wesbruce
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Posts posted by wesbruce
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The problem folks is that there is no perfect way to pay for game development yet found. Stop arguing and get inventing. The system proposed is the current imperfect front runner. You can't satisfy everyone; It's just not possible.
And if anyone leaves in a huff that's more voxels for me!
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How would this warning work in practice?
I think JC's still thinking that through but it looks a bit like he will go with the second life / landmark solution. Someone can go into your claim but can't attack and destroy anything. They may be able to interact with some things: doors, trade machines, repair units, junk chests. They may be able to farm, mine or fell trees. Entropia does this.
They may be able to interact with the claim terminal but only to hack it. If they can get to it! They must put virus or worm in it that takes a day to work and tells you offline via an SMS to your phone or an email, somethings up.
If the site, claim is abandoned that's easy the hack works. You don't loose the blue prints only the resources.
But if you want that base you come back hit the antivirus button in the claim UI and the worm/ virus is gone. There may be some who fight to defend the worm/ virus while it works and those that battle them to keep the claim.
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First thing some people are going to do is build a publicly accessible RN inside a "prison" and then not let people out until they pay a ransom.
And 100 players will very quickly form a very big escape committee.
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Meaning, there are no good reasons other than "well, it's not red because it's blue".
The site's FAQ will have to do then.
I'd also like to remind you I was kind enough to provide a TLDR of my own ramblings.
Won't preach water while drinking wine, I am willing to read through anything of up to a similar length of what I unleashed if it doesn't completely suck, and isn't quite as jumbled as what you so smugly referred to.
Well, at any rate the ideas are out there and they either take root or don't. Seen enough forums to hold no illusions, but here's hoping.
Would have enjoyed some proper responses, counterpoints even, but as so often before, the first ones to strike were less than capable of that.
Maybe someone still bumps in before this topic devolves into a comlete sh!tstorm.
Read my posts I've dealt with many of those points.
The kid in the dino speeder is probably the only one that needs more work.
- The kid is probably below the age threshold in the EULA but no one reads those any way and there will be a lot of kids.
- He can make a ship in VR and zoom around like a maddy in VR with no fear of a crash or ambush destroying it.
- You can't lose the blue print on ship destruction. So the amount of effort put into detailed design is retained. Put a Resurrection unit near your warehouse full of resources and rebuild it.
- A detailed ship with lots of rooms etc will be lighter and more manoeuvrable than the low poly lump with a rocket attached.
- A detailed ship with lots of rooms etc will attract crew players to man the combat and repair system. You have the advantage.
- It's very hard to destroy anything: vehicles, building, the ships and stations are not one shot kill. Damage knocks out systems and leaves drifting hulk to be fought over man on man, corridor by corridor. To take a ship or building you must hack the core unit and that may take a whole day.
- There will be a lot of players who will go after the greifers in their low poly rockets if a crying kid shows up in chat.
Also on player made elements, there are a few in the works showing up in various image archives that you will like. Wrap a few voxels around them and you have any style you want but many want DU to have a style and a lore of its own. It can be done but its a lot of data to send player to hordes of players. And other people own the patents.
If you want a super smooth voxel warhammers ship it will come.
If the combination of JC's server architecture and Dual Contouring voxels works then every major game company will buy it to make their gameworld.
mmm playable tyranid ships or Ork hulks. No better D & D spell jammers!
Lastly on payments; the main problem is not the payment system but what happens to your stuff if you go off line for months or years. It's the problem of abandoned players accounts. NQ has an innovation. Effectively you licence it all to someone: a friend, a guild or org. A will. They inherit it all. That delays the problem a little. They may have scrapped it all but they owe you one and they may have your blue prints somewhere.
Elsewhere I've discussed off line or client side archiving. It's a possibility. I'm not however a dev.
Supposedly you can't loose your Second Life character and all his stuff yet I have twice. It's nothing to do with billing.
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Let's just figure this out, from a marketing point of view, let's take real figures, shall we?
Rust had actually the kind of success DU can expect and wish to have. I consider that anything below Rust-level of success is not what you can hope for a "10-years-to-go" project.
We do not care about the number of players here. Rust has 10145 servers online according to https://rust-servers.net/servers/list/406/
Might have been better/worst before, I don't know.
Average renting package go from 10$ to 20$ per month. Source: http://comparegamehosting.com/game/rust/
Let's say it is an average of 15$.
10145 x 15 = 152175 $ per month, 1,82 million $ a year. Make the package 20$ and it's 2,4 millions $ we are talking about now.
Sounds to me like a perfect way to monetize the game and ensuring a large community around it.
Add on top of that some cosmetics in shop and you are good to go. Fact is that the current marketing charts might show larger revenues on a pay to play model, but very few projects actually succeed.
Look at the names of all those who failed on the paywall : Everquest II, Lord of the Rings Online, The Elder Scrolls Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic... Source Silicion Angle. Those are not little names here. Those are AAA games made by large teams of battle-hardened developers. Star Wars failed man, look at that name, look at the genre... 200 millions dollars of development cost. (Wikipedia)
Well, it is possible to make decent revenues out of a paywall on start, but on the long term the solution is not viable. I do not believe in a system where players get disconnected because they lack game time, and will find it is an happy experience that makes it worth waiting for the next play session... They will not propagate the word, and you need the word to spread.
And if a word they spread, 'might not be that good.
Eagleone your missing Several points.
All those games you say failed covered development costs and made a profit. The fact that busy people move on to other games and other things is normal. Games wain that's normal. It happens to all types of games with all types of billing systems. No one has found the golden key to the metaverse.
Secondly NQ can sell DAC in packs of 6, 12, 20, 24, etc the equivalent of a larger B2P price without any trouble. That is also the equivalent of renting the servers.
Second life was the first to sell server space represented as rented sim space. The same model you recommend. While people still play Second Life its aged, It's not easy to up date to a much more modern system and some of us early builders never had enough room. We lost everything when the rent came due and we could not find the money. (10000 prims)
Renting servers is not a solution to permanent archiving of abandoned accounts. That's a totally different problem to any existing billing system. I've discussed it elsewhere.
Likewise Planet Entropia nests its server payments and content creation costs in the form of rent for buildings, and the purchase of ammunition, and mining probes. Again some of the things you talk about. MindArk is doing nicely but it's dated and new content trickles in very slowly.
The sales model you want does not guarantee longevity. No sales model does... Sadly.
NQ has a staged plan. Four games in one deployed in stages:
Planetary survival with a SF theme.
First person Sim City! (That will be huge when the city building fans catch on. Yes we will need roads.)
PvP combat with large armies and player made bases, gravtanks and aircraft.
Interplanetary and interstellar 4X eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate! Also first person.
Each stage will get a flood of new people buying DAC.
If you can't afford DAC you can get in via one of the org sites and work for your DAC earning them in game from NQ or orgs.
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I've found the duel contouring paper and a few others. Interesting stuff. http://www.frankpetterson.com/publications/dualcontour/dualcontour.pdf
Not easy to implement for an armature like me.
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There were not many surprises for me. Everything is limited by server size and team size and the need to limit the flow of data to millions of users.
One question was answered it's not marching cubes but a improvement on marching cubes or tetrahedrons. Need to search up all the newer voxel signographs.
The industrial craft 2 indicates the tech tree's roots so it does look like the disposal unit will be a macerator or recycler analogue. A way to get rid of all the rock. A modded minecraft tech tree with shields, etc would be cool but it's a lot of work and testing. Direwolf20 would love it.
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OK so it looks like there are three kinds using the same model and functionality but working a little different in terms of game play.
- The Ark ship units added at the ark ship powered by its "infinite" geothermal power. Open to every one dying without a powered unit.
- The personal unit that you get two of counting the above ark ship unit. You will spawn at the closest one. I suspect yours will be very well concealed. These will work if charged and are repowered by power plants and batteries. This will be the driver to get your base technology up. These can not be sold or dropped. They may be indestructible or respawnable.
- An expensive crafted version that can be sold, licensed to resurrect your friends, org-members, allies. It may even be able to be set to resurrect anyone that has fallen close to it. That last one would be in your market to get traffic and sales. Emulating open to all the ark zone version.
You lose some random items. I could see a line of weapon upgrades or skills that reduce the probability of a key item being lost.
Spawn rooms and spawn ships would need big power systems and possibly big battery systems.
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I main concern is the performance that the game will have during these large gatherings. Either it be a local trading hub or battle in space if FPS is very low and choppy, like Eve Online gets and Space Engineers. I'm guessing this is a concern for the developers and at this stage we don't know yet.
NQ technology is specifically designed to deal with that. Unless you've got 30 people on a stair well or everyone on the the same 8 square metre landing pad, something that does happen in Planetside 2, you should have no problems. Note: Planetside 2 is re designing its biolabs now to eliminate those lag traps and to add more building game play.
There is another form of lag that occurs when someone is on a different region or has low bandwidth. The NQ technology does not solve that but possibly could help in two ways.
- Measure the latency at both ends and adjust the server density proportionally to compensate.
- Or measure the latency and add a buff to shields and accuracy to compensate. Thus if you have 150 fps due to an over loaded optic fibre link you get +15% shields and +3 accuracy but only if the other guy has much lower latency. I know there is a term for that but I can't find it.
In terms of game play DU will be much more like Planetside 2 ground and air combat until you get to space then while space is big it will be very much like world of warships with the heavy use of zoom functions to negate distance. Small ships spotting and doing hit and run attacks while the large ships hammer away at shields, turrets and sensors. The repair crew will not just be a hot key and timer but actual player running around using real skills fixing and repairing things.
Every element will need a damaged form and a operational form. Much like planetside 2 or World of tanks.
*Note it is not actually the optic fibre links that get over loaded but the nodes they link to/ through. This is why optic fibre maps note the nodes.
http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/InternetTube_v2-01.png
and http://www.submarinecablemap.com/
In both cases the dots are where you get the distance based lag.
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What does this mean for long range snipeing/ bombarding of player bases ect.
I read through the whole thing and it all makes perfect sense, but the quote i've linked makes me think that there is going to be an issue with long range attacks/maneuvers.
As a player that likes to bombard people and snipe them from a distance and then go and claim my bounty from their cold dea.... from the place they died, this makes me slightly worried when in populated areas that accuracy long range will not really be possible and that it pushes people to fight closer.
What if we had a battle station that has a thousand people on board being attacked by long range warships, would we be able to accurately counter attack or would the less populated warships have the advantage due to distance and population ?
I can't see this being a huge problem in a tab targeting system. All NQ needs too do is send an immediate real time up date both ways when you're looking at some one through a binocular or sniper-scope or the space ship equivalent. It gives you a 1 to 1 fast link but only if you remain in the snipers sight picture. Most games do this anyway.
Getting sniped from an invisible sniper on the far off hill is the whole point of sniping. It's the real world point of being a sniper. If you are exposed to probable sniper positions you are dead! That was one of the things drilled into me in army boot camp.
Dig a trench with your nanoformer fast or die fast!
If you are in a brawl with 10 guys on the ground and 10 snipers show up now the server has 20 people half of them close half of the far but it is still only 20 people interacting, a number most systems can handle. NQ and DU is making the actors or players the focus of the servers architecture. The world is not divided spatially into zones but logically into players and interactions with the world geometry layered in under them.
If you are in a brawl with 10 guys on the ground and 10 snipers show lag will be very short term problem. Someones going to die fast any way.
This also means that if someone in your trench is watching the hill with binoculars (or a battlefield para-scope if he's smart) he can counter the snipers with a mortar barrage. Rock, paper, scissors.
In many games the guy looking though the binocular, para-scope, sniper scope, etc suffers tunnel vision, a real world problem, NQ can simulate this easily too by just slowing down a tiny bit all the other update flows. Some games cut them off altogether. Stabbing the sniper in the back with a knife is a real world thing. This is why few snipers actually work alone. They have someone watching their back. In some cases the entire commando team is just there to cover the snipers back, spot targets for him, carry his lunch and spare ammo. All for that one critical shot.
(PS I almost failed boot camp. lol.)
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Yep if JC's server architecture works every MMO game company will want it and so pushing their people to fund the experiment will be a major thing. If it works every game will be using it. The metaverse quadruples in size over night.
If Dual Universe makes JC Baillie as rich as Markus 'Notch' Persson they can expect a low asking price for his technology.
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Nice idea but I think power will matter. The more power the more you keep.
- No power the Resurrection Node is off. Res some where else.
- Base power = lose stuff but your home.
- Lots of power = keep all your stuff. Clearly the Resurrection Node is designed to drive your quest for energy early.
Still not sure how they are going to Stop people slipping into your base via you Resurrection node, looting stiff and digging out. They have three game designers listed now so that's progress. They may be on it. A lot of resurrection nodes will be in trap rooms or have a one way exit system if not. "Jump off this cliff, it'll be fine!"
They could use a colour or number indexing system; each RN has a value you res at the one matching your preset the value.
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There's not a "chance" or a "partial loss of items", you lose your entire inventory.
Losing skills is too much, losing effectiveness for an X amount of time or being unable to play your character is pointless and annoying, while cosmetic degradation like scars could work, but still, not first on the list of things to do.
Losing your ship/station/inventory is enough as a penalty, there's no need for more. If dieing is too much of a problem, people will just avoid PVP, and we don't want that.
Yep that sounds like JC's plan but it means to do even a small battle you may need a hundred full sets of guns and gear in a armoured warehouse on the actual battle field.
I think by mid alpha a semi-locked grave will be clearly needed. The prevalence of that in minecraft is telling. Death chest was one of the very first minecraft mods. Loosing everything is a recipe for hundreds rage quitting.
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yup like in SL, which is the first complete sandbox game as DU is derivating from, but SL had a horrible gameplay, so doesnt count as game, but more as a social world.
but explain more, i dont understand your point of view, why would attachment point would trigger problems, JC mentioned we could craft our stuff/outfits but didnt mentionned more, so i just proposed a working system, the one from SL, i certain there isnt any patent on it, any other games also have attachment points, but premade stuff with a style and level etc... and not as many attachment points as SL, and you just take of the pelvis point
what would you think it could be?
True Jeronimo but it had to be noted that people will try and do this and it costs money and time to undo. It was mainly a warning to the dev's, and you would be amazed how many attachment points can be abused.
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Well I backed as soon as I got the mail.
To be honest this whole thing is wreaking havoc on my nerves.
You think you have nerves, the alpha is jan/ feb next year, only 4-5 months away. 4 months goes in no time at all in the world of game crafting.
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Hey NQ, What ever you do don't do this to new players:
...snip...
Landmark is not a game its a permanent development test server. That was always the stated aim and still is. It has game play and building but it is never meant to be out of alpha. That's what all of us that signed up early signed up to. Not sure I like the style that's developed, too gun like, and Everquest Next may take some time but It is what it said it world be.
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But how do you chose between different modes. will the easy mode players have advateages over hard players. But i like space zombie mode sounds cool.
A choice at the game start screen would work. However JC is looking to create a game where people are forced to work together and and hard mode setting or difference in start mode would work against that. My suggestions are all about people coming late to the game.
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It occurs to me that just doing a remake of a minecraft mod pack at smaller voxel size would not be good enough. (love all three mods though) That's why I had levers, wedges, pick-hoe etc. I.e. even a minecraft veteran faces a little learning curve if some low technology is enabled. It needs to new, temporary, low technology and only ever as a player choice competing with the nanoformers speed and power so you have genuine bragging rights.
That is the challenge. The nanoformer uses power to mine and harvest. In building mode I would assume it needs no power. If its out of power you take damage. That's already been talked about. It a driver to technology development and a hint that a lower technology, power saver game mode, may be an option. But NQ probably would want to keep low technology to a minimum. It's extra work.
I have an idea: I'm putting together models of some lower technology elements these are not meant to be usable but when you make a foundry from scratch the nanoformer first makes the low technology stuff then uses them to make the high technology Foundry which then replaces the low tech stuff instantly. One mesh with charcoal kiln, bloomery, and a pile of resources: stone, dirt, fuel and ore. It is only meant to be visible for a few seconds. It beats scaffolding.
At the moment I'm stuck for a good copper (Malachite) ore Texture. Most out there would look rubbish on a 25 cm voxel and a 4 m tunnel wall. Making the ores look convincing will be a challenge. I need to do a little research on texture tools in gimp and blender. I'm not a dev so I don't know if they have someone on that problem yet.There is also the question, If you have a nanoformer why do you need a foundry or 3d printer? Some technobabble is needed. My best suggestion is that the nanoformer can move things but can't make phase changes; Smelting, melting, setting glues and plastic are all phase changes. Hence the need for four base machines: foundry, 3D printer, assembler and the disposal unit {only in the art but that is clearly a grinder }.
The next game design question, If you have all this high technology do you need all the ores? Copper Malachite, tin Cassiterite, Lead Galena, the three iron ores - Native Iron (asteroids), Hematite, and Magnetite? The precious ores make sense, gold, silver = electronics. Then you have rare earths. Rare earths are not found in ordinary dirt. Some ores like lithium are not even generally found underground much. They are dry mountain ores and salts. How detailed and scientifically accurate do you want to be?
The real hard mode is for the game designer.
As for easy mode players having an advantage over hard mode players that is the point.
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- Easy mode; As described already.
- Hardish mode; someone has moved your cryopod out of the safe zone to the other side of the planet. Dig and hide. But the nanoformer works.
- Hard mode; As per hardish mode but the nanoformer is on the fritz you take damage every time you use it but you can make a healing booster that fixes it if your close, you can pick stuff up by making a lever and cut stone with a hammer and wedge, Strip branches form trees with a pruning hook. Dig dirt with primitive pick-hoe. make a 3D printer and fix the nanoformer with a repair kit from it.
- Extreme mode: defective cryopod, you emerge a zombie. You can walk, jump, turn, melee and make a nanoformer attack but nothing else works until you harvest a vital resource to fix your brain and nanoformer. And everyone is hunting you because you have a useful resources drop. How long can you last as a space zombie.
[i keep writing about space zombies and awaiting someone saying "Noooooo no zombies!" But All I hear is a worrying silence. Scary. ]
Hard and Extreme mode would both be sweet griefer penalties.
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I would suspect that most of the alpha and beta wipes will effect some of our saved builds and leave others intact but they will not work in the newer version.
I have some early stuff in landmark that I would never want to see the light of day ever again. Hangs head in shame.
I have some ships in space engineers that wont work at all because of up dates.
I think some of the best alpha and beta build will show up as ruins. I've suggested that. Replace the elements and core unit with stone or loot chests drop them on a new planet to be found. We could even have a few themed build competitions. The great sky whale build off.
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For combat we will need some kind of temporary battle respawn. A deploy-able stretcher/ Resurrection unit with a limited range. Medical skills may give higher level of retained items, lower debuffs and longer range. This makes your medics vital in the battle because they create and deploy the things. Other wise battles will be locked in around the main spawns like planetside 2 with out sunderers or planet entropia.
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Maybe tie it to a stat, like, the more people you kill the more item you lose upon death I mean, the ship loss aloone witl be enough, but still.
How would the game know your a griefer and not a very good security guard or organisation warrior or bounty hunter? It will need a reputation system of some complex kind.
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See the weather thread there is a dozen more there including some from me.
I tend to go more into depth as to how the may work.
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Hello,
I cannot help but notice controversy about the starting zone. I would like to give my input.
I have noticed there is a lack of planned tutorial, the arkship is ideal for that. You could create faked interactions that cancel out after a certain time allowing you to make npc quests and thus gather enough material and money to get a decent newbie ship and go away onto another planet.
nstead of letting the NQ team design the starting area, it would be beneficial to let the alpha players make it and build it organically, with the premise it will be deallocated from their property once in beta to implement npcs and their quests according to the past happenings in the alpha. It would be wise to make a small no edit zone around the arkship itself to make it look like a memorial once things have been built around.
I hope you like that proposition.
Its all hinted in the back story.
Player has memory loss = create character,
Play looks like death warmed up = edit character appearance,
Player has this glowing thing on his hand = VR training,
Player leaves ship at launch = spawn is some distance from ark and the alpha and beta builds will be wiped (but may appear as ruins to be found later. )
Late player enters game = Choice of city or wilderness start. In the latter case someone has moved his cryopod to somewhere JC sanctions probably nearer the edge of the safe zone. The cryopods in the back story are portable!!!
Hard mode. Late player leaves the ark proper = a bambie org or player picks him up in a speeder and whisks him off into the wilderness for a hard zero resources and zero protection start, NQ NPC vendor pays the taxi/ noob bus driver,
There will be player made tutorials in world very quickly. The VR system would include ongoing tutorials.
Designing the start of this game is the easy bit.
CO2 recycling vs in-ship biodome
in Idea Box
Posted
Technically they are part of the same system. I.E. all long endurance ships have both. The space shuttle and International space station ran on tanks of oxygen and scrubbers but the space station has some plants for experiments and recently micro greens, food. The plants are not enough to provide much oxygen.
All ships have the scrubbers, the ISS, way back through Apollo to the first closed life support system way back in 1860! and the design has barely changed in 156 years! Note Stargate got the scrubbers wrong as a plot device. All CO2 scrubbers are reversible if you have heat and a pressure pump and somewhere to vent the CO2. They are either lithium or calcium based.
The mars analogue work in Hawaii that ended last week used a mix of systems. The Biosphere 2 project a few decades ago uses the latter system. It had problems on the first test but that's been fixed. A lot of carbon got locked up in the soil creating a problem and they had no way to unlock it. they were als short a few tons of nitrogen which did not help. A fix was found.
Biodomes take up space but there is a cheap solution. Algae farms. Technically the solar oxygen unit in space engineers is one.
There are actually three systems:
The most likely system in DU will be a unit that mixes all three mechanisms in one unit. If your near it your supplied with oxygen, if not, get the helmet on. On Alioth your air supply is set to regenerate all the time (unless you dig too deep). O2 levels will take along time to go down because your nanopack probably has a ton of it in there anyway. Having a Tardis on your belt is very handy.