new engine and a hope..

[ArcticWolf]

Originally Posted by Outlaw_

It would not, if done properly

Which requires massive re-factoring, that at this point is not worth it, IMHO.

It would take months, if not a whole year, to get the system working properly.

[Snoid]

Originally Posted by ArcticWolf

(about collition detection)

Ok, we can understand that solid mobile objects are difficult or imposible to implement. But maybe we can hope for some more realistic physics. And im not talking about shadows or light only (hey, nice work, but i wont use it).

A crazy idea would be a knight skill (to be developed) that makes that knight a wall, literally, granting her solidity against enemy players (like any rock out there) and of course, she cant move while it's active. Yeah, i said it was crazy.

Other changes could be (not about collition, but im still on topic -see title-):

Gravity: I'd love to see little dmg if the player falls down from certain distance.

Fire burns: Lava and other heat sources should deal some damage too.

Improved AI: Actually mobs and NPC artificial intelligence is poor. I dont know a lot about it, but I think a little effort and creativity could make Regnum "life" more "alive". What happened to that old topic about monster factions, fighting each other? And what about (this one is mine) mobs migration? Make monsters move from one zone to another, that would make leveling more like a quest, not just killing the same mobs at the same places.

Well, this is not a post about suggestions but about hope in the new engine. If new engine is more than shadows (and they changed sunrise, damn it!) it could be a real new world for all.

oh! and more emotes, please! it's impossible to make machinima now!

[ArcticWolf]

Originally Posted by Snoid

Ok, we can understand that solid mobile objects are difficult or imposible to implement. But maybe we can hope for some more realistic physics. And im not talking about shadows or light only (hey, nice work, but i wont use it).

A crazy idea would be a knight skill (to be developed) that makes that knight a wall, literally, granting her solidity against enemy players (like any rock out there) and of course, she cant move while it's active. Yeah, i said it was crazy.

A skill-enabled collision would be as difficult to implement (if not more) than normal collision, but it puts far less strain to the server.

In fact, I'm working on something like that for a game with some of my friends at ITBA.

Gravity: I'd love to see little dmg if the player falls down from certain distance.

Fire burns: Lava and other heat sources should deal some damage too.

That requires just three or four lines of code, but again, you should optimize your code so it's not noticeable.

Improved AI: Actually mobs and NPC artificial intelligence is poor. I dont know a lot about it, but I think a little effort and creativity could make Regnum "life" more "alive". What happened to that old topic about monster factions, fighting each other? And what about (this one is mine) mobs migration? Make monsters move from one zone to another, that would make leveling more like a quest, not just killing the same mobs at the same places.

Reinforcement learning would be a good way to deal with most of these problems. Each instance of a monster could be its own thread and gather data of each fight. A genetic algorithm could then sort the most effective strategies and produce new using pseudo-randomization (mixing tactics).

Also, it would be nice to see a population-balancing algorithm: so when you need more mobs, the server creates new instances, and when you're done then it kills them in order to save resources. A minimal population number and population growth-shrink ratio could be established so it doesn't get out of hand. Oh, and please, pool the threads.

Migration would need a zone-balancing approach. The top-rated mobs (mobs that we kill the most) should be far from "active battle areas"*, and this algorithm would rotate the population.

*This way, if you want to hunt, you should go to the other side of the map. Action in the warzone would be more interesting, I guess.

[Froste]

What happened to the supposed mob factions?

[e30G]

Why can't character collision detection be done client side? Is it too hard to prevent abuse if done that way? Couldn't the verification stage of the game be enough to detect modified files that can be used for abuse?

[ArcticWolf]

Originally Posted by e30ernest

Why can't character collision detection be done client side? Is it too hard to prevent abuse if done that way? Couldn't the verification stage of the game be enough to detect modified files that can be used for abuse?

Because then the server would need to coordinate +1000 nodes of a distributed computing system, which has to be encrypted and reliable.

But there should be client-side collision detection to avoid package flooding. :P

[MalaTempora]

Originally Posted by ArcticWolf

Which requires massive re-factoring, that at this point is not worth it, IMHO.

It would take months, if not a whole year, to get the system working properly.

as said by Outlaw a proper work could lead to a good collision detection,
and ok, as said by you this is difficult to obtain.
But, some of the point you give as "defense" against collisions detec. is about
path - algoritm of search, i don't ask about mobs solidity (that could be very
very a luxury :-D ) but of players solidity..

About the risk of having cheaters if too much work are done by clients,
i see already some people running like hell, so i suppose that some sort of
speedhack exist already... i've not fraps installed on my pc, and this is not
the right place (or thread) to talk about it, but this game have already
some fault on stopping "cheaters" hope that new engine can help in this too..

please try understand that i like this game, when i discovered it "i pass the
words" on all my friends, and many (about 5-6) of them are playing too this
nice game now, what i feel is that there are some "sides" that can be really
improved to give the perfect feeling... and giving my 2 cents is all i can do
at moment (a part of buyin some xymers..things that i do, cause i know
that dev times is not for free.. and my fun time can have some prices..)

[ArcticWolf]

I think you got me wrong - I'd love to see collision detection! But it's just not feasible at the moment, because they should fix other problems first.

And regarding the engine, the new technology has nothing to do with the server (or it shouldn't, because you should prevent any code from your server leak to a client app). Though, I'm sure they'll do something about it to enhance UX (user experience).


PS: I'm sure there are some speedhacks still working, but also it may be a server error, i.e.: a heavy package-dropper connection between the server an a client that may cause it to jump. This shouldn't happen, but as I haven't seen the code I can't tell you this for sure.