Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Duke 2.0]

 It doesn't seem like it would be too much of a problem. It'll be difficult to remotely send viruses to other ships as they'll likely have the most basic of filters to only let text messages through. You would mostly only get then when trying out strange programs to control your ship.

 Not a problem.

[Lord Dullard]

It seems pretty obvious that, yes, there would be some kind of protection in place from letting the code go truly wild.

That said, now that I think of it, serious issues will arise from letting people actually code things in a multiplayer game unless the code is well and truly made impotent.

It'll only be a matter of time until some griefer with a working knowledge of basic code structure figures out how to create an infinite loop despite any restrictions placed on such attempts.

[Rose]

in the faq notch said that infinite loops are perfectly possible and there's nothing stopping you from doing them.

[Lord Dullard]

I'm not sure if that means that he simply doesn't understand the consequences in multiplayer, or he's put some kind of stopgap measure in place (i.e., infinite loops are possible but are limited to x cycles/second or somesuch).

If he's just allowing them full-steam, well... that's dumb.

[Darvi]

I shouldn't tell you this, but if a computer is told to divide by 0, it'll explode.

[Cthulhu]

Distributed modular ships and viruses that rearrange them into giant dicks.

Game of the year.

[Lord Dullard]

I shouldn't tell you this, but if a computer is told to divide by 0, it'll explode.

It's one thing to implement error handling that'll prevent players from crashing the game by means of producing code errors. That's fairly easy.

It's entirely another thing to say 'oh sure infinite loops yay' and then prevent griefers from bringing entire servers down via lag.

[Rose]

each virtual cpu is of a fixed speed of 100khz.

an infinite loop inside the virtual computer won't do anything to the main game.

[Lord Dullard]

each virtual cpu is of a fixed speed of 100khz.

an infinite loop inside the virtual computer won't do anything to the main game.

Ah, there we go. That makes sense, then.

It could still be broken, though. Assuming it's possible to create self-replicating computers.

[Sowelu]

So I've got a thought experiment for you guys (partially because I have a small stake in it, even if I probably won't go back to that project for a while).

How DO you fund a truly MMO-based game like this, if not by a monthly fee?  I mean, what on earth do you charge for?  Pay-to-win sucks, and "you only buy it once" is a great way to bring down the game's servers in a real hurry once new players stop signing up.

Let's be generous and say that an average player uses $0.50 per month in bandwidth and amortized CPU costs, and that advertising costs and pay for the devs are fairly minimal.  What kind of payment scheme can you use, which guarantees an average income of like $6.00 per player per year?

[Sirus]

Guildwars used the "buy once, play free" method, and stayed online for a long time. Of course, they charged money for the expansions, which might have helped.

Could you also define pay-to-win? Are you talking about low level-caps for free players, or just things like experience boosts that you pay money for?

[Lord Dullard]

Charge them $6.00/year.

Any particular reason you need to do a monthly subscription? A 1 payment/year subscription seems more manageable, and users would probably be a lot less hesitant to pay $6 for a year's worth of a game (not much of a loss if you don't like it) than to sign up for a monthly subscription, which is a much bigger hassle.

[Sowelu]

Pay-to-win often goes hand-in-hand with free-to-play.  A P2W system is any system where the whole game is theoretically open to you, but real monies give you more XP, better weapons, more actions-per-day, stuff like that.  If it's level caps for free players, that's practically the shareware model.  Guess it works though...yeah that could work pretty well.  But do you pay once to break the level cap, or do you have to subscribe?  Also, what if your game has no levels?

Ehh, I'd be leery of "pay for a year of service", because A] players might feel like oh, I /bought/ this game and now they are taking it away...just because they have had it without consciously paying for a long time.  And B] it's a huge risk for the company, because you get a lot of subscribers up front and then a year later, when they all come up for resubscription, you don't know if your resubscription rate is going to be 50% or 5%.

In a game like 0x10^c, the 'pay for expansions' model doesn't work because it's kind of an open world, right?  I mean...where is the expansion even going to go?

Here's what Puzzle Pirates does, and it kinda works.  In a very simplified nutshell: Anyone can serve on a ship, but only people who pay can own a ship, or captain a ship that their guild owns.  They actually have two types of servers: one that divides it up by subscription (pay $x/month and get eveyrthing), and one that divides it up by microtransactions and special currency (pay $x for *10, pay *10 to get this subset of paid rights for a month, and you can trade your *s to other players for normal game currency).

[Matz05]

I think that a $6 yearly thing could be something somebody like me would think of doing.

I understand that upkeep is necessary for a unified MMO server, but I sincerely hope that other servers are allowed.
(What if I am lucky and a nearby business discards a big set of obsolete rackmount servers and i get a good deal on a fancy Internet connection? Can I run an extra-small galaxy for friends!?)

In addition, I would feel much less stupid paying an up-front fee for a year of use of a multiplayer server than I would paying monthly fees.

[Sirus]

Heck, make it $30 a year. I could probably do that price, and that means more money for the devs.