Paragon Chat Development Roadmap and Wishlist

[Ohioknight]

And then CodeWalker went and just gave us all the Jingle Jets for CoHmas !!  Huzzah!

I'm loving all the new changes, and love the jingle jet, but I'm even more impressed/intrigued with the Frisbee/snowball...

Is this implying a route towards some kind of combat function might be available?  Even if it's in mock/dumbshow? 

How is the Frisbee coordinating between chatters?  Or is the deal that everybody's just not seeing the same Frisbee at the same time?

[Codewalker]

The new powers system includes a high-level synchronization protocol. To boil it down, when you activate a power like Snowball or the Flying Disc, your Paragon Chat instance sends a message to the zone's meta channel declaring that you are activating that power. If it's a power that has a target, the message also includes the target -- either the XMPP JID if it's a player, or a name and coordinates if it's an NPC.

Other Paragon Chat instances receive that message and set things up in their own powers system to replicate the context. The proxy entity that represents your character is assumed to have that power, and the activation sequence fires off with the correct target (or nothing happens if for some reason the target can't be resolved). That of course only works if the receiving instance knows what the power is and how to activate it -- older versions that don't have that particular power show nothing happening at all. Targeting NPCs works because everybody's Paragon Chat has the same static NPCs and can find the correct one to use as a target.

You end up with multiple Paragon Chat instances, each with their own representation of the state of the world, all activating the same power at roughly the same time. Effects are handled locally, so the timing of the projectile and the hit always look correct based on your client's idea of everyone's positions. Since the effects are applied locally as a consequence of the power activation, even more complex ones work across the network - like the granting of the gift when you're 'hit' by Holiday Cheer.

The timing is consistent within the activation of the power, but as network latency implies that not everyone sees a completely consistent world state, the activation itself may not have exactly the same timing relative to other events from everyone's point of view*. For what Paragon Chat does, it's 'close enough' to be convincing.

For something like real combat, that would probably break down fairly quickly, and there would need to be a way to resolve out-of-order power executions, as well as ensure that everyone is playing fair and only sending power activations that are possible for them. AI-controlled NPCs are also a big wrinkle for distributed systems, as somebody has to be authoritatively running the NPC, and you have to handle cases where that particular instance suddenly disconnects. That's one of the reasons that long ago I said PVP is more likely to happen first - see also snowball/toy bat.

Mock effects are definitely in the realm of possibility with this system. Loading the real power data in a form that doesn't bloat Paragon Chat's already hefty memory footprint is one of the issues that needs to be solved. Persistent ownership of powers was another (which is now solved). Mock leveling or some other way to choose powers is another, as simply giving every power to every player would crash the client, and currently there is no record of which powersets you chose at character creation.


* Future plans for Paragon Chat involve moving away from the declarative system of periodically broadcasting coordinate updates. Instead, it'll send a timecoded event stream, kind of like an incremental demorecord that can be buffered by a small amount and played back for smoother movement without prediction artifacts. Presumably power activations would be timecoded as well in this system, which would solve the relative ordering problem quite handily.

[FloatingFatMan]

A question if I may!

Is it possible to recreate peds and traffic in PC? It doesn't matter really if it's not consistent across the network, having it purely locally rendered would still bring the city back to life for us!

[Garble]

Speaking of making the zones less barren I've wondered if the zones could spawn area-appropriate foe-NPCs. Even if all they do is stand there folding and unfolding their arms like the trainer NPCs it would make the zones feel more like they used to be. I know from Icon that the spawn points are baked into the maps and from game experience I know the spawns were kind of randomized/timed. Even if the mobs were static, or spawned and despawned randomly it would be really cool to fly around Perez Park and see clumps of Hellions and Skuls again. (Especially if I can throw a frisbee at them or boink them on the head with a foam bat)

[Paragon Avenger]

Speaking of making the zones less barren I've wondered if the zones could spawn area-appropriate foe-NPCs. Even if all they do is stand there folding and unfolding their arms like the trainer NPCs it would make the zones feel more like they used to be. I know from Icon that the spawn points are baked into the maps and from game experience I know the spawns were kind of randomized/timed. Even if the mobs were static, or spawned and despawned randomly it would be really cool to fly around Perez Park and see clumps of Hellions and Skuls again. (Especially if I can throw a frisbee at them or boink them on the head with a foam bat)

Good idea, but there would need to be some sort of garbage collection.  Maybe that was built in, maybe that's what Rikti raids were for.

[Leandro]

Is it possible to recreate peds and traffic in PC? It doesn't matter really if it's not consistent across the network, having it purely locally rendered would still bring the city back to life for us!

Those require generating navigation meshes for the maps that the NPCs (including cars) can use for pathfinding. Not trivial, not likely to happen soon.

[Garble]

Did the ghost people in Dark Astoria also use those path meshes or were they an atmospheric effect?

[Codewalker]

Those were just regular citizens with the LOD fade values flipped backwards. Probably had the flag to push players out of the way disabled as well, but I haven't checked.

[Paragon Avenger]

Probably had the flag to push players out of the way ...

I hated being pushed out-of-the-way by passers-by.  Made me fell like, "Sure, you risked your life and defeated The Malta Group, but what have you done for us lately?"

[JordanYen]

I hated being pushed out-of-the-way by passers-by.  Made me fell like, "Sure, you risked your life and defeated The Malta Group, but what have you done for us lately?"

Relevant to this discussion: http://www.jeremyduffy.com/jordans-town/?page_id=48

[Fighting Blaze]

And here I am, a poor young temp player. I played the game on the 14 day trial way back in the day, I never even made it passed Kings, and you guys are missing so much cool sounding stuff that I sadly never got to see.

[Jagblade]

Couldn't find much mention of it anywhere else, but I'd love to see the old Giant Monster NPCs such as Lusca in Independence Port again. If I remember correctly most if not all of these guys stood in one spot until agro'd. They'd be great as decoration.

[Paragon Avenger]

Couldn't find much mention of it anywhere else, but I'd love to see the old Giant Monster NPCs such as Lusca in Independence Port again. If I remember correctly most if not all of these guys stood in one spot until agro'd. They'd be great as decoration.

Well, Sally is in Croatoa.

[Nyghtshade]

Well, Sally is in Croatoa.

Is Sally really still there?  I thought she vanished after the Halloween Event with the Mysterious Floating Island.

[Paragon Avenger]

Well, Sally is in Croatoa.

Yes, 271 yards NE of the store, (Ronald Kincade).
I haven't tried throwing a snowball at her.

[Nyghtshade]

Any more word lately on how testing is going for restoring Bases in Paragon Chat?  Especially the future possibility of restoring bases that multiple characters or players could enter at the same time?

[NJQuazar]

I had a possibly crazy idea for the Anniversary party.  You have the temp  power of snowballs, so I was wondering if you could build on it and make water balloons. They could be either a temp power or a reward for those that show up and make the Anniversary awesome. Could have an epic water balloon fight!

[Tahquitz]

Tempering expectations... if it wasn't already in the client as a temp power or ability when the game was live, the possibility of it happening in Paragon Chat approaches 0.  (I'll never say it's impossible, but the likelihood of it coming to pass isn't great.)

It'd be easier to run around as a wolf than to throw water balloons.

[Nyghtshade]

When we get bases (with access for all) back, I am totally going to try creating an Irish bar for hanging out.  Wish there was a way to pipe in our own music, but I'd settle for the bar, ha.

[Solitaire]

Is the road map going to be updated, with where things are up to, what's being worked on at present and what's in the future?