My TC, take... uhh... two?

[halkun]

Well, I must look like I'm spamming the forums now. I have to apologize. Finding out the Build was open sourced and under active development has probably been the most exiting thing I've seen! I want to set the record straight with a new thread and to kind of post on a daily basis what I'm doing. This is actually for my own benefit than anything...

I'm making a wonderful TC of my own work. (Well, it's an offshoot from a game that has been abandoned called Space Station 13) I came up with it as I was stripping out the CON files and graphics to make a TC template. I figured I might as well make my own game as oppoed to ripping off Dice's "Mirror's edge." I wanted to strikethrough my old OP in the other thread but found I couldn't edit or rename the thread. As this is different enough, I decided to make a new one...

Anyways, I decided to make what I call a "Minuscule Multiplayer Online Role Playing game." or a MMORPG for short. (God, I hope no one has come up with that yet!) It plays up to 16 players... Here's the plot...

A ship is in distress! You and your crew have been sent out to recover the ship, fix it up, and warp it back to earth. Each crew member has one of 16 jobs, that will only let them into particular parts of the ship. Captain, Science officer, engineer, Doctor... etc.. However, one of your crew is a traitor, and you must find out which one before the ship is destroyed!

The game leans heavily on in-character RPGing. (If you have vent, the better) I've had the overhaul much of the basic Build engine to do get a good framework up. This includes picking up and dropping of inventory, custom locks, and a new randomizer that won't de-sync the clients.

So far I have implemented a new keycard system, it can hold up to 255 cards. It also is dynamic. If you lose the card, you lose access. I have a screenshot with the inventory system going, and you can see the icons for some of the jobs. I'm quite proud of this.

http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/8484/duke0001sk4.jpg

You can see the inventory in the lower right hand corner, the "ghost" card a card slot showing you can hold one more. Not bad for a week's work! You can select and drop whatever card you like. I have the framework for the ship, but it's not much to look at right now. After I have the access system going, I'll be starting with the Atmospherics section of the ship and start modeling out an air system. (The traitor can turn off the air, or pipe bad air into the system. I hope you have your gas mask!)

Oh, here (http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/7131/maplabelnub4.png) is a map from the old game's editor that I'm using. (It's pretty big) 1 square is 4096 build units.

I really like this idea a lot. I want you guys to promise me that if I don't post something new about the project everyday. Go ahead and kick my butt! I deserve it.

[DeeperThought]

That's cool, and great work considering you are still getting oriented. But AFAIK the maximum number of players is 8. It seems to me that 8 different positions is quite enough anyway.

[halkun]

Can I bump that up in the networking code?

If not, That's no problem, There are 7 senior officers that have all the power of the ones below. Here is a breakdown of the chain of command. (Here's for thinking ahead!)

http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/8552/screenshotspacestationtgi7.png

That would be Captain, Engineer, Science officer, Security officer, Medical officer, Personnel officer, and the Chaplain. That leaves a lacky that can be any job assigned by the personnel officer. I can also drop the Chaplain and gain an Atmospheric tech and a station tech that work under the Engineer.

I'm gonna dig in the duke code a bit and see what I can find to expanding the number of players.

The idea is this is more of a prototype. I have a friend begging me to make this "for real" in Source if I can make it happen in Build. When I saw what it took to mod Source, I was really shocked. I thought it would be easy, I mean Build is really powerful, and it's shocking that Source has no support for scripting at all. (There is a Lua add-on, but even then you have to compile it in)

As a side note, I've been updating the wiki every chance I get. So far I have the proper way to use hitscan with example code, and I've fixed the sprite drawing routines to give helpful and useful information. For example they said X and Y were coordinates for putting the sprite on the screen, but never gave the RANGE! I had to figure it out on my own.

[DeeperThought]

Even if the game could support 16 players (which I doubt will ever happen), you will never find 16 people to play at once. Even 8 is a huge stretch. I think you should assume that max will remain at 8, and plan on having bots fill in where necessary.

[halkun]

One of the things I have learned when embarking on silly projects is always be able to scale back. Change is good and that the end product rarely RARELY winds up anything like the design document. You can play this with a minimum of three people. (Captain, Personnel and an extra) any less than this and you know who the Traitor is. Any other classes and you can't access the whole ship. (You need at least two that can reassign jobs in case one of them is the traitor)

I've actually thought out the mechanics of this pretty well.

[halkun]

Well, now I have to do some texture stripping. I didn't realize that some textures are hardcoded to a function. I need to make a **DO NOT USE** texture for all of those so that when I'm making my level I don't bang my head against the wall wondering why my actor code doesn't work. (For example all my access cards disappeared when I went into mutiplayer mode, and the access lock ignores actor code) I'm probably going to be spending some time nuking all the graphics. It doesn't matter much as most of the sprites will be replaced with 3D models anyway and the textures will be taken from the DEF file. It looks like the system needs at least *something* or it gets all kinds of weird.

== EDIT==
My placeholder graphic
http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/9698/kaorp7.jpg

[Bloodclaw]

Anyways, I decided to make what I call a "Minuscule Multiplayer Online Role Playing game." or a MMORPG for short. (God, I hope no one has come up with that yet!) It plays up to 16 players...

I had an idea like that one time (it wasn't only in a spaceship), but I stopped because there was no in game joining for Eduke, and I never finished any of my projects.

[The Commander]

I had an idea like that one time (it wasn't only in a spaceship), but I stopped because there was no in game joining for Eduke, and I never finished any of my projects.

That, and that not many people are going to be interested in a multiplayer only mod than a single player mod for Duke.

[halkun]

It's an experiment... Also, when I'm done with it, I won't look a lot like duke... I can also write my own connect-a-thing front end. I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. My major concern is getting the keycard system going. (It broke again in a quest to doing something more elegant) I'm having issues with my discrete math making a bitmask filter

[Sang]

That, and that not many people are going to be interested in a multiplayer only mod than a single player mod for Duke.

With the help of Hamachi, setting up a Duke3D multiplayer game is rather easy.. So that can't be an excuse. Perhaps the reason Duke3D's online part is a little on the dead side is because there's not that much interesting stuff to play.

Still I think you would do best to make sure it's fun in Single Player as well.

[The Commander]

With the help of Hamachi, setting up a Duke3D multiplayer game is rather easy..


There is also the other programs, Dukester X and Duke Connector. But Duke still isnt friendly to play online as it should be IMO. I know that can't really be fixed right now. But oh well.

[halkun]

Here's a little test
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/8647/mapwh6.th.png (http://img407.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mapwh6.png)


Atmospherics
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/1618/map2ax8.th.png (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=map2ax8.png)

Security
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3901/map3hg8.th.png (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=map3hg8.png)

I also have the mess hall done, and will be working on sick bay next. I have to make a few more textures. I'm having a heck of a time coming up with ceiling tiles. Turns out when I've played FPS games, I never looked up... I have no idea what one would look like. Anyone know where I can get some for free (no strings attached)

The walls look duke-ish, but those are my own texture (Inspired from the original duke walls)

[Sang]

Needs more work.. You don't have any shading and the space outside of those big machines or whatever is really empty.

Also I'd pick other floor textures. Further down the line you might also have to change the ceiling and wall textures, but for now they still look okay.

Add more lights, buttons, pipes, windows, stuff like that :o

[halkun]

I've only created, like, 16 textures for the game. I also have a minimal con file with 4 actors defined. It needs a lot of work. I have no music, or sound effects.

It's pretty basic now.

[Sang]

Well no point of posting shots this early in development if you realize they don't look as good as they could.