Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Tenks_sl said:

VG was a fantastic game but suffered from technical glitches and requiring, at the time, a super computer to run it effectively. I think of the world of VG got populated from the get-go it could have been the heir apparent to EQ. But it simply didn't have the population to really support it's vision.

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What was a supercomputer. How about a core2duo with a 8800 gtx did that qualify at the time?

One more note, all the talk about "swapping out art assets" isn't bullshit. It is really easy. They way Unity works is that you can create a "blank" game object. And, that object has a series of children objects. One of the children objects is the model. When I first started my game, I started with a basic skeleton as my player character b/c it was free and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't too retarded to get Unity to work. It was actually the same skeleton Pantheon used in its trailer. Anyway, I made the basic movement and the attack and way HPs were handled and put in some abilities and finally figured out "I got this." When I wanted to add a more robust player character model to my game, I bought one for like $45 bucks and just replaced the skeleton model child object with the new warlock model child object and reassigned all the animations. There is a little bit of overlap because you have to do stuff like make sure the effect goes off at the right time for the animations, which are all different in each model, but for most of the core functionality its works as is.

They are probably getting all of the class mechanics and design stuff in order with like "hardcoded" values. If they get funded, I would expect that the first two people they hire are a good database guy to undo all the hardcoding and a good networking guy so that they make sure they get the networking stuff all set up right. Making a multiplayer game is kinda of a bitch in Unity, but like I said, our newb asses did it with no experience. I dont think a pro team will have any issues at all.

My guess is they are working on stuff like Oloh is describing. Maybe they've even learned to not release things too early, and a week from the KS end date they'll drop a bomb having a pretty in depth, working combat demo even with some unique art assets testing things in that zone/dungeon we've seen. Timing will be critical. Too early, and it'll be open for scrutiny too long. Too late, and it won't give a chance for the flying monkeys to spread the word that "See, they HAVE been working on the game and it's awesome!"

popsicledeath_sl said:

My guess is they are working on stuff like Oloh is describing. Maybe they've even learned to not release things too early, and a week from the KS end date they'll drop a bomb having a pretty in depth, working combat demo even with some unique art assets testing things in that zone/dungeon we've seen. Timing will be critical. Too early, and it'll be open for scrutiny too long. Too late, and it won't give a chance for the flying monkeys to spread the word that "See, they HAVE been working on the game and it's awesome!"

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I know for a fact that privately, the focus is/was combat a few days ago. I just don't know what the plans are in regards to the KS.. If they plan to elaborate on it, show it or if they are just ironing some ideas out and the discussions are more long term.

Mr Creed_sl said:

If you have a dragon some degree of intelligence is plausible, if you have a giant but-creature it might just act on the instinct of hurting back whoever hurts it most, and mindless undead might be happy with fighting whoever stands closest.

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Yeah, EQ was doing this in 1999.

Undead would not run and mindlessly smack you if you got too close, while live mobs "scared for their lives" would run when they were below 20% hoping to get away or find help from their friends. Some mobs were social and call their friends for help, while others were a bit antisocial and would not. Some mobs would agro you if you fell below 25% health, seeing you as an easy opportunity target, or smash your head if you were sitting down and vulnerable.

It is some pretty basic stuff, but it makes the world feel alive and all contributes to the immersion.

Fight_sl said:

Yeah, EQ was doing this in 1999.

Undead would not run and mindlessly smack you if you got too close, while live mobs "scared for their lives" would run when they were below 20% hoping to get away or find help from their friends. Some mobs were social and call their friends for help, while others were a bit antisocial and would not. Some mobs would agro you if you fell below 25% health, seeing you as an easy opportunity target, or smash your head if you were sitting down and vulnerable.

It is some pretty basic stuff, but it makes the world feel alive and all contributes to the immersion.

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Not to derail, since I'm enjoying these Unity lessons.. I'd Plus 1 Oloh and Gecko if I could...

but assuming players can dig pits for mobs to fall in, there will have to be some form of smart AI. The mob needs to recognize the tactics the players are using and try to adjust or the player environment CC shit is a waste.

mkopec_sl said:

Check my post a few pages back. I dug up an article on how AI is being handled in EQ Next. ITs quite refreshing if they make it work.

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Yea, man! I agree. I know there are some at SoE who are wondering how all this will be received.. Basically, worried players might complain it's too complicated:-( I hope SoE just sticks to their guns

Convo_sl said:

Yea, man! I agree. I know there are some at SoE who are wondering how all this will be received.. Basically, worried players might complain it's too complicated:-( I hope SoE just sticks to their guns

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You know a ton of players will complain. Whether they'll cave is the only question.

Oloh_sl said:

A team like Brad has could make a cheap WoW clone with one class and a starting area with shitty graphics in a month without any "real" coder. No doubt about that. Like I said, I am not talking out of my ass, me and my buddy made a cheap, bad Diablo clone that could support 2 players in a month (necromancer class and an overland area to fight in), using no tutorial or other prefabricated scripts. We just started Unity, researched shit online. The first iteration of the skills are listed below and all worked. I coded them all myself with no previous coding background (I am a lawyer, so I am not even around people who code, tbh)..

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I guess this is part of the issue I have had, in that they've been prepping this for months supposedly and had zero content to offer when they threw up the Kickstarter, in addition to the actual information page and design being weak.

I do believe the base creation of the infrastructure, tools, character creator, encounters and AI for the game to some degree is more why one wants to be tech heavy in the beginning. Yes, purchasing an engine speeds things up, but if you recall Vanguard used the Unreal 3D engine which had many of the same features.

I also think Brad can leverage, overtly and covertly, the many assets at SOE to help move things along which might be why he needs more content implementors versus actual technical people.

Programmers and Artists can be designers. Unfortunately, the reverse is not always true and for a small company I'd imagine the more one can do, the better their game and process will be to reach end product. Or heck, maybe Brad just needs a bunch of lawyers.

popsicledeath_sl said:

You know a ton of players will complain. Whether they'll cave is the only question.

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More like: "when they'll cave."

mkopec_sl said:

Well this shit has to be tried. I was against it until I actually read what this AI model entails, and it sounds very promising. Sure beats static spawns roamers and scripts.

Link for those which didnt see it...

Utility-Based AI and EverQuest Next - EQNexus

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I'm all for the AI in the world and economy; that sounds exciting. But what the ai in grouping will do to class choices leaves me lukewarm.

Why is nobody calling Brad to task on his comment about "playing the game"? You would think that's a pretty important tidbit of information.

PS. Yes, I realize it's obvious that he's full of it and blowing smoke up your asses, yet again.

Kirun_sl said:

Why is nobody calling Brad to task on his comment about "playing the game"? You would think that's a pretty important tidbit of information.

PS. Yes, I realize it's obvious that he's full of it and blowing smoke up your asses, yet again.

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We did talk about it.. We want to see the game but we also see how dumb people are... I don't know if you have visited various forums but just in regards to the dungeon video, there were a ton of posts saying shit like "it's so dated looking!!" Basically ignoring any disclaimer that the game was in early development.. It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't type thing but I'd personally rather see it.

Oloh_sl said:

In fairness, using Unity doesn't really need a "coder" per se to get started. I have never coded before in my life, never made a video game, and never worked on a development team, and I was able to implement a Necromancer from scratch in Unity. It's technically C#, but it is really just scripting. They will eventually need a lot of professional coders to, obviously, but I assume the people that are involved have at least some experience with scripting (certainly more than me) and they could start to implement and iron out classes almost immediately without a pro coder.

Unity handles the physics graphics, etc. It is really, really easy.

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As I've been working on my little MUD project using Unity I've learned a lot in a few weeks thanks to a few guys that are doing the engineering part. Unity is pretty limited in what it can do right out of the box.

Unity is just an engine. You still need a network and database solution and that isn't easy when it comes to Unity if you want your game to scale beyond like a handlefull of people and NPCs in your zone.

Unity doesn't allow you to create caves, "holes" in the terrain out of the box. You need to use 3d modelers (maya, blender) to create meshes, stick them into Unity and stitch terrain around them.

There is a lot you need to do, to make things work right for an MMORPG.

It's very easy to make a piece of terrain look cool, and drop a pre-made script and NPC into the game. It's hard to make it all work together without crushing your client with drawcalls and data management.

Ok, so thankfully this thread shifted to a technical discussion involving Unity. I love technical discussions.

Unity is awesome. At the company I work we use Unity as the client in every single one of our projects. Unity allows you to prototype and test ideas very quickly, as in weeks as opposed to months or years. However, a test or client-side prototype is light-years from a production MMORPG engine. MMORPG engines aren't like most networking structures, the vast majority of the game runs on the server itself, so it isn't like building a Diablo clone where two clients talk to each other, it is far more complex than that because half the code you write lives and runs full-time on the server. There are no good prebuilt server-client mmo engines out there in the way there are client engines such as Unity and Unreal so you inevitably write at least 90% of the server code yourself (if not 100%). Making a game with that type server-client setup is incredibly difficult and time consuming. Also, no one programs the servers in C++ anymore, the industry has instead shifted towards functional languages like Erlang which generally require more specialized and expensive skill sets, although the payoff is huge. Luckily, the days of having a dedicated database admin are pretty much gone because of NoSQL Document databases (Couch and Mongo for example).

I thoroughly enjoy using Unity, even with all its quirks, but Oloh you aregreatlyexaggerating how fast and easy it is to make an MMORPG even with such a good front-end. It is in no way a magical panacea for making games that are still some of the most complex pieces of software out there. They are still hellishly difficult to make with modern tools. You really don't need many designers on an MMORPG until you are in full production (if at all). I can easily supply 5 programmers and several artists with what they need design wise, even while making vertical slice content that includes database work, level design, scripting, and sometimes particle effects. If Unity has done anything it is allow our projects to get away withfewerdesigners by making my workflow shorter and easier to manage. And this is with experienced programmers that have been working with Unity for several years and with custom server tech that they built themselves over the course of those years.

One funny thing is that GUI work is surprisingly difficult and time consuming. You don't think you will, but you generally need 1 UI programmer on a project full-time throughout almost the entire thing. It is just one of those things that isn't difficulty per say, but just ends up having lots of flat out time consuming revisions. I'd actually say on any one of our projects a solid 10%-15% of our programming resources are directly GUI related.

If anyone is interested in how Unity works on a very basic level just start watching these videos:Unity Fundamentals - Our First Level - 3DBuzz

To echo Draegan, I highly recommend Unity to anyone out there that is interested in making games.