We have had a lot of new insights and ideas since this was first made but it is a good place to learn what we had in mind in the first place. Note that somethings did not translate well to Wiki format. For example the key code commands.
(c) Copyright Britta Hüter and Douglas E Knapp (2007)
Our Basic plan is simple. Make a data about a cluster of stars, planets and moons. Then make a simple ship with just one crew member in a G pod that can go and look at them using jump, warp and Normal Drive and some sensors. Next make a bigger ship that has cargo space and crews quarters and G pods for each station. Next add networking so that you can have a full crew, one person for each station. From there add more ship types and more game details then add in beam down to the ground and fighting. Naturally this is a very rough outline.
Credit
Although I thought all this up by myself, I must say that Planeshift has done much what I had in my mind for 20 years but in a fantasy setting and with a more restrictive idea of what a Game master might need and do. I have borrowed heavily from their work to make parts of this document. Influences have come from reading all the Hugo and Nebula winners as well as from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and the Original Traveller game. Picture background made from a JPL-Hubble picture.
Table of Contents
What makes it good?
Story
Quests, Jobs and Missions
Plot Types
General Game Ideas
World Ideas
City Ideas
Object Ideas
Event Ideas
NPC (Non-Player-Character) and Non-Player-Corporation Ideas
Player Character (PC) Ideas
Communications
DNA and Alife
Developed Traits and Skills
Help
Programming Ideas
Rules of Polite Conduct
Interface Ideas
Hardware and System Requirements
Possible production Software and Open Source Game Platforms
Software Design
Making Money
The Team
Appendix
Terms and Definitions
Things To Do
Put team together
Write to money and team sources
Make MT valley into walkable map
Design valley city plan
Design Blender3D models for everything
Design gimp textures
Design sound
Design sound effects
Game design contest. Each person submits his design and a donation. The winner gets the pot.
What makes it unique?
It is hard science fiction.
It is photo real.
It has “Puppet technology” controlled toons or characters. You can make your character cry or laugh while walking and singing.
Player get “charisma or good play votes” that they can give to other players. At the end of the month the top 10% of the players get some sort of bonus and also get political points that can be used to run for higher online offices in the game. This will encourage players to help each other and to form strong groups. Leadership and niceness has its rewards.
It has a full Gaia ecosystem with DNA and NPC reproduce and have sex and other bodily functions.
Everything has to eat, drink, sleep, excrete and have the right environment for it to excel.
It has 5 races that are all interconnected. Each race has a very distinctive social rule system, style and city type and environment. Each one excels at some type of basic skill. Each race needs the other in some way.
Players can make things off line with blender3d or some other editor and add them to the world and are encouraged to do so! They can invent new weapons, make a house, clothing, or they can make a new kind of animal. They can sell these things in character to make money online or get big money or cool things from a NPC for the animals.
They can buy land outside the cities and make their own communities.
Making good NPC bots is rewarded as is making good player bots.
It has unlimited skill levels that are not restricted within a race.
High level player loose low level skill and thus need low level player to advance and produce things.
Skill levels are increased by getting a book that can be read and must be read to use skills, this teaches real world information and they give quests to help perfect skills.
It has Technology Levels that increase on a daily basis.
Players can vote and they can set up votes for any group or subgroup of characters.
It has a full economy with an exciting auction system.
Players can play ANYTHING in the world even a carnivorous tree if they like.
It has world physics so if you roll a rock into a house the house falls down.
It has scripting with AI that lets players play when they are not at the computer if they write a good script. Scripts have a private life and then are made public.
Client computers are used to run NPC in the background of their game playing.
Servers can be anywhere with the main server used only to coordinate all the others and to keep track of where things are.
What makes it good?
This document sets down the ideas I have for the perfect science fiction Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). I have written them so that you can shoot holes in them and help me to improve it. Please do! I am open to any idea or criticism. Please keep it constructive though, just telling me something is dumb without giving a better idea is useless. I am even open to bad ideas and am really open to "impossible to program ideas!" Please feel free to say what ever you want, nothing is set in stone.
If you see something that has been tried before and did very well or poorly please point out where you saw it, how it was implemented and why it was good or bad. How could it be better?
Please keep these questions in mind and then answer them after you read this. Feel free to correct or point out any mistakes of any kind.
What excites you?
What do you hate?
What bores you?
What do you love about MMORPGs?
How much control would you like of your character?
With body language?
With Fighting?
With sex?
How do you feel about sex in game?
How do you feel about fighting in game?
What would you be happy to pay for?
What makes you never want to play a game?
What brings you back the second time?
What brings you back the second year?
How do you feel about product placement?
Monthly charges?
One time fees?
Donation?
Free areas with extra areas for extra pay, pay for better tools or skills?
Paying for cash in the game?
What has been missed?
What would you like to see?
How important is each thing to you?
What do you love about this game design?
What would you like to see?
What questions did I leave out?
Rules of Polite Conduct
Gentoo's code of conduct is a good starting point for our project.
Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends And Influence People is a second source of the type of behavior we would all like to exhibit and receive.
Story
I am Ubik. Before the universe was I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.
How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later by Philip K. Dick, 1978
The Three "Laws" Of Prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
Name: Traveler, Quest, Gaia, Future World, ??
Genre: Hard Science Fiction with a flavor in a Clarke, Niven, Asimov, Harry Harrison, Orson Scott Card and Pournelle style. Also inspiration comes from Planeshift, Traveler and AD&D. Faster than light travel is real but not for the people of Earth, yet. I prefer the well lit look to the dark Doom like look. This is not to say that some places can't have a dark look.
Setting: Many aliens live on Earth but if they are PC they can not leave due to embargo with the low tech Earth. Four main races vie for power over the Earth with the humans in the middle of it all. Each race has subordinate races under them.
Many buildings in the city limit will be made with Green building designs and use Geothermal heating and Solar Electric or whatever. The stream will be saved as park and will have a buffer zone around it to save its natural beauty. All buildings should be blended into nature as much as possible. Straight lines are to be avoided except were our Feng-Shui consultant Britta Hüter states otherwise. She can be contacted by her website in English or German.
History or A framework of future history: One race found the Earth and it's people as they explored the galaxy for new hyperspace routes. These routes are always changing due to interstellar drift in relation to each other. The Sol system was found to be a short cut in a high volume interstellar trade route area. The Earth would have controlled this but they were not up to the task yet. On finding the Earth weak, the aliens called the Leonapeds decided to take over in secret from the other aliens to increase their profits but were caught. Before they were caught they seeded the Earth with many animals that they liked to hunt. They also placed plants that would give the humans a hard time and also ones that they found pleasing as well as the play the animals needed to survive. All animals where genetically modified to live on the Earth.
The illegal takeover was stopped by a sort of Intergalactic NATO. Earth is now under its protection with only a small island of alien trade and interaction with very tight boarders so that nothing goes out or in without permission. The Leonaped's other three main competitors also made cities in the Earth/Alien trade area.
The other three aliens are the Water aliens, the Earth Aliens and the Wood aliens.
A Why, for each alien.
A Why, for what is happening and what the players must do.
Maybe we could get Niven or Pournelle to write a background short story for us?
Future: This is the place that the background story is unfolding to around the players. This is what the players get caught up in.
Races: human, and aliens are playable along with animals and plants. Human populations are low due to the Alien vs Human war.
Politics: ?? Humans feel they should be allowed to leave the Earth and are collecting as much info and tech as they can but in secret from the I-NATO
Economy:
Strong from trading with the aliens and the arrival of new technologies. Underground economies do exist with high prices for illegal goods. Alien illegal goods are very highly priced but if PC are caught by Earthies then the consequences are minimal to encourage the use and understanding of aliens technologies and supplies.
There are five main races including the humans that fight politically for power on the Earth. They fight anyway they like up to and including war. War is mostly avoided but small raiding parties are common in areas of isolation.
These four alien races are not the strongest or most technologically advanced races in the galaxy but they are the ones that are stronger than Earth but still feel that the Earth has things to offer them.
Each race has a race that it mothers, a race that it is a son to, a race that it tries to control and a race that tries to control it. This is a five element design for the flow of energy in a system or it can be looked at as a positive and a negative feed back system linked between five things.
Kids get taught, parent teach, workers get jobs and money, bosses get the labor and control.
Everything comes from somewhere and goes to somewhere:
cash and goods and experience can come from NPC.
PC can made goods or mine gold or kill monsters for income.
Money goes out as players quiting or not being online.
Money in the bank. Money out of the game as GPG ZIP files of things
spending money for new goods to NPC
Time or use wearing things out.
Things being devalued with time or low tech level or to many of them (flooding the markets)
Hard work makes things of value and so does rarity.
Voting
Number of questions on balled
Types
Yes/No (binary)
ABCD click vote.
fill in the blank.
Groupings
World
Race
Guild
Group
Buddy
Given Coin (Only characters with the coin can vote)
Limit
Time and Date
Number of votes
Quests, Jobs and Missions
For a quest to be good the player must risk something that they value; self, money, possessions, friends, disease or position in a group.
Timed quests add tension as do competitive quest to the game.
Get a cure for your disease before you die and in the mean time your stats go down lower and lower . . .
Capture the flag before someone else.
Save a friend from a disease. They are quickly dieing from something.
You must survive being hunted for 24 hours by an alien. Die or get the money.
Fetch Object: Get six dead rats, 1 k gold ore, dead person, prisoner, information about a person or what ones is saying. Catch animal or pick plant.
Deliver Object: Give person thing or information. Take thing to place.
Protect a person on a trip or guard a place.
Join guild and get information or object.
Design new thing. Clothing, weapon, art, if sells then you get lots of cash.
Pick up trash on the street. Maybe find something cool.
Hurt or rob someone.
Tend something. Sheep, garden, machine.
Run store.
Advise or mentor someone for a period of time.
Recruit someone.
Sell something.
Convert someone.
Repetitive: task, mine gold or make iron bricks.
Gamble.
Bank, loan, invest.
Judge or argue a case.
Campaign, military or political or crime.
Make one group fight a second group.
Form a gang or a guild.
Plot Types
Attachment to object or person or place.
Love triangle.
Love quest or loss.
Save the world.
Break a moral or hold to one.
General Game Ideas
Looks photo-realistic hard science fiction MMORPG.
This is a sandbox style game with a huge map and a huge area to explore including space in future expansions. We are starting with 5 main cities and 5 main races. These five are symbiotic in space and are minor races there but on Earth they are in competition and are the main races.
Lighting is ray traced for reflections and shadows. What counts of course is not how it is done but that it looks good. (I think computer power will be up to this by the time we reach beta). ![[WWW]](http://wikispot.org/wiki/eggheadbeta/img/sycamore-www.png){kind=small}
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=334
This game is fun and educational. Players should become educated by playing in a painless fashion.
Contrast makes a game good. If it looks all the same all the time it is boring!
Something new each time you play. Challenges that you can accomplish in a short time but joined together make a dig mission or adventure story.
No two players have the same adventure or the same missions or the same skill sets.
Avoid reinventing the wheel, use open source and learn from others successes and failures.
World Ideas
The sun and the moon move in a natural way.
Shadows are cast and change with the movement of the sun.
The world clock runs at normal speed but the days are only 21:36 hours long thus each player has a chance to play at different times of day no matter where they live on the true Earth. If they play at the same time everyday then each day they will start play 3:24 hours earlier than the day before.
Most stores and shops are open 24/7, but some are not to force awareness of the current time.
The system has a Darwinist and Earth System Science also known as Gaia Hypothesis like ecology with genetics and reproduction.
Plants grow better in places that are good for them. Plants need the right light, water, soil and temperatures to grow well.
Weather can be taken from the national weather servers like it is in the game Flight Gear and then modified to make it a little more exciting.
Grounds will appear to be continuous. No breaks for down loading, no indoor vs outdoor no hallways connecting outdoor places etc. Should be like real life. Use Flight Gear as an example of this.
Scenery is interactive. You can shoot a whole in a door or dig a pit in the earth.
The center of the game has a sky calender building that can be read based on the shadows and light beams from the sky and star and moon light and positions at night.
We start with just one city and some wild areas around it and then expand to a new city and the land between the two and then ever outward. As soon as the new city is added all new players will start in the new city to keep players home bases spread evenly around the planet.
Perhaps players start locations could be by language spoken? All German speakers in the same mass bunking area. Later they can move out to wherever they want.
Hard Science Fiction rules. Try to keep it real but not at the expense of game play.
Faster than light travel (FTL) and communications works.
FTL uses huge amounts of Energy. E=M*D²*C² where E=energy, M=mass of ship in metric tons, D=distance in light years and C=speed of light. This means that you need huge amounts of energy to make a jump. This energy is only available in stars. The ships to not burn up because they are sucking the energy up to make the jump. Jumps may only land in a hard vacuum. Trip time is from the worlds surface to the sun and then down from the space above the destination planet.
Due to the unseen sub-universal properties some stars need a lower energy expenditure per trip than others. This saves great expense per jump and time. This jump sweet spot is hard to detect and find.
FTL drives energy absorbers render all beam weapons ineffective.??
Nice looking world. Use the Public data about the Earth and then flood it.
Technology Levels are an important concept. A person from 2020 NY city could not survive in a primitive tribe nor the other way around. Skills are Tech level dependent.
There is a system of zoning. Zones dictate what styles of building can be build in an area and what type and function. It also dictates the level of censorship.
Zones will be rated using the USA film system of rating but applied to 4 categories: sex, violence, drugs, and aberrant behavior. Players breaking these rules will be subject to sharp discipline. See here for rating information: http://www.mpaa.org/FlmRat_Ratings.asp
Players can set the level that they find excitable for them and will be flashed a warning if they enter an area above what they have set. Kids will be excluded from entering prohibited areas without signed permission from a parent or guardian.
Communications will be filtered for content based on the censorship settings.
Each person uses 5 units. one of each cities stuff. This can vary but is always something from each. in a 5E way
Five Elemental City Ideas.
Each city is connected to Earth City (Humans) by a subway or a bullet train. Putting the humans in the middle of things.
Earth City for Humans
Metal City dry for crayfish like aliens.
Water City for octopus like aliens
Wood City
Fire City
Object Ideas
Objects can be taken out of the game and saved in an email account and then put back in the game without the players being able to change or duplicate them.
All objects should be movable and interactive. If there is a shelfs in a room with books then the books can be taken off and the shelfs moved if the player has way.
Players should be able to drive cars, ride horse, elephants, bike, fly with planes and use carts etc.
Perfect armor can be worn for free but it records what happens around you and slows you down and limits what you can do including with fighting.
Event Ideas
An event can effect an object or class of objects or a set or subset of objects or an area on the map.
They have a trigger e.g. time of day or proximity of a certain player or type of player.
They have a duration, e.g. rain lasts for 1 hour and explosion lasts for a few milliseconds and a comet lasts for days.
They have an effect they change something about something. Could be rain, an explosion or a fall trap.
They may repeat, each day or minute or at random or always as in the case of a fall trap.
Auction
The auction is open to all players and viewable by all but under aged or filtered auctions private auctions.
The item and its description are posted along with it's picture. Then bidding starts. Each bidder is visible as ranked by bid list. The PC can increase his bid by clicking it up. The auction ends with a time limit plus or minus one minute. This plus or minuses is to increase excitement and to stop poaching.
NPC (Non-Player-Character) and Non-Player-Corporation Ideas
Dream Followers: They have missions that they are on and they follow them and get others involved on the way and talk about it.
Alien should look like they did not come from the Earth not cute like humans with cute ears and fur. Aliens look like they evolved on their different home planets. They fit their home niches.
NPC are impossible to tell from players. They have good Turing test scores :-)
NPC can be run by trusted players.
Damage should be as real as possible. A gun shot wound will damage the nerves, blood, flesh and organs differently depending on where it hits and what kind of bulled it is.
Damage recovery depends on treatment and constitution of the character.
Plants are NPCs and can reproduce and grow better in some places than others. They have homes and don't just pop up out of thin air.
NPCs are controlled from client servers outside the main server just like players are.
NPCs live lives. They get up, go to work and come home. They use scripted routines and AI to accomplish this.
You can stop an NPC on the way to work and ask him a question.
Opinions of leaders effect others especially subordinates.
Everyone can be a GM.
Trusted Players can play question answerer roles. The question would pop up with info about the NPC asked and the player asking and then the player would answer and chat with the player giving a very real feel to the game and blurring the edges between NPC and PC.
"Monsters" are born they don't just pop out of thin air.
PC must enter and exit the game in a way that does not look like crazy. Or maybe they fall over sick when their soul (player) leaves unexpectedly and are picked up by the hospital staff? Or an AI takes over and walks them home and then starts them on their scripted daily routine or just checks them into the closed hotel for a long sleep. A clean exit should be the player finding a room for a nap or the night or entering some sort or scripted and repeatable routine.
Players that do not return after some time, say a 30 days unless some provisions are made like for a long trip or something, die and are burned at the morgue and are thus gone from the game forever with all data deleted and all possessions actioned off.
A closed economic system with a central computer run bank for loans and storage of expensive stuff.
There is a bank system, hospital, police, government, dole, job, stores and judge system in place that is computer run.
Everything must eat, drink, pee, shit, sleep, reproduce, get sick.
What you eat counts, you must have a balanced and wholesome diet for best health. This teaches good nutrition to players.
Everything has emotions, needs and memory.
Player Character (PC) Ideas
Promote role playing and acting!!
Death: Death is permanent! Why? Easy, because what makes a game fun is risk. If you can fight a monster and you KNOW that you will not really die then you are risking nothing and fighting Godzilla in the nude with a knife is an OK thing for you to do. Who knows, you might get lucky, win and then level up! Death needs meaning and to get this in needs to mean the end of your character!
This leads to the other question: you have been playing this character for a year and some idiot blows up the spaceships you were on. Thus through no fault of your own your years worth of work is lost. This makes the game unfair, and discouraging. Games are played to have fun and this could ruin your whole week or more.
I suggest that at this point the player gets to make a new character. It will not be the same character but some of th e time and skills that a year of playing have given a player will be retained. Maybe you become your son or something like that and get points to build a new character that are proportional to your old character. Maybe you loose a quarter of your skills or something like that.
There is a small window so that you can hear what is said behind you. It only shows text and the name of the speaker. The text fades with distance.
Each animal and race has input: hear, smell, see, feel etc. These have varying ranges of sensitivity and accuracy.
Basic classes of characters are: Ranged, light and fast, tank, healer, carrier, special function, crafter, harvesters, tenders and political.
Basic races are: Metal, Fire, Earth, Wood, Water. Each head race has it's own city. Each race then has sub aliens that are yin and yang and then each of those is further divided into the 8 and then 64 types of the I Ching.
Metal aliens like cold, fire like it high and dry, metal like hot and dry, water like it wet and cold, Earth are balanced and don't like extremes, wood like it windy and steep but also love to impose order.
Make the game hot, easy and exciting for new players. Give them a class to pick and then a job to go with it. This makes it easy for new players but once they learn a bit they will see that they can learn any skill that they want. Older players may also learn basic skills in other areas but remember that you forget what you don't use.
Player start with no money this stops players from making lots of new characters and give all their money and things to one character to get a character that is rich.
Nothing should be random about character design and a player should be able to make the character as they see fit. They must make the character with an eye to acting the part.
Perhaps Character generation could be part of the game. Training and schooling in some sort of hyper fast time. Or maybe they could pick what schooling they had and where they came from. Each player starts just out of school. Kids would not have many skills (not like they can understand complex interactions anyway).
There is a written history and background to the game that the players should read before making their character. There is also written material on how to act and role play. The character design system will give many extra points to spend on your character for answering some questions from the written history and help thus promoting the reading of this material.
Out of character communications will be enclosed in brackets.
After weeks of play players should be able to make radical changes to their characters but will then have to rename them. It is dumb to have to play with a badly made character that you made on your first day just because you don't want to loose the month of character development time you invested in him. You should be able to take that play experience and invest it in a new character. You may not take this experience from a jailed or hospitalized character.
Due to great medical technology characters are never killed IE look at the move Fifth Element. However Characters that are badly shot up will spend at least a week in recovery and will then have impaired strength and endurance for some days or hours of on-line time.
Investment in current standing. Hard to get to but not boring to accomplish. A long walk is good to get to a needed goal but not if the walk is boring and repetitive.
Skills are real. If you get skill at making a knife then you know what kind of metal is needed in real life and at what temperature you work it etc. You learn real world skills or information.
The system should be classless but it does have races and races do have areas of expertise.
Skills are earned after hard work that is not boring.
Game goals exist for everyone from 6 year olds to sex crazed adults and murderous teenage boys.
Easy to tell each player apart from all the other players at a glance. Maybe crazy hats that can be seen at a distance and have meaning about skills or vocation.
Players can play anything alive in the system even trees if they want.
Players can design anything in the game. IE clothing or buildings or weapons.
Players are not all the same and are drawn into cliques to survive. You need each other and don't want to change groups to often. Guilds are encouraged with knowledge coming from senior players.
After long term play a player can take his character and trade him in for a new one without loosing all the built up experience. Maybe his skill levels could be change to education credits. These credits do not give skill but increase the speed at which new skills are learned. Skills that are common to both PCs are transferred straight across. The new PC will have a new first name but will keep the last name of the first PC.
PC vs PC killing is discouraged but possible. Jail time is bad and makes players not want to get caught. Player killers are not common. Anyone that kills in a peaceful area will have cops after him and will pay a large price for it. Players that like to kill and hunt can get missions to hunt down killers.
You can Ghost the word to learn what is up with your character when the character is non-functional, IE hurt.
At the start of a new PC the PC will be given cash and a room and a job: For example a job of finding street litter for pay. Sometimes the trash has valuable info to get the player off onto a quest of some sort. Or the player will start in a big dorm of beds and on the dole with a mission to get a job.
Players are encouraged to leave their computers on with their PC botting around at his work and sleeping and the like. The background computer time can also be used by the central server to run NPCs.
Body language should be expressible easily. IE smiling, crossing arms, giving the finger.
XXX rated behavior is OK in some areas. Player caught by other players doing really crazy stuff or illegal will be kicked out and then banned. 3 strikes you are out rule.
Public Nudity is OK is designated areas. Players will have some sort of mark to tell what censorship level is to be used with them. IE a necklace or something.
There will be a computer controlled hospital and jail. If you are in there you serve the time. In the mean time players can play animals or other NPCs or a second character of there own. PCs played by real people must be played in character of you loose the privilege to play them.
Violence should not be the key to the game but should be usable. IE a banker can not get his loan back without the option to break a players leg or take his house. Players could choose to be a hit-man, soldier hunter.
Violence is a crime. Crimes must be reported to be acted upon. In "G" rated areas any crime maybe seen by NPC and reported on.
The community can make or break a game. A good community will welcome players old and new and keep them coming back, and often keep them subscribed long after the game has become old. A horrid community will send players running to their account menu to cancel. The our community will be very friendly and welcoming. New players to the game will not have a problem getting help with their questions, and will likely not find it hard to find someone to mentor and group with them, or perhaps escort them to their location if they are lost. Players who have been around awhile will have made many friends who they will continue to play with for years to come. The design should make new players needed by old players and make new players need the old players too.
New players PC will look young and old players will look older or have outfits that show their experience and position and class.
Skill levels should come as much as possible from real knowledge and real skills not just enhanced probabilities of completing tasks.
Having to be grouped with someone to kill what they are killing is dumb. Only getting points for the final kill is dumb also!! If you spend all day doing something without completing it that does not mean you learned nothing. In a fight the person who learns the most is often the looser.
Communications
Long rang and time delayed communications will be just like using a cell phone.
Can VOI be used to let players talk with each other?
Players can receive messages while off-line.
All chats are saved on client computer.
Short rang will be with a floating balloon over the character. With distance the balloon becomes transparent. If the character is hard of hearing then this happens faster. If the player is using a spying device then it happens slower. If you are in front of the character then you hear them easier. The players can pick the volume of speech thus limiting who can hear them and at what distance.
Use cell phone to call for help. E.g. dial 911 to get help if shot. Have other numbers for other stuff.
DNA and Alife
These are the traits that are DNA and not learned or earned. You get a set number of points to spend on these traits.
Race: human, cat, crawdad, bird, reptile, cute kid characters that are short, rebel teenage characters, cave, night, air water, hot, cold, day, night, wet, dry, other atmospheres, other gravities.
Surface pattern and color. IE Skin or hair.
Sex: male, female, both, none, changeable
Age
Height
Strength
Psychic abilities
Observation accuracy and acuity
Cardiovascular fitness
Reflex speed
Endurance
Weight
Looks: sexy to ugly.
I think that; will, intelligence, charisma, education and cleverness can not be well acted with out having it. Can you act smarter than you are if you have a low IQ and your character has a high IQ? Can you act like a PhD of physics if you are a high school kid? Can you act 60 when you are 12 years old? On the other hand they are important for NPC.
Developed Traits and Skills
Skill sets are open ended and expandable.
Skills are Tech Level dependent with higher technologies being rapidly harder to use but lower technologies being usable for a greater range of TL but at some point they are to far from the PC technologies Level for him to use with skill. I.g a 2007 solder can shout a missile and hit his target but may have a very hard time with a catapult or working the main weapon on a space ship.
Skills fade with non-usage but can come back to 90% in about 1/3 the time of first getting it. With longer times the percent of recovery goes down and the time needed increases.
To get advanced skills you need 2 or more lower skills. Thus after many skill advancements you can no longer use your first skills so well but need them to do your job so you hire lower ranked PC to do the work for you! This makes for a more social game, gives newbies a place and makes older players need newer players and want to help them advance for them.
Skills do not have levels but are continuous they are represented by floating point numbers. No one is equal.
Building your one skill helps others to some degree. E.g. If you learn metallurgy then in the process you strength increases. If you run from place to place for weeks then you endurance increases.
Strength = Current Level of conditioning + skill at using your muscles + base. Skill is increased by learning from a higher level player or by reading a book or taking a class. DNA dictates max Strength and rate of increase and decrease. Two people with the same strength may not be able to preform at the same level do to training. DNA will have a set point that you tend towards. Some people are naturally bulky and strong others are thin and fast.
Help
All players should be able to get the help they need at any time. In game or out.
Game design should be so good that players never need to ask how to do something. (yes, I know good goal but how?)
There is a trade off between ease of play and complexity and precision of control. We want it easy but not at the cost of self expression.
Programming Ideas
Programmers must pay close attention to the learning curve of the game!! All failures must be perceived to the player as preventable and forward progression should be seen as easily attainable and the work to get there should be fun! Goals and results of goals and results of future goals if attained should be easily perceived.
Botting is highly encouraged and a system of scripting and open source modification of client software is also encouraged. All scripts are public after a short in game copyright runs out. This will encourage innovation with a profit for great ideas but after that the idea will be open to all players. Maybe the scripting would be based on Python and Prolog together somehow?
There should be a system to track world and and other statistics so that game masters and developers can see what is happening in general in the world.
All PC should be tracked and their paths of travel marked when they are not botting or scripting. This can be used as a source of paths for NPC to use when they need to get some where. Just find closed path that goes to both ends and then find the shortest or best one to use.
Interface Ideas
The root language of the game is English. All other languages should be supported but inter PC communications is in English. A Babel fish should be provided to help Non-English speakers use English. Perhaps the player could type in his native language and just under that it would come out in English. He could then edit the under box as he sees fit and then transmit.
Transparent GUI: The GUI should be as transparent as possible (figuratively and literally). Play should be easy but accurate. You should be able to control what part of an NPC your player grabs or shoots or strokes. You should be able to walk or run at different speeds. You should be able to break or set or softly set down an object in an exact spot. You should be able to dance and use body language.
The GUI should be simple to use for a first time player but after time you can do very complicated things with it in an intuitive way.
Maybe you could type 1,2,3 or 4 numbers for each action and use the mouse to point to the location of the results. e.g. 1 means right hand next number is 1 to set down then next number is the speed and the mouse in the left hand points to where to set it.
My current idea is to use the mouse in the left hand to point to what you want to interact with and the mouse buttons to pick what part of the body to use for interaction. The 10 key would be used in the right hand to type a set of numbers that would flow down a tree to end at a function entering choices that would dictate the different styles, types, amounts and strengths of the action.
When the animation team finds it to hard to do then we just print it out to screen as a tell. E.g Player stands up and takes a bow with his thumb up his noise.
Three examples:
1 would be walk, 3 would be in a sneaky way and then a 5 would be the speed of walking. The mouse would have been used to pick what direction to walk in. Pressing left click would start the action, releasing the mouse button would stop the action.
5 would be fight and 2 would be a certain stance, 7 would be the kick and 2 would be the type of kick and then 6 would be the power to use. In the mean time the mouse would have picked the foot and and a target on the other character.
2 would be face, 3 would be smile and 9 would be a really big smile. The mouse would be clicked on a character that you would smile at.
Mouse 10 Key Interface
1.Fight
1.Attack
2.Defend
3.Draw/Sheath
4.Hide
2.Inspect/Look
1.look at wall
3.Move
1.Belly Crawl
2.Crawl hands and knees
3.Sneak
4.Run
5.Sprint
6.Jump
1.high
2.broad
3.hand catch
4.Dive
5.Dive with roll at end.
6.Cartwheel
7.hand spring
8.flip
7.Swim
1.Breast
2.Crawl
3.Backstroke
4.Side Stoke
1.Right
2.Left
5.Tread Water
6.Dive Under
7.
8.Fly
9.Duck Walk
10.Sideways walk
4.Posture
1.Sit
1.In Chair
2.Lotus
3.Half Lotus
4.Sword Draw sitting.
5.Cross legged
6.Kneeling top of foot on ground.
7.Kneeling top of foot on ground lower legs outside upper legs.
8.Outdoor Kneeling toes on ground like ready to get up.
9.Feet Out
1.Legs together
2.Legs apart
1.Number 0-9
2.Squat
1.Feet Flat
2.On Toes
3.Stand
1.Natural
2.Stiff
3.Military relaxed
4.Military attention
5.Attack
6.Receive
7.Defend
8.Lean on something or someone
4.Lie
1.Side
1.Right
2.Left
2.Fetal
1.Right
2.Left
3.Back
4.Stomach
5.Lean
5.Action
1.Urinate aim with mouse for males.
2.Defecate
3.Speak (mouse click on person to talk to)
1.Roar
2.Shout
3.Yell
4.Bellow
5.Sing
6.Call
7.Speak
8.Talk quietly
9.Mutter
10.Whisper
4.Breath/Hold
5.Dance
6.Body Language Move
7.Sniff
8.Pause/Wait
9.Insert action into other action. E.g. Running. . . Wave . . . .Running
6.Interaction
1.Ride/Drive
2.Smoke
3.Drink
4.Eat
5.Put into
6.Dress/undress - put on/take off
7.Inspect Thing/ Look At Thing
8.Smell Thing
9.Insert into (key into lock)
7.Interpersonal
1.Sex
2.Kiss
8.System
1.Help
2.Petition GM
3.Volunteer for making the game better
4.Bug report
5.Options and Adjustments
6.Run Script
7.Bot as in Robot your character
8.Quit Game
9.Change Character
9.User Defined Keys and scrips 0-9
Directions idea in Degrees
1.0
2.23
3.45
4.90
5.135
6.180
7.225
8.270
9.315
10.338
Settings Idea
1.0=off
2.1=on
3.2=Lock or auto
Hardware and System Requirements
I run Kubuntu Linux with OpenGL on a AMD64 X2 3800 with an Nvidia Gforce 7600, 2gig ram. This should be taken as a minimum because by beta it will be low end.
Something fast and good with graphics. OpenGL, Linux, MS and Apple in that order of importance with acknowledgment of the number of Windows systems out there. We want to make it so most can play but not at the sacrifice of a good looking and playing game.
Internet connection should be something faster than a modem but if a modem works then good.
Possible production Software and Open Source Game Platforms
OpenOffice is being used for all communications and office works. You can get it for Linux and Windows for free.
C and C++
Python Wikipedia
Prolog Wikipedia perhaps implemented as a library in Python or C. It lends great strength to AI and language processing. Do you have better ideas?
Blender3d Free for Linux and Windows.
Blender3d game engine (looks like it is not ready to me.)
Gimp Free for Linux and Windows. Photoshop is a good substitute.
PostgreSQL data base
Panda3d
Better ideas?
Software Design
Server: Coordinates world and Clients.
Clients: Players, NPC and Ecology.
Do you need to calculate the shadows as they change or can you just to morning, noon and night and then morph the shadows?
Making Money
The one of the largest and most popular MMORPG has a very large number of people on it. According to Wikipedia, “on March 7, 2007, Blizzard announced that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft had reached a new milestone, with 8.5 million players worldwide; there are more than 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million players in Europe, and 3.5 million players in China.” This is a huge target audience for product placement and advertising.
Planeshift took 15 developers 5 years to get to where they are.
WOW took 300 Developers 4 years to make.
NWN took 210 developers 3 years to make.
Cost of the competition
Box Set cost $19.99
Will there be a monthly fee to play the game?
Yes. After the end of the free month included with the game, you will need a subscription in order to continue playing the game. You have three options, as you will see when you create your account: a month-to-month package at $14.99 per month, a three-month plan at $13.99 per month, or a six-month plan at $12.99 per month. Please be aware that the subscription fees for three-month plan and the six-month plan must be paid in full.
Or in other words $155.88 year plus the one free month for $19.99.
Why isn't World of Warcraft free?
World of Warcraft will require a fee to play. This fee will be used to support the costs associated with the high-quality levels of service, support, and ongoing content creation that we are planning for World of Warcraft.
Target audience will most likely be similar to SF magazines and movies. These numbers for this magazine are most likely in my opinion reflections of our hardcore users. On the other hand I feel that the real numbers might reflect a younger and broader group. I for one have read every Hugo and Nebula winning SF book and watched most of the SF movies released in the last 40 years but have never subscribed to a SF magazine. I think that this would be true for most of our users. It is important to note that the average reader of this group is about 36 years old, male, making $40,000 a year but could make much more, with 4 years of university study, owns a VCR and is very likely to use an on-line service.
READER PROFILE
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Sex
Male
Female
61%
39%
Age
18-25
26-45
46-55
56+
7%
52%
23%
18%
Education
Some college
College grad
Some post college
Post-graduate degree
27%
66%
15%
28%
Annual Household Income
$26 - 50,000
$51 - 75,000
$76 - 100,000
$100,000+
35%
24%
14%
12%
Average number of books purchased per year
Hardcover
Paperback
14
24
Average $ spent per year on other products
Video games
VCR tapes
Movie tickets
Audio tapes
Collectibles
$136.00
$105.00
$63.00
$115.00
$193.00
Owns personal computer 75%
Uses on-line services 65% (of those who own computers)
Owns VCR 94%
Keeps back issues longer than one year 71%
Readers per copy 1.7
Average paid circulation 12 months ending 9/30/2005: 26,600
We are a "Green" company. We promote good sustainable living an a healthy community. We are not anti-technology. A great new photovoltaic cell is a great thing to us but smog, deforestation and over population is not.
This software is educational and fun. Users will learn about sustainable living, good diet, ecology, biology, exercise and responsibilities to nature management and fellow mankind.
This project is open source and will give back to the community of programmers that made this project possible.
We will take all donations and encourage them to allow us to keep expanding what we contribute to the open source community.
Finding sponsors and advertising is great provided we do lot loose integrity, self management or artistic control of the project.
We do not expect high profits until after we have a large user base in the post beta release stages of our first edition production. You never know though may be we will be one of the lucky ones and do well before that point!!
In game advertising is possible. Perhaps with product placement. E.g. The furniture could all come from Ikea and have their name on it and they would pay for this. Ads could be placed like in Google or the movies.
The graphics, music, rules and fiction of the game have a copyright that is owned by the director of the project. All materials submitted become the property of the director of the project. This insures that our work is not stolen and copied. Our world will remain unique and break-off groups will have to start from the ground up thus hopefully encouraging them to stay and work out the problems that they see.
A one time fee may be charged to give players a start-up cash fund. A monthly fee or a fee for more money may be implemented. The profits from this will go to paying for server time and to reward developers for great or hard work.
I feel that players should also be able to earn real cash for their hard work, contributions or good ideas. The idea here is not to get rich but to invest in the community and further our goals. If we can pay leaders to work full time and drop their day jobs then that is very good!! A nice living is wanted by all and should be given after they bills are payed.
One possible unexplored idea is to follow the Old World of Darkness genre and develop a second market with the same underlining game engine but new fiction and art work. The official company is rumored to have a MMORPG in the works.
The Team
(much of this section is straight from Planeshift, a great fantasy MMORP!)
The team is made of many people working together. All are valued from the person who gives us a new skin for a nice dress to the person that has worked with us for years. Please join our team. We have a system of mentoring and internship. Don't be fearful if you have no experience with helping and contributing to an open source project.
The GAME project is based on a team of talented developers spread around the world that collaborate to reach a common goal.
If you want to be part of our development team or just a contributor then email our recruiter with your qualification and interests and a resume if you have one and want and upper level position. Please include samples of your work if you have any.
Project Director:
Responsibilities:
-
Ensure project progress, build and expand organization, ensure coherency in all project areas, give guidelines to all leaders on operations.
2D Graphics Leader: Open.
Responsibilities:
-
Find/Evaluate new 2D artists and reference photographer (share photographer with 2d team if needed).
-
Concept Art, Web page look, coordination of all 2D graphics.
2D Members: Open
3D Graphics Leader: Open
Responsibilities:
-
Find/Evaluate new 3D artists and reference photographer (share photographer with 2d team if needed).
-
Coordination of all 3D models, 3D renderings, animations.
3D Members:
Background / Setting Leader: Open
Responsibilities:
-
Find/Evaluate new world builders.
-
Coordination of development of quests, legends, npcs, monsters, etc...
Background/Setting Members:
Rules Leader: Open
Responsibilities:
-
Find/Evaluate new rule contributors.
-
Create, test, debug all rules related to character creation, combat, magic, etc...
Rules Members:
Engine Leader - Client:
Responsibilities:
-
Find/Evaluate new programmers.
-
Coordination of client development, interface with server.
Engine Programmers:
Engine Leader - Server:
Responsibilities:
-
Find/Evaluate new programmers.
-
Coordination of server development, interface with client and db.
Server Programmers:
Documentation Leader: We are seeking a new one.
Responsibilities:
-
Find and evaluate new writers. Develop all manuals, FAQs and help.
Documentation Members:
Music / Sound Leader: We are seeking a new one.
Music Members:
Public Relation / Recruit Manager: We are seeking a new one.
Responsibilities:
-
Find new recruiters, recruit players and developers, bring net-surfers to the Web page, PR and marketing. Helping to assign new people to their mentor and leader.
For more details see http://www.planeshift.it/recruitment.html
Appendix
Terms and Definitions
AI: Artificial Intelligence
Alife: Artificial life
GM: Game Master
Hard Science Fiction: This is Fiction about the Future that NEVER breaks the rules of physics and science. Some fudging or fantasy of what could really be is OK for the sake of good game play but it should be avoided at all costs and have a really good pseudoscience explanation.
MMORPG: Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game
NPC: Non- Playing Character
PC: Player Character
SF: Science Fiction
VOI: Voice Over Internet
