Triple Post, yay!
This time I actually bring good news, please ignore everything I said yesterday [mostly]. My difficulty with networking was in a console application it is hard to have real-time updates. However, after reworking the idea for this game I have found an acceptable solution.
Each player will be a computer on the Satellite, they will be assigned computer roles which give them access to more parts of the ship, say if you were a maintenance you would have access to the engine terminal, but not the doctors terminal. As said, each player is the computer and they are all connected to a central computer, or the server. They players send commands to the central computer, which then post's back the result of running the command. The player can then analyse the result and send a command again.
For example, if a computer wanted to receive info on all the rooms in the space station, they could run this command sequence:
and the central computer would then send back relevant information. Let's presume the player is an atmospheric technician, the player could then run:
[air_sensor_3,air_sensor_7]->read
Which would print the memory of those all the sensors from 3 to 7 to the screen.
As in real life all objects consist of their memory, and certain people can read the memory, write to memory or both. For example, someone wanting to cause a fire could do the following:
fire_alarm_1->write->POWER:0
fire_alarm_1 power has been set to 0
oven_1->write->GASFLOW:10000
WARNING! GASFLOW is above recommended operating limits. Using this equipment could cause unwanted results!
oven_1->write->IGNITE:1
Lost connection: oven_1
Lost connection: fire_alarm_1
Lost connection: air_sensor_1
Obviously, a computer is at no risk to death by lack of air ect. but they do need electricity and operators. The computers will have to keep power to the whole satellite and keep their operators alive, while their operators do not do anything if there is not enough air in the satellite they will die, and so will you.
That covers most of how the game play works, when it comes to the central computer it will be a server but will mostly operate much like a normal computer. It will have a command stack, which will hold all commands issued by the players and then process each one and return results.
I just gave my imagination its biggest abortion all year.
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