Coming Soon

[Arcana]

I'm sure Arcana is now looking at that update message and thinking about how easy it would be to write a bot that pretends to be a player.

I thought about that before you posted the message.  I'm currently thinking about how much effort would be required to write a bot that pretends to be a combat engine.

Consider an XMPP zone with a limited number of players.  Now write a bot that spawns an NPC.  Modify the client so that clients are capable of sending "I activated power X" messages.  Have the bot receive that message, and send to all players in the zone a command that causes the caster to play the appropriate animation, then spawns the correct VFX and sound FX, then reduces the health bar of the NPC target by an appropriately calculated amount after the correct delay.  If it reaches zero, execute the dead animation, then timer out a despawn.

Sounds laggy as all hell, but hypothetically speaking with the right architectural support you could create a combat engine that *is* a player, just one with admin rights to send the right commands to all other player clients in the connected zone.  I don't know if your current architecture would fully support this; I might need to make some feature requests.

[Gun-Nut]

Remade and saved my main's costume for this! Can't wait!

How could I forget about the save costume feature! Now I need to boot up the game and get a few ready to go

[Kyriani]

I wonder if we'll be able to use the npc costume bits in the Soon server. Since Soon is separate from Icon, there's no guarantee we'll have access to those bits.

[Arcana]

I wonder if we'll be able to use the npc costume bits in the Soon server. Since Soon is separate from Icon, there's no guarantee we'll have access to those bits.

Correct (there's no guarantee).  What matters is what Codewalker has managed to put support into for his translation layer.  Just because it exists in Icon, doesn't mean it will exist in City of SoonJabberXMPP.  But its likely that except for features that would be problematic for all players to possess without restriction, anything we can do in Icon is probably something that Codewalker will try to get in there eventually.

What's problematic?  Well, compelling another entity to play an emote when that entity is another player is likely problematic.  Unrestricted switching of zones could be problematic.  Unlimited spawning of other entities could be problematic.  I get hints that they are concerned about creating a relatively safe environment for players to interact in.  Some of the things you can do in Icon are not safe when other players are about.

Spawning yourself into HasntBeenAnnouncedYet as Rularuu doesn't seem particularly dangerous (dibs) but it might be a feature Codewalker set aside to get actual player costumes working first.

[WolfSoul]

I'm wondering this: can you make it so that all those slash commands are clickable in the power or inspiration trays?

Thanks,

Wolfsoul

[Arcana]

I'm wondering this: can you make it so that all those slash commands are clickable in the power or inspiration trays?

That one probably has to wait for the FAQ.

[LaughingAlex]

How could I forget about the save costume feature! Now I need to boot up the game and get a few ready to go

Made a new costume for my main already to.  But then, my main will have a different take and origin than before.  Much more artificial with a hyper-advanced twist.

Edit: I ponder just how many possibilities this will later unlock though.

[Ohioknight]

  I get hints that they are concerned about creating a relatively safe environment for players to interact in.  Some of the things you can do in Icon are not safe when other players are about.

Well now I'm intrigued ... what in ICON would not be safe for other players?... or do you just mean things like my "City of Hitler" racist-torture-sex-extravaganza project (man, nobody wants to let me do that)

Now that you've got me thinking about it... you mentioned that those geysers in the ski area are NPC's -- it would be awesome to plant a few of those randomly around on maps in ways people wouldn't notice them until they stepped in them ... AAAAAHHHH!

[tripthicket]

See, now I want the name of the place to be Jabboonx. It fits, kinda (Jabber + Soon + XMPP).

Really I just like saying 'jabboonx' out loud.







jabboonx jabboonx jabboonx

[Paragon Avenger]

See, now I want the name of the place to be Super Fire Dragon's Fun House of Chat. It fits.
Really I just like saying "Super Fire Dragon's Fun House of Chat" out loud.

Super Fire Dragon's Fun House of Chat

I agree.

[Codewalker]

Well now I'm intrigued ... what in ICON would not be safe for other players?... or do you just mean things like my "City of Hitler" racist-torture-sex-extravaganza project (man, nobody wants to let me do that)

Spawning stuff makes griefing easy due to collision detection. You could surround somebody with a bunch of big immovable NPCs and box them in. Or block off a heavily trafficked area. Or just fill the zone with so much crap that it lags everybody out.

Changing yourself to look like an NPC is potentially an issue as some of the things you can turn into are huge and fill the screen. Imagine if a group of 5 or 6 people all turned into hamidon and gathered around the atlas plaza. Or Pocket D.

That's why neither of those will be available at launch. /benpc may be something we take a whitelist approach on. As for spawning NPCs, that's something we have some tentative plans for a way to handle that will be covered in one of the upcoming announcements. The one I'm thinking of we'll probably see sometime Wednesday or Thursday.

[FloatingFatMan]

Personally, I think the safest way forward would be to just disable any commands we didn't have access to in the live game, except maybe the ability to teleport to another map (because even though we're all nice people, griefers gonna happen).

[Arcana]

Changing yourself to look like an NPC is potentially an issue as some of the things you can turn into are huge and fill the screen. Imagine if a group of 5 or 6 people all turned into hamidon and gathered around the atlas plaza. Or Pocket D.

Hamidon itself is somewhat problematic because of the goo, but the goo is not subject to collision (he also normally can't move, although as an entity in this system that's not relevant).  Seed of Hamidon, on the other hand, would be down right bananas.  I benpc-ed myself into the Seed on the beta server before shutdown, and the sheer size of the thing is so unwieldy its practically self-griefing.

I did scare the crap out of a few players though, so there's that.  When a devouring earth with its own zip code starts following you around, you tend to notice.

[spindisc]

I thought about that before you posted the message.  I'm currently thinking about how much effort would be required to write a bot that pretends to be a combat engine.

I was having the same thought. Also, I guess you could sniff the communication stream localy and have applications (similar to the old Herostats) working in the background.

In fact, if a simulated AI is CPU heavy for the server we could write the same logic into a local application to handle that and then just have an "adventure" server check if the required application is present on the local machine to allow players in. The local machine could then be responsible for all the AI for a supergroup entering an "instanced" area or an "instanced" version of a zone. And even have a load-balancing feature to hand over bots between each other.

Then with a defined command set and a good scripting tool we could create missions with dialog, spawn points, zone changes, etc. and have that published to a common repository. In the server/local app you could then just browse for a mission to run.

Would this be possible?

[Reiraku]

When a devouring earth with its own zip code starts following you around, you tend to notice.

"excuse me, little hero. Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior?"

[Victoria Victrix]

"excuse me, little hero. Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior?"

[Rejolt]

Wait, Arcana. That sounds like Jedi mindtricking to have us play a MUD rpg with CoH avatars. Eh, stop gap?

Sheldor: Use ax.
Troll: You miss!
Sheldor: Throw ax.
Troll: I don't know that command.
Sheldor: Toss ax.
Troll: Thank you for the ax.
Troll: Use ax
Sheldor: Son of a ...

I keed! But with those scripts flying around it sounds best if we did apply a "points" system to start. I want a power = x points from your total. Or maybe just ONE or two attacks each (single target and aoe).

But yuck then .... um.. recharge timers? Endurance? Range? Defense/accuracy? Any secondary effects?

How long would writing that take?!

This would how ever be frick'n awesome to run Mutants and Mastermind games with this character creator and ACTUAL premade maps! (imagine the GM being real size Hamidon or Rularuu shouting "IGNORE ME")

Would it be bad if I advertised for this in the Tabletop RPG page of Facebook? Aka: Looking for GM to create a campaign with Paragon City Maps for Mutants and Masterminds/Icon/BASH!/etc play.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I thought about that before you posted the message.  I'm currently thinking about how much effort would be required to write a bot that pretends to be a combat engine.

Consider an XMPP zone with a limited number of players.  Now write a bot that spawns an NPC.  Modify the client so that clients are capable of sending "I activated power X" messages.  Have the bot receive that message, and send to all players in the zone a command that causes the caster to play the appropriate animation, then spawns the correct VFX and sound FX, then reduces the health bar of the NPC target by an appropriately calculated amount after the correct delay.  If it reaches zero, execute the dead animation, then timer out a despawn.

That would mostly depend on how much of the client-server communications protocol is supported by the client side of SOON.
While developing the actual server would still not be easy, with SOON handling the communications it would be easier than otherwise.

[Ohioknight]

Spawning stuff makes griefing easy due to collision detection. You could surround somebody with a bunch of big immovable NPCs and box them in. Or block off a heavily trafficked area. Or just fill the zone with so much crap that it lags everybody out.

Changing yourself to look like an NPC is potentially an issue as some of the things you can turn into are huge and fill the screen. Imagine if a group of 5 or 6 people all turned into hamidon and gathered around the atlas plaza. Or Pocket D.

I am ashamed that I am not clever/twisted enough to have thought of those -- now I want to go into ICON and play with populating giant NPC's into Pocket D 

[Draeth Darkstar]

I can't even begin to say how awesome this is. I'm so excited to see something outside the realm of conspiracy theories about emulation, even if this project isn't aimed to become a full-scale server emulator.

Please let me know if you have use for someone with an education in game engineering and current experience in PHP web development. My legitimate compiled language skills might be a little rusty, but working in a C-based language every day, it shouldn't be too bad to get back into the good stuff.

In a totally unrelated matter: with all of this chatter about using CoXMPP as a vehicle for virtual tabletop gaming, have you given any thought to including dice rolling commands? AIM does this with a pretty simple format, it's something like //roll-dice-#-sides-# (ex //roll-dice-5-sides-10 for 5 10 sided dice), which would cover the overwhelming majority of dice-based gaming needs. Alternatively, dice notation common to P&P would be less verbose for traffic concerns, ex /roll 5d10 for the same logic.