ORBITER MMORPG!!!!!!

[garyw]

Perhaps it would be fun without time acceleration. You could perform a TLI burn on Monday, and a week or so later login to find yourself in the moon's SOI.

The problem with that is simply that most people have trouble planning the next day, never mind three days from launch! You'd have to plan the launch so perfectly that you have guarenteed time to pick up at the exact moment you need to.

Now, that limits the scope of this "MMORPG" to just those few that have really good IMFD/TransX skills.

 

[agentgonzo]

The problem with that is simply that most people have trouble planning the next day, never mind three days from launch! You'd have to plan the launch so perfectly that you have guarenteed time to pick up at the exact moment you need to.

Now, that limits the scope of this "MMORPG" to just those few that have really good IMFD/TransX skills.

Not necessarily - you launch one day, perform a MCC the next day and then possbibly the next day. Then on the third day, you'd stand a pretty good chance of being in the right place.

 

[Face]

Maybe Lua can be integrated into OMP? That would be the start of tasks and missions etc.

There is no need to integrate Lua in OMP. OMP - as in Orbiter Multiplayer Project - is just a framework for Orbiter multiplayer. And as such it is not the be-all-end-all for Orbiter multiplayer.

Sup? Is there any interest in creating something like Warcraft or any of those other massive online games that you hear about nerds playing for 12 hours a day?

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I dreamed about it last night. I can TOTALLY picture it in my head and it's getting me all excited. Have a couple of guys act as "space traffic controllers," directing spacecraft so they won't run into each other. We could all wear headsets and talk to each other on Skype, have docking parties at the ISS, drink virtual beer, etc..

Don't know how long missions would work though (i.e. anything out of Earth orbit)... It would be nice to have controllers and bases set up across the solar system but since it would take months/years to get there, I just can't see it being feasible... UNLESS we could cheat a bit and somehow integrate time acceleration.

Anyhow, what are your thoughts on this???

If you real want to have Orbiter MMORPG, you have to start with content. As in:

• What are the roles you can play in this RolePlayingGame?
• What can players do in your "world"?
• How can players interact?

If you can answer these basic questions for a RPG, you can think about implementing it without real-time multiplayer features. Let's say VSA - did they work out yet?

As soon as you have a working environment that works without multiplayer features, you can add this last "sugar" and get MMORPG.

But if you think you can start with the technical environment and somehow the content will come later on, you'll fall for the same illusion I once did.

You wrote about totally picturing such a system. Could you please try to work out a description for a RPG based on Orbiter? Not just a simple paragraph about station building and mission control, rather a clear vision about how it would work. Maybe on Orbiter-Wiki or something...

Don't entangle yourself in technical issues - they can be solved, trust me. Even time-acceleration is no problem, just think about it what it actually is... time-travel.

Sorry if this is coming over as rude, but Orbiter multiplayer is a topic where talk extremely outweighs work. Come on folks, if you really want it, do something for it!

regards,
Face

 

[Hielor]

Not necessarily - you launch one day, perform a MCC the next day and then possbibly the next day. Then on the third day, you'd stand a pretty good chance of being in the right place.

What if you launch one day, get your MCCs just right, but then can't log on at the right time for your LOI insertion burn?

 

[Shadow Addict]

I had never considered a non-accelerated multiplayer version. While this works far better than any accelerated idea, it poses problems, like Hielor's above. In addition, if you're doing long, interplanetary flights (or even LEO operations, save for possible station-building), what's the need for multiplayer? Perhaps for detailed simulations like NASSP, where it makes sense to have three people flipping switches and doing P52 alignments and things like that, but for anything else it seems sort of pointless.

 

[Kaito]

You wrote about totally picturing such a system. Could you please try to work out a description for a RPG based on Orbiter? Not just a simple paragraph about station building and mission control, rather a clear vision about how it would work. Maybe on Orbiter-Wiki or something..

Taking his idea and posting something on OrbiterWiki right now. I'll edit this post when I'm done

EDIT:
http://www.orbiterwiki.org/wiki/Multi-player

 

[Hielor]

Even time-acceleration is no problem, just think about it what it actually is... time-travel.

Even if you confine the world just to the Earth-Moon system, the available space is so vast that encounters with other players would be few and far between. If you allow your players to time-travel, you've just added another dimension, and the only time players will ever see each other is when they first start the game. After that, everyone will be on their own timeline, and even if you're at the same base as someone else, you might not see them since they're a year in the past.

Time travel/time acceleration isn't a difficult technical question, it's a difficult content question. If someone time travels on a trip to the moon, can a player still in the time of that trip see that person's ship doing that travel? If so, what happens if they interfere with that travel? If not (or if they can't interfere), then see the "would never see another player" comment.

Or, what if you have, say, an asteroid with a limited number of resources? On real-world (thenceforth RW) date January 1st 2010, at in-game (thenceforth IG) date January 1st, 2100, player A discovers this asteroid, mines and exhausts its resources, and leaves. Then, on RW date January 31st 2010, at IG date December 31st, 2099, player B goes to that same asteroid, mines and exhausts its resources.

How do you resolve this? Does player A's mining of the asteroid remove it from past timelines? At that point, you might as well not have time travel, since there's a universal "current" state. Does player A get the minerals, and player B still gets to keep his? Well, at that point you've defeated the purpose of having limited resources, and you might as well have unlimited resources, but an economy based on unlimited resources wouldn't be particularly successful . I guess you could have the "limitedness" of the economy based upon the rate at which you can return materials to a base to sell them, rather than the presence of them, but if the player ends up spending most of their time travelling, that's a good way to lose players quickly.

I think there's a reason that no successful multiplayer games have incorporated time travel as a primary mechanic outside of very limited situations (and the limits required would be such that it wouldn't be useful to Orbiter). I think you'd need to design around the need for time acceleration by having vessels that are so sci-fi in nature that you don't need time acceleration, but then the question becomes...why are you using Orbiter for that in the first place?

Personally, I think Freelancer would've made a fantastic MMO, with a little more balancing for that purpose. I think that's how space MMOs would have to be: sci-fi (so things are interesting), and with many abstractions from reality (because reality doesn't make a very good game )

 

[Face]

Time travel/time acceleration isn't a difficult technical question, it's a difficult content question.

All very valid points, Hielor. Someone should put it up on the Wiki page mentioned above...

So resource-limited economic content is difficult to do, Orbiter can't become a "standard" MMORPG. There are still chances for it to become a "special" MMORPG , since I fail to see that economic content is the only one possible. What about service content, where players get points for doing successful deliveries, pax-transport, etc... ?

Anyone of the MMORPG "believers" want to elaborate? Give me a reason to speed up OMP development, because I don't see a need to hurry...

regards,
Face

 

[eveningsky339]

Let me guess, you're doing the Dwarves' Quest?

The missions given by the Mage's Guild are much cooler. My clan and I are headed towards Neptune. We only have two more years to go since we started when Orbiter was in it's 2002 phase.

 

[Hielor]

So resource-limited economic content is difficult to do, Orbiter can't become a "standard" MMORPG. There are still chances for it to become a "special" MMORPG , since I fail to see that economic content is the only one possible. What about service content, where players get points for doing successful deliveries, pax-transport, etc... ?

Deliveries, pax-transport, etc...I don't think that actually requires live multiplayer. You can't even really have someone escort you, or do a "caravan" for a freight-hauling session, since stationkeeping enroute would probably end up using more fuel than the trip itself would. Ascent/re-entry, you wouldn't be able to maintain a formation without an autopilot, and well...having an autopilot defeats the purpose

Such a thing would I think be better handled with a simple interface outside of Orbiter, with the Orbiter part being handled offline. A pilot could log in, see what missions are available at their location, and accept one, which lets them download the scenario file for that mission. An Orbiter module keeps track of the objectives and makes sure there's no cheating, and then at the completion of the mission the client is re-synced back to the server, and the state of things on the server is updated.

I'm pretty sure something like this has been mentioned/done, but I'm not sure.

Care would have to be taken to ensure that you don't "check out" conflicting missions to people, and you'd probably also want to have a time limit by which they need to have the mission done in order for it to be accepted.

 

[Kaito]

Deliveries, pax-transport, etc...I don't think that actually requires live multiplayer. You can't even really have someone escort you, or do a "caravan" for a freight-hauling session, since stationkeeping enroute would probably end up using more fuel than the trip itself would. Ascent/re-entry, you wouldn't be able to maintain a formation without an autopilot, and well...having an autopilot defeats the purpose

Such a thing would I think be better handled with a simple interface outside of Orbiter, with the Orbiter part being handled offline. A pilot could log in, see what missions are available at their location, and accept one, which lets them download the scenario file for that mission. An Orbiter module keeps track of the objectives and makes sure there's no cheating, and then at the completion of the mission the client is re-synced back to the server, and the state of things on the server is updated.

I'm pretty sure something like this has been mentioned/done, but I'm not sure.

Care would have to be taken to ensure that you don't "check out" conflicting missions to people, and you'd probably also want to have a time limit by which they need to have the mission done in order for it to be accepted.

1 up
I know someone tried this a while back...I'd be willing to partake in it again if something like this ever started up again.

 

[canadave]

Even if you confine the world just to the Earth-Moon system, the available space is so vast that encounters with other players would be few and far between.

I've read this argument several times in connection with the viability of multiplayer--that even with non-time-accelerated multiplayer, limited to Earth's local area, space is "so vast" that it would be "hard for players to encounter each other."

The thing is, that all depends on what is meant by the word "encounter." If it means "flying in approximately the same space as another player", then perhaps that might be true.

But the way I envision it is, it'd be fine to interact with other players using the same "green box in the HUD" that is used to identify the ISS, for instance, from many kilometers away, even if it's not visible as a structure.

For instance, let's say I'm playing in this hypothetical multiplayer with Player B. I would be able to see his GL-02, for instance, as long as it's in my line of sight, with a range finder in the HUD as well. That would be enough of an "encounter" to make it worthwhile--particularly if we could communicate with each other, compare destinations, etc.

Here's another thing to consider. Sure, space is vast, and if two players are in multiplayer, perhaps it'd be hard to physically be close together if both are just flying around randomly. But what about trying to achieve a rendezvous with each other? Let's say me and Player B take off from opposite ends of the Earth....and our challenge (the new Orbiter version supports challenges, right?) is to rendezvous as soon as possible above a certain altitude. That would make multiplayer great fun, in my opinion, and quite a challenge to do.

What about a rescue scenario, where one person has to evacuate his own DG4, and another has to come rescue him and retrieve him into his own DG4?

I agree, multiplayer might need to be limited in terms of time-acceleration and so on. But the sheer vastness of space, I don't see as being a limiting factor to playability or enjoyment, at any rate.

 

[BHawthorne]

There is no need to integrate Lua in OMP. OMP - as in Orbiter Multiplayer Project - is just a framework for Orbiter multiplayer. And as such it is not the be-all-end-all for Orbiter multiplayer.



If you real want to have Orbiter MMORPG, you have to start with content. As in:

• What are the roles you can play in this RolePlayingGame?
• What can players do in your "world"?
• How can players interact?

If you can answer these basic questions for a RPG, you can think about implementing it without real-time multiplayer features. Let's say VSA - did they work out yet?

As soon as you have a working environment that works without multiplayer features, you can add this last "sugar" and get MMORPG.

But if you think you can start with the technical environment and somehow the content will come later on, you'll fall for the same illusion I once did.

You wrote about totally picturing such a system. Could you please try to work out a description for a RPG based on Orbiter? Not just a simple paragraph about station building and mission control, rather a clear vision about how it would work. Maybe on Orbiter-Wiki or something...

Don't entangle yourself in technical issues - they can be solved, trust me. Even time-acceleration is no problem, just think about it what it actually is... time-travel.

Sorry if this is coming over as rude, but Orbiter multiplayer is a topic where talk extremely outweighs work. Come on folks, if you really want it, do something for it!

regards,
Face

I agree with most of that. There needs to be something that fits in well with the content yet is time consuming and enjoyable. That means coming up with buisy-work type of mini-games within the scope of the content. People also need to be doing things for a reason -- working out supply and demand mechanics. And you're right, all of that can be worked out without the least bit of multiplayer environment. You could tack on the multi-player aspect last. It is important to design all of those mini-games with multi-player in mind or it'll be awkward and unbalanced for awhile till it's cleaned up and the content is polished though.

The others that argue that none of this really needs multi-player are partially correct, yet partially wrong. The multi-player aspect is rewarding in the fact that you can enjoy space flight in real-time interaction with other community members. It's a social aspect that I don't think is everyone's cup of tea. Some people like to just do things on their own, while others like to spend time writing things up on forums and have time to formulate thier messages, while others like to interact enjoying the same content and topics in real-time. It's not that orbiter doesn't lend itself to real-time content as much as Orbiter players are not all of the same mindset and gaming preference. That's the real limitation to such mutli-player aspects, but that shouldn't be a road-block to those that wish to pursue such content and interaction.

I'm used to helping out with MMO gaming mechanics as I've been under NDA with Mythic Entertainment since 2003. Coming up with a concept writeup would not be hard, but instead of just me coming up with it, I propose that it be a group undertaking with input from all who care to give it. That way it's not just a singular point of view and ideas could be bounced off everyone and refined. This has worked pretty well in my experience with the MMOs I've helped focus test with and it's a plausible solution towards some meaningful side content for Orbiter.

It was mentioned that space is huge and that even just doing Earth-Moon would be a large undertaking. What I put forth though is that there'll be areas of content players would want to gravitate towards making it not so vast of a gap between players. This could be because of choke points in the game design, be it highly sought after resources, central stations or even supply line space routes. People are going to blob together in thier play in those distinct places regardless of the distance between destinations. Also, there could be strategic advantages for corporations wanting to do things secretly away from the main activity blobs. I propose it's just fine to do more than just Earth-Moon, because there'll be resource blobs of activity in the asteroid belts and on Mars and on other places of interest.

The distance between places can actually be designed in as a benefit to casual players because they could set the ship autopilot and know that in 3 days they'll be at their destination and just login at the time they scheduled to be there. Take a negative aspect such as distance and make a positive out of it though mechanics. During that downtime their ship could have been doing things like processing raw lunar or asteroid mined material or refining simple materials into more complex. That's just the production side of things that could be a small facet of supply-demand mechanics and an economy system. Ships need fuel, supplies and oxygen, and even some downtime for maintenance as do bases both in orbit and on outposts on the moon and mars and wherever else. Also waste from those places needs to be dealt with too. Some people might even specialize some characters in high profit characters that just do the long runs between planets for high profit gain for their corporation. While they might also have a second character that they play most of the time with activity around Earth-Moon. There are all sorts of mechanics that can be weaved into a setup that would drive multi-player activity. I'm just scratching the surface with random ideas though.

Construction and maintenance can play a role in activity. Corporations are going to want to compete and expand their capabilities in places of interest. Some players could run a base that service and maintain ships. Some places could even build or dismantle and recycle damaged or old ships. Someone scouts out and finds a highly sought after resource, someone is going to want to build infrastructure to exploit that resource.

Clutter in orbit of Earth is another focal point. Put a mechanic in that rewards for the removal of debris that have dangerous trajectories in Earth orbit. Depending on if this is near future of 50-100 years from now, maybe even the Moon and Mars also have those issues.

The ideas can go on and on to fill the void. They're not that hard to come up with. The hard part is finding the balance and a group to implement such things.

Problem is everything I mentioned is waaaaay outside the scope and intent of Orbiter. Do we really want to branch orbiter off in that direction with 2 divergent versions with greatly different focus? And would we even be allowed to? IMHO, diverging Orbiter that far off the original intent might be damaging and would probably require it's own separate project as not to confuse matters around here. It would also require a good dozen+ like minded individuals to gain critical mass on getting such a project under way.

Mini-games:
Ship/base construction/deconstruction
Ship/base maintenance
Supply/waste transport
Debris removal
Resource exploration
Resource refinement
Product manufacturing
Police/rescue
etc...

Levels of interaction:
Government affiliation
Guild/Union affiliation
Corporate
Individual

Roles to play:
Corp CEO
Explorer
Transporter
Engineer/mechanic
Police/Medic
Salvager
Pirate
Military
Diplomat
Any number of other roles of interest...The roles need not be rigid. Whatever people want to free-form roleplay within the scope of the system mechanics and theme.

And for the more creative types, they could help throw together regular storyline of news and current events to glue it all together and put some meaning to it all.

 

[BHawthorne]

Wow, talk about me killing a conversaion, it went dead silent in here...lol.

 

[Wraith]

Ok, I'll break the precious silence then .

Three days to the Moon is pretty good for NASA, but is hardly suitable for a computer game.

'Realism vs. gameplay' here is a crucial question. How much are you willing to sacrifice in order to make it playable? As an example, here are a couple of numbers for Saturn and Pluto to think on.

This basically adds insult to injury: not only the matter of this hypothetical Orbiter MMO becomes, as Face stated, the matter of game content rather than technological viability, but also becomes the matter of sacrifices.

Personally, although I am a flight sim fan (Falcon, Flanker, Lockon, DCS) I'm not a religious zealot who condemns any sort of handwaving for sake of gameplay. I'm quite content with FTL drives, absence of relativism (due to very 'funky' effects and implementation woes multiplied by the number of players), power generators capable of projecting/facilitating singularity points (hehe), energy shields and so on.

For me, that's what makes the game fun even if it's totally and utterly unrealistic.

 

[Face]

Deliveries, pax-transport, etc...I don't think that actually requires live multiplayer.

As I wrote before, actual content could very well be designed without multiplayer at first.

Mini-games:
Ship/base construction/deconstruction
Ship/base maintenance
Supply/waste transport
Debris removal
Resource exploration
Resource refinement
Product manufacturing
Police/rescue
etc...

The notion of mini-games is interesting. Most of them are very narrow focused and can be implemented independently IMHO. We can look at them as "addons" to a multiplayer system.

Wow, talk about me killing a conversaion, it went dead silent in here...lol.

Now you know how I am feeling here sometimes . And this is how all multiplayer topics ended before... "dead".

Personally, although I am a flight sim fan (Falcon, Flanker, Lockon, DCS) I'm not a religious zealot who condemns any sort of handwaving for sake of gameplay. I'm quite content with FTL drives, absence of relativism (due to very 'funky' effects and implementation woes multiplied by the number of players), power generators capable of projecting/facilitating singularity points (hehe), energy shields and so on.

For me, that's what makes the game fun even if it's totally and utterly unrealistic.

This was addressed by Hielor's statement here, and I quite agree with him:

I think you'd need to design around the need for time acceleration by having vessels that are so sci-fi in nature that you don't need time acceleration, but then the question becomes...why are you using Orbiter for that in the first place?

regards,
Face

 

[EtherDragon]

Another way to think of multiplayer "encounters" is the way we interact with the effects left by another player.

Lets suppose there is an MP server out there that does little more than offer missions and record/maintain the results of those missions.

Short Scenario 1:
Player A begins a mission to resupply mars, but has a failure along the way and is unable to complete the mission.

A new mission becomes available on the stack "Emergency Mars Resupply"

Short Scenario 2:
Player A completes a mission to deliver advanced building materials to Brighton Beach on the Moon.

After a short time new mission types become available from the Moon because Brighton Beach is more self sufficient.

The idea is, as missions are completed / ignored the results are maintained - and other players can experience the updated setting.

 

[Arrowstar]

This is something that I tried to do with my Astra Space VSA. The system can be made to work, though I never had the membership to try it out on any significant scale, and lately (the last few months) I simply have not had time to start things again. Part of the problem you'll run into is simultaneous player interactions with the same object. For example, what happens if both player A and player B decide to move cargo container X, but A moves it to one location and B to another? It's essentially impossible to reconcile like this. You'd have to set up the system linearly so that only one player can interact with the universe at a time. This might work for what you're proposing but it does not very well in a VSA setting. My "solution" was to allow individuals to set up their own "story lines" which did work linearly (pilot A, then B, then C), but nothing persisted from that storyline after it completed, allowing for a quasi-static universe that gets changed, worked in, and then matched to the original state again so that at the end of the day everyone stays on the same page.

 

[Hielor]

For example, what happens if both player A and player B decide to move cargo container X, but A moves it to one location and B to another? It's essentially impossible to reconcile like this. You'd have to set up the system linearly so that only one player can interact with the universe at a time.

Easy enough: a player can only actually interact with cargo container X if they have a mission that involves it. If they don't have a mission for that cargo container, they just see it as a static object (or don't see it at all) that they can't interact with. Only one player can have a mission involving cargo container X at a time, so that way you don't have this problem.

 

[Arrowstar]

Easy enough: a player can only actually interact with cargo container X if they have a mission that involves it. If they don't have a mission for that cargo container, they just see it as a static object (or don't see it at all) that they can't interact with. Only one player can have a mission involving cargo container X at a time, so that way you don't have this problem.

Sure, that's one way of doing it. But then you have to implement that in Orbiter, which would require some special plugin. I'm not saying its impossible, but it may not play well with some other addons and it's just another thing that needs to be written, tested, and distributed. Additionally, it does rather take away from the freedom of the player if the only things they can interact with are mission-defined. This may not be a big deal now, but with Dan's UCGO coming out and the potential for "factory" vessels and ships to "eat" cargo, the ability for the player to creatively problem-solve by using other objects in the universe (not necessarily defined in the mission parameters) may be hindered by that approach.