Author Topic: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.  (Read 333246 times)

Illusionss

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #740 on: January 05, 2014, 11:15:49 PM »
If that's an optimistic view of COT, then I very sincerely hope you're right.  But last I heard they don't have an approach to MMO software except to build their own...  their chosen engine doesn't include a developed MMO.   And first thing they're getting the character creator going.  Which makes me think MMO development will be after (I'd be happy to learn I was wrong).

That sounds like a potential 6-year time sink to me.  MMO development has defeated professional shops before this.

Oh also, why does the jankyness of the code matter if they're reverse-engineering the functions?

Allow me to clarify; it was indeed an optimistic view of CoT, which I am looking forward to seeing in a most extreme fashion. And I would think it would almost be easier to build from the ground up, than try to replicate that knot of old cables in some hoarder's living room, as someone else aptly put it.

Where do you get six years from? My understanding - someone please correct me if wrong - was that their CC was slated for 2014, game launch in 2015. Even with delays - and I expect a few - that's not exactly six years.

MMOs have defeated professionals before this. But in this case, there's one extra factor: this isn't some project people are "interested" in because they were hired to work on it. These are people who got thrown out of their online home, just like you and I did. They want their home back. This is no humdrum "job" for them, they go to prepare a place for not only themselves, but for us.

Perhaps they will fail. Stranger things have happened. But until they DO, I will continue hoping and wishing them success and hoping for miracles, until proven otherwise. [And I will still get on that emulator, because I am nostalgic too.]

Ohioknight

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #741 on: January 06, 2014, 12:10:17 AM »

Where do you get six years from? My understanding - someone please correct me if wrong - was that their CC was slated for 2014, game launch in 2015. Even with delays - and I expect a few - that's not exactly six years.

MMOs have defeated professionals before this. But in this case, there's one extra factor: this isn't some project people are "interested" in because they were hired to work on it. These are people who got thrown out of their online home, just like you and I did. They want their home back. This is no humdrum "job" for them, they go to prepare a place for not only themselves, but for us.

Perhaps they will fail. Stranger things have happened. But until they DO, I will continue hoping and wishing them success and hoping for miracles, until proven otherwise. [And I will still get on that emulator, because I am nostalgic too.]

Well, as I understand it, 6 years is roughly what it's taken the folks now working on Valience to get their home-grown MMO software working (and they posted a marvelous description of the development hell that that took) and while COT game launch is scheduled for 2015, I don't understand how they plan to hit that if they don't have a solid decision on the main component that's about 1/3rd as difficult as an actual game engine to develop.   I understand they're still considering purchasing an independent package instead -- which would mean integration and more cost than planned.

And while this is no humdrum job for them, it also isn't full-time employment.

As I say, I sincerely hope there's something I'm not seeing (and I am backing them with money as I am Valience and as I would H&V) but I have higher hopes for SCORE than any of the others (though I already have 8 alts in two user ids on Valience's pre-alpha)


   
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Illusionss

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #742 on: January 06, 2014, 12:31:32 AM »
Valiance has been in development for six years? This is the first I have heard of it.

What is the size of that project compared to CoT? As in, how many people are working on it? I have never seen a Kickstarter for Valiance. How are they funding that project? These are really rhetorical questions; my main point being, that the size of the project is going to directly impact the release date. For instance 50 people are going to produce more, faster than 10 people. And budget matters a lot. What tools do they have? There's just a lot of variables here rather than a flat "MMOs take at least six years to create, across the board."

Ohioknight

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #743 on: January 06, 2014, 12:50:11 AM »
Valiance has been in development for six years? This is the first I have heard of it.

What is the size of that project compared to CoT? As in, how many people are working on it? I have never seen a Kickstarter for Valiance. How are they funding that project? These are really rhetorical questions; my main point being, that the size of the project is going to directly impact the release date. For instance 50 people are going to produce more, faster than 10 people. And budget matters a lot. What tools do they have? There's just a lot of variables here rather than a flat "MMOs take at least six years to create, across the board."

You seem to have misread my "That sounds like a potential 6-year time sink to me. " as "MMO's take at least 6 years to create across the board".  My point was that I fear COT is going to hit an awful reality in 2015 when they discover just what all can go wrong with MMO development working with a game engine.  Like I say, hope I'm wrong.

Valience is a new project but it is a re-purposed re-development of an older fantasy MMORPG that was about 75% complete.  It uses a house-developed MMO engine that the development group is using for several projects, none of which have yet been released.  The group has been developing that MMO for a number of years. The total organization is smaller than the COT effort, the Valience team is MUCH smaller and they are also not full-timers on their projects (multiple game groups working independently on shared architecture and resources).  But because it was a mostly developed game that was re-purposed, they were faster out with a (very, very, limited) playable environment.

Valience doesn't use kickstarter, but will accept donations which can be found on their web page.  Unlike H&V which is unwilling to take anybody's money at this point.  I consider my Valience donation pay-for-play as I'm happy to have anything that lets me thump a bad guy.

Oh, just wanted to add "For instance 50 people are going to produce more, faster than 10 people" -- I really hope that that's true, but coordinating 50 people to be even AS productive as 10 is often not possible in my experience of software development (granted, that's in Fortune 500 environments... but still)
« Last Edit: January 06, 2014, 12:58:19 AM by Ohioknight »
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General Idiot

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #744 on: January 06, 2014, 04:19:48 AM »
their chosen engine doesn't include a developed MMO.

Last I heard, they were using the Unreal engine right? Quite a few MMOs run on that. Most notably one of the two remaining superhero MMOs - DCUO runs on it. Marvel Heroes does too, although that's more a Diablo game with MMO elements than a full on MMO. Several other large MMOs do as well, most notably TERA and NCSoft's own Blade & Soul. And Lineage II runs on an earlier version.

The list of games of all shapes and sizes that run on Unreal is actually pretty staggering when you see it.

mixedemotions

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #745 on: January 06, 2014, 04:21:23 AM »
 CoT, I can't wait to see the hard work restore our home. I for one am personally grateful for all the effort. However if a private server happens to pop up I wouldn't mind getting a invite  ;D

Every once in a while I manage to keep my mind off of CoX for a short amount of time. I manage to live peacefully, but it never lasts for very long... The memories I have of the game still seem fresh in my head. I can't wait to step back into my home away from home again.
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Ohioknight

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #746 on: January 06, 2014, 05:28:31 AM »
Last I heard, they were using the Unreal engine right? Quite a few MMOs run on that. Most notably one of the two remaining superhero MMOs - DCUO runs on it. Marvel Heroes does too, although that's more a Diablo game with MMO elements than a full on MMO. Several other large MMOs do as well, most notably TERA and NCSoft's own Blade & Soul. And Lineage II runs on an earlier version.

The list of games of all shapes and sizes that run on Unreal is actually pretty staggering when you see it.

As I understand it (please, someone more knowledgeable correct me if I'm wrong) -- while lots of games run using the Unreal game engine, they also use MMO software to actually run the game.  Unreal doesn't come with MMO capability -- you need to build it or buy one.
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Aggelakis

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #747 on: January 06, 2014, 05:43:28 AM »
As I understand it (please, someone more knowledgeable correct me if I'm wrong) -- while lots of games run using the Unreal game engine, they also use MMO software to actually run the game.  Unreal doesn't come with MMO capability -- you need to build it or buy one.
Err. Uhh. The Unreal engine scales to MMO-capability by itself. For the really most basic explanation, the game engine is the base of the game. What the game looks like, how it interacts, etc. That doesn't matter whether it's MMO or not. You hook into it with a single player game or a multiplayer or a MMO multiplayer. The functions and such.
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Ohioknight

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #749 on: January 06, 2014, 01:27:05 PM »
Err. Uhh. The Unreal engine scales to MMO-capability by itself. For the really most basic explanation, the game engine is the base of the game. What the game looks like, how it interacts, etc. That doesn't matter whether it's MMO or not. You hook into it with a single player game or a multiplayer or a MMO multiplayer. The functions and such.

So now I am confused.  Why were people saying during the kickstarter that Unreal didn't come with MMO capability built in?  Why were the COT people saying that while they were currently planning to build their own MMO software, they might purchase it and integrate with the Unreal game rendering software as other games did?  This is not, by any means, my field of software development.
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Codewalker

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #750 on: January 06, 2014, 02:32:07 PM »
Err. Uhh. The Unreal engine scales to MMO-capability by itself.

I don't know if anything has changed with UE4, but the last time I worked with the Unreal engine, it didn't by far.

Unreal is designed as a first-person shooter engine and its built-in networking code is based around that. It's designed for low-latency medium-bandwidth links to support twitch gaming. It has a hard player cap that was originally 16 but I think increased to 64 in UE2 or 3 (the stuff I used it for never came close to that). The out of the box server will let you load statelessly connect several players together on a single map. If you want more than one map, you have to run multiple servers and there's no built in method to persist data across them or control who connects to which one.

AFAIK it doesn't have any kind of seamless transfer support that people have come to expect in a modern MMO. So you're looking at frequent loading screens / waiting for connection messages when moving between areas. UE3 added "Seamless Travel", but that's for a local game or a co-op server where the server itself loads a new map because everyone on it is in the loading zone and moving the same direction.

There's a couple of methods to use it for an MMO instead. You can either use the built-in networking code and write / use your own stuff on the back end to handle character state persistence and moving them between maps. That's what DCUO does IIRC. It's decent for games that need fast reaction to things, but if your MMO isn't twitch based then you're wasting a lot of bandwidth (which adds up fast in the datacenter with thousands of people connected).

The other option is to use a completely custom server backend, eschew the built-in networking code altogether, and replace it with your own. In that case, Unreal would think that it's a single player game running locally, but your own code plugged in to it is creating actors that seem to be computer controlled, but are really being driven by a connection to your custom MMO back-end. With that setup, you have no limits on the number of players in the area beyond what your own code and the client PC's graphics can handle. You *might* be able to leverage the Seamless map loading support in this setup, but it would be tricky to get right.

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #751 on: January 06, 2014, 06:59:52 PM »
Well DCUO, Tera and B&S all use the UE3 as their graphics engine as well as several others.  So unless each keep reinventing MMO support in house, UE3 may now incorporate some rudimentary support now.
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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #752 on: January 07, 2014, 05:20:31 AM »
Still an optimist, sir. 

As disjointed as we've become in the last year, when the time comes to ask folks to give it a spin, there may be 8 forum readers that day (people still check in but at varying times, dates and through RL issues.)  If you're not asked to be in any betas, or the public release whizzes by as you learn of it months later, don't be hurt over it. 

Now let's see in X months, X years, if I can take my own advice.  ???

Just keep coming around and you'll be one of those eight hehe.

Personally I expect there to still be way more than eight around here though. :)

Drauger9

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #753 on: January 07, 2014, 07:16:10 PM »
Quote
Still an optimist, sir. 

As disjointed as we've become in the last year, when the time comes to ask folks to give it a spin, there may be 8 forum readers that day (people still check in but at varying times, dates and through RL issues.)  If you're not asked to be in any betas, or the public release whizzes by as you learn of it months later, don't be hurt over it. 

Now let's see in X months, X years, if I can take my own advice.

Maybe it's the optimist in myself but for me personally. I got this feeling in my gut and that's the reason I started coming back around. I've been checking the forums everyday for alittle over a month. Before then I was just a lurker. LOL!

I check this forum everyday and I check NCSoft's homepage everyday. So I'll just have to wait and see if this gut feeling pays off.

Shenku

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #754 on: January 07, 2014, 11:05:05 PM »
Codewalker's right. While it is possible to build an MMO with Unreal as other MMO's have proven, there's no native support for MMO style server functions, so you'd basically have to build up most of that yourself. Especially since, as Codewalker already pointed out, the serer limit is hard capped at 64 players in the base code, and doesn't support multiple mapservers running simultaneously for different maps.

Heck, if you do a few quick searches on Epic's forums in the UDK section, you'll quickly see that most of the more experieced members of that community actually seem to discourage using Unreal to build an MMO, especially for small scale(i.e. Indie/non-profit) development teams because it's rather impractical. Granted, their discouragement is more based on the quantity of content that would need to be made, but the lack of pre-existing MMO server support is often cited as well.

These things can be fixed of course, but it's essentially building an entire system from scratch, so it's not really saving any time development wise.

Ohioknight

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #755 on: January 08, 2014, 12:59:48 AM »
Hence my lack of optimism on COT hitting a 2015 release schedule.  And my suspicion that S.C.O.R.E. will release before them. 
« Last Edit: January 08, 2014, 01:34:49 AM by Ohioknight »
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Beltor

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #756 on: January 08, 2014, 03:05:46 AM »
I haven't posted in a 'long' time but I've check this forum almost daily since the shutdown. I and likely many others like me would be willing testers.

General Idiot

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #757 on: January 08, 2014, 05:26:23 AM »
As I recall, the free version of UE3 is limited to 64 players tops. If you pay for a license, you can go higher. Certainly high enough to accommodate say, 100 players in a zone. Which was CoH's limit.

Lycantropus

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #758 on: January 08, 2014, 06:47:14 AM »
Just keep coming around and you'll be one of those eight hehe.

Personally I expect there to still be way more than eight around here though. :)
Especially if you count the lurkers that check in regularly, but only post from time to time, when they think it's important.

;)

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malonkey1

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Re: OK, what now? I need a private server or the ability to run my own.
« Reply #759 on: January 08, 2014, 05:00:57 PM »
Especially if you count the lurkers that check in regularly, but only post from time to time, when they think it's important.

;)

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