Planescape online

Well, I don't really know what Metaplace can do graphically, so that point is kinda moot for me.
However, I'd like to see some graphics at least, since I find staring at text for long times extremely tiring. And yes, I have played a lot of Muds and textbased adventures, and liked them a lot.

What purpose did it serve? All it's done for me is give me a bad first impression of you.

I'm sorry if my post offended you, but you've obviously missed my point. Someone joining the forum just to post a long hostile, sarcastic post like Khagan's only makes themselves look irrational and immature. Thanking that person for making such a worthless post only serves to make you looking the same.

I don't want to drive this thread any further off topic so maybe we should move this away from here.

It's a classic internet jerk tactic to try to make someone you disagree with look like an idiot by saying you agree with them and then saying a bunch of completely ridiculous things that totally miss the point.

Then you make sure people get that you didn't really mean any of the crap you said by making a remark like the last line in the post. Khagan totally missed the point of the post he were reacting to though. He's also only made two posts so far since joining, both in response to my posts in this thread. This gives the impression that he's only interested in stirring up trouble.

The idea about a text only game gives me a rather ambiguous feeling. I think that it will attract few but the most nostalgic fellows. (People like me )

I’ll list some options concerning an online version of PS that sprang to my mind (unafraid of stating the obvious):

Where?
1) the planes: (-) too many equal possibilities, none of which preferable over the others.
2) Sigil: (+) mascot to PS, contains her Serenity and lots of interesting NPCs, vanilla flavoured

When?
1) pre faction war: (+) classic (-)predetermined storyline, static scenario
2) faction war: (+) lots of action (-) few interaction, one sided on “blood sports”
3) post faction war: (+) evolving, totally open ended
4) ancient Sigil: (?) weird/cool
5) kriegstanz: (?) ditto, but with the objections from 2)

What (should it incorporate)?
- “know thyself” problems, ethic quest(ion)s, philosophy (PS:T, Black & White)
- weird atmosphere, never telling the whole story (PS:T, Ecstatica)
- decisions whether players want to meddle with factions, which would influence their goals
- slow, non-linear game play (PS:T, Realms of Arkania [imho best CRPG ever!])
- as many details as possible (Ultima)
- beholders as a player characters

How?
a) first person: (?) standard, action oriented
b) iso perspective: (+) classic
c) bird’s view: (+) very cute (like “Dawn of War”; all those tiny orks jostling and bustling around)

Tech?
a) Metaplace: (+) new approach, server usage included (-) unfinished (only 2D yet), closed down
b) alternatives: see www.devmaster.net/engines/ on this

That's all folks. What’s your opinion?

We could set it in "Ye Olde Sigil". Way back, way before the upheaval. That way, everyone could found as many philosophical factions as they want. Also, we would be pretty free to incorporate anything we'd like, probably even freer (is that a word?) than after the faction war.

Hmm. But then there needs to be a way for the factions to gain influence...

multiverse.net has a nice ring to it. A very nice ring to it.

Yes we should definately start small. So sigil to begin with and then pan out from there.

Ancient Sigil is a great idea, but then I think we should give em a good ol' taste of the planes and have em all culled by the ladies decree. Y'know once the factions get all out of hand and are just hacking each other up in the streets.

I also reckon that if anyone faction has/gains majority control it somehow affects the way of the multiverse what with belief having the effect it does.

Problem with that, is that unlike Metaplace, which seems to be a good deal simpler, Nebula Device 2 definitely requires a good knowledge of programing, which may be a problem if we don't have the people.

On a diferent note, I can do artwork textures, and maybe 3d modeling (Iso is probably more practical, so the point is kind of moot)

Well if we are short on programmers, as I suspected we would be, its a comment occurence I've found. Do people have friends or aquaintences who do know programming and would be willing to help out when we ask them to?

Some programming will be a necessary evil (the D20 rules must be known to the computer, for example), because all engines, including the new ones like Metaplace and Mutliverse, are generic and must be adapted in order to serve our purpose.

If it is done in the right way, we can run our stuff with little effort on most engines alike, similar to a company of actors staging the same play in different theatres.
My idea is to try and make a rudimentary draft version (technical demo or such), that we can get warm on.

When Metaplace is ready for us, then we can move there what we have created so far, if we want to.

The programming will only be the tip of the iceberg. What the game really needs is content: story (or rather a set of stories), graphics, sound. And we need a concept, as detailed as possible. And a general motto wouldn’t be bad either.

We have one volunteering programmer (me :twisted:). Oh brothers where art ye?

While this may not be possible, there have been a couple DnD vid-ga-ma-games for the PC. Would it be possible to use those as a base for the ruleset-system? Or maybe a mod to make programing work easier for everyone?

I hope you didn't just join this forum to try to convince everyone that men and women are physically identical.

I never said anything about realism because I knew that someone would immediately make this tired and meaningless argument. Would you be happy with humans bleeding iced tea and sweating Gatorade then trading it to the elves for free movie tickets even though movies don't exist in the setting? No, because that's stupid and completely inconsistent. So are identical sexes in humans.

Obvious strawman is obvious. You've gotta be trying to troll me, there's no other explanation. (Which is funny, I have to love your attempt at irony.)

*EDIT: Yes, I do realize that my first post was itself a strawman of epic proportions, but that was the point. It was an exaggeration of a viewpoint that is itself absurd. Kobold and Azure realized this at least, and I imagine that so do most people who read it.

But don't claim you didn't bring realism up. What's the word you used? Anachronistic? Well what's that but a fancy and specific way of saying unrealistic?

But it doesn't matter. You are trolling the troll, after all. But let me ask one question

This is the quote that my "troll" post replied to. I took this quote to mean that you think that there should be stat differences between male and female PCs. Was I wrong?

If I was, sorry.

If I was right, well, you need to realize that we're talking about a game, something that's supposed to entertain people. An RPG whose purpose is to allow you to play someone who is the exception to the rule, someone who defies conventions and stereotypes, someone who is unique. If you can't atleast understand that, then you're the one with the problems, not me.

The DMing could be done direct and indirect: Firstly we would build scenes and quests that anyone can explore. (Just like PS:T for instance.). Secondly the admins could turn into certain NPCs, which become PCs with certain special abilities (mazing people etc.).

That’s the standard way to do it, I think.

The game must be scriptable, anyway. Metaplace uses the programming language Lua (as do most modern games like WoW, NWN, …) for that purpose. Maybe we could even come up with a visual editor for quests which would assemble puzzles (or whole quests) by drag and drop, generating the corresponding Lua script.

This is a good idea and should be one of the first projects started on after your initial 20 room / 5 classes batch is completed. This sort of system will allow you to easily convert trusted players into reliable builders, sharing the workload and building momentum of game development. If you need building done and this isn't ready - be prepared to train some people on the use of Lua directly, building is more important to maintain populace interest - but even so - keep this idea around for the future.

I was thinking for the begining setting it could be like the GTA in game evolution. Y'know. First your stuck in a part in sigi, the lady has stopped all portal for some reason or other and the rest of the city is walled off by the dabus, closed for repairs so to speak, then as the game grows more of it becomes accessable, then as the game grows the portals start to work again.

As for GMing it would seem completely uneccessary for their to be a DM as the makers would flesh out the world and you'd find your own tales. Grated we could "toy" with people and send them on quests that lead to an epic adventure full of immense and profound insight. We could be like a real version of the gods, grant some players demigod status, have people run around in circles and lead people into tragedy, all for the sake of our own sick twisted amusement. Bwhahahaa! Just every now and then pick a player at random and have a little say in his destiny. Just like the gods.

You are right, getting story ideas (eg. dialog-ideas for NPC) shouldn't be too hard. And scripting is much easier to learn than grafic-editing. Especially as a scripter just has to produce the effect, no one will take a closer look how clumsy the code is made. But grafics cannot really be improvised.

Asking myself:
1.How important is a D&D System for Planescape Online?
Not at all! Planescape worked with AD&D, D&D 3 it will work with 4th Ed and you can rebuild your favorite Planescape-Char even with BESM, should you need to
So it shouldn't be a problem to use an engine with a build-in RPG-System.

2.How important are grafics at all?
If you dream of "getting new players interested in Planescape": Do you think they will even try a game made by some guys most of whom have neither an idea of graficdesign nor of coding. The progress made will be VERY slow, and this will finally drive off the last interested people. (Settling for an engine that is not even ready to use will add to this problem. NWN I would be more useful ...)
So why not take some 2D morpg-engine. There are lots of them floating around, the problem is finding one, that is (supported and) customisable enough to allow good NPC-scripting. NPC are crucial for the Planescape-feel in the game, especially if you can't do too much with grafics. (Those who "need" 3d-effects can be told to try RogueDao anyway ) 2D-Grafic editing is way easier than 3D. It would be able to produce quick results, and at least getting some of the users in here interested to participate. With a basis like that you can always make it grow.

Something like this: http://xtremeworlds.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
(they may be better ones - especially as I don't know the scripting possibilitys for the NPC. But at least it already has a Guild-system )

Mash wrote:

Do we have to recreate every single nook and cranny of D&D into our online game. God no. However, we are going to need some way of dealing with combat (because combat is an integral part of Planescape. Granted, it's not on the "lets go around and kill some random goblins" level. It's more on the lines of "we'd better get diplomic because this dark goblin overlord can kill us eight different ways without blinking" level. Not to mention that sooner or later, it's going to be you verse the elite team of goblin agents who are currently infiltrating Sigil, and you're going to need some way to fight them.

Once you establish you need a combat system, we might as well use the d&d system. Why? Two reasons:
1) Everyone knows it. Nobody is going to go "huh" when you tell them they lost 2d8 hit points. And Planescape is based in D&D.
2) The D&D combat system is incredibly easy to program. 2d8 turns into Math.random() * 8 + Math.random() * 8. Rolling d20 is just Math.random() * 20.

Of course, wizards and clerics are far more difficult, but still doable. Thus, it's probably easiest to use basic D&D rules, even if we have to modify a few for our purposes (we don't want players to have access to Planar Shift if we havn't made any other planes).

I *can* do iso, but it's a lot harder to make walking, attacking, etc. animations. There's also the question of how animations need to work, which probably depends on the program.

It's not any harder technology-wise, but drawing with propper perspective, accurate joint movement, foreshortening, etc. for each frame is much slower and more dificult than a top-down view (it's also really hard to make it look good with low res. characters) Top-down is extremely simple to paint and animate, which is probably good if we want a lot of diferent NPC and PC sprites--it is Planescape after all. A slightly orthographic top view is almost as easy, though, and provides a better view of the characters, and, much more importantly, a good view of doors, windows, etc.

There is also the question of resolution. I can get to work on stuff whenever someone gives me an idea what the people doing coding need for their test, but it's essential that I know what size I'm working at and what format the files need to be in, because I'll be creating tiles, objects, and characters accordingly and then using a map editor and Photoshop to piece stuff together quickly and efficiently. I'm not familiar with creating graphics for games, so I also probably need a description, so I can make my final products easier for everyone else to use.

because then I have to model, unwrap, texture, animate, and render everything myself. Those are 4 full time jobs and one big drain on my PC.

This is the easy perspective, it's not much harder than an isometric top view, and I can handle it without much diference in work. It's more complicated perspective that's the problem.

Painting textures on an unwrapped model, even with pelt mapping in 8 is mind-numbing, yeah. And that's not even including rigging, which is a huge weakness. I can do some things in 3ds, but it's less work to paint over them in Photoshop than to texture them, usually.

That is exactly what they did in PS:T. The models are rendered from 3D to 2D. (That’s why it still looks good. I'm not quite sure whether 2D will be easier than 3D, since 3D can be honed over and over again and is easily customized, whereas 2D bitmaps are static and there will be lots of them.)

My first choice if we want things to get going fast would be Arianne.
Have a look at Planeshift, too. It is open source and maybe the game will be as easily customized as the name
crossfire looks somewhat low tech, but it might do.
We might also use a Ultima Online shard emulator.

Whatever we do, it should be done efficiently. That is we make one humanoid character (no matter if 2D or 3D) and animate it. Then this paragon would be accommodated to all other models.

If it is to be 3D then I recommend www.blender.org , since it has become a sort of free standard and can import/export almost every format.

If we don’t use Metaplace or such then we will have to find a server. (Peer2peer MMORPGs are rare.) That might turn out to be a problem.