Quote from: CheatCat on April 10, 2015, 03:21:49 am

Please do not do this. Planeshift is the best Open Source MMORPG out there. If you switch to the Unreal engine, the support for Linux would be more limited. Also, the Unreal engine guys do not like Open Source or GPL so much.

Of course it seems tempting to switch to a such robust and powerful engine, and it is very popular. You have my fullest understanding if you still want to change engine. I am sure there will be huge improvements. But Unreal is not open source so it kills a bit of the spirit in this game.

This make me a bit sad, but you do as you think is the best.

1.) Epic fully supports games on linux, the editor on the other hand is still not officially supported yet, but runs none the less.
2.) There are tons of 'opensource' projects on github that use UE4, you can not opensource the engines code its self, but you can do what ever you want with your code. If there are changes you want to push upstream for the engine thats different matter. As long as the PS devs follow the EULA there should be no issues, and if they have any questions they can ask them on answers.unrealengine.com (just tag it with the appropriate tag)
3.) Because it does not follow a totalitarian ideology of opensoure dose not mean it will kill the spirit of opensource its self. UE4 is VOSS, virtual open source software, any one can get the source for any reason and only have to pay if they make a certain amount of money per quarter. If you have any legal questions please feel free to read the EULA its self and/or ask them on answers.unrealengine.com

For me you sound a bit like someone from Unreal engine support department.

I share the concerns about Unreal not being free as in freedom:
- If you need to patch it, you need to follow their EULA.
- They could take it away from you anytime.

But Unreal also seems to be a very advanced engine.

While I am happy to see a decision to move to a more advanced engine…

This is exactly the game for you if you don't like gore!!  There are so many full professions that have nothing to do with combat, e.g. cooking, alchemy, mage (non-combat spells, tons of them), adventurer, crafter, miner, metal-worker, fisherperson, many more.  Any creature parts you need you can get from other players and you can avoid the aggressive mobs we have.

And your RP won't have any gore.  I suspect that this game, even on Unreal and fully fleshed out, is not going to be heavy on bloody things, it's just not the Yliakum vibe that I get.

For me this is a critical feature of the game. If it would force me to see gore in order to play it, I know I am out. I am not into seeing blood or splatter for my recreational gaming activity and sooo many other games fail to address this need of mine. I also do not want to see the inside of a consumer or anything like this.

My chars don´t kill anyway, but I also don´t want to see it if some other chars kills a mob nearby.

So my plea is to have any gore as an opt-in for those who want to see it.

I am also concerned about moving to engine that is not free as in freedom software.

Has openscenegraph¹, Torque3D² and GodotEngine³ been considered?

[1] https://openmw.org/2015/announcing-switch-openscenegraph/
http://www.openscenegraph.org/
https://github.com/openscenegraph/osg/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
(based on LGPL)

[2] https://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d/ (MIT Licensed)

[3] http://www.godotengine.org/ (MIT License)

Thanks,

Update is covered on Phoronix:

PlaneShift 0.6.3 Open-Sourece MMORPG Released
Published on 24 December 2014 05:39 PM EST
Written by Michael Larabel in Gaming
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTg3MjM

But Michael IMHO has done a disservice to the open source gaming community by the last sentence in the news article. Its totally okay to note that the graphics of PlaneShift is not up to par with current commercial titles, but to say it in a way like it I personally find offensive and disrespectful of the effort developers and testers put into the game.

Thus I made a positive comment about the game. Its still in moderation, but I think Michael will allow it.

I nomimate and vote for myself (Damola that is, maybe I get myself her username in forum). As long as we make it a friendly cooperation, I don´t care that much tough.

I would handle things the following way: For each guild someone has half of the keys. The representive is to be informed about any key given out. I just would like if every guild could hand out keys on their own. On the other hand if its clear that keys are to be equally spread and the representative doesn´t decide whom from the other guild is to receive a key that would also work for me. We could agree on certain criteria that need to be required tough to hand out a key, like:

- Is willing to refill or open the Den´s, i.e. to work for the Den´s.
- Has been a certain time in guild and is voted to be trustworthy by at least three guild members.

BTW I opened the Den´s for the first time after the theft this night after almost completing the refilling Waesed started.

Damola yawns now "Time to go to bed soon"

I definately prefer the new training system for various reasons, including:

• The old one required to go to an NPC way to often IMHO. And in training fighting / defending usually even to different NPCs as more than one skills gets practiced. Sometimes it meant waiting for the next real time day of playing as a NPC was sleeping
• For players who are not into fighting there now it is easier to spend some progression points on skills. Before it was rather difficult to earn PPs that exceed the PPs needed to rank the skill. My char did recurring quests over and over and over again to do this for example.
• I never understand why a NPC should validate the practice my chars made and are then magically able to do so in an instant. I just clicked train and peng there the skill was leveled

Yet I also see some challenges:

• The new training system shows skill leveling in-balances way more clearly
• The new training system reduces interaction with NPCs a lot

I elaborate on these a bit more:

I see how the new system shows skill leveling in-balances more clearly. So for example it is possible to raise armor skills in no time by equipping good armor, possibly including armor of the Defender and then have a ton of mobs fight against the char while casting Life Infusion as needed. I tried this myself. This doesn´t require botting, and I wasn´t botting. I never leaved the client for more than a minute already for the reason to watch the health of my char carefully. For me this shows that armor trains much more quickly than using a weapon. Another probably inbalance has been fixed before release and this is the famous mutiple pet command trick. But in my perception due to the extent that Empathy doesn´t raise at all anymore.

I think its important to watch out for imbalances like this and fix them over time – without punishing players that take advantage of it as long as they are not botting. Actually instead of needing GMs to more carefully watch for botting I have some suggestion to prevent extreme botting via some kind of thing that is actually natural:

It is utterly unrealistic that any char is capable to defend against to ton of mobs for almost unlimited time or do any crafting work for an unlimited time. At some time the char needs to take some rest.

PlaneShift already has a short term concept for that with physical and mana stamina. Would make adding some longer term exhaustion / recovery cycle make sense? Some value that doesn´t decrease very quickly, yet also takes more time to increase again. So that for example a reasonable time a char simply would need to take some rest (just as in real life)? Say after a hour or two the char needs a rest of half a hour or two or something ike that. It would also give more space for RP as during some times a char would not be able to engage in leveling.

On the other hand that might be overdoing things and adding complexity and it may be possible to fix imbalances and prevent some of the botting by balancing out short term stamina stuff. Actually my char doesn´t seem to exhaust at all by defending herself which isn´t all that realistic. Preventing to be hit requires agility and moving quickly, surely this should be somewhat exhausting. Of cause its important not to overdo things there as this may frustrate quite a bit not being able to practice / train for a longer period of time which is one aspect the new training system addressed (no wait for NPC to wake up).

Aside from that, maybe re-introducing some NPC interaction, but not as often, but more rarely may make sense. So at certain mile stones. It would feel natural to me that you can practice and level a skill to some extent and then need a trainer to teach you a certain edge that is difficult to learn all by yourself. In any way on NPC training: I think it should need some time as well, as I find it unnatural that with NPCs its always "Poof! There you have it.". Then this could be used to allow part of the training through giving tria to NPCs as an alternative way which adds some variety. Yet, this would also complicate things again. On which milestones and how does the player know? In that area I also very much like the idea that players can train other players as this offers another incentive to work together in a team.

Another idea would have equipment wearing out, not only shields and armor and weapons, but also other equipment, yet more slowly depending on equipment, a sickle probably quite slow, a rock pick maybe a bit faster, and armor, weapons and so fastest.. And making the effect of wearing out more clearly. Certainly a q1/300 shield shouldn´t offer much protection anymore or at q1/50 weapon be that useful for attacking. Right now I don´t see any disadvantage in using equipment that has quite reduced quality.

Well in summary I think its important to fix any skill leveling inbalances as these show more clearly now and to have some in game mechanics that prevents extreme botting cause I don´t think GMs can watch out for it 24/7. Aside from that I do think its a big improvement and I would keep the change in general.

I do think that keeping the new system offers quite a bit of new opportunities to develop the skills system further.

These are the versions of the packages I used:

# apt-show-versions | egrep "(build-essential|^jam|subversion|libcurl4-gnutls-dev|libhunspell-dev|libopenal-dev|nvidia-cg-dev|nvidia-cg-toolkit)"
build-essential:amd64/sid 11.6 uptodate
jam:amd64/sid 2.5rel-1 uptodate
libcurl4-gnutls-dev:amd64/sid 7.35.0-1 uptodate
libhunspell-dev:amd64/sid 1.3.2-7 uptodate
libopenal-dev:amd64/sid 1:1.14-4 uptodate
nvidia-cg-dev:amd64/sid 3.1.0013-1 uptodate
nvidia-cg-toolkit:amd64/sid 3.1.0013-1 uptodate
subversion:amd64/sid 1.8.8-1 uptodate

Damola and Yenida as requested (dissatisfied with the lineart, I changed it. Hope you like it!)

Marvellous, Mariana! I love it. Thank you so much.

Love,
helios21