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[SimpleSyrup]

LATEST UPDATE (2010-01-11)

GAME: http://hubris.simple-syrup.info/
F.U.Q.: http://simplesyrup.pbworks.com/Hubris-Quest-Online-FUQ

It's finished, but a little bare on features.

Post-competition thread started here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=10404.0




LATEST UPDATE (2009-12-07)
HUBRIS QUEST ONLINE will live here: http://hubris.simple-syrup.info/  

     

Okay, I'm going to perform an experiment destined to fail. I'm going to make an MMO using the lofi dungeon tileset. What can I say, it's inspiring.

Here is what I know so far:
* The server is going to be written in JavaScript using V8 + Node.js. Yes, JavaScript.
* The client is going to be Flash (9/AS3).
* Everything will be tile based (discrete movement,  not continuous movement).
* I haven't decided if the viewport will be scrolling or non-scrolling yet. I know I won't have time to solve the problem of server boundaries, so it's either going to be "walk off the edge of the screen onto the next screen and possibly next server" or "mysterious dimensional rifts on certain longitudinal or latitudinal lines". Or I might just try to cram the whole world onto one server, depending on performance.
* I'm probably going to procedurally generate most of the world and then add in some details.
* Gameplay inspiration are the earlier incarnations of Ultima Online. PVP, kind of lawless, skill-based growth. Emergent gameplay.
* Since I'm a dad of a demanding 1 year old, and also work at a startup at my day job, AND I'm biting off an MMO, AND the holidays, I need to seriously concentrate on the scheduling and work pace. So I plan on the following:
  * I'm going to work in 90 minute increments. If I don't think I can get in 90 minutes of work, I'm not going to start (or continue).
  * I'm going to schedule the game assuming I can work a minimum of one 90 minute block a day for the next 35 days. So I have roughly 52 hours to complete this. I'm going to work in passes so that I can hopefully at least have something functional after 52 hours, versus ending up with a UI and no server, or a server and no content, etc. I'll post the schedule in this thread.
* As soon as I have a working client/server, I will open things up for testing + feedback (if that's allowed by the contest rules? Guys?)
* The name of the game is HUBRIS QUEST ONLINE until I actually complete something reasonably resembling an MMO. Then it will get a proper name.  

I expect to fail. But I'll take this opportunity to work in a highly constrained environment and see if that is conducive to making a beeline for something that works instead of getting caught up in a million possible avenues.

[dbb]

I am in awe of your insane ambition. Good luck, sir!

Even if this fails, it is still a noble quest.

[SimpleSyrup]

Thank you for your support, dbb! And your non-reiteration of the utter hopelessness of the project, which is self-evident.

Never the less, I press on.

Here's the project plan with milestones laid out, and my deliverables for M1 laid out. I think M1 is about 18 hours of work.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ao3ggWYTfRVfdHNQUEpzdjk1MVpyUVJ3cFdhY2pBdkE&hl=en

[increpare]

Cool.  Be sure to keep us up to date with your progress : )

[Pishtaco]

This is inspiring. And you seem intimidatingly well-organized.

[oryx]

Sounds awesome! yell if you need any testers

[dbb]

Oh, and please do post something in the Obligatory Introduce Yourself Thread. Who is this intimidatingly well-organised Don Quixote of the indie gaming world?

[theparticleman]

This sounds awesome.  I thought about doing something like this, but I know I wouldn't have enough time to finish (having a 1 year old of my own).  Good luck in your attempts.  I like your "at least 90 minutes" idea.  I might try that myself (though I don't know that I can ever get 90 continuous minutes to code when I'm not at work).  I've done some preliminary work on a similar project, so if you'd like someone to run ideas by I'd be happy to help if I can, though I'm a C# guy and not a Flash or JavaScript one.

[Inanimate]

This is an amazing feat you are trying to accomplish, and it has my wholehearted support!

[iGniSz]

What a great idea! I was almost tempted to try and get a place on your team instead of entering myself.. Good luck to you good sir! May the best entry win..

[undertech]

Cocktails!

[SimpleSyrup]

Wow guys, thanks for the all words of encouragement! Now I'm super motivated to get something finished!

I got about 3 hours of work in today, and things went well - finished things in less than/equal to my estimated time for them.

Completed:
* Put together schedule/project plan etc
* Built Node.js and set up dev environment
* Created a raster-based (versus ttf) text widget for Flixel (I'm going to use Flixel for the client for now just to speed things up)
* Determined feasibility of compactly storing maps in UTF-16 strings in JavaScript - was able to store a 10,000x10,000 map successfully (assuming 2 bits per tile) without blowing up V8.

In progress:
* Rudimentary TCP communication between Flash and Node.js. Ran into some unexpected weirdness (<cross-domain-policy/>) that I wasn't expecting (I haven't programmed much in Flash before), got it resolved in Flash Player but not in-browser. Still working on that.

Hoping I can squeeze in one more 90 minute block tonight! The technique does seem to be working well -- I started to meander and make things overly generic for the raster-text flixle widget, but realizing my time was winding down, I change coursed and finished it on schedule.

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

Admittedly, whenever I see someone start a game with a post count under 10, I have very low expectations.  But you just said about 50 things in that last post that sound like you know exactly what you're doing, and that this is going to be a major stereotype-breaker.

Looking forward to this

-PENCERKOFF

[SimpleSyrup]

Have a home for HUBRIS QUEST now. I expect to have something operational (basic chat) tonight or tomorrow.

  http://hubris.simple-syrup.info/

I'm pretty excited because I've found that it's suuuuper easy to build a distributed object system in JavaScript. Well, easy is relative. Relative to C++ it's super easy. I built a C++ distributed object system in the past based on a combination of the classic Tribes 2 networking and Scott Bilas RPC papers, and it was a bitch and half. In JS, with closures and "arguments" it's almost too easy to wrap distributed method calls, curry things up, and replicate 'em to clients. Of course, this is going to be far more sluggish, based on TCP and all, but I'm just not prepared to get into UDP/Flash 10 stuff, not to mention that Node.js doesn't speak UDP. After all, the original Ultima Online used TCP, and it ran reasonably, and that was like 12 years ago. So I'm hopeful.

So bottom line is that I ended up getting way deeper into building a real distributed object system to implement chat than I thought I would, so it's taking longer than planned. However, other things that I had allocated a lot of time for, I now believe won't take much time, because I'll have already laid a lot of groundwork.

Coding the server in JavaScript is awesome. Such a breeze, and so elegant. If I never coded in anything besides JavaScript again I would be happy.

Oh yeah, how do I get my post tagged with one of those nice ASSEMBLEE tags?

[Galaxy613]

You need to edit the first post and change the Message Icon.

Looking good!  

[CatStack]

Wow, it sounds like this is coming along rather nicely. It is a very ambitious project, but then that's all the more awesome if you manage to get it done. Best of luck. 

Also I may have to steal your 90-minute time segment idea. I'm all over the place when I work on something and it'd certainly help me manage my time.

[SimpleSyrup]

 

The first real build of HUBRIS QUEST is now up at http://hubris.simple-syrup.info/

It simply connects to the game server and receives chat messages that are generated server-side every 5 seconds.

There's a LOT going on under the hood though, to get this, so I'm stoked about seeing how quickly I can roll out some functionality now.

Next version will be interactive, for sure.

PLEASE let me know if you don't receive chat messages in the form of "ADMIN > The time is X:XX:XX PM GMT and there are X players online." Not doing so would suggest that you could not connect. The game uses port 443 which I figure ought to be open, but Flash since seems to insist on having a security policy file served on port 843 as well, which I think may not be available in strictly firewalled environments. Still working on that. Hrmm.

[SimpleSyrup]

Crap. Seeing a bug that means this probably isn't working for most people. Time to start working my first patch. 

[Pishtaco]

Not working for me, I just get a grey screen with a line at the bottom about the build. Clicking away gives me an amusing 'game paused' screen.

[Mocker]

Wow, I'm super pumped to see someone using Node.js . Have you used server side Javascript before?