Makin' Mah Mmo

[Eniko]

I like the IRCd idea. But, unless you are planning on setting up your own IRC server, then I'd suggest trying to talk Craigix and Co. into hosting an IRC server, that way you would tend to have less trouble with idiots from other channels. Also, if you do set up your own IRCd, I'd suggest Unreal IRCd. Back when I was an IRCop, it was a nice setup.

-God Ginrai

Well, if I am going to set it up for actual game communication I'd like to preserve in game names. That means running my own server with modifications so nobody can change nicks to an existing character's without having first logged in to that account via NickServ or some similar service.

EDIT: Come to think of it, Twisted does have IRC support built in. The easiest method might just be to create a Twisted IRC server with slightly customized services... hmmm... Does anyone have experiences with the Twisted IRC server?

 

[God Ginrai]

I like the IRCd idea. But, unless you are planning on setting up your own IRC server, then I'd suggest trying to talk Craigix and Co. into hosting an IRC server, that way you would tend to have less trouble with idiots from other channels. Also, if you do set up your own IRCd, I'd suggest Unreal IRCd. Back when I was an IRCop, it was a nice setup.

-God Ginrai

Well, if I am going to set it up for actual game communication I'd like to preserve in game names. That means running my own server with modifications so nobody can change nicks to an existing character's without having first logged in to that account via NickServ or some similar service.

EDIT: Come to think of it, Twisted does have IRC support built in. The easiest method might just be to create a Twisted IRC server with slightly customized services... hmmm... Does anyone have experiences with the Twisted IRC server?


As long as you have services, then that name problem is already fixed. I think Anope and Epona both have the ability to change a user's nick to a guest nick if they don't Identify with the nick within a couple of minutes.

Btw, I have a lot of conceptual ideas about the IRC part that I'd like to share with you, but I don't want to steer this topic off course by discussing it. Do you mind if we discuss it via PM?

-God Ginrai

 

[Eniko]

Go right ahead. The whole IRC integration thing is still a little fuzzy in my own head.

 

[God Ginrai]

Go right ahead. The whole IRC integration thing is still a little fuzzy in my own head.

PM sent.

-God Ginrai

 

[Eniko]

Another small update: the server background save system has been implemented. I won't go into any detail unless anyone likes me to, but it should cut down on synching errors caused by human failure to the point of eliminating it entirely. (as far as such a thing is possible)

It should also keep me from having to write the vast majority of saving code since there's an autosaving system built in, which means quicker development. Definitely a milestone right there.

Of course, the database server doesn't as of yet do anything with the data the server passes to it to save, but implementing that should be trivial once I decide to mess with the database end of things.

 

[som99]

I must say this looks exciting keep up the good work, I allmost dream at night about a mmorpg on the Pandora

//som99

 

[audovoice]

The Mark of Kri
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhlhqLbzafo...feature=related
Had a novel way of selecting your enemies by rolling the right analog stick.

Wile I would not recommend the whole combat system the selection method might be useful for some of your skills or maybe ranged combat. Things where you need to get the angle right from point A to B.

Wile you would for some circumstances want to target one specific monster in a group or maybe one other player character to interact with, it is more likely that you would flail about in a group of monsters (damaging many) or cast a spell on an area of monsters.



I do think touch screen is potentially very cool though. It might be nice if only some special attacks used touch screen. Like touching 3 or 4 monsters in a very limited amount of time to do a lightning attack, or drawing shapes to cast spells like in black and white or squiggly paths around the map that the character fallows along wile flailing wildly like the whirlwind attack in Diablo 2.

 

[Eniko]

And another minor update. I finally got sick of messing with Pygame's software blitting and Pyglet's odd (and slow) inner workings and wrote my own OpenGL renderer and image batcher using Pygame and PyOpenGL. The client is now trucking along at 350 FPS, and with 500 players onscreen it was still getting 150~250 FPS.

 

[Joepostal]

Wow that sound like great performance... I hope you are able to complete this. An mmo when ever you have wifi sounds awesome.

 

[Zephyr-sama]

I know it's still early in progress, and sound isn't really important at this point, but are you going to be in need of a musician, or are you going to compose the score yourself?

 

[audovoice]

If in the end performance is still an issue you could have some kind of midi or .XM but if it is not a problem with standard settings then you could go .ogg (mp3 loops imperfectly and wave is huge but does loop seamlessly). Or you could have both. Music can get really tiresome. But a double sound track does sound ridiculous. No one else does it. Although it would come in handy at times as an alternative to turning of the sound. You could have midi music for parts of the game that have a little bit more going on graphics wise. Like a lava cave or blizzard/ice level music.

 

[Eniko]

QUOTE
The Mark of Kri
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhlhqLbzafo...feature=related
Had a novel way of selecting your enemies by rolling the right analog stick.

Wile I would not recommend the whole combat system the selection method might be useful for some of your skills or maybe ranged combat. Things where you need to get the angle right from point A to B.
Well it certainly looks interesting but I wonder how I could adapt that to a 2D environment. I'll keep it in mind though, see if I get any good ideas.

I know it's still early in progress, and sound isn't really important at this point, but are you going to be in need of a musician, or are you going to compose the score yourself?

My good friend RavenKazuki will be working on sound and music for the game. I'll see if I can poke and prod him into coming here and talking about his end of things a little, since I'm blissfully ignorant of that side of things.

 

[SanguineRaven]

My good friend RavenKazuki will be working on sound and music for the game. I'll see if I can poke and prod him into coming here and talking about his end of things a little, since I'm blissfully ignorant of that side of things.

Hello to all.
Since I have been brought aboard by Eniko and seemingly entrusted with the audio side of her project, I thought I'd add up to what is said here a little.

To be quite honest, the end result in this case will vastly depend on the performance allowances and limitations the project gives me to work with. My usual (and preferred) method remains with the 'live' recording formats (which in the case of this project would likely be .ogg, for the reasons audovoice mentioned earlier). I usually compose tracks and perform them live on synths which, while not necessarily as simple as composing straight to midi, tends to give a more organic sound. I suppose I use a very studio-like approach when I track music.

But I'm familiar with midi and .XM as well, and I'd have no problem with working with that at all. The idea of a dual track is interesting (although it would be time consuming), and that's something that might be worthwhile to play with, even if not necessarily pushing to have a whole dual-track score. In that case, I'd likely have to shape the tracks even further to try to keep the two as seamless as possible so the user won't notice the difference.

Staying versatile is likely going to be key in a project like this, so I'm keeping my horizons open to see what's going to be most efficient.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Hello to all.
Since I have been brought aboard by Eniko and seemingly entrusted with the audio side of her project, I thought I'd add up to what is said here a little.

Welcome to the forum! You seem to know what you are talking about, always good to have more talented people here

Really looking forward to this game on the panda, even more with good music.

Cheers!

Edit: ah, too bad

 

[Eniko]

p.s. ook nederlands?

He's not.

 

[SanguineRaven]

Welcome to the forum! You seem to know what you are talking about, always good to have more talented people here

Really looking forward to this game on the panda, even more with good music.

Cheers!

Thanks a lot for the welcome!

Ah, music and audio techniques is the only thing I'm knowledgeable about in that sort of project, really. I can understand coding principles and algorithms on a base level, but coding's pretty much out of my league, I'm afraid. I just learned to transpose musical techniques to the digital field (something that's almost required of anyone wanting to dabble in audio endeavors nowadays), and I pretty much use the same principles I would in studio recordings and such.

In any case, thanks for the welcome and it's nice to meet you too!

 

[Eniko]

Still not dead. I was going to add a quick dummy database for fake-persistance. But then I needed a log-in method. And then I needed a window. So then I needed a GUI library, and since I couldn't find anything that worked the way I wanted it to I started working on a home made one:

The GUI will be completely skinnable through XML and external image files, so people will be able to make their own skins. The XML used to create the screenshots above can be found here. Plans (besides the obvious like more widgets ) include allowing customizable attributes to be specified inside the theme XML and letting people set the options from in game. Like for instance the titlebar or body colour.

Still working on TTF support. I want fonts to have a shadow (though optional) to use as backdrop so fonts will always be clearly readable. I've already got my TTF rendered into a texture, I just need to figure out how to use render targets with OpenGL to get the shadow done. I could just create a pair of images for every font but why do manually what you can do procedurally?

In other news Purple Pirate Productions has a forum up now. There's not much there at the moment but in case anyone wants to discuss/speculate on game features and doesn't want to clog up the development thread here, you can go there.

 

[kloplop321]

this is totally awesome. will it be possible to make such a thing like(in the future anyway) where users can design their own maps and have a "user realm" or "Player owned houses", that others can visit when they are online(to host the map data)

 

[MarkoeZ]

this is totally awesome. will it be possible to make such a thing like(in the future anyway) where users can design their own maps and have a "user realm" or "Player owned houses", that others can visit when they are online(to host the map data)

hmm, sounds nice, but this got me thinking about user created quests inside the general area as well (submitted for approval ofcourse ; ) Might increase the gameplay overall. That's the biggest challenge with small projects, (original) content takes a lot of time to develop. If users could submit their own, it would be more hours of single player enjoyment. And there might be some interesting/hilarious/genius entries as well

Edit: Thinking on, i don't know much about it, but this might be possible with xml? go to point (area) x to do this asignment and return to NPC y to collect reward. or am i completely missing the point here?

edit2: well, edits..

 

[Tempel]

this is totally awesome. will it be possible to make such a thing like(in the future anyway) where users can design their own maps and have a "user realm" or "Player owned houses", that others can visit when they are online(to host the map data)

hmm, sounds nice, but this got me thinking about user created quests inside the general area as well (submitted for approval ofcourse ; ) Might increase the gameplay overall. That's the biggest challenge with small projects, (original) content takes a lot of time to develop. If users could submit their own, it would be more hours of single player enjoyment. And there might be some interesting/hilarious/genius entries as well Eniko has stated that GM's will be able to edit the world in realtime, which certainly helps with content. As for ordinary users, it seems like giving them their own personal space to create a house or gameplay challenges could be interesting, though care would need to be taken to prevent exploitation (like people putting a Giant Destroyer Monster in the middle of a pile of exploding barrels so that they can get easy experience). For that matter, care will probably have to be taken to make sure the GM's themselves aren't abusing the privilege.

Regardless, relatively open editing will be possible, so content shouldn't be too much of an issue.