Conspiracies Ghost War? A MMORPG?! Possible?

[Sled88 0]

Hi folks....

While working on Conspiracies: Substance and further patches on Conspiracies: Rising Dead, I ask myself a question...

Is it possible to create a kind of mmorpg of conspiracies in arma2 or better would there be some interessted people?

i think there are some issues:

1. you can also enter the game when you get on server and the game is already running... possible?

2. a server which runs 24h a day without costs to me... possible?

3. a huge scripting team because my knowledga of mp-scripts is not the best... anyone interessted?

4. converting the life-simulation system 1.0 to mp... possible? (parts can be seen in patch 1.10 for CRD)

5. saving the equipment when you leave the server and enter again... possible?

6. ca. 300 enemies by bots and ca 100 animals by bots... 64 players humans.. possible to handle?

7. possibility to accept missions for each character...

so my thoughts so far... enlight me!

Regards!

EDIT: My development-base would be CRD and new experiences of CS!

[Takko 10]

Do you guys remember Sahrani Life for Armed Assault or Chernarus Life?

This can be done now, and I think this would be awesome.

Driving around as civilian or stalker or cleaner would be cool.

a server which runs 24h a day without costs to me... possible?

I can help out with that if enough people are interested in this, since I have one.

5. saving the equipment when you leave the server and enter again... possible?

It is, look at the Sahrani Life scripts.

6. ca. 300 enemies by bots and ca 100 animals by bots... 64 players humans.. possible to handle?

It is but that would not be feasable. Remove bots completely and shrink the player limit to 42 and then it would

be running for everyone.

Also remember (very important!) don't build your world by yourself by the most part and keep the addon-limit rather low to avoid looong loading times and lag.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Takko

[Sled88 0]

I remember Sahrani Life yes... So that one with the server would be no prob so far? Sounds great so people c;mon help this great idea to get reality! Show interess and help me out with my probs and questions!

[Sled88 0]

we need some bots, traders and enemies... would be cool if i can get a script to create enemies only for an accepted mission and then delete them... so the bot counter keeps low... also some animals for the lifesimulating system are needed...

[PuFu 4600]

1. you can also enter the game when you get on server and the game is already running... possible?

Yes

2. a server which runs 24h a day without costs to me... possible?

Depends. Cost free servers are not available. If someone is willing to help out and make a server available to you then that's different

3. a huge scripting team because my knowledga of mp-scripts is not the best... anyone interessted?

some might be i guess. There is an ongoing talk about 24h mmo type game running continuously on dev-heaven g_wave.

4. converting the life-simulation system 1.0 to mp... possible? (parts can be seen in patch 1.10 for CRD)

not sure what you mean here. life simulation system 1.0?

5. saving the equipment when you leave the server and enter again... possible?

Yes

6. ca. 300 enemies by bots and ca 100 animals by bots... 64 players humans.. possible to handle?

Yes, although after certain time, the server will most likely take a dump, or at least the server FPS will go down due to strain and memory leaks.

7. possibility to accept missions for each character...

Yes

[Sled88 0]

You made my day pofu!

the Lifesimulating module was developed by me... but i think it is only sp able... its a script which is running continuously and forces the player to eat, sleep and find warm places (cuz it plays in winter)... so you need animals to eat, fires to wearm up, and beds to rest or sleep! also the sleeping script is shitty in MP... is skips the time for 4 hours... so not doable in mp....

[wiggum2 31]

First, i would say that this sounds huge...maybe too huge.

Remember, without really good missions, totally working scripts and new contant from time to time you maybe will not have many players interested in this.

So i would think twice before i would start this project.

I would say that the CRD style of gameplay works much better in SP.

we need some bots, traders and enemies... would be cool if i can get a script to create enemies only for an accepted mission and then delete them... so the bot counter keeps low... also some animals for the lifesimulating system are needed...

Thats a easy one.

You just have to spawn the units after the mission is accepted. And so you can delete them any time you want.

But spawning is not always the best solution and has to be done carefully.

[Sled88 0]

atm it is only a discussion... i will finish substance first before thinking of starting this huge thing...

[biggerdave 56]

5. saving the equipment when you leave the server and enter again... possible?

A more realistic idea for this (and certainly easier to script!) would be a passworded ammo locker. So when the player leaves the server, he can put his equipment in this box, then retrieve it when he returns. This would also mean players could transfer equipment to each other without them both being on the server at the same time.

6. ca. 300 enemies by bots and ca 100 animals by bots... 64 players humans.. possible to handle?

Largely depends on the processing power available to the server. I believe the engine can handle around 500 units at any time though.

7. possibility to accept missions for each character...

Should be possible, if the mission script is running seperately for each player, though it does kinda spoil the point of multiplayer if players aren't working together/against... might be better running the mission engine separately for 16 groups of 4 players. (Or for 8 groups, each composed of 2 competing teams)

we need some bots, traders and enemies... would be cool if i can get a script to create enemies only for an accepted mission and then delete them... so the bot counter keeps low... also some animals for the lifesimulating system are needed...

Traders can be spawned at the beginning of the mission and made invincible or respawn after so long. Bad buy bots could be organized into respawning groups, then called into action against the player when they're needed, that'd save resources and potential problems that would rise from spawning new bots on the fly. Recycling is fun! (Used to do this a lot in the farmland missions back in OFP, rather than trying to create a shitton of zombies for every encounter, then deleting them when they die, just move the corpses out of player view then bring them back to life with setdamage 0, I don't know if this still works in ArmA.2... might have to check... it doesn't :( )

Project definitely sounds interesting :)

Edited July 17, 2010 by BiggerDave

[welcome to hell 23]

6. ca. 300 enemies by bots and ca 100 animals by bots... 64 players humans.. possible to handle?

I would recommend 50 players. 200 AI total. Small island like Namalask.

1. you can also enter the game when you get on server and the game is already running... possible?

Yes. Although it would take a long time to sync up if you plan to have a lot of players and animals, it would also cause immense desync to players already on the server.

Server would eventually crash or take a dump because of ever increasing amount of scripts running in the back ground as the game progresses.

3. a huge scripting team because my knowledga of mp-scripts is not the best... anyone interessted?

I have limited client - server SQL knowledge and some ArmA 2 MP mission scripting knowledge, i would be willing to help.

5. saving the equipment when you leave the server and enter again... possible?

Yes.

"JayArma2Lib - Jaynus' ArmA2 Extended Library" supports logging to an external file, which i assume could be stored on the server, from which i assume mission could match player ID's and load personal data.

I would highly recommend SQL, where data such as player ID, location, equipment arrays e.t.c. could be stored in a database just like in a real MMO.

7. possibility to accept missions for each character...

Yes.

[Sled88 0]

thanks so far i will contact you at the weekend for some details! =)

[Sled88 0]

Do we have any other peoples who could and want to help?:)

[Sled88 0]

well since i have every project done so far i want to hear if here is still someone interrested in??? :)

[Nirow 10]

Its a really awesome idea, i cant wait for it.

[Dominges 10]

The PersistentDB (Just the right thing that Welcome To Hell was talking about) will suit perfectly for this purpose.

And also, dynamic spawn of AI for the win, with the caching scripts like CEP AI Caching

The correct usage of PersistendDB in JIP scripts will probably solve long catching-up and desync problems as well.

The key to 24/7 game is also control of everything. Like cleaning up dead bodies/dropped weapons and stuff that can "accumulate" until server gives up.

Edited September 6, 2011 by Dominges
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[Sled88 0]

So it seems that it becomes more and more real this project. Never thought it could be realized by the possibilities of this engine! :)

[SigintArmA 10]

My thing... is if the server is populated so much, on a tiny island, that people doing missions might encounter and somehow ruin others missions. Like if player 1 has a mission/task in town 'C' and player 5 is running nearby and sees the dynamic enemies appear there and player 5 runs into town 'C' to kill them all because... hell it's fun killing? But at the same time without really realizing it, he screws up the mission/task player 1 was doing.

The question would be, if such a problem were to arise with players accidentally (Or on purpose) screwing up another players gameplay?

The only thing I can think of, would be caching and some way that after 'X' time the units respawn (While corpses despawn) so that if such does happen, Player 1 still can complete his task. But I don't know the actual limitations of doing such a thing.

Though I would like to see some kind of focus for both team and solo players. IE Team players can have a chance of outwardly changing future updates with missions/factions/whole cities. But make it so the solo player isn't bluntly ignored and is unable to do much of anything.

Hopefully this didn't sound confusing ^^; Haha

[Sled88 0]

Well I know what you mean... but I think the server admin is the only thing that can provide such an incident

[DaveP 66]

Multi Session Operation with Stalker AI on the ambient spawners and a survival system. Problem solved?

All you need is enough horsepower in the server (lots of RAM especially) and robustly written configs/scripting for minimal errors/memory leaks (which will eventually kill the server, no matter how hard you try)

Edited September 6, 2011 by DaveP