[Ideas] PR Future Engine Ideas and Suggestions

[Anariaq]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]eggman

We're just seeing what building our own game would be like.. it'll be a huge amount of work, but we're taking some baby steps to see if we think it's feasible. At the same time we're working on a design (effectively a mix of PR1, ArmA, Infiltration and maybe some concepts borrowed from Planetside mixed in with some fresh PR2 ideas). There currently is no game engine or mod platform that exists that can do what PR2 would require, so we'll likely have to pioneer a few concepts as well as hope stuff matures to facilitate some of the vision.

egg

Hey new here at this forum. I just got hooked on PR 2 weeks ago. And first now got in this forum. Love your work. I play OFP and soon arma ( but did play it couples of hours when it came out first time ) but there is somthing about PR that not of thouse can match.

Although I was leaning toward Cryengine2 ( with its superior physics over arma/arma2 <- havent seen anything chanced from arma ) I can see why you are going for C4 with its potential in this type of gaming. I just hope that helicopters will be better simulated that it is now ( maybe I wish for somthing that destroy the gameplay... If so desregard it )

I can do some 3d works even though Im not professional maybe I can help a little for the great works you guys are doing for us

[[R-CON]Wicca]

Welcome to the forums Yes they are doing a great job

@ tirak

You are right i am mistaken...

Now, lets calculate, how many guys will be working on this? And for how long?

[McBumLuv]

What I'd love to see is :

Good networking - Can support many players (At the bare minimum 64, but 128 is better, and 256 would be amazing), destructibles, and so forth, without lagging.

Good terrain rendering, ability to have a farther view distance without lagging, better grass and undergrowth rendering (similar to Arma's would be interesting).

Infiltration-esque small-arms weapon deployment / movement. Great looking game where the weapons have a mesh themselves (think no more shooting through walls, can't walk through a small space with a gun sticking out, etc...). Better equipement customization/pick-up options would be good, too.

Better VoiP / squad/platoon system - Positional qualities with radio as a possibility between Officers and such. Pretty much a for-all-intents-and-purposes fixed mumble, but if not, Mumble

Vehicle physics - No more jets slowing down when going into a dive :P No seat restrictions, stabalization, 3d HUD, and animations when getting in/out would be amazing.


Basically the option to implement the majority of that along with the things we take for granted in BF2. But I realize the chances are pretty slim when coming across an engine with all of that in it already, or even doable with modding. But who knows

BTW I guess this didn't end up going anywhere, did it eggman? --> Mod Team .. looking to transition to TGEA .. should we seek psychiatric help instead? | General Discussion | Forums | Community | GarageGames Didn't want to post it previously when pr2 was all "Omg wut is dis conspiracy?!!!?!!11!!"

[eggman]

Keep in mind that PR1 will persist for some time. The v0.86 patch is in the works, the v0.9 feature release is looking to be so large that it will get split into v0.9 and v0.95. Then with v1.0 PR1 will probably look to the community factions as the primary source of new content (with some "stewardship" from the PR Devs).

Ideally before PR1 dies out we'll have a playable PR2 alpha and we'll develop that for quite a while, iteratively building the game play feature set up from the infantry and squad systems, eventually getting into the realm of combined arms.

egg

[The Iron Dreamer]

just an a strait thought... can you use the networking of an a MMoRPG game (they usualy support 100+ ) or it will be too complicated or it wont be compatable with a FPS game...

[Tirak]

Originally Posted by The Iron Dreamer

just an a strait thought... can you use the networking of an a MMoRPG game (they usualy support 100+ ) or it will be too complicated or it wont be compatable with a FPS game...

Consider the combat system of a game like World of Warcraft vs Battlefield 2. MMORPGs don't need the same kind of lag free (relatively lag free anyway) precise targeting that an FPS needs. There are already complaints of poor hitbox detection due to latency in BF2. MMORPGs just crunch percentages and decide if you hit or not depending on those, not two moving objects colliding. This is one of the major reasons why it's so difficult to have Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooters.

[acemantura]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]eggman

As many as we can get We may use a 3rd party networking library such as RakNet. But just getting a basic 2 player multiplayer game compiled is currently our focus hehe

Ideally we'd like to see 8x8 man squads + 1 Commander per team (65 per team, 130 total). We think that 4x8 man squads + 1 Commander per team (33 per team, 66 total) is about as small as PR can get and still be interesting. I'd settle for 98 (6x8 man squads+ 1 Commander, 49 per team).

We may be able to augment those numbers with some AI for things like Civlians or statically placed MG nests or supply truck drivers and such (bots can maybe do some of the boring tasks that add to the human player experience).

But when you add in destructible environments (in PR2 ideally birch trees don't stop vehicles like a brick wall) then you start to really tax the available network bandwidth in client server architectures and peer to peer architectures on PCs are very prone to hacking / cheating... so effectively we'll be stretching the limits of what is feasible.

egg

Egg, you owe me a new, non sticky, keyboard. Mine has too much drool on it to be able to use it in game now.

[USMC_Cook]

Have you guys looked into financing?

The video game industry is growing at a frantic pace, and there are actually venture capital funds that were created with the sole purpose of investing money with independent game developers. One example is Vanedge Capital.

You've already got a great resume. All you have to do now is sell the idea to a few investors and you could find yourselves with enough capital to make one hell of a game, and you won't have to do it through EA.

[[R-DEV]Sniperdog]

Originally Posted by Tirak

Consider the combat system of a game like World of Warcraft vs Battlefield 2. MMORPGs don't need the same kind of lag free (relatively lag free anyway) precise targeting that an FPS needs. There are already complaints of poor hit box detection due to latency in BF2. MMORPGs just crunch percentages and decide if you hit or not depending on those, not two moving objects colliding. This is one of the major reasons why it's so difficult to have Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooters.

Just for kicks, here is a a game I used to play which belonged to a rare breed of games... the mmo-fps. The game is called ace online now and is a mild aircraft style simulation but an mmo none the less. I know I have been in engagements in the game in maps with 70-100 people on each side. Around there it would start to get somewhat laggy but only because there would be missile trail animations and very fast paced rendering due to the nature of the game. The actual image quality in the game was low compared to modern fps's but the net code none the less did an astounding job of making a fps style game playable with that many people.

Here's the wikipedia link (much more popular in Korea than here in the US by far):
Ace Online - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a simple PvP combat video all set in one map where you can see what I'm talking about with a lot of people in one fight. Every one of the ships is an independent player.
YouTube - Ace Online Mothership Attack Movie

[cyberzomby]

Sounds like a good plan to me eggman! Good to see that theres so many features in .9 that its going to be split up haha!