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Author Topic: A Noctis style MMO  (Read 960 times)

Eclectic Wizard

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A Noctis style MMO
« on: November 23, 2013, 04:18:43 am »

I have been thinking for a bit, Noctis used to be my favorite game of all time, sadly i couldnt get the star catalog to work properly ever.
For years i played that game, just exploring and exploring, as this all powerful feline alien. It was an awesome feeling. But what if someone made a game like that, but with multiplayer? Imagine piloting a ship together with your friends in an infinite universe full of randomly generated planets, perhaps with randomly generates lifeforms on them? Some of them could maybe be dangerous? Imagine that everyone who joined in the game would start on some homeworld of whatever race the players are, with a basic ship capable of interstellar travel and maybe some basic measuring and science instruments and an uplink to the star catalog, then they could set out to explore. Perhaps there could be a reward system where pictures of distant worlds, their data and such would be rewarded for completeness, maybe you could be given points to upgrade your ship with? Maybe you could outfit it with a deadly planet destroying laser to remove planets you disliked, or maybe outfit your landing craft with a rover, or maybe rquipment for capturing theese randomly generated animals to bring them back to some awe-inspiring galactic zoo back on the homeworld?

I am just thinking, its an interesting idea and i would like to discuss the aspects of such a game. It could be done with less than a megabyte of code and machinery that could only run DOS, its been proven with Noctis. Can it be done today? And would it actually be a fun game?
« Last Edit: November 23, 2013, 04:28:51 am by Eclectic Wizard »
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alexandertnt

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Re: A Noctis style MMO
« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2013, 06:01:52 am »

There is one reason why I like Noctis. Exploring a big, empty, beautiful void. Thats it.

No quests, upgrades, points, rewards, none of that. The only reason to "play" was pure curiousity. Because of that, What you have described sounds almost like (to me) the antitheses of Noctis.

Could still be a fun game though.

Quote
It could be done with less than a megabyte of code and machinery that could only run DOS, its been proven with Noctis

Just to clarify, the size of the binary is in no way an indicator of the effort or time it took to develop. Noctis was coded in a mix of C and Assembly. You could rewrite Noctis in a more modern fashion and the result would be a larger binary and (most likely) considerably less development time. I also couldn't think of a reason you would consider aiming to keep the binary so small, unless it was for the demo scene or something.
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Knight of Fools

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Re: A Noctis style MMO
« Reply #2 on: November 23, 2013, 06:28:35 am »

In a world where the scale for a large game starts at 10 GB, size doesn't really matter.
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deoloth

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Re: A Noctis style MMO
« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2013, 03:06:40 pm »

I had fun with Noctis. Granted, it was incredibly hard to find the fun at first with the weird control scheme however the concept was great and the exploration was nearly unparalleled. I was amazed when I found my first tree and when I stumbled upon the first signs of animal life. I did check back on the website on and off a few times a year for quite awhile in my late teens waiting for the next version, and was disappointed when it was canceled.
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Eclectic Wizard

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Re: A Noctis style MMO
« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2013, 04:47:00 pm »

Alexandertnt: you misunderstood me, i know that a games size means nothing to the effort put into it, im a coder myself and a meg of code is awfully much code.
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Feed black desires, aid human ascension