Camelot Unchained MMO

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Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
Kubla Kas_sl said:
I saw in OP that it mentioned player housing and RvR. I assume it means something more like guild housing? Unless it actually lets you have a house just for yourself that someone else can come over and burn to ground if they want? Or is the mixing of the two not really happening and he is just using two buzzwords to keep people interested in the project?

I'd assume any full RvR game would borrow the keep building and owning land aspects of Shadowbane?
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I doubt they know what they really meant.
 
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Gecko_sl

shitlord
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Denaut_sl said:
Building a game back end is still extremely challenging, now there are better tools to do it with but don't under-estimate the difficulty. There is still no "out-of-the-box" solution for something like CU.
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Any time you do a similar project again you generally do it more efficiently, correct? That's pretty much my sole point regarding this project and Jacobs.

DAOC used a flat file 'database' and mostly old MUD code, a la EQ. While I'd guess CU won't go that far, I'll be amazed if most new games are not reusing a good chunk of code, as that is what development people do on any project I've worked with. I'm not sure why game development would be any different. It's not like IP technology has changed, and there's a lot of very good baseline code for Client/Server out there already. The same holds true for databases.

I'm not an expert, but I'd be surprised if building a back end solution in this age of gigE, Linux clusters, and cable is not far easier than 12 years ago. Heck, with Kickstarter you don't even need funding.
 
Denaut

Denaut

Trump's Staff
2,739
1,279
Gecko_sl said:
Any time you do a similar project again you generally do it more efficiently, correct? That's pretty much my sole point regarding this project and Jacobs.
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Only if you are self-critical enough to learn lessons. In theory you could do it more efficiently, but usually what seems to happen is you just make a whole new set of mistakes. I just have little to no faith in Jacobs.

DAOC used a flat file 'database' and mostly old MUD code, a la EQ. While I'd guess CU won't go that far, I'll be amazed if most new games are not reusing a good chunk of code, as that is what development people do on any project I've worked with. I'm not sure why game development would be any different. It's not like IP technology has changed, and there's a lot of very good baseline code for Client/Server out there already. The same holds true for databases.
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There are several problems with "reusing" DAoC code.

Firstly, Jacobs doesn't own it, Mythic does. Secondly, the tech is absolutely ancient. Like you said, it used flat files as a database, which is just a crude Object Database. You would never do that unless you didn't have the time, money, and/or knowledge to use a proper object database because it scales terribly. Later, games upgraded to using proper object databases like SQL. I think even eventually DAoC converted to using MySQL, but I could be wrong.

If you were building an MMO database today, right now, you wouldn't use an object database at all, you would instead use aDocument-oriented databases. For games they are superior in all the important ways.

Game development can be very different than normal business software development. Certainly you reuse stuff when you can but it isn't just databases that have changed so drastically, but also the way the servers and therefore game logic is constructed and programmed. All if the back end tech used for games has changed immensely in the last few years.

For example, servers and like 90% of the game code is no longer written in C++, but instead inconcurrent programming languageslike Erlang. These are languages designed for extremely heavy parallelization and multi-core multi-proccessor scaling. C++ is no longer used to construct entire servers, the network code and all the game logic, but is now relegated to the low level tasks it does well like physics, collision, and pathfinding. To take advantage of this new and powerful tech, programmers need to completely rethink and redesign the way a back-end is built. Other people are doing it and reaping the rewards, if you want to stay competitive you better as well.

Things are VERY different now and it has only changed in the past few years. SOE saw this coming and spent a bucket load of money (rumor is like 30 programmers for a couple of years) on the NEXT engine. They knew the tech their other games are built on wouldn't cut it, so they assembled a new engine from the ground up. Now, there they absolutely reuse tons code, but their entire engine is built for that purpose and most importantly it is a MODERN engine. DAoC, WAR, and anything else Jacobs publicly worked on do not function even remotely this way.

I'm not an expert, but I'd be surprised if building a back end solution in this age of gigE, Linux clusters, and cable is not far easier than 12 years ago. Heck, with Kickstarter you don't even need funding.
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I understand what you are getting at, but the revolution was both incredibly recent for gaming and not terribly transparent to outsiders. It isn't the hardware, but way game code and server logic is constructed for those types of large scale multi-tasking systems. Frankly, I am glad I am not a programmer, because I spent about 4 weeks trying to learn Erlang and let me tell you, concurrent programming is a complete mind fuck. I think I will stick to just being a good scripter and leave the server/network code up to the experts.
 
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Kharza-kzad_sl

shitlord
1,080
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I had to read some erlang for a server gig... that was... really strange. I've been learning the server side of things for web stuff, and it is so completely and utterly alien to my C++ directX world. It has been interesting.
 
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fucker_sl

shitlord
677
9
Draegan_sl said:
Open World pvp design requires people doing things. Other than attack other players, people need to be building, guarding, fighting, collecting, moving things. Else it's just GW2 WvW.
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it's the reason why i have never got interested in Daoc. It was a half-done pvp game for me. There was no consequences in any of the fights there were in Daoc aside from some marginal realm bonus. No real conquest, no territorial control. No nothing. It added all the chore of a mmorpg (levelling, equip etc) but not the satisfaction of destroying your enemy

i wish someone had the balls and the resources to make an EVE-Style pvp game in a fantasy world, but we know that's impossible. EVE is a collection a empty zones aside from a couple stations models, few textured 3d spheres for planets and randomly generated asteroid belts using a couple dozen models. Nothing more. It's easy to add a couple hundreds new systems

in a fantasy setting, the resources necessary to create a conquerable enviroment even for only 3000 players in a server would be absurd. Unless it was like SW:Galaxies and it's 99% empty planets
 
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Kubla Kas_sl

shitlord
200
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Some niche PvP MMO needs to borrow from some of the full PK MUDs...
-Level Ranges - no griefing lowbies with your max level guy
-Limited Items - Item drops of mobs (specific mobs, no random loot shit) is limited by population on server. Some items might only be 10 of, some 100, if you are offline for too long of a time your limited items are reset back into the world.
-Specific loot per mob as mentioned above - creates a natural danger to camping/hunting for a specific item you may want and also create conflict if multiple people are wanting that same thing
-Full or partial corpse loot

Now there are some consequences for actually PvPing. Let me also say, I would aboslutely hate this game as my now older self. But my younger self, the one who played the PK muds like this would have loved it.
 
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Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
pyksel don't make me register you as a shill. If you're just gonna RSS feed this thread, at least toss some opinion, don't drop naked links.
 
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Gecko_sl

shitlord
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The hilarity quotient from that link is extremely high.

If you drop $250 you can actually get a printed game manual! If you drop $450 you can get a signed Cloth Map from Mark Jacobs!
 
Pyksel

Pyksel

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Gecko_sl said:
The hilarity quotient from that link is extremely high.

If you drop $250 you can actually get a printed game manual! If you drop $450 you can get a signed Cloth Map from Mark Jacobs!
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I think the interesting thing about the tiers is while some are cumulative others are not. That didn't make a whole lot of sense. Granted the diversity of them are nice the cost and rewards are pretty laughable in some regards. I do like the subscription discounts, particularly the ones that are renewable for $1/year but considering the cost to achieve that, it just doesn't seem worth it.
 
Pyksel

Pyksel

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bleedat_sl said:
Dude threatens to ban people in every thread.....so i will say angry.
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I've got nothing against the guy but it's pretty obvious he doesn't like this thread being here and judging by his posts on F13 coupled with the ones here, he really despises Mark Jacobs and is quick to call anyone out who finds interest in this project or doesn't share his level of distaste. So be it. His house, his rules. He can wield his powers how he chooses and if I don't like it I can certainly move on.

Perhaps if I just posted a response like -_- that would have been ok?
 
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Kedwyn

Silver Squire
3,915
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I'll be kicking them some money. I've pissed away enough on shitty single player games to not mind supporting something a little different.
 
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Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
Who threatened to ban you? I was just going to fuck with you and change your user title to Camelot Shill to rustle your jimmies. Looks like it worked without having to do anything.
 
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