[MP] [RPG] Daylight RP (Coming soon)

[Ezcoo 47]

Yes, we have considered it actually. We planned to create a mine pretty much exactly like that months ago (to A2 version), but became to conclusion that it's rather low priority because of various issues. We liked the idea itself, but we found that there would be too many issues if we implemented that into game.

[kilroy the nerd 14]

What issues, exactly? I'm curious. And is it just A2, or A3?

[Ezcoo 47]

The idea was considered when we were working on A2 version, but we found that there would have been too many issues related to the gameplay and glitching. To be honest, I don't remember the exact details because the idea was rejected about 9 months ago and the details are buried somewhere in our endless amount of documentation. We might consider it again later, but it would still have lower priority because we're currently working on the core features that must be implemented into the core before it can function correctly.

[Ezcoo 47]

Looking amazing!

Will you make it possible to use statsave with the mission?

I forgot to mention in my previous reply that the statsave is not very high priority for us also because we definitely want to have an endmission in the game. We all agree that the continuously evolving situation in the game is one of the most important reasons why non-persistent RP was so fun in Arma 2. Chernarus Life: Revolution (the HGs version) was great example of that: the situation in the game evolved quickly enough so that you were never bored but also slowly enough so that you could "keep step" with the situation.

For example, at the very beginning there was "the starting hassle": people joining the game, high activity in towns, occasional traffic accidents etc. Then the "calm moment before storm" began: civs bought equipment from towns and "disappeared" when they moved on the landside and got scattered around the map to farm, fish and mine. Also minor illegal activity was present sometimes, but it was very quiet and peaceful time otherwise. Cops were mainly patrolling around map and having checkpoints, often having discussions with civilians at CPs to maintain their situational awareness.

After a while "the cusp" started, when the civilians returned to towns from landside, selling the goodies that they had produced and gathered. They became a little more wealthy, and started to invest their money to various things. Someone maybe set up a bus company, someone bought an oil factory with his money, someone set up a gang and started an illegal career with his friends, someone bought bodyguard license, gun license and a gun and became a bodyguard, etc. This period was often the first moment in the game when the game really started "rolling forward" on both cop and civ side: while most the legal civs started their diverse careers with their investments, also illegal civs had become more wealthy than before and therefore they had become remarkable factor in the game for both cops and civs.

After that there was often a long period with lots of activity on both civ and cop side. The nation kept evolving, the equipment became better on both sides and investments became also more remarkable. Often a group of a few rich civilians appeared, that had quite a lot of power in the game (money talks, you know...) The illegal activity started to become slowly more serious and professional; finally, instead of scattered and random crimes there appeared concentrated and well planned coordinated attacks, that often shook the whole country and threatened the whole society, sometimes even making the country to collapse into chaotic anarchistic state. Cops had to be very tactical, cooperative and well equipped to win these fights, to maintain the control of important areas on map and to reveal the evil plans of illegal civilians. In the last stage, the "final fight" began. Terrorists appeared, and they attempted to gain control of the whole nation by doing large attacks in the military base (that was the most important area in the game). If the cops managed to maintain the military in the control of government, the lives of people continued quite normally (but the country itself stayed shaky often), but if the terrorists captured and maintained the control of military base, they took control of the nation, made a revolution and won the game.

We're definitely aiming to recreate and enhance that kind of gameplay, simply because it was so damn exciting and fun! :D And because you can play through a round, there's no crucial need for statsave unless you want to create persistent RP based on our platform, which is also possible, like mentioned in the posts above.

[Caselius 94]

I enjoyed the another HGs server, I think it had perfect balance between the what happens even it had statsave. Towns were active, people were farming and in some rarer cases a dangerous civilian was against the police. That server had so that money was hard to get and some businessmen [Players who devoted time to the mission and used it to right things... *cough cough* "the stuff"] ruled the town. I was a SWAT-Team cop, I had pretty good equipment most of the times, but sometimes criminals were too damn dangerous.

After i first played in the statsave server, I almost never played non-statsave ones, I somehow loved that my progress wasn't lost after server restart.

[Ezcoo 47]

I see. I tried it with justice too, but we found quickly that we didn't enjoy the slow paced but persistent gameplay as much as we did enjoy the fast paced but non-persistent gameplay. But it's just a matter of taste; some people love the former, some prefer the latter one. That's the reason why we'd like to offer people easily extendable platform; people like different things, so let them do what they like to do. And that's why the public version of Daylight will be like skeleton (hopefully!): it gives you the basic structure, but you add the flesh... :)

[Ezcoo 47]

Text removed – item system is being changed a little bit, the overview that was here is outdated now

Edited August 29, 2013 by Ezcoo

[Ezcoo 47]

I guess it's time for SITREP!

The public version of Daylight RP is getting closer to release state. It contains the core functions that RP developers can use as platform on which they can build their own versions. We're talking about weeks now, and currently it seems likely that the platform will be available soon after Arma 3 full version release.

The release of platform will be "soft launch". It means that we will release minimal Alpha version first, that includes the necessary core functions but nothing else, and it might contain some noticeable bugs as well (not very many though; qbt has really taken care of the quality of scripts! :)). We will start to develop our private version immediately after the initial platform launch. We will then probably add some things from our private edition to the public version, and fix the bugs that we have found ourselves and what people have reported to us. We'll then release the final version of the platform and concentrate completely on our private version after that.

We have made some decisions regarding to the public platform license, the release of platform and our private edition based on the public platform.

The platform license will have these terms among others:

- the public platform will be free to use and modify non-commercially, but the platform developers must be credited properly

- the private editions that are built on the platform don't have to be open source – this includes also modifications of the platform itself

- exact terms will be published later with the platform

Long story short, we will give you pretty free hands to do whatever you want with the platform, as long as it remains non-commercial.

We have made a huge design change to our private version after finding out the splendid appearance of Altis. The change has a huge influence to the gameplay. I would even talk about complete redesign. It might sound problematic, but it's not a big deal thanks to the flexible platform. We're sure that we've made the right decision – also the feedback about the change that I've requested from some of my "trusted" RP fellas has been 100% positive so far. But more about that later! ;)

PS. Regarding to our private edition, we're looking for modellers, texturers and modders in general who are familiar with creating addons in Arma. Even though the edition itself is private, you would have free hands in releasing your artwork in public – it would be your artwork after all, and the only thing that we need is the right to use your artwork in our version. PM me or add me on Steam (ezcoo_) if you're interested!

[Ezcoo 47]

In a nutshell, the design changes that we made to our private version are:

- statsave will be implemented which means persistent world (yay!)

- medium runtime of rounds will be changed from less than 1 day to 5-7 days (we believe that this would be the happy medium, but if it wouldn't be, it can be changed easily)

- the world will be immersive experience

- the gameplay will be made to offer in-depth RP with "from players to players" concept; players run the world themselves – for example, the mechanics have to maintain the infrastructure with engineers, eg. traffic light network, lighting, electricity network and supply and EMS takes care of the wounded players (we need modders for especially this, eg. ambulance with stretchers would be needed), also numerous other careers, including eg. the law enforcement and illegal gameplay will have diverse options

In addition,

- the cop side will use ACRE

- both cops and civs don't have any artificial or abuseable tools (such as the well-known civcam) – they use realistic tools and solutions instead

- there won't be any artificial meters of progress in game (like skillpoints), it's up to players how they succeed (see next line)

- the activities in general have both good and bad choices, eg. EMS could even kill the patient if they selected the wrong options and illegal civs might reveal themselves accidentally if they failed badly :D

[kilroy the nerd 14]

Question: how do you plan to deal with trolls? Are you leaving it all up to admins, or? Like, people who abuse the limits of the mission, or something like that.

[Ezcoo 47]

That's a good question, always topical issue with RP servers :rolleyes:

Keeping the gameplay clean of intentional trolls, abusers, glitchers and script kiddies and motivating the players to obey the rules is one of our strongest areas. The support for proper administration is very extensive (that does not mean admin spawn tools) – pretty much all possible measures against griefers have been utilized, and those include architechture of platform and scripts that are relatively resistant against unwanted changes, for example. However, good scripts are only part of the anti-griefer measures. Concepts are also important, because they're much harder if not impossible to bypass with cheats (but they're up to the admins).

For example, the rules in our private edition motivate the players to obey the rules so that they actually want to obey them, because they'd be the only ones who'd suffer if they didn't obey the rules. On the other hand, the rule list will be as simple and short as possible. I believe that no-one, especially newbies, like to read rule list that is 10 A4 pages long... In addition, our private edition will use rank-based whitelisting, which means that you earn access to better stuff by obeying the rules and not being pain-in-the-arse to other players. It's very effective way to keep the game enjoyable for everyone, but also to detect cheaters and glitchers: both players and admins learn the names of high-rank players very quickly, and if you see a new player on the server with high-end equipment, it's very likely that something is wrong. That way you can target the resources of admins where they are needed and make them a lot more effective.

When we take into account also the Steam-exclusivity of Arma 3, which pretty much kills the unwanted black market of stolen and generated CD keys, the global bans and server bans are actually effective. If you get banned and want to get back in MP, the cost of new key will be €45 instead of €1-2. In addition, thanks to the effectiveness of punishments in A3, the deterrence is now remarkable factor in enhancing the quality of gameplay in MP unlike in A2.

There are also other measures that help us to keep the server(s) clean, but they are WIP so I'm not willing to talk about them more until we have finished them. And part of protection is also not telling everything, of course – like Sun Tzu said, "know your enemy"... ;)

PS. My personal tip to every server admin out there; this is your best tool against griefers and cheaters:

:D

[kilroy the nerd 14]

Note taken...

Still, there are plenty of trolls it seems who will disadvantage themselves just to have a laugh angering someone. Good to hear, all the same, that there's going to be plenty of motivation for RP.

[Ezcoo 47]

Yeah, RP servers tend to gather these intentional trolls for some reason. However, I believe that they'll be a minor problem unlike before. It's hard to troll if you have to spend some time on the server to get your hands on better equipment. The vehicle deathmatchers shouldn't be a big problem either.

In general, we're motivating people to roleplay and cooperate with each other in many ways, especially on cop side. Especially cop side is purely for players who enjoy the teamplay itself, people who like to play as lone wolfs can select civilian side.

[Ezcoo 47]

Here's some news that you might have been looking forward:

We will release the Alpha version of Daylight RP platform within a few days. It contains many core functions (the under-the-hood stuff), and it's unfinished. If the users of platform wish, we accept 1-2 teams to our "support" program, where we would help them a little if they faced problems during using the platform and building a game on it. However, don't expect us to build the game for you – it's you who do the job, we just would assist you a little bit if you needed help.

To get help from us, we require a few things: your team should have at least 3 people, and especially the scripters of team should have somewhat advanced knowledge and some experience of scripting in Arma. The help that teams would get would be related to the platform itself, not ie. scripting in general.

It's very likely that our private version will be cancelled because despite of some attempts to recruit more people to our team, we're still 3-man team unfortunately. We simply don't have enough time to continue working on our private version anymore without any help because we're becoming more and more busy in real life, and developing RP mission and mod is full time job in practice.

[kilroy the nerd 14]

Are you releasing the mission like how Benny's doing it where you have to join the base server, or normally through Armaholic or steam workshop?

[Ezcoo 47]

I asked it from qbt and he answered that he will explain it tomorrow. And regarding to the release itself, qbt is still preparing it (eg. writing some documentation etc.). ETA for the release is a couple of days atm, but don't take it as promise - qbt has super lot work to do IRL now, he will finish and release it when he has time.

[Ezcoo 47]

The time has come. After long darkness, there's finally Daylight! :dance1:

INTRODUCTION

• The released version is Daylight RP Platform Alpha, which means that it's unfinished. It's probably the first and the last release by us, because we simply haven't got enough time to develop it anymore.
  
• Daylight RP Platform Alpha really is a platform, not a complete mission. It means that it offers a great deal of under-the-hood functionality and a basic platform architechture, which makes it much, much easier to develop a proper RP mission on it. However, please note that the release really is an Alpha version, so there are areas that the platform doesn't cover and areas where the functionality isn't fully finished. Despite of that, it still renders the development process much easier because a large part of the overwhelmingly most workful, boring and difficult phase of RP development process – the development of platform architechture and under-the-hood functionality – has been covered.

We'd like to share some tips that we learned during the development process:

• Keep things simple. Really. If you create too complex things, the problems will escalate at some point. For example, avoid high number of dependencies to prevent errors and issues from spreading.
  
• Be open-minded on everything new and keep learning from others. Know that you don't know, like everyone else. Appreciate and consider their ideas and standpoints, use them to learn yourself. You should be proud of your work, of course, but don't let it to go to your head. You stop becoming better at the very moment when you stop listening to and learning from others. Complamency kills your progress.
  
• Be aware that developing and hosting a RP mission is much, much harder than what it seems to be. It requires eg. the ability to perceive and design abstract entities and the ability to perceive and handle large architechture and dependencies in both concrete level (scripts) and in abstract level (gameplay design). For example proper balancing with interesting and dynamic gameplay requires even hundreds of hours of development and thousands and again thousands calculations. On the other hand, hosting a RP mission/mod is a lifestyle to the community leaders and administrators – it requires 24/7 support from the community leaders and the majority of the free time of the administrators in practice. Life/RPG missions are tens of times harder to administrate than any other missions and mods in Arma, because the situations and the backgrounds/reasons to them can be overwhelmingly complex. For example, it's normal that 80-90% of the new admins disappear when they realize how hard work administrating a proper RP server is (happens in Arma and in RP mods in other games too).
  
• Use agile development method. This means that instead of planning a lot and then realizing large amount of plans, develop in little steps called iterations. Do a little change, test it, tweak, replace or remove the change if it doesn't work, and if it works, move to the next change. This is the best method by far because it allows you to see the effect of the changes instantly. Did it break or change something (dependencies)? How's the gameplay? With agile development method you can get answers to those questions immediately, and you're able to trace the sources of the possible issues very quickly, because you've added only few things – if you had added a lot of things, you would have to spend long time to find the causes of possible issues and errors and fixing them. The faster you can do this, the faster the development and the better the quality is. See Marshmallow Challenge.
  
• Some links that we found useful (mostly related to design and project control):

• 
  

Gamedev.net

Iterative design (Wikipedia)

Design patterns (Wikipedia)

Anti-patterns (Wikipedia)

Gamasutra.com

If you have questions about Daylight RP you can contact us on Steam (please note that you have to be logged in Steam to see our profiles):

• qbt (http://steamcommunity.com/id/qbt/) (for scripting related inquiries)
  
• Ezcoo (http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198053533958/) (for mission design, balancing and project control related inquiries)
  

Note that we'd like to keep the private discussions as "think tank" -alike – keep general technical questions in this thread, so that you don't have to solve a problem that has been solved already by someone else and vice versa.

Please note that you have to accept the Daylight RP Platform Alpha license terms in order to download, use, edit and publish any projects derivated from Daylight RP Platform Alpha:

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) The aforementioned Creative Commons license is applied with the following exception:

• Private editions based on Daylight RP Platform Alpha don't have to be open source (they can be published, but it's not mandatory)
  
  

• Please note that the Creative Commons license terms conflict with Steam Workshop license terms – this means that you're not allowed to upload any derivative work based on Daylight RP Platform Alpha to Steam Workshop

Daylight RP Platform Alpha download link (make sure that you have read and accepted the license terms mentioned above before downloading, using, editing or publishing any derivative work based on Daylight RP Platform Alpha):

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[erazeri 1]

Was really waiting for hosting the private version :)

The amount of work you guys put into this is insane, let's hope it's not all for nothing :D

[Ezcoo 47]

We too were looking forward to finish the private version, but unfortunately we passed our internal deadlines and had to stop working on the private edition (and thus also on the final version of the public platform version). I agree that the amount of work put to this is insane, so it's kind of shame that people see "only this much" of our progress. The majority of stuff is still WIP and thus not added to the Platform Alpha release. But, it's just life, and it's time for other things now. :)

[lawlessbaron 1]

any ETA on release?

[Ezcoo 47]

Hi LawlessBaron,

the mission is not being developed anymore. The unfortunate delays in A3 release schedule with some fails that we did ourselves and the huge lack of development resources in general were the main reasons that lead to stopping development. We had, and still have, the passion and ambitious goal to create a new kind of RP that different kind of people from Arma hipsters to hardcore roleplayers would really enjoy. We just simply can't continue working on the mission at this moment because of lack of time and money.