[Mod Idea] Persistent RPG / Online RPG Mod/Map

from Elemental Forums

Not sure why the idea for this didn't occur to me sooner as it is my favourite type of mod and play style. It occurred to me this morning and has sort of grown in my mind since. At first I was wondering if it might take a post to the feature request/suggestions area just to see if it would be remotely feasible, but the more I ponder it, the more I think it could be done.

This post and thread isn't about any specific world or theme, it's more about the play or mod/map style of having a Persistent Online RPG sandbox.

At the most basic level, it could be done with an fairly minimal amount of actual coding. At the most basic level it would be possible to do with a large set of custom tiles placed on a hand crafted map to give the impression of wending dungeons or city scapes or whathaveyou as opposed to the more typical entire world/continent view.

I'm thinking I may have to do an illustration later to show precisely what I mean, but I'm thinking on a large or huge map size, you could fit a very large number of disparate areas and connect them rather nicely, having different adventure areas and perhaps a level/difficulty progression going across in one direction along the map, with perhaps some spikes in difficulty in terms of boss creatures at the end of 'dungeon' areas and the like.

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Getting more advanced, could:

Mod the sovereign so that the background classes selected actually become current classes, with differing skill sets and spells/abilities from the outset and as they progress.

Could script out the ability to create cities (since it is of course more a focus on the RPG rather than the TBS aspects), although may want to include static nodes or spots on the map that can be controlled by players if they're able to take control of them.

Would need a way to have encounters respawn, and even wander (within certain ranges), preferably also with some randomness to the spawn, and perhaps with loot tables to boot.

Heroes/Champions? Perhaps may wish to provide them, but only within a party with the sovereigns, and with a cap on how many can be within a party, after which would need to swap out one to bring in another.

etc, more ideas welcomed!

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Putting icing on the cake, possibly could:

Change fog of war effects by area? Can we add reduced/increased visibility effects to tiles and regions? Can we change the visual effect of the fog to emulate darkness by tile/area?

Include prestige classes at certain level thresholds, or perhaps unlocked by quests, can we include quest chains where completion of one allows another to trigger?

Again, etc etc, plenty of ideas could think of here!

 

With a maximum of 32 players in a world, I think this could be a rather exciting way to play. Will other players befriend you or battle you? If they befriend you, will it be possible, as it was in Age of Wonders, to bring people in from adjacent tiles to a battle, and not just the direct attacked/attacking units? If this isn't standard game behaviour, can we mod that in? Will the engine allow for 3 way (or more) tactical battles?

Would tactical battles even be feasible in such an environment, or does it force all players to go in and watch the tactical battle regardless of what they're doing? Or can the rest of the game continue regardless? If not, how can we make the 'autoresolve' combat more exciting?

 

So many ideas and what not floating around in rather nonspecific ways presently. I'd love to recreate some of the adventures had in NWN PW mods in a new format.

Anyone else also interested?

 

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

As an addendum, it occurs to me that it needn't necessarily be a persistent RPG to be fun. Not sure how many of you played a great many Warcraft 3 custom maps, but some of my favourites (aside from the usual TD's I played) were 'Adventure' maps where you had quests and goals and what not and traversed the map. They were designed to be played and enjoyed within a single session for the most part (although some actually did allow you to generate a code you could use next time to reload your char, sort of).

But with Elemental allowing online saves; with a regular group of players you could produce a more traditional RPG/DnD type experience and play through.

It needn't even necessarily be Multiplayer, although personally I'd probably find that far more entertaining. I'd also far prefer a persistent type game too which should be quite possible seems as though it appears Stardock will be releasing the server software for us to use. :)

But there would certainly be room for both out there, I reckon. And many of the issues they raise are the same whether persistent or just a single play through type adventure.. Although I suppose with the more Adventure orientated format, Tactical Battles could be back on the table even if it drew everyone in, since in theory it'd likely be of a more co-op nature anyhow.

 

Can't wait to get hands on tools and see what we might be able to achieve in this area. :)

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Elemental would be an amazing platform for a tactical RPG a la Final Fantasy Tactics.

If the MMORPG idea is going to be feasible, we need to see if the 32 player limit is hardcoded or moddable. If it's hardcoded, it's going to be difficult to have real persistent RPG if it's continually frustrating to people just to log on during peak hour.

And then you've got to handle server costs too.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting MagicwillNZ, reply 2
Elemental would be an amazing platform for a tactical RPG a la Final Fantasy Tactics.

If the MMORPG idea is going to be feasible, we need to see if the 32 player limit is hardcoded or moddable. If it's hardcoded, it's going to be difficult to have real persistent RPG if it's continually frustrating to people just to log on during peak hour.

And then you've got to handle server costs too.

 

Not sure if you ever played around much with the online parts of NWN (and NWN2 I suppose *grumble*) but it was a similar situation there. Granted, technically, NWN could handle up to 64 players on a single server, but doing so resulted in tremendous lag across the entire server, so player caps in the 20-32 range were far more common.

And despite that?

Still a huge amount of fun. These sorts of things don't result in MMORPGs, you ditch the first M and just get a MORPG. :)

Now one thing I would like to see though that may help in this regard - it certainly did in the NWN community - is the ability to have transitions/trigger points that load your character onto a whole other server, yet keeping your stats, inventory etc, all perfectly intact. In NWN this was managed through a third party developed application (NWNx) that each side of the server transition had to be running, which shared/recieved the users database information as they loaded across.

That way, you actually can get an experience much closer to that of an MMORPG, sure it's 64 players per server, but there can be potentially hundreds of servers linked together.

Also with each server being for such a low population, bandwidth costs are negligable. :)

 

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

NWN was a blast online... It was beautiful playing in a Community that understood what Role-Play actually means. Aaaahh beautiful memories, I love playing evil wizards.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Indeed. :) NWN lasted so long for me - a goodly number of years, although admittedly at times on again/off again - primarily for the online community it fostered.

In regards to emulating such success here, I was reminded of a quote from Brad in the modding preview dev journal in April:

Is Modding hard?

It depends on how much you want to do.  The key tools are included with Elemental.  The ability to make a map/level and then load it from your mod and load additional maps/levels in  your mod and go back makes it relatively easy for someone to make “dungeons” or have cities be a simple icon that when they go into expands into a full blown city.

Original plan was to have 'dungeons' and the like actually be all on the same map, with multi level dungeons emulated by teleport triggers, to place players into the next level which is an otherwise inaccessible area of the map.

However, with that, it appears it may well be possible to actually have multiple overworld areas and completely seperate dungeons, cities, etc.

 

Although the question then becomes, does performing a map change like this entail everyone on the server then loading the same map? Or will be it be possible, as was the case in NWN, to have different players in different zones within a mod? I have a feeling that as it stands everyone will be forced into the new zone, which would make it unsuitable for persistant type play, but could, I suppose, be used to extend more co-op adventure style play.

If I was to ask for one new engineering hours feature now then, it'd be to allow the dedicated server software to have multiple areas loaded simultaneously allowed, which would then well and truly give us the ability to create some fairly amazing persistant worlds.

 

Edit: Decided that I WOULD in fact ask. I have no idea what the Network Coders/Engineers are up to, I assume they may be quite busy at present with the Beta 2 prep, but mayhaps there will be some time to investigate the ability to do this if it can't already. :)

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I like the idea of having multiple maps within a map. IE land on city tile and then load city map. This will make some AMAZING RPG campaigns.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Grove12345, reply 6
I like the idea of having multiple maps within a map. IE land on city tile and then load city map. This will make some AMAZING RPG campaigns.

Truly. I'm HOPING we'll be able to get that functionality for the online servers in a persistant world type format. But even if this isn't a reality, the fact you can do it in a SP (assumably co-op) campaign is awesome nonetheless. :)

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Naithin, reply 3



Not sure if you ever played around much with the online parts of NWN (and NWN2 I suppose *grumble*) but it was a similar situation there. Granted, technically, NWN could handle up to 64 players on a single server, but doing so resulted in tremendous lag across the entire server, so player caps in the 20-32 range were far more common.

And despite that?

Still a huge amount of fun. These sorts of things don't result in MMORPGs, you ditch the first M and just get a MORPG.

Now one thing I would like to see though that may help in this regard - it certainly did in the NWN community - is the ability to have transitions/trigger points that load your character onto a whole other server, yet keeping your stats, inventory etc, all perfectly intact. In NWN this was managed through a third party developed application (NWNx) that each side of the server transition had to be running, which shared/recieved the users database information as they loaded across.

That way, you actually can get an experience much closer to that of an MMORPG, sure it's 64 players per server, but there can be potentially hundreds of servers linked together.

Also with each server being for such a low population, bandwidth costs are negligable.

 

 

Oh man, I really miss the NWN community. I really, truly hope we get something like NWN here. I think we're well on our way, in fact :grin:

 

Anyways, any attempt to revise Elemental to be more RPG-like gets my full support.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Anyways, any attempt to revise Elemental to be more RPG-like gets my full support.

Welp, the modding in the more RPG aspects will still be up to us. But simply being able to have multiple maps in use simultaneously on a single server would drastically increase just how much we could do with the world aspect.

I mean heck, it might even end up being possible to do a more 50/50 TBS / RPG merger, with the TBS aspects going on in 'contested' zones, where establishing perhaps a single city per player may be permissable.

The possibilities excite me, and I'm almost certainly going to be working on a more RPG like mod for online, persistant play, once have the tools in hand to do so; whether or not the server is capable of supporting multiple maps at once.. But.. Gawsh I sure do hope it'll be able to. :P

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Saije, reply 4
NWN was a blast online... It was beautiful playing in a Community that understood what Role-Play actually means. Aaaahh beautiful memories, I love playing evil wizards.

 

There are still a large number of NWN RP servers up. I only wish NWN 2 had expanded upon the toolset/persistant world thing rather than turn their focus on to the single player.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

There are still a large number of NWN RP servers up. I only wish NWN 2 had expanded upon the toolset/persistant world thing rather than turn their focus on to the single player.

Indeed. :( Biggest problem with NWN2 MP in my opinion though; was that the exterior terrain type used ginormous amounts of memory to have loaded on the server, and having players split up as in the case of a Persistant World could mean potentially several such large areas would need to be managed at once, causing it to hit the RAM cap fairly easily.

That COULD have been resolved by releasing a 64bit dedicated server executable, but at least to my knowledge - stopped following NWN2 some time ago - they said they'd never do that. So all work arounds had to be on the part of the world builder, which to some extent is fine.. But.. Yeah.

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Back on track with Elemental PW building though, another thought that occured to me earlier is the handling of the overworld map and the default turn system.

Would potentially want to just disable it entirely.. Although another option might be to have a script hit 'turn' every x seconds, regardless of player status. Would give the world the appearance (more or less) of a continuous system, without having to change how ever little nitty gritty detail works with the rest of the game where there are no turns at all.

 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

I always thought a PW Roguelike would be pretty awesome. I always thought Mordor: Depths of Dejenol had the right sort of idea. Adventurers could split themselves up into guilds and then form up to make expeditions into the underworld. The dungeons could be randomly generated, although there's a  chance you'll run into an other expedition. Depending on your relations, you can fight or trade.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting MagicwillNZ, reply 12
I always thought a PW Roguelike would be pretty awesome. I always thought Mordor: Depths of Dejenol had the right sort of idea. Adventurers could split themselves up into guilds and then form up to make expeditions into the underworld. The dungeons could be randomly generated, although there's a  chance you'll run into an other expedition. Depending on your relations, you can fight or trade.

Haha, <3

I haven't played a roguelike in sometime, but I did actually play that one back in the day! (Although admittedly, was not great at it :P )

If the game's dedicated server can handle people spread across multiple maps, that would be very definitely doable. If it wasn't.. It could still be emulated.

On a single huge map, can have a progression from east to west or whathaveyou, draw out an area, then have the tiles between the areas look like stairwells or caves or teleport pads or whatever else you desire. That way could get the same kind of feel, but still all within a single map, which is sort of how you'd have to do any PW of significant size if the server won't allow us to have multiple maps loaded at once.

...At least until some xpac comes along which inevitably allows our maps to have a 'cave' layer.. Or 3.. or 5.. :)

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

You could incorporate a bit of mount and blade, by say, being able to recruit troops from taverns or the like, then conquering villages for yourself. Add a bit of TBS to the rpg. And you wouldn't have to do it.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

On a single huge map, can have a progression from east to west or whathaveyou, draw out an area, then have the tiles between the areas look like stairwells or caves or teleport pads or whatever else you desire. That way could get the same kind of feel, but still all within a single map, which is sort of how you'd have to do any PW of significant size if the server won't allow us to have multiple maps loaded at once.

Hmm well I haven't seen much news on this yet but the devs are sort of vague whether they'll be supporting multiple maps. I hope in the spirit of Master of Magic they do.

You could incorporate a bit of mount and blade, by say, being able to recruit troops from taverns or the like, then conquering villages for yourself. Add a bit of TBS to the rpg. And you wouldn't have to do it.

That sounds almost like a scripted scenario more than a full-on mod.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

They have an xp system and an attribute system (even a character design screen) so technically it has most rpg elements there. But some things should be added like the ability to pick traits every third level or some such.

About persistent worlds, all that is strictly necessary is to save the character at the end of a session (it autosaves periodically btw, probably possible in mp to) and then have level scaled custom tiles that make a map (or simply make some maps for different levels). When the game saves it saves your characters levels (obviously) so it should be possible to hijack their saves and make a custom save file for only characters.

They said that dungeons were included so we should wait and see about that until we see how they do it.

There are already wandering monsters in the game and I'm not sure but it should be fairly easy to make a script that respawns them.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

^_^

 

I like this idea of loading your Character onto another server!

I could see myself DMing my own server with my own monsters and quests .... hehe