mmorl

[zenkalia]

I will succeed where so many others have failed.  I am currently working on a multiplayer roguelike.  It's going to be browser based and completely awesome.

The dev blag can be found here: mmorl.tumblr.com

My questions:

1. Theme?
I'd prefer to not do fantasy, since there are already so many, but doing other genres typically lends to more ranged combat and that is going to be tough with the way that I'm going to make time work (you'll love it, trust me).
2. Consequence for dying?
It's going to have to be harsh.  Back to level 1, lose all gold, lose half of all items randomly?

[getter77]

Just to check, you wouldn't happen to be on the MnemonicRL team would ya?

Otherwise, good luck and looking forward to seeing what happens!   

Themes:  Sci-fi sees some love, Westerns see none,  Dreamscapes see a couple, Bloodsports have occasional champions...hard to say really...

[Omnivorous]

How is the MMO-system? A great MMO-system I'd love to see in a modern roguelike is just a roguelike world where all players are together in a town for example. And then you can "challenge" people into PVP, then going into a turnbased 1on1-mode, where you use your enemies according to speed, trade turns just like when fighting monsters.

I basically think the system used for multiplayer interaction in this game is described, sound perfect for a roguelike: http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/rpg/demonssoul/review.html

[Fenrir]

What are you using to make this MMORL?

[Vanguard]

Have you decided on how you're going to handle it regarding turn based vs real time play?  Obviously you can't have every player waiting until one guy makes his move, but I've never really been satisfied with the "everyone gets one turn per second" thing either. 

What I'd like to see is one where each player gets one movement point per second, and you can save up a few (let's say five) of them, every move you make consumes one of them, and you can take any action you want so long as you have movement points.  It'd just give the player at least a little bit of time to think about their move, or to use abilities that require more than one keypress which usually doesn't work out very well when it's not turn based.

Of course you could just do it Diablo style too.

The punishment for death needs to take a lot of factors into account.  How long does it take to build a character?  Roguelikes are usually not particularly long games to avoid dying and restarting becoming too tedious.  What are the chances of a character's death due to "cheap" factors, such as lag, or being distracted from the keyboard momentarily?  How dependent is any given player on other people online for his survival?

Dreamscapes see a couple

That would be an interesting theme.

[zenkalia]

Have you decided on how you're going to handle it regarding turn based vs real time play?  Obviously you can't have every player waiting until one guy makes his move, but I've never really been satisfied with the "everyone gets one turn per second" thing either. 

I'm thinking of something close to fallout in which player characters get to move freely, NPCs get a turn every 5 seconds or something like that, and when you go into combat, you are in strict turn-by-turn gameplay.  On the screen I'd represent a time circle or something around each player in the combat (party?) and when you walk by, you will be given the option to join this combat's timeline.  Even when you're in turn-by-turn combat I think that there would have to be a timeout for each turn, defined by the party leader, maxing out at 20 seconds or something.

snip

Arena style turn based combat is on the to-do list.  I'm also considering a Diablo style main town from which you jump into the dungeon.

Just to check, you wouldn't happen to be on the MnemonicRL team would ya?

I WAS NOT AWARE THIS EXISTED.  LOOKS PRETTY COOL THOUGH.

What are you using to make this MMORL?

PHP, MySQL, JS, JQuery, Python.  I originally intended to make an MMO game similar to FF1 or DW1, but rewriting the background image on tons of icons at one time seemed to bog down every browser other than Chrome and Safari...  :X

[purestrain]

I will succeed where so many others have failed.  I

You will fail.

thinking of something [...] or something like that [...] or something.

and i wouldn't want to play a game where people not in combat can move freely whereas i fight turn by turn. Do it realtime.

[xTERM]

I will succeed where so many others have failed.  I am currently working on a multiplayer roguelike.  It's going to be browser based and completely awesome.

Hi! Would you like to join our team (G.O.R.E. project)? We have already implemented big part of a game framework, including networking, terminal emulator, simple GUI toolkit, some map generators, etc.

Source code is easy to understand, and we wrote lots of documentation.

How can I contact you?

[zenkalia]

new realization for combat/monster interaction:  monsters can have a target.  if you are their target, they move in your time (with a timeout to safeguard people sitting there with every enemy's attention).  If they have no target, they move once every 5 or 10 seconds.  This also solves the problem of entering and exiting other peoples "time circles" in the old system.

loki.asuc.berkeley.edu/tiles/test3.php <- To break conventions or not?  I kind of like this keymapping.  It also removes any need for the shift key.

You will fail.

Well aren't you just a ray of sunshine or something?

Looking through your posts, it looks like you're the resident Negative Nancy.  Good to know.

[Anvilfolk]

No, that's Krice

[Numeron]

I wish you all the luck with this, my own project will have everyone playing on the same server as well though not in the traditional MMO single world way, just small arenas. Multiplay ftw

new realization for combat/monster interaction:  monsters can have a target.  if you are their target, they move in your time (with a timeout to safeguard people sitting there with every enemy's attention).  If they have no target, they move once every 5 or 10 seconds.  This also solves the problem of entering and exiting other peoples "time circles" in the old system.

This I like, its probably the best idea ive heard for multiplay RL so far. Still might be hard to do if you have multiple players working together, where one has target and just sits there and the second player bashes it by taking many turns while the monster is stuck in a time circle where very few turns are being taken. If the cure for this is the monster switching targets, two players could jsut keep it switching by changing the time between their turns. I guess you could have two players in the same time circle and drop the move time to every 1 second for that circle. Where being out of combat is free for all time, with monsters without targets turning 5 or 10 as above.

[zenkalia]

I wish you all the luck with this, my own project will have everyone playing on the same server as well though not in the traditional MMO single world way, just small arenas. Multiplay ftw

new realization for combat/monster interaction:  monsters can have a target.  if you are their target, they move in your time (with a timeout to safeguard people sitting there with every enemy's attention).  If they have no target, they move once every 5 or 10 seconds.  This also solves the problem of entering and exiting other peoples "time circles" in the old system.

This I like, its probably the best idea ive heard for multiplay RL so far. Still might be hard to do if you have multiple players working together, where one has target and just sits there and the second player bashes it by taking many turns while the monster is stuck in a time circle where very few turns are being taken. If the cure for this is the monster switching targets, two players could jsut keep it switching by changing the time between their turns. I guess you could have two players in the same time circle and drop the move time to every 1 second for that circle. Where being out of combat is free for all time, with monsters without targets turning 5 or 10 as above.

I would love to respond to this with my full brainstorm that i had the other day but that would ruin some of the fun of my game.  Here's the gist of it though:  different enemies have different behaviors for targeting.  Some will be super aggressive, some forgetful.  Some will change targets every time they're attacked.  Juggling an enemy between two players will work for some monsters but not others.  Should be interesting.

[zenkalia]

If anyone cares...  I made a dev blag, mostly for me to keep track of what Im doing, but if anyone wants to know what's going on, here's the link:

mmorl.tumblr.com

The super short summary is as follows: lol it's a multiplayer door opening and closing game with multiple dungeons!

[getter77]

Great!  Be sure and keep us posted around here likewise as things come along.   

[Rya.Reisender]

Actually there is a high variety of good possible systems I could imagine for a MMORL:

- all people meet in a town and can form a 'play group', then that 'play group' plays through a random dungeons (well that actually already exists and is called Phantasy Star Online)

- only trading items and talking is part of the MMO, the actual dungeon is single player

- a "Versus" roguelike where achievements of one player mean more traps/monsters for his opponents

- a really random roguelike MMO where you just keep advancing from place to place, but through randomness you can end up in the same level as another player and are able to cooperate with him to clear the level with less loses (or maybe possibility to fight each other)

- a self-creating world, at the beginning there's only a village, but if the first player ever leaves a map into an yet-unvisited direction, the next map will be created randomly, but will remain like it was created forever (or until a certain event, like the final boss being beaten or whatever). So eventually you'll endless with a huge randomly created world, that has no end no matter in what direction you'll go