Orbiter Online - Milestone 0 Goals Thread

[Coldron]

Looking like good consept what would work in general.
As my experience in other mmo's limiting something and compared on how much time player uses in game is a downer (referring to EVE online).
And being a sim it takes more time for example mine and haul ore.
But those are things that can easily be changed later.

All together this looks awesome :thumbup:

 

[BHawthorne]

I see, fair enough.

Going a bit ahead, perhaps Artlav can perfect his IRC MFD to use with Orbiter Online. There could be channels for each spaceport, where you could tune in and communicate with people near it, and maybe also each player could have his channel, so players can communicate in private between each other. That would take care of the communication part.

I really like the idea of irc integration. It saves coming up with some new system for text based chat channels. The voip stuff I also like to see too. Face has some ideas on that.

 

[Face]

I really like the idea of irc integration. It saves coming up with some new system for text based chat channels. The voip stuff I also like to see too. Face has some ideas on that.

Hm.. I'm not so sure about that. To me it seems a better idea to create a integrated chat-system where you can control groups/users and the like better from within the system.
As for the VoIP stuff: is it necessary for a working MMORPG prototype?

 

[BHawthorne]

As for the VoIP stuff: is it necessary for a working MMORPG prototype?

VoIP is beyond the scope of PoC, but is something that could be bolted on later as needed. I only mentioned it because we were bringing up methods of chat.

The reason why I find IRC appealing is that you could interact with people outside the scope of the MMO server. For example, I have IRC access via my smartphone, but not Orbiter access. IRC integration would mean I could keep tabs on many aspects of the game by just opening an irc chat. If the IRC server was administered by the same people who run the game server, there could be total integration of admin tools to manage irc users. Just a thought.

 

[Arrowstar]

I see, fair enough.

Going a bit ahead, perhaps Artlav can perfect his IRC MFD to use with Orbiter Online. There could be channels for each spaceport, where you could tune in and communicate with people near it, and maybe also each player could have his channel, so players can communicate in private between each other. That would take care of the communication part.

I could see this as working so long as a nice user interface went on top of it, hiding the IRC aspect. The reason why I'd prefer a custom chat solution (versus IRC) is that communication should be done through the comm/nav MFD in that talking to folks outside a certain radius is impossible. This would be difficult with IRC, though the spaceport-type implementation might be worthwhile.

Also, does this mean people will have UMMU characters?

 

[DarkWanderer]

Yes, if this is a way to push things my way. :thumbup:

Also I have a nice black deltaglider-technology vehicle around here, which could be nicer in a multiplayer environment...

It is... As long as your way doesn't cross mine.
Jokes aside, welcome. Register here so I can give you access to the project page. Same for BHawthorne.

And I think, we'd better gather a small IRC/Skype conference this weekend. Does Sat, 19:00GMT suit?..

 

[Urwumpe]

Does Sat, 19:00GMT suit?..

Not really well, since on that day is the "TV Total High Diving" in TV and I planned watching it with my family.

---------- Post added at 09:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:49 PM ----------

Registered on the page as "Urwumpe" (how surprising)

 

[Hielor]

I could see this as working so long as a nice user interface went on top of it, hiding the IRC aspect. The reason why I'd prefer a custom chat solution (versus IRC) is that communication should be done through the comm/nav MFD in that talking to folks outside a certain radius is impossible. This would be difficult with IRC, though the spaceport-type implementation might be worthwhile.

The problem with this (and the integrated VoIP, if it uses similar limitations) is that if it's too limited, people will just use an external solution. For chat, if built-in chat is limited they'll just use the IRC MFD. If voice is too limited, they'll just use Ventrillo.

This happened to WoW -- they thought that integrated VoIP would be a great feature, but when they introduced it, no one used it because it couldn't compare to Ventrillo. People just kept using Ventrillo.

 

[BHawthorne]

That's my reasoning too. I know Vent and Teamspeak and am conforable with them. I'm also confortible with IRC. We needn't reinvent the wheel on everything. All we need to really do is just do a proper job of integration. A prime example of voip integration gone wrong is in Eve Online. They went proprietary and noone uses it. Everyone is always Vent or Teamspeak. So, if people are so stuck on vent and teamspeak and irc, why can't we just build those into the client as needed? I know there is a tendacy to want to do things from scratch, but I think these 2 things from scratch seem to be a waste of time to redo unless there are some major reasons to do so. It also means that less needs to be done on the PoC when these 2 things are accounted for.

 

[Urwumpe]

I would suggest showing a fixed number of chat lines as annotations on the Orbiter Screen. Would maybe be abuse of the annotation feature, but better than nothing.

Using IRC as back-end is maybe a good initial solution, but maybe a special dedicated chat protocol inside the MMORPG architecture might one day be better.

After all: currently we talk about maximal 400 frequent users in time zones spanning the whole world, with the majority concentrating around GMT+0 and GMT+7. Lets say maximal 150 users at a time, initially a high number of bypassers which will likely quickly drop. Nothing that requires already good servers, but some growth might come.

with growth, having a system to communicate over multiple channels without publishing in which channels you are might be a good idea...and without causing heavy load on IRC servers in a network that might not be our own...

 

[deltawing777]

Im curious. Why do you guys use IRC? Why not voice chat? Isnt talking easier than typing?

 

[garyw]

Im curious. Why do you guys use IRC? Why not voice chat? Isnt talking easier than typing?

IRC is much better for information sharing, has logging, the ability to walk away and read the back scroll. Much nicer all round.

 

[TSPenguin]

Also, I am able to voice chat with other people, doing other things and still be on IRC.

 

[Hielor]

Im curious. Why do you guys use IRC? Why not voice chat? Isnt talking easier than typing?

...

We went over this like ten different times while you were in the IRC. I'll try again.
IRC is much easier for casual conversation, for many reasons:
-More than one person can be "talking" at once. Try that with voice chat, let me know how well it works.
-You can get up and go to the bathroom, then come back, and read whatever you missed. With voice, you've permanently missed anything that happened while you were gone.
-If someone does miss something, bringing them up to speed is as simple as pasting the log to pastebin (or, if it's short, just directly into the IRC). With voice, you have to sit there and tell the story, which monopolizes the channel while it's being told, or (if you go to another channel) causes both the teller and the listener to miss anything that happens in the main channel.

And again, we already *have* a ventrilo server that we use when it's appropriate--when the IRC would be annoying to use, such as when we're playing IL-2. When we're in FSX, we use FSX's voice chat. When we're doing whatever else, we use the IRC, because it's easier and simpler.

 

[deltawing777]

...

We went over this like ten different times while you were in the IRC. I'll try again.
IRC is much easier for casual conversation, for many reasons:
-More than one person can be "talking" at once. Try that with voice chat, let me know how well it works.
-You can get up and go to the bathroom, then come back, and read whatever you missed. With voice, you've permanently missed anything that happened while you were gone.
-If someone does miss something, bringing them up to speed is as simple as pasting the log to pastebin (or, if it's short, just directly into the IRC). With voice, you have to sit there and tell the story, which monopolizes the channel while it's being told, or (if you go to another channel) causes both the teller and the listener to miss anything that happens in the main channel.

And again, we already *have* a ventrilo server that we use when it's appropriate--when the IRC would be annoying to use, such as when we're playing IL-2. When we're in FSX, we use FSX's voice chat. When we're doing whatever else, we use the IRC, because it's easier and simpler.

Ok ill agree with that.Well I have an idea. I know of a dev named CHrisW.He has a working lightweight multiplatform voip client/server he has made called voicechatter.He has the source code available for download also.I have tested it and the voice quality and features are great! I used it due to ventrillo server being limited on the slots available with the free version.It tested fine with 20+ people at a time. Site is voicechatter.org Just a thought maybe this code can be inbedded into this project with permission of course