In emailing someone last night, I vocalized the following for the first time and decided I should see what the community thinks:
The quick and dirty: a means of making a "shared" EV universe in which up to 256 real world players are represented as Pers resources in an updating, temporally offset way.
Background: back in late 2001 I wrote a little utility for Override pilots named PersMaker (see (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/002041.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...TML/002041.html(/url) ). The gist of it was that it would take one or more pilots, read info from the pilot files and generate Pers resources that would put similar ships into a plugin. The coup was that, if a pilot had dominated a spob, a novel govt would be generated for that pilot.
As I posted news about the utility to the board, I started thinking about the asynchronous nature of this BBS: two people can be "on" the board at the same time, having a conversation, but that interaction was temporally offset due to the nature of the board.
It hit me that, with very little trouble, PersMaker could be modified to access an online server where pilot information was stored. It could then use that information to make a plugin. Thus, the idea of a asynchronous shared universe was born.
Basic details:
*There would be an application (call it PM) that the user would launch. It would decrypt the user's pilot file and access information on the pilots available $, weapons, last spob, dominated spobs, rating, and what mission bits were set. This info would then be uploaded in an encrypted form to a server. The server would take this data and also return similar data for up to 256 other pilots that had been uploaded. PM would take that data and make a plugin named "PM plugin" which would make all those pilots appear as Pers in the game.
*In addition, the basic game data would be modified. Because different people would be doing different 1-off missions, not all of them would be available. For example, if pilot #4 had destroyed the Dreadnaught in EVO, no other pilot would be able to access that mission.
Detailed details:
*As a test-bed, I see the original EV universe as being the best. Because it was the first, it has the fewest number of missions that would need to be modified.
*Mission bits would be divided into two groupings: bits 1-5000 would be the standard bits we think of, indicating if a player had completed (or failed) a mission. Bits 5001-10000 would be reserved for data from other pilots. In this way, PM would be able to note whether a mission was completed by the local player, or by a player saved on the server.
*One-off missions and mission threads would have to be structured in such a way the the test bits would have to look at the 1-5000 and the 5001-10000 bit sections to see if a player was elgible for a certain mission.
*The PM application would not only read from a pilot, but would write to the pilot file, setting the reserved bits as necessary.
*PM would also act as a simple cheat tester. It would scan the plugin folder of the local player looking of any "non-sanctioned" plugins. This would help level the playing field.
*PM would also constantly watch the pilot file. Anytime a save occured, PM would update the server with the new data. It would not, however, make a new plugin (for reasons discussed in Problems)
Problems:
*The EVNgine reads the pilot only at the start of the game, but writes to it each time one lands. This, coupled with the fact that the engine only loads plugins at startup means that, if the user plays for long periods of time, their actions will deviate more and more from the rest of the server. Imagine posting 10,000 words to a thread on a BBS. Everyone else will be posting only 50 or so words, so your comments are very behind the present converstion by the time they appear.
*Cheating. It would be relatively easy for a player to cheat with their pilot. Even easier to do so using plugins.
*Possibly very frustrating. While it would be realistic to have missions only offered once (Go and kill the alien cruiser), others would feel left out if the missed such a mission. I have never played in the online role playing games, but as I understand it, they have continually resetting quests. This may be something to implement, though it kind of diminshes the feeling of actually sharing the universe with other players (even though you can't interact with them directly).
*Crafting missions for such a modified setup would be quite challenging.
Which is why I post this now. I can make the PM application relatively easily. I could probably come up with a simple 3-4 system proof of concept example as well. It would be so much nicer to modify the missions of EVC as the proof of concept, though. So, you mission experts, would something like this be feasable, or even desirable?
<seant cringes and hits the Submit topic, bringing his pet project to the light of day>
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Mac<-->PC pilot file Conversions: (url="http://"http://phair.csh.rit.edu/~seant/EV/PilotConvert/")http://phair.csh.rit...V/PilotConvert/(/url)
"Create enigmas, not explanations." -Robert Smithson