What are your guys thoughts...

For those who understand this, let''s take a little poll here.

What would you guys think of a shared-user world that could hold around 30 people in it using nothing more than FPS netcode? Amazing? Impossible? Obvious and worthless? Whatchya think?

Well Darwin, tell me something, what are the server requirements?

Let's say a P3 with a T1 line. Let's also pretend it's possible. Would this be cool? Or would it be nothing much?

what all would be possible in this world? imho, thats what would make it rock or suck.

The content of the world is irrelevant. I'm simply talking about the possibility of having a multiplayer world of any type using FPS netcode.

You DID say, for those of us that understand this.
Please help me out with the definition of "nothing more than FPS netcode".

He means multiplayer Quake.

Lf

I agree with Nephilaine that the content of the world and what you can do in it would be the most important factor in determinig the value of such a product. Using FPS netcode to create a world is fine as a technology demonstration. However if this system was to be made into a product, the content and interactions among the participants should be more important than the technology used to implement the world.

Ok, all together now:

AS A TECHNOLOGY DEMO

Honestly? Not a whole lot. The others have a point, the fact you can get 30 people together by itself is not that great. What would make it great could be what they do once in there. They have been giving you your answer, you just havn't seen it. If that is all it offers - 30 people together using FPS netcode - then its not that interesting. If it does something else then it depends on what else it does.

It's hard to picture what you're saying when all you say is 'shared-user world' and 'FPS netcode'. Do you mean a persistent world with fps netcode?

IT WAS kewl darwin ..hehehe

I agree with Maerl, it was cool

My point is that it is cool as a demonstration of what is possible. However if you intend to make it something other than a technology demonstration, content should become a higher priority than the technology.

Don't all multiplayer FPS's capable of hosting 30 simultaneous players fit this definition? Also, what does "shared-user" mean? That there are 30 avatars and players share them?

The original Tribes had a multiplayer RPG mod made using its code and I've seen similar mods for UT though I can't give you links.

I just realized something that's lacking in SL: first-player perspective.

It was one of the things that sold Everquest on me. It was the reason I never played DAOC or Acheron's call (cos it didnt have it).

Not saying I'd come back into SL if everything (including building stuff) was in first-person, cos I simply dont have enough time, but it would make a big difference in immersion.

Obviously, the ideal would be to be able to move blocks around with your hands, à la Minority Report, but first person perspective would be a good start

Azelda

Umm.. SL *does* have a first-person view mode.. it's called mouselook. It's the only way I can actually fly long distances and explore the world for any real lenfght of time. I can't deal with watching my AV stumble across the terrain and bump into things with no maneuverability for too long before I have to go into mouselook and navigate that way. Of course, the problem with that is that you lose the ability to see info about things by only moving your mouse over them, and you cna't build and such.. but for actual navigation, mouselook's first person view is where it's at for me.

Ok, let me clarify further. This would be PURLEY a technology demo. I'm NOT going to develop this into a game of any sort. I just want to see what you guys think of the fact that there could be a multiplayer world of ANY TYPE with nothing more than fps netcode. Discard any type of content. Pretend it's an RPG, just for an example even though it's irrelevant. Would this be interesting or new to do? I don't care if USERS don't care about it, but as a developer's thing... a hint to dev's of sorts.

Isn't Quake a multiplayer world using fps netcode? I don't get what's new about this.

Hit escape then press M to go into mouselook, or use your mousewheel.

Quake isn't a persistant world.

You never said yours was either Darwin. You aren't giving enough information.

Darwin, I don't want to break your balls here but I'm not sure this idea makes sense. FPS netcode doesn't account for persistence so a persistent world wouldn't use FPS netcode, right? You still might want to look for that old Tribes multiplayer RPG mod. It was persistent (at least as long as the server was up, maybe beyond).

Is that a Thomas Paine reference?

This might be more than you want to know, but I try and never let that stop me...

The evolution of these programs seems to follow the following general pattern:

(1) Get some 3D stuff working for a single user. (viewer)

(2) Add code to allow multiple users to see the same things and interact with one another. (shared viewer)

(3) Add other shared elements such as physics, sound, lighting effects. (shared viewer = game engine)

(4) Add elements that allow users to change the worlds 3D objects while the program is running. (shared viewer + "level editor"

(5) Go back and enhance above capabilities to achieve what ever level of completeness you desire.

(6) The Metaverse

My guess is that the number of projects that have started along this path have numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands. In the early 90's the number would probably be in tens at most. The availability of GPLed and public domain code has increased the number dramatically, but the fact that many of the projects consist of one or two people, and little or no funding has meant that many of them stall after having take something that is at stage 2 lets say, and advancing it to stage 3.

Two factors contribute to the stall. (1) exhaustion, (2) ignorance. The first is obvious, this is a lot of work for one or two people. It's even a lot of work for a good sized team, even if they are drawing a paycheck to do it. The ignorance part can be broken down further into situations where the coder just isn't knowlegable in a particular area (physics for example) or, even more commonly there are aspects of the system for which there is no existing public source code (physics for example), and ther requirement to rewrite that part from scratch leads back to the exhaustion issue.

I think Doom and Quake code have been out there for several years now. Blender (construction) was made Open Source last year I think. I don't know of a public physics engine. The code that allows the Atmosphere viewers to be shared among multiple users (chat server for lack of a better name) is already PD I think.

Worthy of note is that almost everything that is already out there was developed by one company or another and then given away. There are few examples of any of these components that started out Open Source from scratch. My guess is then, that the Metaverse will be created by a company, and then maybe followed a few years later by an Open Source equivalent. Commercial companies have a distinct advantage when it comes to pioneering a technology. Open Source has a distinct advantage once a technology becomes "commoditized". Once standards are established, a thousand people around the world can maintain and enhance a system a lot better than 6 guys in a room. But it will probably take 6 guys in a room (or less) to do it the first time.

Which leads me to ask: Why is Microsoft still diddling with an operating system instead of working on the Metaverse? Any Microsoft people here that have an answer to that? My answer involves people and egos rather than business and technology. But I could be wrong.

This is in answer to yours and the following post.

SL DID have first person mode for a while. It was removed. I don't know why. Think of it as camera mode from the point of view of the avatars head. Same key and mouse use as in current camera mode, but you didn't see your avatar. When your avatar entered a room, what you saw was the interior of the room PERIOD. Mouselook is nice, but it's not the same. Having my avatar enter a small house and the camera show me the top of the roof is pretty useless. That is why most interior builds in SL are pretty useless too unless they are spacious in every dimension, including 20 ft. ceilings.

Adding true first person mode back to SL will dramatically change the architecture in SL for the better. I hope they get around to doing it soon.

Adobe has put out a piece of software that does this...allows you to host a multiuser world for whatever you want. There are a number of universities also doing this that you can apply for an account with. Overall they are more like SL with no content and even less structure.

Quake, Unreal, Tron 2.0 (which has a level editor), NwN, and so on, are really not the same thing, as the point of these environments is soley geared to gaming (as are the APIs, which are specifically designed to model gaming patterns). LSL looks a lot like dumbed-down UnrealScript (as well as the 3d tools looking like dumbed-down Maya ;p). But like anything else you can always find another use for things like that.

Interesting notion, I think we're going to see a lot more of this sort of thing. I'm convinced this will eventually be a legitimate form (as in profession) of skill. Of course by the time it's paying big I'll probably be retired or dead, but eh that never stopped me.

* reaches for geritol *