Md 3D

[I am Bored]

As mur spoke of in one of his long messages it was some time ago, and i had forgotten until just now, but i think that if we had a lot more more players online at once than we currently do, it wouldn't work to have to scroll down a page something like twice the current length of a mosly empty md page, and the chat in that case would be hard to read, however if it were in a 3D environment, you wouldn't have the problems with the chat being over crowded, as you would only pick up the people within a certain distance of you, and it would also open up more roplay oppertunities, as isn't that what this game is about the roleplaying? although we would have to figure out how to get the fights integrated into a 3D world.... but i think it would be worth it..... and we would also have to figure out how to mark the bounderies of md..... and the map might have to be slightly bigger..... and you would have to figure out how to integrate the story mode, and tutorial into this..... and we would need some decent 3D artists for the entire thing, and we must find out how to make this all work.....

i will continue to edit this list of things to find/figure out as this topic progresses, and i will actually make it into a list, and not just a long paragraph....

[awiiya]

I say no, because I love the drawing feel of the game. 3d would take away all of that.

Edit: I wasn't the one who gave you negative rep. To prove it, I shall give you positive rep.

Awi

Edited August 26, 2009 by awiiya

[I am Bored]

it is possible to get a drawn feel to the game with the right camera angle, and only drawn shadows..... no player shadows.... i think it could be achived to give it the drawn look it currently has......oh and you don't have to give me negative rep just because you say no
and that means not doing the same thing to this message as well.

Edited August 26, 2009 by I am Bored

[Chewett]

Iab, no offence but have you ever tried to make a 3-d online game?

Imagine the time MD took to make... Multiply it by 10. just to get it back to the beggining.

3d ness would A, be pointless and B, be more complicated

Also unless you want bad graphics it wouldnt be browser based anymore.

Or if you are offering to make it...

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Mucho mucho mucho time and effort. Also, it would cause issues and take from the feel of the game. Of course, I think it'd be better in 3d, but it is unreasonable to expect it to be done.

[Fenrir Greycloth]

It also takes millions of dollars to develop. Not to mention high powered servers.

[dst]

No way! One of the reasons I love MD is the fine art-work and the 2-D style. I get lost in 3-D...

[I am Bored]

[quote name='Fenrir Greycloth' date='26 August 2009 - 07:04 PM' timestamp='1251331478' post='40301']
It also takes millions of dollars to develop. Not to mention high powered servers.
[/quote]

the fact it would take millions of dollars to devolop and the high powered servers, wouldn't make much difference, as if the community was as big as in the example i used, it would already have to be a high powered server, and besides, i am only posting this after remembering one of mur's long messages (not sure but i think mur was drunk at the time..... not sure what that means though, although i would certainly not mind the game not being browser based, and there could still be the 2d version for those who don't like the 3d, although as i pointed out above, the 3D world would certainly add more possibilities for RP.... and (this i don't know of, but isn't it possible with a community as large as the one suggested in my example in teh first post) couldn't it also slightly lower the server load? as if it was out of browser, you could tell the computer of the person who's playing to check if a certain character is within chat range, and not get it to report back to the server, and just get it to get the server to send the location of the players.....

[Kafuuka]

Programming a 3D game isn't the largest part of the work. - It would be quite boring to do, since every line of MD code in existence would have to be adapted into the new engine. - There are good libraries available to jump start your project. However making 3D models for everything takes ages. Right now it already takes a lot of time for new 2D avatars to be released.

Efficiency: in a continuous 3D world every time a player moves even a single pixel, the server needs to recalculate the distance to the nearby players and determine if it is now/still in visible/audible range. All those that are in range should be told the player did move. In order for it to look natural, your visual range should be quite large: people shouldn't suddenly appear before your nose. Assume then that people would move about as often as the frequency of speech is now... the server load increases a lot. And then you should increase the update frequency, because you want fluid motion.
Making a 2d client that is not browser based, could improve efficiency by storing more data on the players' computers. This is valid for 3d too, but I doubt it outweighs the overhead from calculating and transmitting position updates.

RP: *sparkly blue text* will remain just that. You can only make a finite number of animations available and if you want to use a different kind of *RP action* than those that are animated... though luck.

[Chewett]

[quote name='Kafuuka' date='27 August 2009 - 11:04 PM' timestamp='1251410685' post='40358']
Programming a 3D game isn't the largest part of the work. - It would be quite boring to do, since every line of MD code in existence would have to be adapted into the new engine. - There are good libraries available to jump start your project. However making 3D models for everything takes ages. Right now it already takes a lot of time for new 2D avatars to be released.

Efficiency: in a continuous 3D world every time a player moves even a single pixel, the server needs to recalculate the distance to the nearby players and determine if it is now/still in visible/audible range. All those that are in range should be told the player did move. In order for it to look natural, your visual range should be quite large: people shouldn't suddenly appear before your nose. Assume then that people would move about as often as the frequency of speech is now... the server load increases a lot. And then you should increase the update frequency, because you want fluid motion.
Making a 2d client that is not browser based, could improve efficiency by storing more data on the players' computers. This is valid for 3d too, but I doubt it outweighs the overhead from calculating and transmitting position updates.

RP: *sparkly blue text* will remain just that. You can only make a finite number of animations available and if you want to use a different kind of *RP action* than those that are animated... though luck.
[/quote]


Good idea, Sign me up for the 2d client, I havent played around with dll injection in a while

3d client as you said would require 500 times more data to be processed. Not the mention the download size of something that is 3d.

[Liberty4life]

in addition to wot chew said, making md client based would also lower its availability, ppl have less trust in game when they have to download client and also clients are always make only for windows, well at least i never saw client for other os

[Kafuuka]

3D games often use directX libraries instead of openGL, which offers the same functionality and is supported on many platforms. The old neverwinter nights used openGL and had a linux client. Talking about 2D clients, I don't see any reason to use directX. It should be possible to have both a non browser and a browser version available at the same time too.
The main obstacle I see, is the client being made. That takes a lot of time which could be spent on implementing new features. There are probably people who would want to volunteer to do the job, but that would require exposing the source code of MD to them. Knowledge is power, power corrupts...

[Rendril]

I fully support the client idea, however, it is far from an easy implementation.

I think there is a simpler approach, but one that yields the same advantages: a form of advanced caching.

Allow players to download the MD content (that which is readily available such as scene, creature, player, alliance etc, images) and store it on their computers, then give a field for them to specify where to load the files from. If new content is released, it will look it up in the stored vault and if not found, download it from the site.

Our browsers already do this caching, but not on such a permanant basis. Consider this: every scene takes at minimum 100kb to download, yes, I realise it doesn't sound like much but for someone with only 20mb to use it is plenty and multiply it by all players getting new content, but now instead of loading it from the site, it is loaded from the player's computer. You decrease load time for the player, save on bandwidth, and free up the server.

It wouldn't require recoding of the game, the same variables are passed to the pages but the content just gets found locally. Nothing new here, our browsers already cache websites.

[Chewett]

[quote name='Rendril' date='28 August 2009 - 10:34 PM' timestamp='1251495262' post='40408']
I fully support the client idea, however, it is far from an easy implementation.

I think there is a simpler approach, but one that yields the same advantages: a form of advanced caching.

Allow players to download the MD content (that which is readily available such as scene, creature, player, alliance etc, images) and store it on their computers, then give a field for them to specify where to load the files from. If new content is released, it will look it up in the stored vault and if not found, download it from the site.

Our browsers already do this caching, but not on such a permanant basis. Consider this: every scene takes at minimum 100kb to download, yes, I realise it doesn't sound like much but for someone with only 20mb to use it is plenty and multiply it by all players getting new content, but now instead of loading it from the site, it is loaded from the player's computer. You decrease load time for the player, save on bandwidth, and free up the server.

It wouldn't require recoding of the game, the same variables are passed to the pages but the content just gets found locally. Nothing new here, our browsers already cache websites.
[/quote]

its a good idea for such games where hidden content doesnt matter, yet if you were going to remap the images to a local drive that would mean that they would all be viewable. Something that i didnt think mur would want. As then you would be able to look at all of the locations and creatures. Which is something that i dont think Mur would approve.

[Rendril]

But the images can already be viewed. The content that needs to be hidden would not made available for download until it is released.
We all already have the files downloaded by our browsers as it is, it is not exactly "hidden".

Edited August 29, 2009 by Rendril

[Chewett]

they can be viewed yes, But can you see all of the scenes and all of the hidden parts of the scene? Its relatively hard to do that, yet if you download it you can see everything by just navigating the folders. Something i dont think Mur would want.

[Rendril]

Having the static image in front of you will not reveal any hidden features. I'm not saying to download the flash files (although that would speed things up even more) but just changing where they load their content from. Those who know how to find the hidden parts can find them whether they are make readily downloadable or not, they are hardly impeded by the current system. What I am talking about is saving the images themselves that everybody can already navigate through as it is.

[Chewett]

Based on my experiance the likely things that would take up the serverload would be the php files (everything being computed) and the flash images. If you think about it the jpg's and such really are only a very small part of MD and most browsers will catch these very quickly

[Jubaris]

its impossible and unwanted... don't even think about it!

[Rendril]

I agree, the images are not the heaviest consumers of reasources but they still add up to many gigabytes that could be used elsewhere. The biggest impact will be for each user. Yes the browsers cache well (usually if tuned correctly) but they have periodic clearing, this serves as a stable library of sorts.
The scene images alone take more than 100kb, I have times when I get 5mb for a week, that equates to being able to load about 50 scenes in total. I'm sure others could benefit too.
Remember that images would only be the beginning and can lead from there with more storing.
It's a simple suggestion that is easy to implement, redirecting the default location.
Anyway, I think we have derailed this topic more than enough

Edited August 29, 2009 by Rendril

[I am Bored]

if you wanted to do something like that you could use the files in a format unreconizable to most computers, most wouldn't be able to open the files, i might, along with at most 15 others in the entire md community, and this few number (hopefully) would have the sense, as i do (well most of the time anyway), not to show others how to do it.... and a 2d game in the design of md has it's limits to it's usefull community size, and a 3d game typicly has a larger usefull community. we could still leave the orriginal 2d game running, and might even be able to intigrate it with the 3d version.... and when a person moves, the comp they use could send the message of their new location to the other comps of those in the area bypassing the server and reducing the serverr load.