Oolite Bulletins

Though creating MMO oolite would be incredibly difficult, I'm sure it can be done.
The problem with people hacking could be fixed by instantly logging out anyone with unfair values (ex: speed set to 1000, infinite sheilds etc.)

The programming aspects aren't the issue - with the amount of programming skill on this forum, it could easily be done.

The big issue, as has been said before, is the hosting and the costs involved in it. A dedicated server and oodles of bandwidth would be needed, and that all costs money.

It's not really "_a_ dedicated server"- if that were the case I'd do it as I have two dedicated servers with a huge amount of bandwidth (10Mbit multihomed connectivity). Remember what the "m" in mmorpg stands for? Massively Multiplayer! That means dozens of servers. A dedicated P4 server with 512MB RAM can run (in my experience) two loaded Enemy Territory or TC:E servers simultaneously, for a total of about 30 players, but much more than that and you hit spots of lag. If, say, we had 4000 players (not altogether unreasonable given download counts) we'd probably need 50 dedicated servers. At around 100 quid per month a pop (since most players are in Britain, the servers would really need to all be within Britain, or close Europe such as France or Ireland), that's 5 grand a month to run the servers. Perhaps if I were Mark Shuttleworth it would be feasable, but I don't think there are any millionaires on this board! Before you say charge for it - Oolite cannot be commercialized due to the license, and even if Giles changed it to something like the BSD or GNU GPL license, making a pay-for MMORPG out of Oolite would bring a Brabenite smackdown quicker than you can say 'lawyer'.

The practical difficulties of a MMORPG are, as mentioned, too high. Besides, I wouldn't have the time. However, a one system game might be doable and everyone could shoot each other for "fun".

That's an interesting idea. Instead of Elite in its entirety, why not take one aspect of it and turn it into a networkable game?

For example:
Academy: players are flight school students learning the ropes around Lave.

Thargoid War: players are navy or thargoid pilots in the deadly Sector 32.

Pirates: in the lawless sytem of Zaonce, pirate clans take on the cops and the navy.

System Trader: A natural disaster has decimated the main world of the Ededleen System. The players are either escorts, pirates, traders or the law and must help to rebuild the world. The navy has set up a boundary where large tradeships must stop, and the player ships must load up from these big ships and take stock to the world's station.

All of these would run on a smaller timeline than the main game - maybe a set span of up to 10 years in game, maybe with a running plot and maybe just a free-for-all.

Or break it down by galaxies, even.

Would it be totally unfeasable to make the galaxies becomes steadily bigger as you went through them? Each could run on a server (cluster) and reduce the overall load, and by the time a player reached galaxy 8 it would be Pretty Darned Big (tm) with enough going on to keep them happily occupied. Whereas galaxy 1 would be very much 'newbie' territory with fairly strict rules on things. High-end ships might show up (Mussurana, Firewasp, PCC, etc.) but wouldn't attack players unless attacked: they'd be there purely for colour.

Networked missions are perfectly feasable - it'd just be like running any other non-massively multiplayer game - such as ET, TC:E, Quake etc.
It's just the MMORPG monster that people keep trying to tickle the tail of. It doesn't matter what you do to the galaxies - if you want a MM (massively multiplayer) element you need the server resources appropriate for massively multiplayer. At a rough wild assed guess, this is going to be one uniprocessor server per 30-odd users. It gets expensive to run very fast.

Now I'm now server whiz, but what about split hosting? If each computer bothered with that player, and just got updates from the server, wouldn't it be easier? OR what if it wa a "hostin" thing. A few players link up to fly together. That would be a good first step.

It doesn't matter how it's done.

And with something like this, there's going to be a hell of a lot of data transfer between the server and the client. Small packets perhaps but in a constant stream.

It would be very expensive to run...

As to the problem of cheating, well that's easy, you run it as Blizzard run Battle.Net. There's a closed system for Oolite only (which would include OXPs of course), one for Strict play (perhaps with a Universe Hyperdrive to allow players to go from Script to Relaxed play, but not back again), and perhaps an open TCP/IP play system. If they hack that, well, it's their own fault if everything falls to pieces

The closed system has the advantage that most of the actual numbers would be stored server-side; why bother duplicating huge amounts of data to players' computers? Give it a refnum and let the DB handle it

Hello, would some kind of p2p de-centralised approach work, when connecting players? I'm no expert, just thought I'd toss that one in there

Regarding missions etc, I reckon co-operative play would be really satisfying. For instance, you could be part of a transporter escort squad fending off Thargoid (AI) or another team of attacking players. This would be like 'King Of The Hill'

Mission ideas for single-system non-massive Oolite:

• Much as Pirk says, one side defending a transport or similar from the other. Two rounds, one attacking and one defending for each team.
• Team combat. Each team spawns around a station, then tries to rack up the kills. The station can be used to refuel, recharge shields and possibly buy missiles. Obviously no auto-docking.
•  Team combat 2. Each team spawns some distance away from a single, shared station.
• Individual combat. Each player spawns some distance from the station, distributed roughly in a spherical shell around it.
•  Team mothership. Each team spawns around a dockable mothership, which is destructible. The goal is to destroy the enemy mothership.
• Ring race. With and without weapons.
• More creative games I thought of once but can’t remember.

General setup:

• No energy bombs, escape pods, hyperdrives, energy bombs or docking computers.
• Everyone has an advanced targeting system and a space compass from the start. Stations/motherships show up on the compass and are colour-coded. Teams are also colour-coded on the scanner. You should probably start with a fuel injector too.
• Optionally, kills are worth money which can be used to buy stuff (excluding the banned items above) on stations and motherships. Otherwise, missiles and fuel are free and other stuff isn’t available.

cool vision. the setup seems very sound.
so Q-bombs are in?

Ahruman wrote:

• More creative games I thought of once but can’t remember.

• Capture the Hermit.
• 2 player Jousting/Chicken.
• Gambling on race and combat outcomes.

"Red leader red leader where the hell are you damn it! I'm gettin' my arse shot off here. Help please, I can't shake them. Plea...." <shhh shhhshhh crackle pop fizz>

Red Leader " Fcuk! I'm gonna own you s.o.b. !! Retribution is sweet "

requesting 1v1 solitaire,freecell,or minesweeper



if its not happening in a persistent universe it suc*s ,whats the point to just shoot a friend in another ship without the rpg features of oolite?

cultist wrote:

requesting 1v1 solitaire,freecell,or minesweeper



if its not happening in a persistent universe it suc*s ,whats the point to just shoot a friend in another ship without the rpg features of oolite?

Permission denied, underwhelming of the hippocampus is strictly forbidden. Offenders will be re-classified to 'fugitive' status and hunted down like dogs!"

"woof woof woof owww"