Space MMORPG (more or less Oolite style) in the planning

Katharsis · Post by **Katharsis** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:12 pm

Hi Commander,

University(s) for example have the infastructure (our ManGos-Server is running at Technical University of Vienna).

Another thing i thought about, would be something like a cluster-network, where every dude can make his/her own System for him or herself and/or share it with others (P2P goes Oolite).

Best Regards
Katharsis

Post by **Cmdr James** » Thu May 28, 2009 12:51 pm

There are certainly organisations which have the capability, but the real question is who can be motivated to make resources available.

There is no clear revenue stream, and arguments such as educational value are minimal. True some organisations do run game servers for no ~~good~~ financial reason, but I dont think it can be assumed.

It is also worth mentioning that the legal situation is not 100% clear. I would say that the oolite team believe there are no copyright, trademark or other IPR issues, but that this has not been testing in a court. It is not impossible that a huge deployment may invite rigthsholders of one kind or another to challenge that belief.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:06 pm

While I can't program for toffee I do know a reasonable amount about distributed Simulation.

Has anybody considered the use of DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation)?

DIS

Perhaps a half way house between single player Oolite and a full-on massively multi-player persistent Ooniverse.

A few key systems in each Galactic Chart that every person wanting to play must have the "multi-player" oxp installed. This oxp would contain all the ships, stations and other eye-candy to fully populate these systems. (This would limit you to a sub-set of all the ships that you could use in Multi-player mode but that's a small price to pay surely?). Ships could fight (the DIS standard and libraries requires that each instance (i.e. player/ship) runs a DR algorithm for every other entity in the "battlespace" and it is the firer that tells the entity that is fired upon that it has been hit based on where it perceives it to be (not necessarily where it is - limitation of the lag and Dead Reckoning)).

These systems in the multi-player version could be centres for commerce - you buy and sell in the multi-player systems and then when you drop back into the normal game/systems you drop out of DIS and the game reverts to "normal" mode with normal commodity lists and the like.

Katharsis · Post by **Katharsis** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:06 pm

... You´re quite a pessimist James - aren´t you ?

No .. in honest: ATM 3000 ppl downloadet Lestradae´s Mod .. 1500 ppl are registred here ...

So we can assume, let´s say, 4000ppl playing Oolite online - That isn´t so much ! If you have a well programmed server, i think it would be possible to let them play together on less then 15 serverStations !

But FIRST we must take look on the game itself - why the hack does it takes so much system-ressources ? - Can anyone answer me this question ?

Greetings
Katharsis

Davidtq · Post by **Davidtq** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:11 pm

Ive got a server running a wow emulated server (occaisional use entirely for my families amusement, not open to anyone else) running the entire world of warcraft server adds about 2% extra cpu load on a antiquated single core athon 3000+. Thats running all the npcs, mobs etc etc. I dont doubt that actual players add a lot to the load, but the basics of populating a "living" world really shouldnt bog down a server badly.

I would have thought in common with most mmorpg's you are going to want to run the "galaxy" as a giant SQL database. However you are going to want some decent protection to stop basic SQL injection hacks. When you start running things as a database processing power required isnt that huge, its funny that most mmorpg game clients are just a pretty front end for editing a database...

Ive never touched oolite code to know how well you could get it interacting with sql databases for its information as well as writing to an sql database. I really have no idea of whats going on under the hood in oolite.

I actually came up with an idea for a flash based mmorpg back in 2000 or so, I got some interesting 3d stuff working, (completely not what flash is intended for, and the standard of the graphics showed it

) but fell over completely trying to deal with a central database, then got distracted by some real work etc and left it gathering dust.

As you already have a SQL server running you could experiment with creating very very basic clients to communicate with the existing database start with just reading and displaying variables then writing, and then from there represent that graphically even interact to the point of moving a cursor in 2d around the screen is a good start. That at least is what I would do. Then perhaps start adding 2d "basic" npcs to interact with.

Its a little odd but just because the database is normally interacted with by a client with 3d representation doesnt mean that you cant interact with it in a purely data manner, and just because a variable is normally used for a characters x,y,z co'ords etc doesnt stop you using them for completely different purposes when testing how it all works... It is just a database its all numbers and variables regardless of how they are represented by the client.

Of course you wouldnt want to do that with a live server with other players, but it could be a good practise to have two client computers one with the standard client and one with your own "basic" client, and you should be able to work out how to "do things" which affect what the "real" client can see.

Of course you have to balance out for yourself how much is worked out client side and how much server side. but thats all basic development decisions nothing specific to oolite.

But then thats me who would be starting from 0 and learning the ropes rather than someone with current professional experience.

Katharsis · Post by **Katharsis** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:12 pm

Just my Thought DaddyHoogy !

That was what i meant with "P2P goes Oolite".

Another thing could be to make just three (big?) Systems for pvp, trade, both, available online - this would reduce the server-load to a minimum amount.

Greetings
Katharsis

Katharsis · Post by **Katharsis** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:20 pm

I laughed while reading Davidtq (not

more

), because i have absolutly the same history

I admin a ManGos-Server (WoW) and started to code an flash-galactical-MMOG not long time ago

its funny that most mmorpg game clients are just a pretty front end for editing a database...

I think we have realy the same point of view ... scary

Regards
Katharsis

Post by **Cmdr James** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:37 pm

Katharsis wrote:
So we can assume, let´s say, 4000ppl playing Oolite online - That isn´t so much ! If you have a well programmed server, i think it would be possible to let them play together on less then 15 serverStations !

Right. but lets take a step back, we are talking about converting oolite as is, to a mmorpg. as I said in the begining, I think a similar game can be writem using some of the assets, but I dont think oolite is a good starting point. There is no oolite server, and converting oolite to be a server is a huge job. Probably as big, or bigger than starting again.

People are now speaking about an sql database, amongst other things. Well yes, that can be done, and perhaps would be the right way, but its not how oolite is now, not even close.

Katharsis wrote:
But FIRST we must take look on the game itself - why the hack does it takes so much system-ressources ? - Can anyone answer me this question ?

As games go, it is pretty light, you can certainly play oolite on systems that dont do Sims 2 or Halo 2 justice. I think we do have stats on which bits of the code are heavy, and if I remember right its textures taking memory and collision detection and scripts, especially from OXPs, taking cpu.

Can it be done, yes, of course. But the question is: if you want to build an mmorpg would you start from oolite. I would not, simple as that.

Post by **another_commander** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:40 pm

Guys, this is all nice in theory, but remember that one way or another we are still talking about a rewrite of the code, excluding the economics and logistics of running a multiplayer setup. DIS, SQL server, P2P, all of those require a start from scratch because the game is not designed to support them. There is a reason why we are telling you that the code is single player oriented. When Oolite was first created, it was done with single player only in mind. The current codebase has close to half a million lines of single player oriented code. Changing it to support multiplayer is just not expected to happen any time soon. I don't think that anyone from the current team has the time nor the will to dive in an effort like this, so any of you who really want to see this happening, please go ahead, download the code, hack it to your heart's content and give us patches that work. We will test everything we can and if things work as intended, we will be happy to enlist you in the dev team and consider going ahead with implementing multi, IF we can assure that there will not be any legal implications as a result. Otherwise, Oolite remains single player, plain and simple.

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Thu May 28, 2009 1:43 pm

Katharsis, this has been discussed many many many times already, before you joined.. you may find it helpful (and informative) to read the following threads.. a good number of your questions, (as well as many you haven't thought of yet) are covered there...

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=964

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=3216

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=1743

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=3596

Doing a search on the term MMORPG will turn up several others also...

Katharsis · Post by **Katharsis** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:01 pm

Right ... back to earth ...

I will download the code today an will sleep over some things.

Greets and Thanks !
Katharsis

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:11 pm

another_commander wrote:
Guys, this is all nice in theory, but remember that one way or another we are still talking about a rewrite of the code, excluding the economics and logistics of running a multiplayer setup. DIS, SQL server, P2P, all of those require a start from scratch because the game is not designed to support them. There is a reason why we are telling you that the code is single player oriented. When Oolite was first created, it was done with single player only in mind. The current codebase has close to half a million lines of single player oriented code. Changing it to support multiplayer is just not expected to happen any time soon. I don't think that anyone from the current team has the time nor the will to dive in an effort like this, so any of you who really want to see this happening, please go ahead, download the code, hack it to your heart's content and give us patches that work. We will test everything we can and if things work as intended, we will be happy to enlist you in the dev team and consider going ahead with implementing multi, IF we can assure that there will not be any legal implications as a result. Otherwise, Oolite remains single player, plain and simple.

BTW, I like Oolite being single player - it reflects for me - the vastness of the space it is supposed to occupy - even 100s of millions of ship occupying the vastness of interstellar space spanning 100s of light-years across the chance of meeting anybody you actually know - close to zero.

For me, this forum is my MMO persistent Ooniverse...

ClymAngus · Post by **ClymAngus** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:20 pm

Diziet Sma, AC (what a fantastic shortening) good points all.
and of course da hoggy! Much sence! If I may add my longwinded 10 pence worth.

In the flurry to turn everything that ever was into a Human on human cash reap. There are some small things to remember, whilst it would be cool to shaperone Captain cat's ship through a near death experience and get an off the cuff retort in return for olympian space fairing effort..... We have to remember what made elite memorable.

1) you against the machine brings closure. A difficult concept these days in an age of vendettas but if the machine killed you, you could turn it off. The conductor of your destruction was not laughing at you from some distant residence and informing the world how he "Poned" your ass. for week after week until they got bored.

2) You against the machine brings calm. However well programmed there will be a point at which the programming will fail and sentiency will show itself. There is no hope in a group of people who have locked down a server and anyone online has to fight and die so they feel "in control"

It saddens me that those who make mmorpg's can't see several simple truths.

1) Not all games HAVE to be competative sports. (Considering how most programmers I know hated their gym teacher I find it odd that they are creating worlds centered around this particular psychosis.)

2) OOlite already is a mmorpg. The game is NOT the place we are playing. It's in the minds of each and every maker on this notice board.

I'm not however surprised. It is easy to see the things we invest in, as the one total future. Why not? We were smart enough to invest in them in the first place. A wise man sees many ways of going. One type of flower in any garden makes for a dull garden.

To quote "the dead poets society";
"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be? "

OOlite is simple poetry, Katharsis, Davidtq, you are engineers. So, what will your verse be?

Katharsis · Post by **Katharsis** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:51 pm

I don´t got it ClymAngus ... can you specify ?

ATM i want to check if, and what, the community can do for me/us (the mmog-allwaysBigger-allwaysSmarter-allwaysFaster-people). If it comes out that the community of Oolite ist not interested in that kind of Idea i have realy no problem with it...

Since Oolite is Open-Source every man and every woman, can make his or her own project out of it.

That will be myVerse.

Katharsis

BTW: My understanding of an MMORPG has nearly nothing to do with competetive sports. It is more about dynamics ... if it would be possible to create a game which passes the Turing-Test i would be the first person who would be addicted to it ...

ClymAngus · Post by **ClymAngus** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:53 pm

Katharsis wrote:
I don´t got it ClymAngus ... can you specify ?

ATM i want to check if, and what, the community can do for me/us (the mmog-allwaysBigger-allwaysSmarter-allwaysFaster-people). If it comes out that the community of Oolite ist not interested in that kind of i Idea i have realy no problem with it...

Since Oolite is OpenSource every man and every woman, can make his or her own project out of it.

That will be myVerse.

Katharsis

Then, I would believe you have answered your own question.
Boiling this down to 0's and 1's, and maybe interjecting a touch of soul searching whilst we're at it; must everything be massively multiplayer?

Isn't there enough? As I say to the sadomasocists, if I wanted pain and Dom Sub relationships i'd got to work! Same with MM. Life is MM, we have remade our own world again and again for the digital audience reflecting varying degrees of physical verbosity.

Do we really, REALLY, need another one?

Answer me this; If you want indepth space battles with other human beings then why wouldn't you just buy eve? Not just eve there are many space trading games where you can be blasted apart by the first 12 year old that happens to have found their daddy's credit card. Hell you don't even have to pay for it, every other basement albino has managed put one together something vaguely playable, where no one plays.

There is no money in it, there is little pleasure in it, there is nothing but hard slog with little reward, the slow monetary drain of server space and every other man decrying your efforts. Would you stand as a poet would and do so regardless? I wonder.