Particle's Custom RPG

PCRPG Development => Development => Topic started by: Particle on November 10, 2006 03:59 pm CST

Title: HL2RPG Public Discussion
Post by: Particle on November 10, 2006 03:59 pm CST

If you'd like to talk about how you think the game should go, please do so here.

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Post by: Kyrie on November 10, 2006 05:04 pm CST

Another thought occurred to me in favor of a remort system. Players can continue playing as there is no real 'end game.' The problem that games with max levels encounter is that the developers have to continually produce endgame content to keep those end game players playing. This leaves new players a bit behind as early game content never changes because so much time is spent on the other end.

Another thing I'd love to see is a continued ability for admins to build quests. That's one of the best ways to continually provide new content for players. I hope a move to Source won't limit the abilities that admins have to create new content like that.

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Post by: sin on November 10, 2006 06:08 pm CST

Thanks for the new place to discuss this topic.

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Post by: villman420 on November 10, 2006 06:59 pm CST

the whole thing i dont like about remorting is people hiding behind monster characters. in tvt mod, you could whoop on people who had no idea how to fight. i think knowing how to fight should be a big part of a game.

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Post by: sin on November 10, 2006 07:39 pm CST

Ok, just purchased HL2.  Downloading it right now.

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Post by: sin on November 11, 2006 12:16 am CST

I decided since this is a joint venture that we need a middle ground where we can do this.  I started another forum particularly for our HL2RPG.

Here's the link for all you developers that want to get in on it.

http://hl2rpg.8.forumer.com/index.php (http://hl2rpg.8.forumer.com/index.php)


All dev team members will receive moderator status on the forums.

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Post by: Particle on November 12, 2006 11:04 pm CST

we already agreed to do it here I thought

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Post by: Particle on November 13, 2006 01:13 am CST

Besides--this isn't a joint venture.  It's a project I started about a year ago, and you said you'd like to join the project.

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Post by: sin on November 13, 2006 02:08 am CST

So what have you got so far?  What do we need?

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Post by: Particle on November 14, 2006 10:32 am CST

We need to setup a voice conf with you, me, and a select group of people who are qualified to discuss gameplay before we do anything development-wise.

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Post by: sin on November 14, 2006 02:11 pm CST

I'll see about getting a Ventrillo (teamspeak) server set up soon so we can do that.

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Post by: Particle on November 14, 2006 06:17 pm CST

alright

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Post by: Lidge Farkley on November 14, 2006 10:17 pm CST

Hello.
:-)

What are the current ideas as far as a continually varied system of play for all levels of players?

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Post by: Particle on November 14, 2006 11:00 pm CST

Nothing is final as of yet.  You're invited to the voice chat if you'd like to add your input.

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Post by: Lidge Farkley on November 14, 2006 11:21 pm CST

I don't think you want to hear my ugly voice.. ;-p

Is there a dedicated CS:S server we could all meet on so i can avoid installing additional software?

My input is not the best, but as of yet I do not know the limits of the Engine as far as map open-space rendering.  Obviously there are some bad-ass open areas in HL-2, but to what end is the implementation interested and how big are the maps, really.. and can we make use of the loading system that exists with the HL2 engine? (you load up areas as you walk in to them on huge areas; effectively loading a new map, but only for a few second pause)  Would that be abusable?  How could we make it not abusable?

Many thoughts.

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Post by: sin on November 14, 2006 11:55 pm CST

I've got the teamspeak server installed.  It will be used for discussions mostly between the people that will be modding the HL2RPG, but players can also use it if they wish to.  If you dont have teamspeak, you can pick it up here.

http://www.goteamspeak.com/index.php?pa ... oads&id=1a (http://www.goteamspeak.com/index.php?page=downloads&id=1a)

Then, once you have it installed, open the program up, look in the upper left corner and you will see a tab that says "connection".  Click on that.  Then Choose "quick connect".  You will be asked to put some information in such as

The IP address of the server
70.177.71.176

and

The Password
tribes

You should be in the server now.  Have fun with it.\


**note**

The password will change during Mod discussions and only the dev team will have access.

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Post by: sin on November 14, 2006 11:58 pm CST

Quote from: "Lidge Farkley"

Obviously there are some bad-ass open areas in HL-2, but to what end is the implementation interested and how big are the maps, really..

http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.p ... 4774468800 (http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?faq=source_mod_faq&section=106159031874671600&question=106159074774468800)

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Post by: sin on November 14, 2006 11:59 pm CST

Quote from: "Lidge Farkley"

and can we make use of the loading system that exists with the HL2 engine? (you load up areas as you walk in to them on huge areas; effectively loading a new map, but only for a few second pause)

I think using the loading system between zones would be fine.  I dont think it could be abused.

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Post by: Particle on November 15, 2006 12:00 am CST

I don't think we can use it very effectively in multiplayer.

And yeah--maps have huge potential.  One layer alone would be as big as the tribes map or better at normal scale.  If we drop it down to where a player is four units high, we'd have roughly four times the playable area of even that, plus layering of up to say four different terrain maps.

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Post by: Kyrie on November 15, 2006 12:03 am CST

Quote from: "Lidge Farkley"

can we make use of the loading system that exists with the HL2 engine? (you load up areas as you walk in to them on huge areas; effectively loading a new map, but only for a few second pause)  

Isn't that a single player thing? It wouldn't work as well on a multiplayer server (if at all). At least, not in an FPS setting. For an RPG, if individual zones could be contained in that way, interesting possibilities arise.

There's also the possibility of a multi-server mod. Is this going to be a released mod that anyone can download and host? I doubt that, given Particle's desire to hoard his code to himself and not share it with the world.
Personally, I'd prefer it not to be released that way. Instead, you could create a mod that spans across two (or more) servers. Say one server has half the map, the other server holds the next half of the map. Similar to Sinister's mod. It could allow more than a server's limit of people to play the mod at once. Beginners could start on either of the servers. That opens up the possibility of an interesting player vs player (server vs server) setup.
This multi-server setup has already been done and they've even managed to make it so you can 'global talk' across all linked servers simultaneously.

I've been looking around at what other HL2 RPGs (multiplayer) have accomplished, and really, they're crap. Their leveling is based on shooting at bots or other players for EXP. Then you specialize in a weapon or two as you level. You can gain skills like magic, although I'm not sure what they do.

There are a few single player RPG-ish mods that I haven't tried out, yet. They seem to follow the traditional 'hack'n'slash spell slinger' RPG more closely.

Other topics I've been thinking about and would like to see discussed:
Player vs Player; Make it fair for low levels who wish to 'just level' but allow higher levels to have a fun time with it against other high levels (and willing low levels).
Reputation; I think it'd be cool if your actions against other players, and the places that you do it, can come back to bite you.
Quests; More of the typical WoW-style quests, not the FREE EXP PACKS IF YOU KNOW HOW TO WALK quests. Maybe we can attain a comfortable mix of TribesRPG slashing to level and WoW Questing to level.
Administrative Content; I think I mentioned this before, but I think it's really important. If you give admins the ability to create content on their own (like in good ol' TribesRPG) you really take a load of work off the mod developers. Admins can continually bring fresh new things to the server while developers can take their time creating the really big content updates and various bug fixes. A Garry's Mod sort of set-up is interesting; Been playing that a lot recently, it's just so awesome.

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Post by: Particle on November 15, 2006 12:06 am CST

I forget who mentioned it originally (months ago), but a lua system for HL2RPG would be a good thing of course.

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Post by: sin on November 15, 2006 12:14 am CST

Here's an interesting site i found.  

http://www.msremake.com/ (http://www.msremake.com/)

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Post by: Kyrie on November 15, 2006 12:14 am CST

I only first ran into LUA when I started looking at Source mods. It's an outside language that can be easily 'plugged in' to other applications to allow more functionality?

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Post by: sin on November 15, 2006 12:19 am CST

http://www.lua.org/about.html (http://www.lua.org/about.html)

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Post by: Kyrie on November 15, 2006 12:51 am CST

Yeah, I read that. I was just making sure I understood correctly. It sounds like a cool thing.

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Post by: Kyrie on November 17, 2006 09:13 am CST

Quote from: "Particle"

We need to setup a voice conf with you, me, and a select group of people who are qualified to discuss gameplay before we do anything development-wise.

You want to set up a date/time for this? Maybe contact a few people and invite them, see what kind of turnout you get, really start moving forward.

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Post by: sin on November 17, 2006 01:18 pm CST

I'm thinking after Thanksgiving.  That way everyone will be high on turkey and yams.

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Post by: DGen on November 17, 2006 01:34 pm CST

Quote from: "sin"

The password will change during Mod discussions and only the dev team will have access.

Instead of restricting the whole server you could just make a passworded channel.

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Post by: Particle on November 17, 2006 02:17 pm CST

Sounds good to me.  How about that Friday night?

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Post by: sin on November 17, 2006 06:16 pm CST

I'm going to Mississippi and Louisiana and wont be back until Saturday night.

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Post by: Particle on November 22, 2006 03:10 pm CST

I think this will likely apply to TRPG 6.0 as well as HL2RPG:

Users will only have one account.  On this account, you will chose which character you want to use when you get in-game.  There is a good reason for this kind of change.  It would work wonders on the mangerial side of things, being able to identify users instead of characters.  This would allow easier (and more accurate) votes, bans, promotions, bonuses, restorations, security, etc.  Obviously this is a good thing for both the users and administrators.

---

I think it might be prudent to move characters from thousands of small files to a SQL backend (such as the free MySQL server).  I've already got a framework for this established, but I've just never used it for anything.  This would mean slightly longer load times due to the asynchronous nature of character loads (and saves), but it would probably keep the server from choking quite so much when a lot of player accounts are stored.  It would also greatly reduce the effects of character file chopping and data loss in general.  Additionally, this would allow server owners to more easily create web-based stats, etc, since characters would be stored in a real database.  There are more benefits than this even, and the drawbacks are likely to be small.

---

I plan to continue work on the new launcher interface, and I will be moving a lot of the data transfer to HTTP.  This will allow server owners to dish out custom content from fast web servers instead of a slow connection (for those who host at home).  This has been done in other similar situations such as Steam games with good results.

---

Added to the launcher system will be an option to force "pure" clients--forcing clients to play the game as it was intended (if the server owner desires this for their players when on their server).  This will prevent things like replacing the shield with invisible or mis-positioned items to increase screen visibility.  Things like that are cheating anyway, and this will allow a server owner to dis-allow such activities when a client is connected to their server, if they so choose.

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Post by: Xenos on November 22, 2006 03:46 pm CST

I always wished tribes had a db backend.  That would be wonderful for server owners.  The load time wouldn't be an issue. If you had to wait at a screen saying "Loading Character" for 5 seconds it's still a short time.  I can't see it taking much longer than that to pull character information from a db.

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Post by: Particle on November 22, 2006 04:04 pm CST

It's not the database itself that would cause the delay, but rather the time spent in request between the load request being scanned and the instructions being executed back in the server.

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Post by: Xenos on November 22, 2006 05:14 pm CST

So it would run like Corona's infobot?  I was hoping there would be a better way.

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Post by: Particle on November 22, 2006 06:14 pm CST

Not really.  Be glad with what you get.

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Post by: Lidge Farkley on November 25, 2006 07:07 pm CST

Good ideas Particle; things I have been hoping (and suggesting at main RPG site) since day 1!

Especially the "one account thing"; way easier than having a crapload of characters with a crapload of passwords.

If a database is used, would this enable a higher item limit?

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Post by: Particle on November 25, 2006 07:13 pm CST

unrelated

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Post by: Lidge Farkley on November 26, 2006 04:26 am CST

unfortunate

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Post by: sin on January 26, 2007 06:40 am CST

I just wanted to give an update.  I've decided to move ahead with a Tribesque RPG, but I dont think HL2 is the engine that I want to see it in.  I'm gonna start work modding Battlefield2.  Here's 3 reasons.




(http://http://poe1.pointofexistence.com/poe/stormfront.jpg)

(http://http://poe1.pointofexistence.com/poe/woodland.jpg)

(http://http://poe1.pointofexistence.com/poe/red_dawn.jpg)

The realistic terrain is a huge factor in my wanting to do it in Battlefield2.  I've already set up a Moddb account for this and I invite anyone that wants to help to please join the team.

http://mods.moddb.com/8571/battlefield2-rpg/ (http://mods.moddb.com/8571/battlefield2-rpg/)

lol, that last picture's sky looks like the sky in PCRPG (or the way that it "should" look)