total budget to produce such a game over several years, the number can be quite high. What we are really interested in is rather, for a MMO, how much does it cost to get to the point where the game is playable with enough value and fun in order for it to move from an ?alpha/beta? to a ?release? stage.The other thing to notice is that what factors in most of the cost of producing a traditional video game revolves around creating content: 3D models of the environment, story content (quests, backstory, etc), and testing the balancing of all this to make sure that the content is neither too easy, nor too hard to play. This is actually a huge part of the cost of any ambitious video game today.Our core gameplay approach is emergent gameplay: we believe that it can be incredibly fun and rewarding to let the players build their own stories, their own buildings, their own ships. We will of course bootstrap the process with a few of our own productions, but the whole point of the game is to empower people with the freedom to create their own world in a way they see fit. We also use procedural generation to create the landscape and environment. And it turns out that, as a side effect, this has a profound impact on the cost of the game. Instead of spending money to create content, we spend money to create the tools, the ?laws of physics?, the community support.So, where most other games, including those we are sometimes compared to, will need many millions of dollars to deliver, we believe we can make the game we dream of with less money, while still providing a great and convincing emergent experience. That being said, it is clear that we still need money to get this ball rolling: we still have to create 3D content (every active element in the game is a 3D mesh, like weapons, reactors, control units, etc), we obviously need to develop the innovative technology behind the planetary engine, the continuous single-shard cluster, the inner workings of the game design (how to create an organization, trade, fight, secure territory, etc). This is by no means cheap. But we believe it?s within the scope of an indie studio.Currently, our funding is based on the money of private investors who support the concept of the game, including myself. We have enough cash to get the 20 people team to function properly until we reach the alpha stage, somewhere in 2016. The traditional way to move on from there is to go to a publisher with our alpha, who might be convinced to add a few more millions and ? get more or less full control of the game. The problem is that we have a very innovative and disruptive concept in hand, and publishers rather tend to push their licenses towards more conventional grounds. My fear is that this option, if we have to get to this, might affect the evolution of Dual Universe in directions that neither me, nor you, the community, would really like.The other option that is now available for small companies like us is to go for crowdfunding. The same process goes: you show up with your alpha and ask for support. But here, instead of a publisher, you might get the chance to finance the next stage of development entirely with the support of your community. More than money, what you also get is feedback, which is all the more relevant since we focus our design on emergent gameplay. There is no magic however, we know that the alpha has to be incredibly convincing, and that we have to deliver something to the community that shows that we know what we are doing. All the team is working hard with this in mind, and we are going to do the impossible to try and not disappoint.Even if the crowdfunding might not bring as much money as what a publisher might be able to provide, we are much more in favor of this option. If the amount of money raised is modest and we cannot reach all our stretch goals, we might face a possibly slow ramp up of the amount of game features, centered on a small but active community, that will gradually (maybe over several years) get closer and closer to the ideal final game we dream of. We are ok with that.The really amazing possibility with crowdfunding however, is that we may get the community so excited, as we are, that suddenly everything becomes possible, right here and right now. We could accelerate the development of the game, add more interactive elements and create the most beautiful emergent video game world ever made! We love games, we love the concept of Dual Universe. Ultimately, it is you, our community, that will decide whether we can press the ?turbo? button, and remain free from publishing constraints at the same time. The sky?s the limit (or rather, interstellar space!).JC Baillie,Project Lead
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Hi PetdCat and Kongou,Thanks a lot for taking the time to give us your feedback on this matter!
The secret is going to be to provide enough guild tools so people will be able to mesh together what they think will work best for them. If it breaks, they grow from that and try something else. I see it as DU putting the chess board down on the park bench with a box that contains chess pieces, checkers, marbles, Stratego pieces, Lego blocks, and some wind up cars, and just says "Okay--have at it".
This is indeed exactly our intention
Providing tools to players to develop/shape their game experience how they see fit.
As there are many different ways to enjoy a game, this will ensure they will find what they're looking for (assuming they have taken the time to master the provided tools).Now to answer to Kongou's questions:
- To put simply: only legates can participate to a vote. A legate can delegate his right to vote (without giving his shares in the organization) to another legate if he's absent for a vote. This delegation can be limited in time or for a specific type of vote. However, this delegation cannot be given to a member who is not a legate.
- If you want to create an organization where every member is a legate... so be it. It is not planned to limit the number of legates per organization. It will be up to the organization founder(s) to decide on this matter.
- If you estimate that electing each legate can be too much bureaucracy, nothing will prevent you to parameter the organization in a way that new legates are only elected by organization founder(s) and/or legates already in place. Again this will up to you to decide how you want to configure the political system in your organization. There will be generic templates to start with. But from there, most of the parameters will be customizable to enable players to have the ideal political structure they want.
Anyway, customizable admin rights in an organisation (which extend to territory rights, contruct and item use rights, or political rights) will be detailed a lot more in another blog post (not the one incoming for the end of the week, but the next after).I hope this answers your questions.If you have other questions, don't hesitate to ask!
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Hi Jared,As explained before in this thread, We'd love to give full customization powers to players, but we also need to maintain an artistic style for the game. And if we would offer the ability to players to upload textures, you won't have that anymore. While we can expect most of the players to "play by the rules", there will always be some who won't, uploading "funny textures" that can destroy a big part of the immersion. We want to give to the community a realistic, immersive world, and that comes to a price: not allowing all players to upload custom textures.The other solution is to make sure uploaded textures will be compatible with the artistic vision of the game by going through an approval process. Some games have already done that in the past, and we "might" (no promise there, nothing guaranteed) go this way in the future. Just keep in mind that having an approval process can be time consuming, pondering the number of requests of such type. The artists will have already their hands full of other tasks, as it is planned to have very different materials and props (while the game will start on a planet quite similar to Earth, some other planets are supposed to be far more "alien"). But for now, consider you will have access to predesignated palette.
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Hi Comrademoco,Yes, the spambots seem to have increased significantly their activity on Sunday.Fortunately, we have take some primary measures today that should keep them at bay.A fix is also already in progress to include many of the things you have mentioned above.(it was already planned on Friday but, it takes time to implement it properly)The spambots were not suppressed immediately precisely to gather data about their behavior.Now that we have enough data, all their accounts will be deleted soon.Thanks for your patience on this matter!
Single Player?
in General Discussions
Posted