Thoughts on the new Traveller game?

[Ulsyus]

FIFTH RELEASE: NOBLES
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​
Within this release, it will be possible to become the Emperor of the Third Imperium.

Coinciding with the major expansion of power to the player, within higher levels of this campaign characters will have the ability to deal with other empires within Chartered Space. ​

On reading this I wondered how much of the history of the 3I these guys actually know or grasp. Of course it could have been a throwaway line, without any reference to the odds of success that they the developers may be aware of, with the intent of attracting investors/players. But I wonder...

Off it's a MMORPG, does that mean that time passes at the same rate as in our world? If so, does that mean there's going to be a lot of downtime while your Type S/patrol squadron/Type A/troop transport is in jump between destinations? "Well, that was only 27 hours to get to the jump point from Geflurginoxic II, now we're in jump I'll just use my gaming time to wash my socks and scrub the kitty litter until we get there."

Next, if the characters are still in the services, how do they gain skills?
"Okay, I'm offline while my character is paneled to attend Cse X, which along with U, V, W and later Y will see me increase my skill level in Bay Weapons from 1 to 2. Four weeks of downtime while he/she/it is studying and doing summative testing." Or worse, if they go to a branch school for most of a year. Do they play out the interactions in between classes and workshops and such?

OR are these and all the questions everyone else has asked the sort of support that the developers are hoping to get from the Traveller community?

 

[mike wightman]

Is there any word from MWM that this is legit?

 

[aramis]

I must be the only player in the world that doesn't seem to attract all of these trolls, *-ists, etc. that everyone else comments about.

I've been playing WoW since the initial Alpha, and while I know such people exist, I don't see them.

I don't play much other online, but WoW has a large player base. I play(ed) Diablo 3 too.

Have I seen some stuff? Sure. Have I reported names? Sure. Have I reported people? Sure. I mostly report them because when you report someone two things happen. One, they vanish from your chat log, and, two, they get a 24 hour ignore. Given the diversity of the population, I simply never see them again and don't have to clean up my ignore list.

But after all this time, I have 1 person on my permanent ignore list, and he's there basically just because he's a very active trader in chat and I'm tired of listening to him.

At worst, I've seen bouts of immature, off color humor.

I've been kicked from groups, had kills/nodes/loot stolen from me, ganked and camped in PvP play. It's just no big deal, at least to me. Doesn't happen often.

I was even banned once for reporting a spammer (it was a bunch of spammers), that was funny. But, c'est la vie.

But the apparent rampant, wide ranging, continual toxicity that I hear about? No, I never see that. Not on any of my servers. Not in any of the public chat channels.

Within 10 minutes of first playing everquest, I was hassled by spawn campers for being "in their spot"... That was the first and last time I played it.

Now, on Puzzle Pirates, I have never had an issue with trolls. I have had issues with stingy captains... Wait - there was one troll. He started in, got noticed by a mod - who unmasked his mod status, and banned the guy on the spot. Poof. Dude's account was locked out within minutes. PPs staff play the game.

On BSGO, I had several trolls pester me... too bad for them they were playing toasters... in addition to blasting them, I reported them. Oh, and they'd found ways around the profanity filter.

I've lots of friends who have had issues on WoW and EQ with thieves, including account hackers.

But I've stuck to low volume games that have unpopular themes, and had few issues.

 

[LeperColony]

I'm not sure I have much faith in the feasibility of becoming the emperor.

But even if you did, what would you do when you played the game? Sit through meetings? What a snooze fest. And I see the Archduke of Ilelish is on the schedule. That dude goes on forever...

 

[aramis]

Is there any word from MWM that this is legit?

I know Marc has licensed an MMO. I don't know if this is it.

 

[ovka]

Off it's a MMORPG, does that mean that time passes at the same rate as in our world? If so, does that mean there's going to be a lot of downtime while your Type S/patrol squadron/Type A/troop transport is in jump between destinations? "Well, that was only 27 hours to get to the jump point from Geflurginoxic II, now we're in jump I'll just use my gaming time to wash my socks and scrub the kitty litter until we get there."

​To build a sandbox game of this size and to allow as many players as possible into the universe, it is necessary for each player to exist in their own time and space within the game; players should only be able to interact with other players within the same time frame.

So if it is 001-1105 for me, and 002-1105 for you, we could be in the same starport and not see each other unless I wait around for a day?

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[ovka]

I know Marc has licensed an MMO. I don't know if this is it.

In keeping with canon, anything created within these kits to be added to the universe will need to be approved by Marc Miller through the game studio.

In theory, he either knows, or will know about it.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[Hyphen]

You'd think a group coding a MMORPG would have a better looking and functioning website...

Welcome back, Bill! ;-)

 

[Garyius2003]

I emailed a game designer and publisher, who is politically active so I won't mention his name here because of the politics rule. He was spot on about Star Citizen.

He said this game would not happen. The team does not have the experience or resources to do it.

 

[kilemall]

I emailed a game designer and publisher, who is politically active so I won't mention his name here because of the politics rule. He was spot on about Star Citizen.

He said this game would not happen. The team does not have the experience or resources to do it.

Ya, the 'we got positive attitude' doesn't cover the server/network guy, the client guy, combat/vehicles/structure/people model guy, database guy, not to mention the actual game design/specs which entails understanding what all the other guys can do and not do.


As a standalone game it's hard enough, but the MMO/sharing part with online people makes it exponentially harder, and there are very few technologies out there that can render planets.


I don't even want to think what a patch download would look like, even for just a 20 planet subsector.


This won't require SC levels of spending, mostly because SC costs are being driven by Chris Roberts' inability to actually finish projects, but it would be at least 25 million for perfect teams that do everything right, and I would expect for most more like 50-75 million for the base system and first module.


They can lay their hands on that kind of money and have that guy that can do vision AND project management AND engineering, can do. Otherwise, probably not.


They aren't going to save that much on skimping on pretty ships- its the underlying engineering and redoing that engineering if they didn't spec something right that will spiral the costs.

 

[aramis]

As a standalone game it's hard enough, but the MMO/sharing part with online people makes it exponentially harder, and there are very few technologies out there that can render planets.


I don't even want to think what a patch download would look like, even for just a 20 planet subsector.

There are dozens of libraries that can map a rectangle onto a sphere in relatively little time. Some are a little dated - there was one for QBASiC on a 80286 class with a VGA card, for example.

If they map an icosahedral projection, it can be about 150 kb compressed at a reasonable 15 pixels per hex for the planet. Add a data file for location of ports...

That's actually the easy part. Getting the mix right between ship and ground is the hard part.

There was a game called Space Trader: Merchant Marine (which died on the vine) for Mac & Win... it was VERY travelleresque - no, not the fantastic PalmOS one (which has been migrated to android, BTW), but a 3D-one inspired by it. It wasn't MMO (but was planned to go to being one). The WinXP version is still up on steam. The dirtside was pretty good, the space was decent... boarding actions sucked bigtime... and it didn't play nice in WINE.

Likewise, Star Trek Online had an interesting mix - I have doubts that a traveller version will work nearly as well.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Well, some zones are a pain. But I don't go there as I'm not in the 'must complete all content before next expansion is marketed' group.

I understand your view. There are complaints in the EQ forums. I use the game to relax in. Its completely different than all my other hobbies.

I was in my Lords of the Realm 2 phase when EQ hit the market. LOTR2 was dated then, but it had excellent gameplay. Anyway, the local gang I hung out with migrated from the Lords' series to EQ, and that's when the stuff hit the fan.

It just soured me. My first player on player interaction was me dropping my newly purchased backpack because I was unfamiliar of how to equip stuff, and some kid, and yes it was a kid, just trolled the heck out of me for it. Then said he'd fight me for it when he was several levels above me. I can't remember whether I tried to complain or not. But from then on things only got worse.

So (broken record time here) when I think of a bunch of Imperial Scouts, Army, Navy, Marines, Merchants and whoever else, running amuck in a virtual form of Regina or Efate's starports, I can't help but think that it's going to be the same old.

Maybe I was a weird kid, but when I did a fantasy or scifi RPG, or a warsims, I tried to get into the mood of being a warrior, general, starship captain, what not. But today, to me, MMORPGs are just virtual play rooms with no monitors nor security, and even though the terms of service state you need to be 18 or older, most of the players are between 10 and 13, or adults who act like their in middle school.

*EDIT* The point being that no pre-teen, who are the majority of players (unfortunately), wants to get into the mood of "pretend". Partially because that's kids' stuff, but also partially because they're there to prove themselves to their peers, and not enjoy the atmosphere *END EDIT*

My chief gripe with MMORPGs is that the quests are rather dry, and there's no real story to them. When I did EQ you got an NPC telling you something via the chat window with text. No cinematics, no interaction with whoever it was, and no setting aside some virtual space so you and your party could indulge in the story and adventure, which was the implied promise.

I did EQ for six months, and it was six months too long. I had a woman email when I was searching for an editor the year before last, telling me laughingly that RPGs were for teenage boys. Well, no doubt that's the primary audience, but there's tons of grognards like us here who like a more mature or adult oriented game session without all the pre-teen and teen antics, and still appreciate good games, good stories, good experiences for what they are.

Maybe MMORPGs have changed since. I hope so for those who like to indulge in them, but I'm pessimistic about a Traveller version.

 

[kilemall]

There are dozens of libraries that can map a rectangle onto a sphere in relatively little time. Some are a little dated - there was one for QBASiC on a 80286 class with a VGA card, for example.

If they map an icosahedral projection, it can be about 150 kb compressed at a reasonable 15 pixels per hex for the planet. Add a data file for location of ports...

That's actually the easy part. Getting the mix right between ship and ground is the hard part.

There was a game called Space Trader: Merchant Marine (which died on the vine) for Mac & Win... it was VERY travelleresque - no, not the fantastic PalmOS one (which has been migrated to android, BTW), but a 3D-one inspired by it. It wasn't MMO (but was planned to go to being one). The WinXP version is still up on steam. The dirtside was pretty good, the space was decent... boarding actions sucked bigtime... and it didn't play nice in WINE.

Likewise, Star Trek Online had an interesting mix - I have doubts that a traveller version will work nearly as well.

Hmm, think terrain is tougher then you think.


WWIIOL is a 1:2 scale of Europe, fed with geographical data directly from USGS map surveys, at a relatively low fidelity of elevation change. It takes specialized servers to handle player activities per sector that hands off as you move from one sector to another, it takes standardized buildings and terrain objects in memory to allow fast loading without experiencing screen lag (I'm assuming we will want air/rafts and grav tanks that approximate WWII aircraft, and an additional category of hypersonic ships in and out of atmo).



Greater GB available can alleviate that and have a load-per-planet time can flush and load another planet, but it's not going to be trivial computationally.




Wait a second, I think you are talking about the visual of a planet at some distance.


No.


I am talking about flying in from exoatmo to landing, and getting out of the ship and doing starport/trade/explore/crime. That's environmental render in a way NO one has done, and SC's version is cartoonish at best.





Even if they limit the updating screen space to 'screens on the bridge', which is clever for reducing computing load, it's still got to render enough to steer the thing, and have an outside that matches your overflight and landing.




They could break up such scenes to 'in the bridge/turret/engine room' and then if you are going outside, you materialize next at the ship's locker next to airlock and switch to world environment module, but we'd be missing the Snapshot onboard game.


Otherwise ship operations would need to include the whole deck plan and render.

 

[aramis]

Terrain maps are just a different color image. One where the bit-depth is the single greyscale value.

Or a DEM file.

Heck - Google Earth renders in real time in 3D ... the load lag is because it switches to higher data density. And there is, in GE, a flight sim module, allowing you to fly over the terrain. (It's an easter egg.)

MS Flight Simulator, likewise, renders 3D real-time, and has since the days of the Apple II... larger files and more working memory mean more resolution... or more of the planet resolved at one time.

Kerbal Space Program also does 3D planet rendering in real time.

there are multiple libraries for the C64 that wrapped an image onto a sphere; if you're far enough away to see the whole sphere, you're far enough away that the altitude deviations are trivial.

Also - keep in mind that an item of height X is only going to visibly render significantly if within about 4*X of the edge... for most worlds, that's going to be trivial. you can simply ignore the elevation data away from the edge.

It's not mathematically trivial, but it's exactly the kind of thing GPUs are designed to do.

 

[kilemall]

<Shakes head> I would agree that it is very doable- if this was a single-player game, and if they are smart and want to get funding to go to the next level of MMO, that is what they will do here.


GE is NOT analogous, as you are zeroing in on one neighborhood, not flying over several regions at 3k alt/400 kph then flying the craft into the hot LZ, or even the mundane landing pad.


WHILE other players see the incoming ship and it renders in an accurate relative location and flight behavior.


WHILE the terrain you fly over updates on any point of the planet you choose to go to, including buildings, unique natural features, and rendering other PCs/NPCs/animals/planet environment and vehicles when you get close enough, has to get loaded in without lag.



WHILE rendering proper effects on passing through different atmo alts and whether it's controlled grav or hot reentry.



MMO Traveller ain't FS. It just isn't.


SC itself is going to do 'landing on rails' and skimp over the atmo content. My guess is they will do the same here.


Now one big shortcut they can take here is settle on an underlying game system like we would at the table, and literally roll for results (with input from a ref figure or other players for DMs from player ingenuity). Then the game renders a visual of the result.


Could be a LOT simpler then attempting any sort of sim.

 

[aramis]

BSGO had no issue with rendering ships, multiple fighters, and multiple asteroids all in one go, real time, in a VM.

Elite dangerous is an MMO, and has the same kinds of issues - nasty pain in the * to play, but the rendering is incredible. Including inside the colony cylinders.

you don't need to render the cities in any detail until you get close enough that the buildings are taller than a pixel. At which point, you're not likely seeing even a quarter of the planet. Prior to which, they're just a color splotch.

If the world surfaces are procedurally generated (as is being done by a project for T5), you just need to have the seed and the locations of the ports.

You're way out of date on your render-tech, Killemall. WAY out of date. Almost like you're trying to convince yourself it can't work so as to not get hopes up.

None of the issues you have raised are real.

Then, there's the far more common Space MMO approach. Space is one map, and is ship only. Spaceport is another, but is character only.
I know this is how BSGO did it (albeit landing was only on carriers). While not an MMO, Freelancer and Elite both used this mode, as did Wing Commander (albit WC without walkabout when landed - just a click-to-interact interface in the ready room)

I'd expect: approach world, hit "landing sequence" and a load screen, then wakabout in the port. Alternate landing sites would be other, separate, mission specific maps.

 

[kilemall]

Well we will agree to disagree, but I do expect they will do certain sequences on rails and players will not be able to pitch out the cargo bay in their air/raft on the way in or other such crazy player stunts.

 

[JimMarn]

@Blue Ghost

I had some issues in 2004 when I first played EQ. The dvds I bought had a user manual that was outdated when I made the purchase.

So when my character tried to accpt something from another player's character, I wound up jumping up and down instead. Some players were helpful, some not.

Several of us in the EQ forums, over the past 2 to 4 years, have said we are over 40 or over 60 years of age. There are some kids in there, and some folks who try to take over some zones and not let others play. But the big guilds now complain and some of the trolls and griefers are dealt with by Daybreak. When a guild with a few hundred members, and each player has multiple accounts, Daybreak tends to listen.

I don't know if your experience would differ now or not.

The official forums wouldn't let discussion of quests happen, now they do. A Quest popup has been added, it tells you what you have to do next. Many of the older quests aren't covered in this was. But allakhazam has an Everquest site, alond with EQ2 and WoW, that has Quest and other info on it.

Within 6 months after WoW came out, about half the EQ population left. A few times a year, although I haven't noticed any so far this year, people come back and post in the EQ forums.

EQ 2 took players away to. The game planet was severly modified. No moon either.

I've tried around 15 MMOs, EQ is the only one I still game with.

But if there was a Traveller MMO, I would try it out.

 

[Tiikeri]

MMOS are long and expensive to develop, and from the looks of that website this project is long on dreams and pretty short on everything else.

I played eve online for a while, meh, but I only played wow for 45 minutes.

Traveller is many games in one. Space combat from individual ships to fleet actions, ground combat from barfight to planetary invasions, economic struggles, and missions.

Hundreds of worlds need to be designed, populated and rendered so that people can take an air raft and go wherever they want.

Are they really going to code all this? Doubt it, to put it gently. Is it technically possible? Yes. Practical on an indie game budget or even a major budget? Laughable.

If they make this happen, it will most likely be some limited scifi game with traveller trimming. It'll be limited as to what you can play, what you can do, where you can go. Limited to scripted events, locations, quests, and quest givers. Starports with small environments and essential services, and a little startown environment with a bar. No way to explore, or if you can there's

Is this a game? Yes. Is it traveller? No way. It will have butchered the expansive scope, the freedom, the wide open frontier, the let's go and see what's there.

Theres also technical challenges according to the game engine they use and how they want to model their physics.

Imo, they should start with a traveller themed battle game in one system, like 3I, Aslan and zhodani fighting for one planet, and use that to fund the mmo development. They could introduce factions, gear, character generation, and test their game engine physics, and generate interest. But from one look at the website, I'm doubtful as all get out.

 

[ovka]

You know, back in the early 80s, I played a text-based game called Eamon. It had a toolkit to allow you to create your own adventures. Then there was a more graphical game put out by TSR (pre-WotC) based on Forgotten Realms. It also had a toolkit to allow you to create your own adventures. In the early 90s I played a few MUDs, and there were MUD toolkits. A quick search turns up some MMORPG toolkits.

It seems to me that it would be a better idea to start with an existing toolkit rather than start from scratch. You could probably host it through a platform like Steam online gaming.

NOTE, I am not extremely familiar with the existing MMORPG toolkits or the Steam platform, but what little I do know seems like it could be made to work.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka