Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Quite frankly I could care less whether or not my system could run said yet to be named game. That"s what you call an "example"

I have very little desire to try out more MMOs at this point, no matter how much they"re hyped. If the game is good enough, I"ll hear about it and might decide to try it, maybe. If it"s really fucking goddamned amazing, I"ll buy a new computer.

I"m speaking in terms of Curt Schilling"s originally stated goals of having a massive audience and broad appeal. To do this, you must meet those user requirement standards. You must exceed them.

Oh, and btw, my shitty ass second computer(at the time, it"s in the trashbin now) which I bought in January 2002 and played EQ on could in fact run WoW, and it sucked during raids, but it was doable. Yes, the framerates weren"t great and you had to turn down some options, but it could run alright.

I guess what I"m getting at isn"t that it should be a flawless experience on any system, and that was maybe overstated; but it should *definitely* at least be able to run semi-reasonably on systems that don"t even or just barely meet the required specs, and those required specs should be on the very low end. WoW did do this, you wouldn"t get amazing performance, but there are very few desktop systems out that won"t run it.

I know Curt is a republican, and a rich guy, and probably somewhat of a gaming elitist, and I respect these things. I really do. But he didn"t say he"s trying to make an awesome amazing experience for 500k people. He said he wanted to make a game with enormous broad appeal that would attract huge numbers of users. My comments are made with that in mind, and a ton of people just aren"t going to upgrade their systems, at all, to play a game. I"m not one of them, but the users of this board are definitely in the minority.

Oh yeah, and when I sit down, I want to sit the fuck down. I"m not a chick, I don"t kneel down. I don"t get prepared to receive Brad"s great gift in my mouth. I sit the fuck down and take a goddamn break and think about some shit -- like, that mob was one bad dude. And, shit, I am one beastly mother. I do not worry about that afternoon"sfucking tea.

If you do not have the ability to actually sit in a god damn chair, you can go fuck off. Seriously, this needs to be in every game created from here to the end of time. If you have chairs in the game, I damn well better be able to sit it in it with an animation and all.

James said:

Oh yeah, and when I sit down, I want to sit the fuck down. I"m not a chick, I don"t kneel down. I don"t get prepared to receive Brad"s great gift in my mouth. I sit the fuck down and take a goddamn break and think about some shit -- like, that mob was one bad dude. And, shit, I am one beastly mother. I do not worry about that afternoon"sfucking tea.

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And please don"t make my character carry his staff on his back. I don"t know what idiot started it, but a staff is used as a walking stick when you walk around. You do not erect it on your back like a flagpole.

Ngruk said:

What does this mean? What capabilities do either of these engines NOT have that would allow us to create this monster?

In the end this was by far the best solution(s) for many of our questions going forward. Unreal allows for rapid prototyping, which has to happen to drive out risk as fast as humanly possibly.

There is so much to the core game that we must validate now, today, before we even approach the "cool" stuff. This core game stuff has to be the end all be all regardless of how "mundane" or "simple" it might be. Being able to get these things up and running will allow us to spend YEARS vetting. If it stops being fun, and part of it, a year or two from now, we"re negligent if we think it will be fun for you. Unreal allows this to happen, not to mention they are some pretty cool people.

Bigworld was a no brainer. It"s shipped games (which you may find it hard to believe is rarer than you might think) and it"s so deep and thorough in it"s server side solutions and tech that I think we all knew from day 1 we"d go that route.

What we did after that was spend literally a year seeing every other possible solution, from Crytek to Hero and more. I am pretty confident we saw and got into every solution being offered.

Might seem trivial but this was a huge step for us. Oh and the fact that in doing this we now have a world you can actually log into, and run around in!!
(And I may be biased but it"s stunningly gorgeous!)

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It"s UE3 I would be concerned about if I was on your team. UE3 is fine when it knows what data to expect but its architecture just seems. . .less than ideal for MMO behaviours. It"s about architecture rather than capabilities. To make it work well in an MMO I think you"ll spend a lot of time bending the engine to your will as you"ll be asking it to do things it doesn"t really excel at.

That said most of my evaluations have been done from a console perspective and you have a PC product so you might be able to muscle a lot of problems out of the way.

Totally off the current UE3 topic (which is cool to hear btw), but I asked this on the 38 Fans forums and didn"t get a response. Are you guys still planning on debuting the IP at Comic Con this year? Would it be worth it to fly down there and check it out? I"d love to meet you guys (even the carebear) and see the IP first-hand.

Sounds like a good idea.

Tancred said:

It"s UE3 I would be concerned about if I was on your team. UE3 is fine when it knows what data to expect but its architecture just seems. . .less than ideal for MMO behaviours. It"s about architecture rather than capabilities. To make it work well in an MMO I think you"ll spend a lot of time bending the engine to your will as you"ll be asking it to do things it doesn"t really excel at.

That said most of my evaluations have been done from a console perspective and you have a PC product so you might be able to muscle a lot of problems out of the way.

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UE3 is significantly different than UE2.5. It has been optimized for MMOs and you can expect a lot of new MMOs to use it.

holymight said:

UE3 is significantly different than UE2.5. It has been optimized for MMOs and you can expect a lot of new MMOs to use it.

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A max of 64 players per server is optimized for MMOs? I was under the impression that the net code didn"t changesignificantlyfrom 2 to 3 but I obviously could have been told incorrectly. That aside, it sounds like some of the asset loading/streaming has changed from what Jerrith mentioned in a previous post.

I"m even more clueless now that I lost my UDN access so any corrections are obviously welcome

"Course, if they"re using the BigWorld server architecture, I suppose that they don"t have to worry about Unreal"s server arch

CylusSoulreaver said:

A max of 64 players per server is optimized for MMOs? I was under the impression that the net code didn"t changesignificantlyfrom 2 to 3 but I obviously could have been told incorrectly. That aside, it sounds like some of the asset loading/streaming has changed from what Jerrith mentioned in a previous post.

I"m even more clueless now that I lost my UDN access so any corrections are obviously welcome

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I don"t think the netcode has changed, more the way maps are structured and loaded allowing for much bigger spaces and more objects.

Another team in my company is using latest UE3 for a console game and its much better at streaming maps in than UE2 but I really wonder how a giant world would work out, just rebuilding the lighting can take a long time for a single linked level. Kismet (UE editor) is also pretty powerful and great for quick prototyping, but again not really sure how its going to work for an MMO... for example actors (toons) are static inside a level, moving them to another level (zone in an MMO? Subzone?) creates a copy. You don"t want dozens of copies of the same actors obviously. UE3 is pretty damn good for FPS games but I dunno, being the first to use it in a big MMO seems a bit risky.

I think 38 wants to release in late 2010, which probably ends up being 2011 or 2012. Hopefully the baseline PC is a bit more powerful by then. Orange box has actually sold more on PCs since release than console, 1.5 mil or so across all consoles and nearly 2 mil on PCs. So a well done PC game can do extremely well.

Tyen said:

^^ that is hilarious right there.

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And so very true. lol

holymight said:

UE3 is significantly different than UE2.5. It has been optimized for MMOs and you can expect a lot of new MMOs to use it.

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And I"m sure the 38 guys have some well paid Technical Directors who have done their due diligence and signed off on the choice of engine, too. If they"re happy with it then fine but it makes me suspect this won"t be a massive open world game and most of the action will take place in small instances (where UE3 should do ok).

I"ve been wrong before and will be again but if it was my decision I would not take UE3 for an MMO. When some successful MMO products come to market that use it I"ll re-evaluate my opinion.

Tropics said:

You bought a system 2 years ago (early 2006) that you want to be able to play a brand new game out in late 2010? That is pretty much a 5 year old system, sorry but that is simply unrealistic. By the time this game comes out you are going to have processors with 16 cores as the high end, and your 2 your old once awesome processor might have 2 if lucky.

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Disagree with you here, unless the game is aiming to peak at 100k subs. If WoW had done this they wouldn"t have a fraction of their customer base.

Additionally, the number of people that throw large amounts of money at their PC is going to decrease as more PC developers make the move to console.

Tropics said:

Also, I am sure NGruk knows of the gameplay>graphics thing. I don"t need graphics any better then EQ1 had to be honest as long as the game is immerisve and fun to play. I have never quit a game due to crappy graphics, only crappy gameplay.

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Absolutely agree with this. If I were to give one piece of advice, above all else, to a game designer it would be :

Put hooks in the game, right from the start. Hooks, hooks, hooks. Hammer it home.THIS is THE secret to Blizzards success.They"ve been doing it since day 1 with Diablo 1, with their loot systems and character development. Hard to believe it, but it was amongst the first releases on Windows - they were castigated for not releasing it on DOS.


The Diablo loot system is unparalleled. Don"t just have 3 or 4 levels of rarity- use a "chest" system like D1 and D2. 100 chests, of increasing levels, with higher levels becoming available as you/the mob increases in level. When loot drops the game rolls for a chest, with higher numbers much rarer, then it rolls for the type of item in the chest (a chest might have 12 possible item to roll, with some types more weighted than others) then it rolls for the rarity of that item type - common, uncommon, rare, set, class set, class unique, unique.


Get more staff working on a huge loot system = you win at making MMOs hold players attention. Sets and uniques at all levels that people really want. And some of it INCREDIBLY rare. Make it so at lvl 30, people may want to keep doing that one boss loot run right up to lvl 35, because theres a small chance of a really rare item. Pack those solo instances in, like no-one else has done. The game that competes with WoW will do this.



Leveling isn"t a hook unless you look forward to it; leveling should be a blast, every time. Leveling though isn"t enough on its own, unless there are hooks in there, that you enjoy, that make you semi-forget about levelling. This is why Diablo works and has been so popular. People love doing loot runs, for example, just for the end of level boss drops.

However you achieve it, unless the game is full of hooks like this, I honestly don"t care how good the graphics are. If it has these hooks, I honestly don"t care how poor the graphics are.
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Flight why do you hit enter so many times in your post? Each paragraph and quote has 1-2 extra empty lines surrounding it.

However, I agree with the loot system.

Developers shy away too much from using ideas or systems from other games. One of the main reasons EQ2 failed was because in everything they did they tried to move away from EQ1 as far as possible, to be less like it. It turned out the customers actually wanted EQ done better, not a new game.

Curt, I don"t care about the graphics. Whatever I play I run 3 or 4 accounts at least. You can have my subs for years to come if you made a game that :


i) stole FFXI"s combat system;

ii) flat out copied Diablo"s loot system;

iii) implemented a solo / small group / party LDoN system;

iv) copied SWGs harvesting and crafting system;

v) ripped off a PvP system that is easily accessible like WoWs;

vi) mirrored Asherons Call 1 (that 1 bit is important ) character development;

viii) copy FFXI allowing characters to be all class and raise them separately, but only have one class active at a time;

ix) I was going to say I can"t think of anything I"d copy from EQ2, but you know what, Mentoring is a fantastic idea;

x) give us offbeat classes like the Tactician in Asherons Call 2 or the Vampiir in DaoC. (I know not everyone agrees, but lots of classes please);

xi) give us an in game card game, like Diplomacy in VG or LoN in EQ2 (just dont rip us off, have the cards drop in game not sold out of the game).



I"m going over the top, but I"m just making the point - don"t be afraid to rip off other games. Writers have been doing it for 50 years to Tolkien and for decades before that to R.E. Howard, because it works.

I still want my 100 level dungeon from Lufia 2 and have that as an instance in an MMO.

Its one of the cooler ideas of any RPG I have ever played.