PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: ramlambmoo on December 23, 2004, 04:24:01 pm
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What id like to see in PlaneShift, eventually, is a world that evolves by itself without the need for intervention from the mods. For example instead of there being a spawn point for monsters, and monsters randomly appearing, monsters only appear when two get happen to meet by chance and breed, with the result being a baby monster that has to grow before it becomes a big one... And so say that the monster breeding gets out of hand, and they grow too quickly and then players cant go outside the city because of the packs of monsters, the mods dont just step in and delete them, but the players have to figure it out themselves. So some players have to take the inititive and organise a group to get online at the same time and travel out and kill the monsters, using their numbers for safety, as a result getting fame and reward from the other players. So that the need for quests naturally evolves, rather then just being designated by the game designers. Or the huge mob of monsters suddenly have nothing to eat because they\'ve used up all the food outside and they die until their numbers are back to a reasonable size. This way the history of PS and of the setting would evolve as a result of the players actions, not by a writer writing the storyline. Obviously there are limits, and if theres an omnipotent pack of monsters outside for ever people are going to stop playing, but there should definatly be an element to the game that is decided by the players actions as a whole, and not just a scripted storyline. Obviously monsters are just one example of a way this could be implemented, eventually id like to see this sort of thing where the players shape the game in all aspects of the game envrionment.
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great idea man.. I like. lets just hope they are newbie monsters..lol
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This could also go for the scenery, trees growing where The wind takes their seeds.
Abandoned buildings being overgrown with weeds.
I\'m loving it already :)
Being able to create a little dam in the streem through your backyard to create a little pond :)
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Great idea. But one problem. It will be too complicated for the game
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Originally posted by Myrtl
Great idea. But one problem. It will be too complicated for the game
Only ATM. In just a few years time, these things will be perfectly feasible and, in fact, will become standard. There will be semi-intelligent \"AI\"s that can generate the environmental changes, much like the semi-intelligent \"AI\"s that currently are in their infancy, controlling the NSCs and MOBs. We will see all of this, though it\'s still some years from today.
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Because of the way this game is set up, you could run the evolving thingie on a different server.
The Evolve process would directly edit the database, making trees taller, degrading the state your house is in if you won\'t do repairs etc.
Heck, you could even put a little piece of distributed computing code into the PS client to devide the calculation load over all planeshift players :P
It is actually already possible :D
It\'s just not implemented yet. :]
I can already imagine, new land being created by vulcanic eruptions or something :))
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That is A HUGE amount to program, you can expect that to be one of the last things on the Dev Team\'s list of things to do.
Besides what if there is a bug that destroys a portion of the world or something? It\'d be hard to fix it.
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I expect that it will be put somwhere near the bottom of the ever growin list of things to do.
But everyone will be able to program code for the planeshift server, because it is open source.
The Planeshift team will always have the last say if an addition makes it into the Planeshift program.
We could start a seperate project for this, and offer it to the Devs when it is ready and tested.
Testing btw. can be done on a privately run server, away from the main servers. You won\'t have the pretty pictures, but hey, it will be able to proof the concept. :rolleyes:
It would already be nice if you had a self growing/regenerating forest. :))
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I don\'t really like the fact that the players could effectively destroy the world or make certain enemies extinct by this either.
PlaneShift probably changes so often that by the time you have code that\'ll do what you want hte engine will have changed drastically enough that you can\'t put that in.
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That could happen, but then you can always add a few extra trees for example.
On the other hand, it will not have to be like real world evolution. Evolution (the program) could give creatures an extra boost if numbers were getting too low.
Or if numbers are running low, creatures would be hiding from hunters, making it harder to catch them, and give them time needed to restore their numbers.
About the ever changing PS code, if Evolution will be designed properly, all you have to do in sutch a case is change the input/output routines wich interact with the server.
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look at how mb was after years of development, look (when you can) at cb compared to mb, think how many eons it would take to make an actual world that changes like that.... dreaming to high methinks
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I would expect that this would simply just be too time consuming for the devs to add into the game. It may happen
but in 1 or 2 years time I would think. There are not many
mmorpgs that are advanced like this and so well.. ermm
Thats why most mmorpgs suck its just cut, slash, buy weapon, cut slash.
I am already starting on the game Evolution Online.
and have thought about many things. How the creatures
Evolutionise & and the world. I am sure it\'s possible for
the game engine to be able to use wind to drop seeds
and then let them plant. As for the code it\'s self thats another
task, though I am working on the games maps and all else
in the game. So if your intrested and maybe even have some
artistic skill you could add me to msn (nikolia@gmail.com)
Or just Pm me.
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ooo what they could do is every month they could send a patch to everyone changing the terrain i guess.
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Actually i\'m not suggesting that Evolution should be able to control a whole world at once. Let it first grow some trees in one forest. I think that would already be a nice achevement.
Just to prove that the interaction with the server would be working.
Besides, with occupations as loggers, you\'ll have to have a regenerating forest. Else it\'ll be gone soon.
Evolution would be a way to take that out of the main server-code and develop that seperately and more ealsely.
Nikolia,
Evolution Online is a game you want to develop?
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It\'s a game that is going to be be developed next year
along with the Ankh Ent Team. It\'s going to Use The Brute
Game engine that was developed by The Ankh Ent team.
If you check these forums for one of my post you can see
that I already suggested this idea a while ago. Though
Not just an Evolutionised world but your main character.
You can see some more Info on the engine and it\'s screens
here http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm/load/forums/loadforum/125/loadthread/29444/setstart/1/loadclass/35
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Well actually i didnt think monster breeding would be that hard to implement... obviously a good combat system is far preferable to this, but think about it, its a slow process. You could write a script that would only have to be run every hour or even every 10 hours or so, and all it would have to say is if theres a certain number of animals / plants in an area then make x number of baby ones appear. It isnt that complicated programming required. Obviously this wont happen very soon for the forum is for things you would like in the completed version, and i think this would be good if it could be reasonably implemented.
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Landscape changes probably won\'t be possible till crystal space evolves even more.
Monsters breeding sounds like fun. Just like hunting, but due to how fast people kill... there will need to be tons of monsters.
Though with the possible current design is might be easier to implement a monsters den, where a calculated number of monsters are suddenly spawned when the time has passed to replenish the dead monsters.
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I see monster breeding following way, there\'s no need to implement that female monster comes to male monster, boom boom, no. the easiest way is to record the lifetime of every monster and if the lifetime exeeds it\'s usual lifetime, the monster gets a little stronger, plus it has a baby. the baby is spawned into safe monster place and starts walking to location of it\'s father/mother monster. well it\'s an idea
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AFAIK, the server code loads the maps from a database or whatever. This means that the evolution code could load the same database, modify it, write it back to the DB, and then simply tell the server which part(s) it has changed and that need to be reloaded. The server then could do that and swap it instantly. This swap will not even be noticable to players because theywould be tiny. Tiny but constant. That means that you\'d be able to watch a tree grow, instead of the treew just popping up in front of you.
However, we need a way to stream the maps to the clients, instead of having them packaged with the client. Well, that essentially is an issue of available bandwidth, which means: future.
Currently it would be an option to have sudden and drastic, but infrequent changes, like trees popping out of the ground, and the new maps downloaded upon game start or something.
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Or you can put a major map update out there where \'seeds\' of trees would be planted, the client has a sub-routine wich tells how big the tree has grown at the rendering time.
That way you avoid trees (and other stuff) popping up out of nowhere.
Is there a system in CB that tells clients if a tree has been chopped down?
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Originally posted by ramlambmoo
For example instead of there being a spawn point for monsters, and monsters randomly appearing, monsters only appear when two get happen to meet by chance and breed, with the result being a baby monster that has to grow before it becomes a big one... And so say that the monster breeding gets out of hand,
umm isr that kid oriented to have monster porn????? ?(
i mean im not usually one to anti censoreship but this game will obviously have tons of little kids playing it, it would be rather funny to watch a dwarf couple (midget porn roflomsohfao) <-- if you are over 12 and u wanna know what that is msg me....
it would be ok if it did not have an animation....
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They could set up the code to work only once a day, or at server downtimes. Stuff would change, but the changes would be more noticable.. It\'s not as if the game needs to be CONSTANTLY evolving, (i think too much processor time needed), just an occasional automated evolve would be cool. They could be kept on the same server, and only run 1-2 times a day.
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well....this idea is great. it would be nice when you have been in some other map and come back to your house and your house is weeded and garden crouded with tiny ratbasterds that you step on and laugh! ok-ok that was too much but jeah, the idea of evolving is great!
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I have no idea about how the game is coded atm but i wanted to think aloud on the \"growing trees\" subject.
Lets say that from the beginning you have a small tree thats like 1 meter in height and after a set (+ random?) time (whatever is fitting for the game mechanics) you have the server change the model of the tree into a 1.5 meter one (the size is set but there is like 3 different models that it can randomly pick) and so on.
And after the tree has \"grown\" to something like 5 meters a new, small tree would spawn close to the old tree but not to close, not to close to other surrounding trees either.
This would simulate a growing forest and player made clearings would slowly grow back.
I don\'t know alot about programming, maybe this would kill the server?
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what happens when all the players cutt down the trees?
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GMs would have to manually add a few again, and people would whine and complain until they did :P
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Players wouldn\'t be able to cut down all trees quickly enough. The times are greatly reduced for almost anything in PS, to be able to not require 24/7 gaming. Just think of the regeneration process. Take a couple of hits from a sword, and within some RL minutey, you\'re back to full health. It\'d take a lot longer IRL. :)
Therefore, trees would grow way faster than IRL, possibly they\'d be fully grown by 2 days RL time. Therefore, players would have a hard time and be very dedicated to be able to chop off all of them, and keep it that way. :)
Anyway, I think it wouldn\'t so much consume processor power, but memory (since every instance needs to have lots of attributes, the very reason why items decay when placed on the ground), and bandwidth, since all these attributes would need to be transferred to the clients, though this might be mitigatable by only transferring these attributes if the tree is accessed, and only to the respective client. Still, there\'d have to be a general number of attributes transferred: position and model ID. Theye are normally stored in the maps that are installed on the client, which wouldn\'t be possible if the trees are defined by the server, obviously. This would make PS require broadband connections, which would exclude a lot of players.
I would absolutely love a grass-growing server to be implemented, but it\'s just not yet feasible. :(
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Lol its like the matrix That would take a looooong time to do.
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Brilliant idea this, something to look forward to in the future. I give it maybe 5 years to see a fully dynamic evolving world.
As for chopping down a forest, it will be an impressive sight seeing a horde of players chopping down the trees as they move forward.