DooMWar

[SirTimberWolf]

Come one come all! Irc.freenode.net Channel #Doomwar
Leave suggestions, chat with the makers... HELP DECIDE THE FATE OF THE FIRST DOOM MMORPG
Yeah okay.. so it was a little dramatic... it got your attention didnt it?
Currently in rought design stages, please feel free to donate your ideas and knowledge
Feel free to join us at irc.freenode.net #doomwar

[Nanami]

Er, ZDoom doesn't support in-game joining and only supports 16 players. How are you going to manage this? What port are you going to use?

[SargeBaldy]

obviously legacy because it supports 32 players and in-game joining.

[HotWax]

Um, yeah, 32 players sure is massive alright.

/me boots up DAOC and joins his GF and the other 1,308 players currently doing battle throughout the realms on his server.

[Lexus Alyus]

Why doesn't he use Skulltag? That has in game joining, I think . Plus it has all the great stuff of Zdoom plus lotsa cool deathmatch modes and all that .

[SirTimberWolf]

I'm sitting here at work, I spent most of thwe morning composing ideas.. heres what we have so far.

Engine BASE: ZDoom 2.0.52, with ST's netcode and some other modifications.
Mods: Character system, experience, server side weapons fire code. Hub code extended to allow players to freely leave and join the hub.
Hubs break down into 3 kinds:
Hemispheres
Regions
Sites
Since the entire moon of phobos is 22km in diamiter I hope you can see how this can work... If not.. no biggie.. it will be come clear

CURRENTLY The plan is to have servers that host 32 Players, but exchange character info on a common server (thus elimating the need to make new characters for every diffrent server you play on.)

Classes: Marines: Heathiest of the 3, Do most damage of any class, has access to exotic firepower.
Army: Have access to a lot of fire power, slightly less fit then marines, has some technical ability.
Civilians: Weakest and most poorly armed, however they can do things with technology that others can only dream of.

The focal point of this game will be the original maps... located in the Stickney crater. Though the other hemispheres contain stuff like power substations and landing pads, and mines.. all sorts of stuff... the ultimate goal of this will to be either survive, escape or over take the anomoly and purge phobos of the menece...

I'll post more info after work... be safe everyone

[Lexus Alyus]

Sounds cool...

[SirTimberWolf]

This is a warning/invitation: For ANYONE interested in mapping for this project do ALL THE research you can get a hold of regarding phobos...
yahoo.com has a lot of good links and pictures... When this takes footing it is expected of mappers to know what the planet is like and stuff..
We already have a couple good mappers... I'll post a "what im shooting for in a map" thing soon... Hope this makes sense.. I will probably be doing interviews for mappers and 2d/3d artists soon so if your interested please PM/aim/ym/or email me

[SirTimberWolf]

Timber, you have a good idea, but in order for people to understand it they need a (modified) story line to understand the concept. This for you people (like me, once) who don't know the story:
From Timber himself:

In doom the hellspawn/invaders/whatever invaded through this portal that humans found on Phobos and Deimos.
We built a base around em.. studied em and played with em till the accident happened.
It has been 2 weeks since the initial invasion began.
Marines have begun landing drop ships and sending troops to investigate.
Others from the army and civilian sector have yet to hear of any disturbance.
*there is an army base on the opposite side of the "main" set of instalations.*
Soon after landing the marine's dropships are destroyed leaving them stranded on the desolate rock and the invaders have begun searching for more territory
*Mind you dooms "original" instalations have all been taken over at this point*
Soon the army base finds itself under attack
Thats where it starts
This is when the fun begins
There is all out chaos
Players fight to re-take the moon

Some of you might think of this like Command and Conquer or even Star Craft, but this story and game should and will be better.


-words of DoomeStation

[SirTimberWolf]

This sounds to be a very big undertaking.. you're definitely going to need someone to write some serious network code, especially if I understand correctly about the part about moving from one 'level/area/zone/whatever' to another.. I do suggest you guys not get too far ahead of yourself unless you can manage this particular aspect. Most of the other stuff sounds reasonable to be able to be done, if not quickly, then at least completely.

The network code from skulltag is actually borrowed (and then modified - unless Carn junked it and started over) from zdaemon, which came from csdoom. If you want to do things properly, I suggest you not use this, as I had a talk with arioch about the licensing which doom is under. Zdoom is under the doom educational license, and all bits and peices of code in zdoom are compatible with this license. GPL code (such as the quakeworld code used in zdaemon's networking) is not compatible with the license. I suggest you look into other alternatives, such as the quake2-based code that is in zdoom already. (Do note, that the quake2 code has since been released under GPL, and while zdoom does not violate it's educational license, taking code from the re-released quake2 code would.)

As it was suggested that approaching me for game server hosting is an idea, I will say that I am curious in the project. I will not say yay or nay yet, as the project has not progressed far enough for me to get a feel as to whether it is something I wish to be involved with.

While you're doing a lot of brainstorming, make sure someone is creating a document of features, and that this document will be authoritative. In a few days/weeks when you actually start building it, you should address which features you want to do first, and which ones would make the biggest impact on whether the project will even be feasible (remember the netcode stuff I said being important and difficult? yeah, that should be a priority).

One advantage you have here, is that (from the sound of it) your clients will not have to be able to run servers of their own, so you can develop it in two peices, the client and the server(s).


-Words of Lyfe

Reply:
Lyfe,
Thanks a lot. Rest assured that your words will not fall on deaf eyes.
Thank you for your sagely advice, I will use it to refine the project, you have taken me in a new direction that I will explore fully. Thanks again man, I owe you.

[bimshwel]

I'm sitting here at work, I spent most of thwe morning composing ideas..

How about working?

[SirTimberWolf]

I'm multi-talented

[SirTimberWolf]

Any Suggestions/comments/ideas/etc should be sent to
doomwar2003@yahoo.com

[HotWax]

Some of you might think of this like Command and Conquer or even Star Craft, but this story and game should and will be better.

I saw that text and did a double-take. Are you confused or something? An MMORPG is EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, Asheron's Call, etc etc. Starcraft and C&C are RTS games.

MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game
RTS: Real-Time Strategy

While you could try combining these, it still wouldn't be an MMORPG. Exactly what are you trying to do here? If you're actually going for RPG, you're talking about various character classes, each player controlling a single character, developing them over a long period of time, etc. You'd have things such as levelling up, gaining new abilities and improving existing ones, possibly finding new items to play with.

On the other hand you have RTS, in which one person controls multiple units, typically an entire army against someone else or the computer. You have to worry about things like resource management, unit training, base construction and defense, and of course strategy on a large scale.

Warcraft 3 combines elements of both these styles but at its root is still an RTS. The only difference is that you have "heroes" which level up and gain abilities and, to a limited extent, you can find and use items. There's nothing massive about it though and gameplay takes place on one relatively small map per game.

Do YOU even know what it is you're trying to accomplish? 'cause if so I guess I'm not understanding you.

[Lexus Alyus]

How many "SirTimberWolfes" are there? Are you a paranoid Skitsofreniak? (Gotta love the spelling ).

I am...