Universe Projects

[Cute_Riolu]

The Trailer-thingy

I'm sure some of you, at least will have heard of this game. It's presently in pre-alpha status, though appears to be quite promising, as its developers are willing to interact with the community (even outsourcing some of the work to those who wish to help but are unable to provide help financially), and appear to have a plan to make it happen!

I'm quite excited about this overall, though it may take some time to make, the devs seem like pretty capable folks! Hopefully we'll see some good things from them soon. Feel free to ask questions here if you wish, and I'll see about getting them answered. Yes, I'm aware that this is an extremely ambitious project and perhaps unbelievably so! I'm willing to give it a shot, though.

As a note, this is a repost from another forum I frequent, for those of you who may have seen this before.

A few other related links:

Blog/FAQ
Twitter
Their website (if you don't want to use my reference above :P)
Their development forum, for those who are interested in offering their services; requesting access with a google account is necessary.
Their general forum, for discussion.

[Emmerask]

I´m a bit extremely skeptical about this tbh.

wouldn´t the world map (with the needed detail [resources animals etc]) alone take up who knows how many terrabyte of diskspace?

the internet says its 120 trillion of squares even if we would only save each with 1 bit it would be 13.6424205 terabytes of data just for the map.

And we really need more then one bit to safe any data ^^

Okay you could just safe the map on a server and just transfer the data to the user when needed, however there is a reason mmos don´t do so, the load time and traffic cost would be extreme...

Overall no I don´t believe such a project is feasible with our current technology.

[invinible]

I´m a bit extremely skeptical about this tbh.

wouldn´t the world map (with the needed detail [resources animals etc]) alone take up who knows how many terrabyte of diskspace?

the internet says its 120 trillion of squares even if we would only save each with 1 bit it would be 13.6424205 terabytes of data just for the map.

And we really need more then one bit to safe any data ^^

Okay you could just safe the map on a server and just transfer the data to the user when needed, however there is a reason mmos don´t do so, the load time and traffic cost would be extreme...

Overall no I don´t believe such a project is feasible with our current technology.

It is projects like this that cause technological advancements.

[Emmerask]

true, though if they take money from the public (crowd funding) they really should be able to deliver a product at least somewhat similar to what is advertised.

Else its just fraud

[Pie Guy]

It's easy to make a game with an arbitrarily large map by using procedural generation. I don't think any of the other things are interesting enough to merit developing entire new technologies, and I doubt most of its claims, such as supporting infinite styles of play.

[Makensha]

Sounds like Shadowbane with more stuff to do besides level and gear up. But most of these things will likely fall to the wayside as people realize what the best crop is and just have mounds of that single crop as they combine into a few major factions and duke it out, Shadowbane style.

Not interested.

[Lamech]

true, though if they take money from the public (crowd funding) they really should be able to deliver a product at least somewhat similar to what is advertised.

Else its just fraud

Yeah, I seriously question if they'll be able to deliver anywhere near what they promise or if the general idea will make a good game world. I mean, even with a relatively well run (edit: minecraft) server thieves are still a major pain in the ass. And if you can't inflict any sort of major punishment or even defend your stuff offline...

[Hiro Protagonest]

It is projects like this that cause technological advancements.

C'mon. Planetside 2 is already more intensive than any other MMO out there, and the creators boast(/warn) that no computer in the world is able to play it on all ultra settings (the ultra option you get is actually just textures, I think. I know for sure it puts only one thing on ultra and leaves the rest on high. Plus, by that point, you're probably playing with forty frames per second at best with a really meaty rig, dipping down to ten with battles where hundreds of guys show up).

If that isn't enough tech advancement for up to halfway through 2013, I don't know what is. We can probably handle something like this in the year 2015 (and by that I mean they can start developing it in 2015).

It's easy to make a game with an arbitrarily large map by using procedural generation. I don't think any of the other things are interesting enough to merit developing entire new technologies, and I doubt most of its claims, such as supporting infinite styles of play.

Yeah, I highly doubt you'll be able to play it like a superhero game or Minecraft. I mean, you might be able to invent a jetpack (a long way down the road) and go around flying and shooting people, but you won't be able to play a guy with the powers that a member of the Lantern Corps has. You won't be able to make flying islands simply by building your way up and then destroying everything beneath the island part. It's going to be a survival game, first and foremost, and you'll approach it like you suddenly got tossed back to the stone age in real life on an unexplored planet.

Sounds like Shadowbane with more stuff to do besides level and gear up. But most of these things will likely fall to the wayside as people realize what the best crop is and just have mounds of that single crop as they combine into a few major factions and duke it out, Shadowbane style.

Not interested.

So... real life, but with agriculture optimization? More agriculture optimization?

I mean, in a survival setting with large amounts of real people, no NPCs besides animals, and PvP being a big point, this is inevitably how it's going to end up. It's called optimization. You get the smart guy to tell you what to do, you get the guy with the bow to hunt and provide ranged support for soldiers, and you get the guy with a sword in one hand and a board strapped to his arm to fight. You also make better decisions when you're a small think tank than just one guy. All successful groups follow this type of formula, regardless of size. When it comes to civilization, you also have builder and researcher types.

There might be a happiness/morale meter related to food variety too. All it would take is a small mechanical penalty to give other groups an edge when it comes to warfare, tech dev, and such. And there'll always be a group that just wants accurate rifles and frontier land, optimization be damned.

[Emmerask]

It's easy to make a game with an arbitrarily large map by using procedural generation. I don't think any of the other things are interesting enough to merit developing entire new technologies, and I doubt most of its claims, such as supporting infinite styles of play.

True you could however this will be a static world, you would need another map reference for the player changed environment (and the changes being effected by these changes etc).

Then of course there is load times, you might remember the civilization games and its procedurally generated maps and how long it took to generate them.

Well if you don´t save the map then this generating has to be done every time you start the game and with the complexity needed for a world simulation and the size involved this will take quite a while even with modern computers.
And after that you would still need to contact the server where all the player made changes (and its effects) are stored.

What you could do is to generate only part of the world (the part you are in) and only load those changes. And then store it temporarily on your computer.

Still this is only one tiny part of the problems the devs will face and I just don´t see a tiny indy studio being able to cope with all those problems that will arise and being able to deliver a product.

[Hiro Protagonest]

...

What will the game look like?

Top view, Isometric (Diablo style), and later fully 3D first person. All three game styles will be playable together during the transition to 3D so the world doesn't have to be fragmented. Here are two concept screenshots from the most recent graphics version...

Isometric view. Landscape will appear to be 3D in this view.
The actual technical Html5 demo has the 3D terrain.


Top-down view (for slower devices). Landscape is still sloped but you can't see it. This mode
will be reserved for slower devices that have a hard time rendering the isometric view.

The fully 3D version will come after the game has been released at which point more funding will be available to do it right. 3D is actually easier to manage, with 2D graphics, you have to rely on tricks to make it look seamless, so the move to 3D is an inevitable one.
3D clients will have the option to continue with the top-down view or first person (whatever the player is more comfortable with). This will allow players who are not comfortable with the first-person mode to play the game easily.

My confidence that they know what they're doing has dropped. 2D top-down views for slower computers? This is supposed to be an extremely ambitious, next gen project, and they shouldn't be afraid to push a little. Minecraft is a 3D game, and also one of the few points of reference that they have. X-COM is a 3D game, and it was made back in '94.

I also am not confident in the use of these views in a game with the tech levels this will have. Yes, I know they said they're going to put up a first person view post-launch, but what about all the guys sticking to the old view? Will they have to switch whenever an airplane flies overhead? Hell, will they have to switch whenever they get hit by a bullet or something fired off-screen? I hope they at least introduce a "cone of vision" mechanic so stealth isn't screwed over.

I hate this type of view for this type of game in general, though. It works fine for Diablo and Torchlight. It works well for god-games and RTS games. But for this, I want the third-person view to be like Assassin's Creed, Mount and Blade, or Red Dead Redemption.

In addition, that hut looks like a pre-designed structure you can make from a build menu, not a build-from-scratch thing. Come on, we've had Minecraft and Terraria for years now, I want to build a three-sided hut with the fourth wall being a mountain face. Or a two-sided hut in a cave, with the roof and other two walls being solid stone. But I can't say for sure.

[Lamech]

In addition, that hut looks like a pre-designed structure you can make from a build menu, not a build-from-scratch thing. Come on, we've had Minecraft and Terraria for years now, I want to build a three-sided hut with the fourth wall being a mountain face. Or a two-sided hut in a cave, with the roof and other two walls being solid stone. But I can't say for sure.

More to the point they need as much modularity as possible to
1) Make the game feasible
2) Make the game good.
You know why minecraft is awesome? You come up with your own designs. You detect players using cows. You build clocks out of minecarts. You build subway systems in the nether.

You know what is a great way to take the work load off yourself? Design a few things that can be assembled in countless ways. In minecraft various components can be used in countless ways. Anytime they have a "house" or "hut" or whatever with one way to use it? Failure.

[Hiro Protagonest]

The biggest issue I see coming up for them is a server able to run this. Sure, loading only certain areas at a time works fine for players, but the server has to have it all loaded up.

I think they should just scrap the idea of "one server, world is the size of Earth, and we're going to release expansions that allow you to explore space", and come up with a much smaller world and use a bunch of servers.

[Lamech]

I was going to say "do it Eve style", but that only works with distinct "chunks" of space/systems. They can still do something like minecraft, only load the chunks around each player.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I was going to say "do it Eve style", but that only works with distinct "chunks" of space/systems. They can still do something like minecraft, only load the chunks around each player.

Minecraft's way might work for the start, but they will have to figure out how to buff up their server very quickly. If you explore far enough in Minecraft, the game starts crashing constantly. Imagine how this works when there are thousands of players, at minimum.

Then again, Minecraft also isn't trying to push the limits. I guess it could work if loaded areas are shut back down once all players leave it, but that still generally requires them to travel in large groups, like "tenth of the server population" large. And while large-scale player organization is a thing (see: Outfits in Planetside/2), that doesn't mean they're all going to travel together. A couple dozen players might make a daring trip across the ocean, but half the nation isn't just going to build boats, stock up food, and travel to unexplored territory.

If they really focus on it, we might have the technology needed to do this in, say, a decade.

Still, if they do it this way, world could still be pretty big. Even if it's the tenth of the size of our world, that's still thousands of miles of area to explore, and that's just in an as-the-crow-flies way.

[PEACH]

I've got no confidence in this whatsoever. Anything with a tagline of "Imagine what we can make in 1000 years; we're gonna make it now" is pretty sketchy, they don't seem to have any credentials at all, and they're asking us to believe they can make the most ambitious game ever. If they're not delivering more than Dwarf Fortress, they're lying, and if they are attempting to do that, I seriously doubt they can. At best, I expect an incredibly watered down mmo "game" where they release expansions based on "tech points" that players pool together to create, and even then I seriously doubt it would work.

Also, Minecraft's world is, if I recall correctly, already larger than Earth is.

[Emmerask]

Well theoretically it is, but the map is never actually stored in its entirety (generated as you move along).

There was an article somewhere (I think a german gaming magazine) that it would theoretically be possible to create a whole earth in minecraft however it would require 900 terabyte diskspace

[warty goblin]

I strongly suspect there's a reason combined overhead third person and first person perspectives aren't really much of a thing. I strongly suspect that reason is that doing so is stupid.

Also, for an Earth sized world's worth of terrain, you're going to have to use procedural generation. Which basically means that there's huge amounts of samey boredom between you and anywhere you actually want to be. Smaller is quite probably better here.

[Lamech]

I strongly suspect there's a reason combined overhead third person and first person perspectives aren't really much of a thing. I strongly suspect that reason is that doing so is stupid.

Yup.
The first person either gets a) huge view distance and a comparatively huge advantage over the third personer or b) fog two inches from their face.
OR
The third person gets not detail.

Its doable, but stupid.