by date
Plan for Sam Redfern
Plan for Sam Redfern
| Name: | Sam Redfern | |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Jul 18, 2005 | |
| Rating: |  Not Rated | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Sam Redfern |
Blog post
Torque for remote collaboration... ...and a 'lifestyle friendly' MMPORPG
I've got 2 major Torque projects on the go...
(1) Torque as the engine behind a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) -- basically using gaming technologies for teleworking applications. (Note: do a google on CVEs and you'll see what academics think about this stuff). This is part of my day-job as a university researcher. I've had lots of fun over the last few months implementing things like:
* persistent (database driven) rooms (='missions') connected together thru a master server. The master server negotiates movement between servers (thru 'doors') and even has a 'knock knock' system if a door is locked
* room 'spawner' which kicks off a Torque 'roomserver' on request from the master server
* client-side mission editing so that people can drop furniture and interactive objects into their own rooms
* automatic version patching of client .cs and .gui files
* integration with Teamspeak so that each room has a voice-over-IP session running
* interactive virtual white boards: embedded web browsers (private ones and public ones), also Window-sharing so that you can collaborate using a word processor, spreadsheet, paint program, etc. This includes mouse clicks and keyboard strokes arriving from any client and being posted as a Windows message to the application running on the host computer. Each user also has a coloured arrow rendered onto the surface of the whiteboard, so they can point at things as they discuss their work. Changes on the host Window are split up into little PNG files and streamed to the server and distributed to other subscribing clients, who inject them at the correct place on the whiteboard's surface texture
*** The plan is to make this available to people outside our corporate firewall very soon, for testing. I really want to see how useful this approach is for teleworkers/distributed teams! Pop me a message if you're interested in learning more/trying it out. We are awaiting a final set of 3D models so it looks a bit uncannily like orcs running around unpainted offices right now :)
*** Another thing we're working on is making an 'auditory display' system so that events/interactions are rendered via ambient 3D audio, improving awareness of activities around you.
*** Another thing we're working on is having live CAD objects in the environment, so that the CVE can be used by distributed engineering design teams.
(2) My other major project is even more fun! :-)
It's a "lifestyle friendly" MMPORG called 'Darkwind'. This is in its early stages, but my manifesto is available at http://www.dark-wind.net. As you can see, I have some strong beliefs about what makes a good persistent online game..
Right now I'm working on some of the early bits & pieces: camera movements, game rules, database backend. I now have some 3D modellers working on the project so hopefully will have something to show soon! The plan is to use a lot of the coding work I've developed as part of my other project, and to make heavy use of Tim Aste's content packs. The development plan for darkwind is on the website... probably the guts of a year's work I guess...
(1) Torque as the engine behind a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) -- basically using gaming technologies for teleworking applications. (Note: do a google on CVEs and you'll see what academics think about this stuff). This is part of my day-job as a university researcher. I've had lots of fun over the last few months implementing things like:
* persistent (database driven) rooms (='missions') connected together thru a master server. The master server negotiates movement between servers (thru 'doors') and even has a 'knock knock' system if a door is locked
* room 'spawner' which kicks off a Torque 'roomserver' on request from the master server
* client-side mission editing so that people can drop furniture and interactive objects into their own rooms
* automatic version patching of client .cs and .gui files
* integration with Teamspeak so that each room has a voice-over-IP session running
* interactive virtual white boards: embedded web browsers (private ones and public ones), also Window-sharing so that you can collaborate using a word processor, spreadsheet, paint program, etc. This includes mouse clicks and keyboard strokes arriving from any client and being posted as a Windows message to the application running on the host computer. Each user also has a coloured arrow rendered onto the surface of the whiteboard, so they can point at things as they discuss their work. Changes on the host Window are split up into little PNG files and streamed to the server and distributed to other subscribing clients, who inject them at the correct place on the whiteboard's surface texture
*** The plan is to make this available to people outside our corporate firewall very soon, for testing. I really want to see how useful this approach is for teleworkers/distributed teams! Pop me a message if you're interested in learning more/trying it out. We are awaiting a final set of 3D models so it looks a bit uncannily like orcs running around unpainted offices right now :)
*** Another thing we're working on is making an 'auditory display' system so that events/interactions are rendered via ambient 3D audio, improving awareness of activities around you.
*** Another thing we're working on is having live CAD objects in the environment, so that the CVE can be used by distributed engineering design teams.
(2) My other major project is even more fun! :-)
It's a "lifestyle friendly" MMPORG called 'Darkwind'. This is in its early stages, but my manifesto is available at http://www.dark-wind.net. As you can see, I have some strong beliefs about what makes a good persistent online game..
Right now I'm working on some of the early bits & pieces: camera movements, game rules, database backend. I now have some 3D modellers working on the project so hopefully will have something to show soon! The plan is to use a lot of the coding work I've developed as part of my other project, and to make heavy use of Tim Aste's content packs. The development plan for darkwind is on the website... probably the guts of a year's work I guess...
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 12/19/08 - Darkwind Developments.. image heavy 10/31/08 - Deathracing Firetrucks (many images) 06/23/08 - Happy New Year: 2046 01/06/08 - January 2044 Roundup 10/15/07 - Happy New Year 2043 09/06/07 - What you get when you give an indie developer a free reign to rant, and don't argue with him 08/08/07 - Darkwind Retail 04/26/07 - Darkwind Official Opening May 4th |
|---|
Submit your own resources!| Rodney (OldRod) Burns (Jul 18, 2005 at 12:59 GMT) |
While I agree with your views on perma-death (under the "originality" link on your page), there has to be some way around the problem of linkdeath. If I do something stupid and cause my character to die, so be it - I'll know better next time. But if a storm 500 miles away causes a 15 second hiccup in my connection and I lose a character because of it, then that's a major problem.
So far, nobody has really come up with a way around this because any method of allowing people to survive linkdeath can be abused by players "pulling the plug" when they are losing a fight.
I agree though, that perma-death makes a much more involving experience. I once played Everquest under a self-imposed perma-death scenario (excluding lag death). I made it to level 20 before someone kited some spectres over me and I died, but it made for a more exciting game experience up to that point ;)
| Sam Redfern (Jul 18, 2005 at 13:59 GMT) |
| Rodney (OldRod) Burns (Jul 18, 2005 at 14:18 GMT) |
| Sam Redfern (Jul 18, 2005 at 14:42 GMT) |
I'm also going to have 'timeouts' so each player has a chance to pause a couple of times during the battle if their boss walks in or something.. you'll have the option of automatically calling a timeout in the event of not posting a move in time.
| Joshua Dallman (Jul 18, 2005 at 19:45 GMT) |
2) when you said "lifestyle friendly" mmorpg, I totally thought you were making a socially experimental mmorpg for either people of alternate lifestyles (gay/lesbian/bi) or were referring to "THE lifestyle" (swingers), which was really confusing. on the site you say "the focus of the game is on vehicular combat
| Sam Redfern (Jul 20, 2005 at 09:27 GMT) |
1) Recording events hasn't figured all that strongly in what I've been doing. You're right that it's important for meeting activities, although that is of course only one of the functions of CVEs: they're generally for doing work in as much as for holding meetings in. I don't really see how 3D is that much different to 2D: what matters is the text chat and the audio conversation and the documents that are being collaborated on, not where they are in 3D space... I think....? But anyway, Torque has a nice facility for recording 3D activity and playing it back.
2) "lifestyle friendly"... er yeah, I see where you're coming from! What I meant is that the game allows you to play it at the highest competitive level without forcing you to not have a life outside it. Also you can play it anytime during the week, apart from the scheduled weekly races/battles: but even for these, you choose a league that has its events at a time that suits you. So the game is friendly to whatever lifestyle you have outside the game... if that makes sense? Maybe I should change the wording I'm using??
You must be a member and be logged in to either append comments or rate this resource.
