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Work in Progress / [MMO] Factions

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TheeLord
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Posted: 17th Mar 2011 07:17 Edited at: 3rd Dec 2012 03:56
Factions is a project I have been working on periodically since February of 2008. It is a sandbox MMO which I believe will satisfy a very large gap in features in many other games of it's genre. I have a team of 4 developers working on it currently, below is our most recent progress video and some images.

http://www.factionsgame.com




Technology:
Dark GDK for graphics.
C++ for client and server
Raknet for networking.

Complete Sandbox Gameplay

Factions is a completely different style of MMORPG. Where most MMOs follow the same tried and tested pattern of pre-made, story-driven content. Factions strives to provide a completely unique experience. An almost completely untapped game play style in the Fantasy MMO genre.
Some "sandbox" games promise open-ended game play, only to disappoint the player with the lack of essential sandbox features like the ones explained below. Factions strives to appeal to the niche gamer who craves a more realistic open-ended fantasy MMO. It will not appeal to every joe schmo and their sister as mass market games attempt to do.
Factions allows the player to play whatever role they choose. Whether you are more interested in combat, crafting, faction and/or town management, building a business empire, or any combination of these things, you will be able to play exactly how you want to.

Full Featured Faction System

Traditional 'guilds' have been replaced with the 'factions' concept.
Factions can control territory, build towns, and wage war against rival factions.
Rules can be established to control how your faction is governed, how it interacts with other individuals and other factions, and how it handles infractions on its sovereignty.
Factions (and even powerful and well developed individual players) can hire NPCs to perform duties around their towns and frontiers. Manning a guard post, farming a field, providing vendor services for your goods, patroling a busy corridor and more can all be handled by NPCs. This will allow the players to log off of the game and know their town will not fall apart without them immediately. They will require upkeep in the form of pay and/or food from your fields.
Borrowing concepts from RTS games and possibly even City-building games, buildings and machinery can be erected to serve purposes (silos for food storage, walls for defense, forges to melt the hardest metals, mills to process the strongest of woods, machines to make mass quantities of the most mundane parts). Towns with the best infrastructure and resources will be the lifeblood and work-horses of well-off factions. However, players must also struggle to keep their buildings from deteriorating or being destroyed. Unlike other games where a player's investment is protected indefinitely, Factions is an unforgiving world. Build your house in a vulnerable location or fail to provide maintenance on it and you risk losing your investment.

Fully Dynamic World

One world (oneshard) for all players, no portals to go through to reach other areas, no instancing, no static pre-made "theme park" destined to be the same experience for each player.
Everything from the plant life to groups of monsters is generated in the world and is never actually placed in a location by a developer.
If a tree is cut down, it will not simply grow back. If a monster is killed, it will not respawn. If a mineral depositis mined, it will not return. All things in the world grow and appear based on which biome (jungle, desert, forest etc...) is in the area and what other flora and fauna is nearby. Even NPCs will not simply appear out of mid air, they are treated like other spawns and must be "found" by the player and escorted back to their town. Sometimes NPCs will be on their own scared on the beach of the new world, sometimes they will be in groups of two or three deeper in the woods with a small campfire etc...
The game world in Factions is incredibly dynamic, a player who is not prepared to defend themselves from the ever encroaching wilderness will not last for long in this unforgiving place. Players will need to deal with everything from packs of hungry wolves (or worse) raiding their stores and trolls who would kill a man for their shineys to ambitious players out to create the greatest empire in the world or striving to become the most renowned theif in the land. Some threats will need to be dealt with before they become too big a threat. For example, if a faction's territory is on the edge of wilderness it will become necessary to wonder out into the wild to destroy gathering threats before they encroach on their lands. Say that an ogre camp has been established deep in the woods, far outside the screaming distance of any man. The camp may start out with a single tent and a couple of ogres which are a nuisance to the local deer and rabbit population. In a few days they may establish a larger foothold, start a campfire, and erect a few more tents. Some more powerful ogres will join them. Given a few weeks they may be strong enough to send dozens of marauding warriors to bring back needed supplies to their foothold in the wilds; a small faction's town may be ill-prepared for such an invasion. Woe to the Faction who unknowingly builds their settlement next to a dragon's lair.

Completely Player Driven Economy

Nothing will have a pre-set price in the game and all materials and products will be worth only what the buyer will pay.
There are no gear vendors with gear that spawns out of thin air. If you see a NPC gear vendor, he is hired by a player or faction, told where to stand and who to sell to, and his stock is provided by that player or faction. Infact, if the vendor was killed, the stock could be looted. The factions economy is the most open ended ever created for an MMO, even the currency is created by players.
There is no 'starting area', as a new player you have the choice of starting in the wilderness alone, or starting in a faction that welcomes new players (you will be able to choose which of these factions to start in). When you first spawn, you will have only the rags on your back and a small bag, it will be up to you to work, adventure, beg, borrow, or steal to secure your spot in the world.
There is still a missions system, with all missions being provided by the players. A small list of mission scenarios can befound below:
Escort mission. A player may hire other players to escort him to a far away place to protect a cart full of expensive wares. Or a player may need protection while mining a large iron deposit far off in the wilderness. Or maybe the player just needs a player who has access to a larger wagon to haul his goods.
Bounty mission. A player may decide to put a very large sum of money on an opponent's head. Or possibly a very valuable piece of armor was lost to an enemy in battle and the vanquished player will pay handsomely to have it returned to him.
Collection mission. A wealthy player may need 50 trees worth of lumber to complete his new house, he may decide to hire someone else to do the work so he can focus on obtaining the marble stone from a far away town... Or maybe he'll hire someone to go pick that up for him as well?
Kill count mission. The constant incursions from the local giant bear populations may be starting to effect the farm production, a player may be hired to kill 20 of them to stem the attacks.
Production mission. The faction leadership may demand a stone wall be erected around the town instead of the old wooden palisade. A player may request 500 bolts be produced.
These are just some of the scenarios which may prompt a player or faction to post a mission. Missions can be posted on inexpensive boards in a faction's town, or can be left with an NPC.

Everything is Created by the Players

Just about everything that would naturally need to have been created, has been created by a player. Gone are the days of finding a piece of armor dropping from an alligator or a snake-like monster with no arms wielding a two-handed sword. You will find, however, alligator bones on every alligator and snake skin on every snake.
As mentioned previously, there are no pre-built cities or towns or buildings or NPCs. The entire world will be shaped by the player's actions.
It is possible that a player may reach an extremely high skill level in a specific trade skill and may be able to create things only dreamed of by other players (think nearly one-of-a-kind items like an Excalibur sword).
Most complex items will require many different skills to create. While it is possible that one player posses all these skills, it is very unlikely. Cooperation will be required to create items like buildings and armor/weapons of high quality.
Mounts, pets, and companions will need to be tamed or raised by someone skilled in such an art.
Crafted items will not always turn out with the exact same specs. For example, if a sub-par lumberjack cuts down a tree and damages the wood, and then a sub-par Fletcher creates a "Longbow Arrow Shaft" from that lumber, it may provide a damage increase of +5. Whereas if a lumberjack cuts down a higher quality tree and then an expert Fletcher uses that wood to create a "Longbow Arrow Shaft" it may provide a damage increase of +20.
Town management will be a craft in itself. To ensure efficient food production, building upkeep, and NPC management, the town management will need to keep a close eye on the workings of the town, faction, and its players.

Ability Based Skill System

No one is tied down to any specific class any longer. Players will build their character to precisely what they envision by using Factions deep ability system.
While more powerful abilities do have pre-requisites, for example, to be able to hurl a ball of fire at another player, you must first learn how to create magical fire and then learn how to use it against another player whom you can touch, then you may be able to learn how to project it distances.
The ability system will allow very extreme combinations such as a marksman who can stealth or a plate armor healer. But these combinations would be in vastly different areas of the tech tree and would take a long time to obtain such terrific combinations and there are balancing mechanisms in place to prevent a few builds being vastly superior to the others. For example, heavy armor causes magic casting time to be increased.
Each ability in the game has a skill level, so while your shield block ability may be available to you, it will take a very long time until it 100% effective.
Abilities take time to acquire, you must be logged on to learn them. Learning and skilling your abilities up is also a social activity (much like everything else in Factions), you can learn much faster when learning from other players, in fact teaching is a skill in itself and the best teachers will likely be able to charge much more for their services.
Trade skills and crafting will be included in this ability system, so a player will need to make important decisions on how to allocate their research time. While one player may require additional defensive abilities, another may only be interested in learning how to create the most magnificent structures possible.http://www.factionsgame.com
TheeLord
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Posted: 17th Mar 2011 07:26
I am in dire need of assistance with this project also. This is such a huge undertaking and while I am very happy with the progress I have made so far, it is not nearly enough for me to work on this alone. I have only had very small contributions from an artist friend of mine. Everything else has been done on my own.

Please contact me at Stankiem@hotmail.com if you would like to discuss joining this project.

I feel very strongly that I have the drive, ability, skill, and vision to make this game a success.
TheeLord
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Posted: 17th Mar 2011 07:34
{Reserved for future use)
Qqite
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Posted: 17th Mar 2011 21:20 Edited at: 17th Mar 2011 21:21
Looks very interesting! I like how you have a very good idea of what you would like the final product to be. May I ask a few questions?
Are the "factions" player-made? Or is there a set of factions to join?
How do you plan on handling spammers? (As in if someone starts making things where things should not be. Ex: fences in houses)
When placing objects, for how long is that object client-controlled? Can other clients move/delete objects that other clients created? How do you plan on making it so people can't run around deleting things?

I'm very interested in what you're doing; looks like this could be a very fun game (if done right)

Ventures of the worlds around us are only limited by imagination.
TheeLord
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Posted: 17th Mar 2011 23:58
Thank you qqite. I do have a very good idea of what the game should be, but I also want to be a bit flexible so if people decide to help, they can give their input also. This game design will all come down to providing ample challenge and tools for the players. If either of those are lacking it will fail.

All Factions are founded by players. There is literally nothing that will be prebuilt in the world.
The question on the "spammers" is one that has been asked by a few people and is a good question. One that I don't have the perfect answer to. The first deterant is that I hope to charge a monthly fee for the game, so if someone is going to pay 5 or 10 bucks a month to make a maze of fences they have issues. If this game turns out to be freeware I could see this being a slightly bigger issue. Building things will be expensive though. If it takes a total of like 5 or 10 minutes to gather and craft that fence section and prerequisite pieces, don't think you will waste it for stupid purposes. Also factions will be able to control who can build in their territory, and if you build something in the wilderness it probably won't last long undefended from the monsters and wildlife. If all else fails there are always mod powers and giant dragons that can be sent out on a mission to destroy stupidly placed things in the world lol.
As soon as an object is placed it is placed. Will need to destroy it and rebuild if you did something stupid. If something is important to you, you will want to hire npc guards to defend it. Even then a determined attacker can always find a way (maybe with a group).

Thanks for the feedback let me know if you have more questions or suggestions or ideas or whatever! Thanks
GIDustin
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Posted: 18th Mar 2011 05:37
This sounds very familiar to what I wanted to create about a year back I played a MUD called Accursed Lands which was a completely open-ended skill-based MUD. I wanted to create a 2d RPG style version of this where you can construct buildings, craft items, start a business, even found a new town if you have enough dedicated carpenters. But alas, it was way too much work for one person to handle.

I would be interested in helping you with your project, but I am a DBPro guy with no real knowledge of C++. I do wish you the best though. There just aren't enough games where the players can really make a difference in the game. Star Wars Galaxies hit the mark the closest but I would love a less futuristic type theme.

TheeLord
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Posted: 18th Mar 2011 05:48
Thanks Dustin! SWG is alot of inspiration for this, also high on the inspiration list is EVE and Savage / Savage 2.
If you feel like you can offer help of any sort, please let me know what you can offer and I would be willing to take it most likely!
Westmere
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Posted: 19th Mar 2011 00:25
This sounds pretty darn cool!

It has a lot of the things in it I had in my mind if I ever was to go and make an MMORPG, so I like it even more.

I'm especially interested in how you want to create things ingame. Say a house for example. Is this somewhere in the style of Minecraft or the way you build houses in the Sims?
Pre-Defined houses you can put stuff in like in SWG doesn't sound fitting for your concept.

Also, how does weapons/armor crafting work? Sounds like Minecraft crafting with quality and skills influencing the values. Or is it possinble to create items that are completely unique? Say by combining pieces of wood and ropes to construct a catapult by using some sort of physics? That would be pretty cool too ^^

Hope you stick to it as I would love to play something like this!

I would want to help you if I wasn't working onmy own project atm

TheeLord
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Posted: 19th Mar 2011 08:08
Thanks Westmere!
Buildings will more then likely be pre-defined. It would be fully possible to have a system where players can build their own buildings from scratch, however there are major concerns with that.. Firstly, while a small percentage of the player base would be great at creating beautiful buildings, others would be awful. It would totally destroy the immersion to be wondering around the woods and come upon a completely square building with no windows and a part of the wall missing and a roof not build correctly but the building still standing etc... etc... Not to mention the implications of a player placing very easy to build collidable seconds of building all over the place which will kill game performance. While I agree that it would be nice to allow players to build their own architecture, the cons seem to out-weigh the pros by far. Seeing some of the town designs might be painful enough haha. We'll see though.. maybe in betas if factions can cooperate and make beautiful looking towns maybe we will introduce some building parts for people to experiment with.

weapon and armor crafting will definitely take into account material quality and skill levels and a little luck. And unfortunately there are limitations to what can be done, especially with an MMO and with my skill level So, no, items cannot be constructed using physics or anything like that. Items will be predefined, but I would like to let the player decide which type of metals and woods and other ingredients they use which will determine the quality and effectiveness.
BlueKlayman
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Posted: 19th Mar 2011 10:26
This looks amazing.

Westmere
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Posted: 19th Mar 2011 11:13
Okay, that item construction was a longshot as that would be pretty complicated.

As for buildings, given the setup of your game to be highly customizable I believe you really should try to put some degree of customization into the buildings structures.

My suggestion: Don't go for pre-defined buildings. You would have to pre-define a lot of buildings to keep settlements from looking too uniformly. You played SWG and thus you probably know what I mean.

Instead you might want to use predefined structural parts, such as straight walls, curved walls, different roof parts and use a grid to place this stuff. The client can already check if placing is possible.

Link102
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Posted: 19th Mar 2011 16:26 Edited at: 19th Mar 2011 17:04
My only question is how are you going to help the player get trough this grindfest, without it turning into a bland kill x, take loot, repeat sort of thing?

You could let the player choose from a number of prefabbed styles. For example 5 different styles of windows or doors for 1 house.

As for the building spam, you could have it take some time and money to build, this should hinder the spammers.

I'd love to help out, but unfortunately I have the chronic incompletion disorder...

TheeLord
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Posted: 19th Mar 2011 20:23
I think that I could put a much higher number of buildings in the game I can cut down on the monotony a bunch. Also, buildings will have a health factor of course, so as a faction or player becomes more powerful, they will want a building with a higher max health so it can withstand attacks longer and it's bigger. So there will be natural variety in the towns and buildings because of that.

Link102, the grindfest is something that scares me too. Even the most hardcore sandbox MMO player can be turned off by a lack of challenge and lack of things to do. That is why I said in the post above that there must be ample challenge and ample tools for the players or else the game will fail. Especially when you consider graphics will be nowhere near AAA and I'm sure it will have it's fair share of bugs. Gameplay is absolutely key.

To answer your question Link, the world will be very dangerous and constantly growing in danger in the less populated areas and I hope to have ample invasions that will need to be dealt with and things like huge wondering dragons that will take 20 people to kill. Maybe huge town projects that will take nearly an entire faction's cooperation to finish. Monsters will also behave socially if they are social creatures. So humanoids and animals like wolves will attack as a group instead of one at a time. If you attacked a camp of humanoids, the one attacked will call everyone of their own kind within earshot to come help them. This will also foster cooperation among players to help in these sort of situations.

The social aspect of the game needs to be very big.
Westmere
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 00:28
You also need to keep an eye on the notorious "I play a massive-multiplayer game just so I can happily play alone"-type of gamers. They are there and if you want your game to be a success you should think of them as well.

Other players might just not find a suitable faction at first, get killed too often and loose interest. The result will be that your world will be largely empty except for a couple of high level players, killing every newer player they find to loot them and keep them out of the game in the process.

The same might happen with overpowered factions, killing off every attempt of smaller ones to gain some influence.

So you need to be very careful that this does not happen and it might just be the most difficult part in balancing your game.

As I said I have a project like this somewhere in my mind as well and here are some of the corner points of what I though could help solve this problem:
Use 2 major factions on opposing sides. Like the alliance and the ork in WoW. Or the Empire and the Rebellion in SWG. Or the Galactic Union and the Human Confederation in my mind game
Doing so can get you protected cities where a player can hardly be kill-spamed. No construction rights for anyone and a NPC police force too strong to just take on for farming a couple of weak players.
Ingame such cities can be a lot of things: A save haven, resurrection point, trade center - you name it. Of course large player factions can always offer the same service for players not opposed to or part of their own faction.

You should also think about the possibility to just split your world in fight zones and peace zones, so that players who do not want to engage in PVP have a way of doing this, or new players have a way to level up without the risk of being jumped upon by some high-level player-killers ^^

TheeLord
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Posted: 20th Mar 2011 08:43 Edited at: 20th Mar 2011 17:44
The solo players are being thought of (to an extent). Factions will be able to setup rules on who can go in their territory, accept their missions, use their autioneers, use their other facilities etc... So some factions will be much more friendly to solo players then others.

EDIT: Also, people will be able to break some of these rules (like can't go in their territory) but the faction will also have rules on how to deal with these people (such as automatically declare war on that faction)

Also, solo players can theoretically make their own faction.. If there was a player who played 18 hours a day they could rival some of the smaller factions for sure.

I think players are smarter then to let a huge factions wipe them all out. I think the "political map" will be public for all players to see, so if someone is getting out of control, they can form alliances and work together to subvert the bully on the block.

In my original plans I thought of having some starting factions, but I think it would be more interesting for the players to have to fight the elements for survival from day one. Also, I will not split the world into pvp and pve zones, it would just take too much away from the game plan.

I am trying to not half ass the sandbox concept.. I think where many sandbox games go wrong is that they get scared and pull back their plans to suit a larger audience. For a tiny indie MMO to succeed I think they need to be adventurous and really appeal to a single niche market fully.
Link102
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 02:20
Quote: "I think players are smarter then to let a huge factions wipe them all out. I think the "political map" will be public for all players to see, so if someone is getting out of control, they can form alliances and work together to subvert the bully on the block.
"


They can, but they won't. They will join the biggest faction. Why do I believe this? Because I've seen it happen in PWI (mmo I play). The complete terrain war mechanic of the game has been flawed, because everyone wants to join the biggest faction to rule the map.

If you don't implement some kind of way to balance that, the same will happen in your mmo. (Perhaps a bounty on the most land owning faction or something like that.)

TheeLord
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 06:44
will have to work it out in beta for sure Link. I hope I don't have to put any sort of superficial restraints or controls or rewards.. but maybe even limiting the amount of people that could join one faction would be enough. Ill have to see when it gets to that point.
Quel
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2011 22:47
Link if that is true, then our world is over.

If even in a game, people choose the easy way out... phuhh...
Westmere
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Posted: 23rd Mar 2011 21:01
...which brings me back to my original thought. Implement some sort of pre-defined faction. Maybe have it NPC controlled and prevent players from joining just to act as a police force.

Come to think about it, why don't you use a little dirty trick used by Master of Orion 2. Set up occassional attacks of a barbarian horde or something like that which will decimate the strongest faction. And maybe post news about that in your launcher so new players will not want to join that faction when it is too strong

Other then that an automatic bounty on members of the strongest factions as Link102 said is a very interesting idea.

TheeLord
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Posted: 24th Mar 2011 05:13
Hope you are all interested in giving beta feedback whenever I get to that point (probably a few years off.. haha) cause I will need all the help I could get.
Westmere
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Posted: 24th Mar 2011 20:18
Sure thing...



TheeLord
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Posted: 5th Apr 2011 17:18
Just checking in here to say I have still been hard at work with factIons. While there isn't much visual progress to show I have been working on reorganizing the code and the inventory system. I still need more help if anyone is interested. I did find one artist and one programmer who are getting up to speed and doing small tasks right now to get started. If you have any help to offer please let me know.
Game Warden
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Posted: 9th Apr 2011 18:29 Edited at: 10th Apr 2011 00:00
Hey I'm Ray Crabtree and I am the Art Director for Factions. I just wanted to update everyone on how the game is progressing.



Attached is an updated screenshot with a simple building. TheeLord has made a great deal of progress re-organizing code and has been fixing some bugs. Check out our website for more pictures of concept art and to get updates on the game's progress.

http://goldencrownstudio.com[href]

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miso
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Posted: 9th Apr 2011 23:22
I wish you the best, its a very interesting project.

No place like 127.0.0.1 .
Game Warden
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TheeLord
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Posted: 17th Apr 2011 20:41 Edited at: 17th Apr 2011 20:45
Just so everyone knows, we still need lots of help. We are developing at a pretty rapid pace right now (especially given the fact we only have 3 team members right now). We need almost all talent, and we especially need the below:

-Programmers with DarkGDK experience.
-DarkGDK or DarkBasic coders who know Shaders well.




www.goldencrownstudio.com
stankiem@hotmail.com
DBer
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Posted: 18th Apr 2011 13:38 Edited at: 18th Apr 2011 13:39
Wow!
Is that wooden building built out of wood which has been cut down ingame? Or is it premodeled?
I would be interested in what your primitives look like the player can use to build structures.

Westmere
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Posted: 18th Apr 2011 21:55
One question that just sprung into my mind: Do you have any plans on dealing with Ghost Towns? Just look at Star Wars Galaxies and you'll know what I mean... many player cities, even more houses (which look kind of the same for the most part) and virtually no players in most of them.

Would be pretty cool if you find a solution to that too ^^

TheeLord
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Posted: 18th Apr 2011 23:27
@dber. For now the plan is to have structures be premodelled. Towns will already look goofy enough with the building placements being done by players. Letting them piece together buildings would just be the death of any immersion we had. But who knows maybe well change our minds or do some testing with it.

@westmere. We already thought of that too. And we have a pretty good solution we believe. All buildings will need maintenance. The most I could envision a town surviving without maintenance being addressed is probably 2 months?? So if there are ghost towns they won't be around for long.
Westmere
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Posted: 19th Apr 2011 12:35
Cool. How about deliberately doing something ghosttowny: When the maintenance runs out after two month replace the house with a ruin for another two month. Let's the player retake it and probably looks pretty cool ^^

Game Warden
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Posted: 19th Apr 2011 16:22 Edited at: 19th Apr 2011 16:30
We actually do have a plan like that that involves buildings with different phases in both construction and destruction/deterioration

goldencrownstudio.com

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TheeLord
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Posted: 1st May 2011 20:11
Hey everyone! Just checkin in here to say that development is going very strong! We are still in need of talent, please let us know if you are interested in joining the team! The basics of the inventory system are completed, the character enhancement project has begun. Ray, our lead artist, has been hard at work creating a good looking model to replace the current placeholder we are using. The armor system will begin taking shape now. Will post some screenshots of the character when it's in game and looking good!
miso
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Posted: 5th Jun 2011 17:29
What happened with that one? It disappeared from the site...

No place like 127.0.0.1 .
Darkzombies
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2011 10:15
seems extremely awesome, but arent you worried about people building towns in other peoples towns and destroying it or majorly glitching it, or towns overrunning the world?
And also raids on towns if they already have guards. (A variable could easily achieve that)

And sorry for long post, but i might know a guy who can host this 24/7.

P.S. i would like to help, add me on steam, Darkzombies.

In programming that is, im pretty good with GIMP, but im best at programming.

P.S.S. ill attach a sketch of an enemy mob im thinking of.

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Darkzombies
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2011 10:25
oh yeah, and im a darkbasic programmer, and will most likely be focusing on the adventure aspects, like dungeons and mob A.I. or something like that, idk.
TheeLord
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Posted: 30th Oct 2011 06:59
Just trying to keep this thread from locking, I think I will begin working on this again, it's been about 4 months now. Just had a baby and things are starting to settle down a little finally.
Westmere
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Posted: 30th Oct 2011 15:41
A baby? Well I guess congratulations are in order.

CONGRATULATIONS! Boy or girl?


TheeLord
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Posted: 31st Oct 2011 06:50
girl, and thank you =)
TheeLord
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Posted: 13th Nov 2011 07:08
Quote: "seems extremely awesome, but arent you worried about people building towns in other peoples towns and destroying it or majorly glitching it, or towns overrunning the world?
And also raids on towns if they already have guards."


Just to answer these concerns while I'm bored and just read this..

There will be territory control and rules to control who can build in your or your factions areas and what consequences are for doing so (ie auto declare war against them or their faction, kill on sight order for all your allies, bounty mission created for offending player or faction, etc...) Some people may want their towns to be public and centers of activity and commerce.

And yea if people want to raid a heavily defended town, that is fine and encouraged.. It will suck if you are not logged on and this happens but... should've defended better Who knows maybe we'll allow factions to setup a rule for the guards to send an email to faction members when one or two of them dies or something.
Darkzombies
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Posted: 14th Nov 2011 06:33
well another worry is what if there's one giant faction and it keeps reaping off the other factions? Is that just something you'll allow? Just wait for people to team up against it >

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TheeLord
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Posted: 15th Nov 2011 03:24
I will need to see how beta testing goes in regards to that. I plan to let factions get huge, but who knows, I might need to limit the number of members a faction can have.
TheeLord
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Posted: 30th Dec 2011 07:54 Edited at: 15th Mar 2012 04:25
Hey everyone, just reminding everyone here that Factions is still in strong development, we have 7 people working on it currently. Please visit our new forums if you wish to discuss the game with us!
http://www.factionsgame.com






TheeLord
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Posted: 15th Mar 2012 04:24
Hey everyone! Just to update you, we are still producing Factions. www.factionsgame.com Still looking for multiple artists (3d, character, animator etc...) and another programmer.
TheeLord
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2012 02:00 Edited at: 23rd Jun 2012 02:01
This project is still alive and kicking after 4 years =)

www.factionsgame.com

Check us out! Looking for programmer and 3d artist still
Libervurto
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2012 04:24 Edited at: 23rd Jun 2012 04:27
Building
I agree that giving too much free-reign with construction leads to a majority of ugly buildings. How about creating a modular system where pre-modelled buildings themselves are blocks that can be linked together to create larger, unique structures? It would work like a 3D version of those seamless roads that are so common in city-building games. I think this would allow people to be creative with their structures while preventing ugly buildings.

The difficulty comes with the interiors. You could write an algorithm to place doors, interior walls and staircases or let the player position these things. Then there's the actual function of the rooms to consider. Do you want the player to choose from a list of room types (bedroom, kitchen, smithy, library, etc.) and have the game decorate for them -- this could again be similar to seamless paths, linking adjacent like rooms together into one large room and placing dividing walls between different room types -- or would the player decorate the interior?

Throwing some procedural generation into the mix would help keep things looking nice. For example, you might want a 2x1x1 building to have a window in each section but it might look better in a 3x1x1 to leave a space in the middle section, or the 2x1x1 might look better with one wide window instead of two narrow ones. These could also be options given to the player if that is preferable.

Shh... you're pretty.

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