alphasmart
Level 1
|
 |
« Reply #20 on: May 13, 2008, 08:47:38 AM » |
|
on the other hand, I keep reading "simulated users" as "stimulated users"...
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
increpare
Guest
|
|
« Reply #21 on: May 13, 2008, 08:57:08 AM » |
|
on the other hand, I keep reading "simulated users" as "stimulated users"...
Not going to turn into a second life sim I hope :D |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
mewse
|
|
« Reply #22 on: May 16, 2008, 04:27:34 AM » |
|
I've uploaded a tech demo of MMORPG Tycoon. This isn't playable, but it does all the processer intensive stuff, and you can pan around and watch the basic MMORPG simulation. I'd be really grateful if a few people could grab these builds and give them a try; make sure that they run correctly (no missing dlls or misconfigured frameworks, etc), and let me know how well they run for you. These tech demos generate a random MMORPG world, automatically set up a few zones, a starting area, a respawn point, and a few towns. And then immediately connect 450 users, who go on quests, fight monsters, and level up. (When drawn in blue, they're questing. Red shows that they're fighting, green that they're resting, and white that they're doing something else.. usually returning home after a quest). Individual users are tiny compared to the world map, and so are only visible when you're zoomed reasonably close in. If you zoom in even further, you'll also be able to monitor their health bars. Controls are the mouse wheel to zoom in and out, and dragging with the right mouse button to pan around the map. You'll probably have to zoom out a little to find the automatically placed towns and the users; users tend to cluster around towns, since that's where quests come from. Win32 Tech Demo (888kb)OSX Tech Demo (universal binary) (467kb)(these demos are now outdated; get the latest ones instead, linked from the top post) |
|
|
|
« Last Edit: May 17, 2008, 06:40:14 PM by mewse »
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Alex May
...is probably drunk right now.
Level 10
hen hao wan
|
|
« Reply #23 on: May 16, 2008, 04:56:57 AM » |
|
The right mouse button seemed to get stuck down. The idea is awesome though. not too dissimilar from what we're doing imo
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
mewse
|
|
« Reply #24 on: May 16, 2008, 05:12:44 AM » |
|
The right mouse button seemed to get stuck down. The idea is awesome though. not too dissimilar from what we're doing imo
Interesting. I'm using SDL events to handle the left and right mouse buttons.. if a 'button up' event didn't come through, or if I mishandled one, then that could make the button behave as if it was stuck down. Does that happen for you all the time, or did it happen only once? I could pretty easily switch to polling the mouse button state, instead of using events. That'd probably be better and safer. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Alex May
...is probably drunk right now.
Level 10
hen hao wan
|
|
« Reply #25 on: May 16, 2008, 05:22:25 AM » |
|
It happens every time, without fail.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Crackerblocks
|
|
« Reply #26 on: May 16, 2008, 07:26:08 AM » |
|
Right button works fine for me. But it runs at about 3fps on my laptop and I can't see your cool bloom effects  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Hideous
|
|
« Reply #27 on: May 16, 2008, 07:51:49 AM » |
|
Runs fine on my craptop. Everyone of my players seemed to flock around that home icon thing? Anyway it's looking great. Keep on working!
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
mewse
|
|
« Reply #28 on: May 16, 2008, 02:30:08 PM » |
|
Right button works fine for me. But it runs at about 3fps on my laptop and I can't see your cool bloom effects What sort of laptop is it? I'm guessing that it doesn't have a 3D card? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Inane
|
|
« Reply #29 on: May 16, 2008, 02:45:05 PM » |
|
Works like a barn. No issues with right clicking either.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
real art looks like the mona lisa or a halo poster and is about being old or having your wife die and sometimes the level goes in reverse
|
|
|
|
Hideous
|
|
« Reply #30 on: May 16, 2008, 02:54:22 PM » |
|
Our barn is in bad shape |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Alex May
...is probably drunk right now.
Level 10
hen hao wan
|
|
« Reply #31 on: May 16, 2008, 03:03:44 PM » |
|
Same right-mouse-click bug at home as well. Something to do with installed frameworks? What's this running in? I've no idea what might be causing this.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
mewse
|
|
« Reply #32 on: May 16, 2008, 03:07:09 PM » |
|
Runs fine on my craptop. Everyone of my players seemed to flock around that home icon thing? Anyway it's looking great. Keep on working!
Yeah. The little house icon is a placeholder graphic representing a town; users pick up quests from there, so there'll naturally be more users clustering there. But there's a bug in the users' AI code which lets them perform their hunt quests near the town, instead of going out to the site where the hunt quest is actually supposed to occur, so that really increases the clustering around towns. Same right-mouse-click bug at home as well. Something to do with installed frameworks? What's this running in? I've no idea what might be causing this.
Is that the Win32 or OSX build? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
mewse
|
|
« Reply #33 on: May 17, 2008, 06:39:01 PM » |
|
I've put up an updated tech demo build which has fixes for the sticky right mouse button that some people have had, and also fixes the hunt quest bug which caused users to hunt monsters around their home town, instead of at the hunt question's designated location. The download links are in the top post. I'd be really grateful if anybody who had right mouse button trouble in the last one could give it a try and verify that I really have squashed the bug. Incidentally, the map used in this tech demo is being generated off of the name "Sample".  I'm hoping to have a playable demo up within a few days. Getting really close to being able to join up the far ends of the simulation logic!  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Xotes
|
|
« Reply #34 on: May 17, 2008, 07:55:28 PM » |
|
I tried it out and I must say that I'm impressed by it, even if we can't play it right, yet. For some reason I wasn't affected by the sticky mouse.
|
|
|
|
« Last Edit: May 17, 2008, 07:58:54 PM by Xotes »
|
Logged
|
“I have brought you T, Master. It took quite a lot of searching on your Galaxy’s non-holographic communications network, but no man is beyond the reach of a Sith.”
Meanwhile, poor Mr. T was left to hang upside down in the middle of the room, informing us that we were both fools, to be pitied.
|
|
|
|
mewse
|
|
« Reply #35 on: May 18, 2008, 04:39:50 AM » |
|
So I've spent about half the day on interface improvements (button hilite behaviour works more like standard GUIs, zooming in and out is now centered on the cursor, etc), and the other half on optimisations to the simulation and graphic engine. It's funny how trying to simulate a full world of 10,000 users at a smooth framerate can expose all the weird performance bottlenecks in your code. It was making my MacBook Pro drop to about 20fps, just trying to cope with running AI on that many users. Now it's doing the same work, but running solidly at 60fps again. I should eventually do some more optimisation work on it so that it'll run that quickly on slower machines, too.. but at least it runs at full speed on my own computer now; that's probably good enough to return to work on the simulation itself. Now I'm worrying about something on the design side. When I started out, I wanted to run everything at very realistic speeds. You'd receive subscription fees once a month, and pay salaries and expenses at the same time. If you make substantial changes to a region on the dev server, it'll take your employees a week or so to actually convert your design into a working region, before you can actually move those changes over to the live server. The problem is that I've written the user simulation to run in real time. If I end up needing to run the game at a rate of a day per minute in order to have a month pass in a reasonable period of time, then users will be zipping across the screen far too quickly for the player to actually be able to see or click on them. Maybe I need to put in a SimCity-style variable speed control. But I already have enough trouble making the AI run within the target frame rate without trying to run 1440 times as much of it every frame.  Going to take more thought to figure this out. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
PaulMorel
|
|
« Reply #36 on: May 18, 2008, 06:19:10 AM » |
|
RE: Timing Let the users run at their current rate, but make one day pass every 30 seconds or less. 30 minutes is a long time to wait to get your first monthly update, which I assume is a big part of the game. Technically, the users will be moving VERY slowly, but it will look fine from a player's perspective. It's funny how trying to simulate a full world of 10,000 users at a smooth framerate can expose all the weird performance bottlenecks in your code. lol.  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Alex May
...is probably drunk right now.
Level 10
hen hao wan
|
|
« Reply #37 on: May 18, 2008, 07:42:48 AM » |
|
Confirmed fix on the rmb issue.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Xotes
|
|
« Reply #38 on: May 20, 2008, 12:18:43 PM » |
|
I have a bad feeling about the future of this project...  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
“I have brought you T, Master. It took quite a lot of searching on your Galaxy’s non-holographic communications network, but no man is beyond the reach of a Sith.”
Meanwhile, poor Mr. T was left to hang upside down in the middle of the room, informing us that we were both fools, to be pitied.
|
|
|
|
increpare
Guest
|
|
« Reply #39 on: May 20, 2008, 12:27:32 PM » |
|
I have a bad feeling about the future of this project... ? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Community
