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[Asehujiko]

Will it be possible to have another "layer" of land over(or below) your current one? So you could have 10 tiles on your bottom floor and 5 or so above it? Advantage being the easier defendable shape and disadvantage is that once enemies actualy land you are limited to a few small staircases for moving troops between levels.

[omagaalpha]

Will it be possible to have another "layer" of land over(or below) your current one? So you could have 10 tiles on your bottom floor and 5 or so above it? Advantage being the easier defendable shape and disadvantage is that once enemies actualy land you are limited to a few small staircases for moving troops between levels.

but kind of ruin fun what think Airland is and be hassle to programmer right for player to see the lower level and go back and forth between levels. Plus just better to have on land tiles on one level so can see all of them easier in stand of multi-tiles where not only you has zoom like the other one but you has to switch between levels.

[Ivefan]

I just can't get over the image of the Airlands being ships on the sea and the combat being pirate-ish. Board ship, plunder and get the fuck out of there.

[Tahin]

I imagine that letting the clients handle most of the calculations wouldn't be too terrible, but allowing airlands to be stored on the player's computer is just asking for trouble. As far as hosting goes, I suggest you just build it around a standard limited mulitplayer concept for now, and keep it that way until someone offers to host a "massive" server for you.

[omagaalpha]

I imagine that letting the clients handle most of the calculations wouldn't be too terrible,

By let client handle calculation an person who heck into memory can change value give better stats for island even if it is stored on an server infomation need.

Only thing the client should do ris ender what there, and process the inputs from users to be sent to server where server does the calculation at. Anything else ask for big time for people mess with values of there island to be better faster.

[PTTG??]

I promise I won't post about this again, but I really feel that server-side architecture purely to avoid cheating is a bad idea. (EDIT: And an impossible idea, because nobody, anywhere, will ever donate server space of that magnitude. This will, by necessity, have to have individual small servers.)

My argument is this: anyone who cheats to gain themselves a better airland will:
 - Be immediately recognizable to any player, and thus shunned/banned by admins/lynched.
 - Have a high-level airland, which will automatically go to the high-level airland area of the game. Most people in high-level areas will have gotten there by skill- and thus cheaters (who have no skill, or they would be just playing the game) would be hopelessly outclassed by the skilled players.

In other words, it won't be FUN to cheat, because even if you have a great airland, the only players you can attack are those with equal or better airlands, who are better players than you are, too.

Besides, anyone determined enough to code a memory editor for the game will figure out some other way to hack into a server-side control.

Putting all this limitation on the game will prevent players from keeping a continuous Airland from game to game or skirmish to skirmish- the whole point of the story justification of flying chunks of land is that you can keep your kingdom through several "games".
Isn't this the same forum so upset about DRM in EA games? About limitations that do more harm than good? Who thinks that holistic defenses are so much stronger than limited restrictions?

Ok, I'm done. I really hope that an open system is used, but once Vactor has made his/her/it's decision, I'll go with that.

[omagaalpha]

Besides, anyone determined enough to code a memory editor for the game will figure out some other way to hack into a server-side control.

You do realize that program out there that can allow a person to edit memory address in memory, right?
So don't they has code it to do it.

What about value change cause the server to crash because they change an value in memory that handle by client side. Another reason is for have stable server running too and for everthing take in the Server has make sure values does exceed what should be there. So you are talk about lot coding by make some calculation client side.  So even if try not to be DRM like(which I hope not) you still has worry about it because you has take it into account to make sure the server does not crash on you.

[Ivefan]

- Be immediately recognizable to any player, and thus shunned/banned by admins/lynched.
 - Have a high-level airland, which will automatically go to the high-level airland area of the game. Most people in high-level areas will have gotten there by skill- and thus cheaters (who have no skill, or they would be just playing the game) would be hopelessly outclassed by the skilled players

A smart cheater can easily avoid detection and when the possibility for cheats exist, good players will be declared cheaters by others. I don't know how many times i have been called a cheater while playing CS.
And even if they would be sent to the highest levels the experienced players can't do shit against a cheated horde of the best units.
Oh, and one of those memory editing programs is called cheat engine, quite handy when abusing flashgames and it surely works for anything else but i simply haven't had a reason to use it for other things.

I'd dare make the comparison of your idea with Open Battle.net for Diablo2.
It's cheat infested in so many ways that it's pointless to visit it unless you are playing with friends. True, give the host a way to kick cheaters and it would have been done with but considering that the intended structure of Airlands is to be a Massive multiplayer with many isles floating around it wouldn't be fun with a lot of sparsely populated servers, and admins aren't avaible at all times. Not to mention the "oh shit. That guys is attacking with a superior force, quit game."

The only argument for a clientside game would to lighten the load of the server, All gameplay aspects seems to be better suited for a single host server base.

[Tahin]

I guess we'll see how resource intensive the server is once it's actually semi-complete, as well as how many people are actually interested in playing this. I imagine that, at least initially, the game could probably be pretty easily hosted on a single home computer if it needed to. If the game is good and gets semi big, charging a small monthly fee wouldn't be too much of an issue if it means you could pay for a decent host.
Also, I'm sure someone out there is crazy enough to host it for free.

[Vactor]

My current vision of the finished game is that your airland is saved server side.  However this may or may not be possible to do for a lot of the reasons everyone was pointing out.  In my plans for development I see this as something that will unfold as the game goes forward.  Initially it will be a single player game, followed by a match system where a few players can test the mechanics of airlands fighting.   The next step I would expect to go towards would be allowing people to set up their own servers where they can host their own large groups, If it turns out to be a well liked game, or a server owning beneficiary appears, opening official servers becomes an option.

I think allowing clients to make calculations is going to be necessary for people to be able to host their own servers.  My hope is that I can develop it in such a way that this is workable.  My current ideas include having the server check a portion of each player's calculations to see if it arrives at the same conclusion,  and providing the server host the tools necessary to maintain a fair server if they wish. 

While it is true to say that the more experienced player will have an advantage over someone who just downloaded the good save file, I just see it too easily turning into a game where you download a set of saves, and play with premade airlands.  I'm not against including the option for playing this way with friends, as well as a single player mode, but I want there to be servers where you have to play your airland from the ground up, which will be much more fulfilling in my mind. 

I realize that in this mode it then becomes devastating to morale if you lose everything you've worked for.  My goal is to make losing all of the land around your airland not require you to start over from scratch.  By improving your tower/mage you will become more powerful and more able to replace whatever you have lost.

If I can compare it to another game I would go with EVE, where you develop your avatar, and your avatar rides a ship.  Your ship can get destroyed, but you keep your avatar, and all of the skills that you have developed, which allows you to relatively easily replace what you lost, while forcing you to still value your property.  Your tower/mage would be your avatar, with the land around it your ship.

**Edit**
Of course all of this is subject to change as we move forward, and I'd prefer to not have paying money a requirement to play.  (I would consider a pay to play official server if only to cover the personal cost of said server, but without getting ahead of myself If the game is popular enough to warrant this I would prefer it if it could be financed in another way.)

[Neonivek]

" Your ship can get destroyed, but you keep your avatar, and all of the skills that you have developed"

No... what Eve does is turn your character into basically a ship in it of itself. You only keep the skills you have developed if you have bought the clone in advance. (so you can hillariously lose litterally years of progress... The only game I know that has the equivilant of pernament death for everyone)

Though I understand the concept

[Gigalith]

How much information could an Airland even hold? Suppose there are 5,000 total Airlands, with an average of 30 hexes each, and we have 10 GB of free server space (which is nothing these days). Each hex could have 66 KB all to it's lonesome, and we'd need to be storing the median snobbiness of the local wine to even dent that. Bandwidth is a different subject, but depending on the pace that might not be a concern either.

 

[Duke 2.0]

...median snobbiness of the local wine...

 The only thing I read.

 But really, we could fit a lot of stuff if that's the case. Although having too many things interact could hurt performance. Such as averaging out the 'elements' of every hex in relation to the population and armies stored there.

[Tahin]

Moving away from the technical side of things and back to gameplay...

One thing that I have decided in my infinite wisdom is that, one: Units should more or less be designable from the ground up, and two: This should have both an effect on gameplay, as well as a visual one, and three: The exact nature of these statistical changes should be kept secret.

For instance, you are designing your uber-awesome airship. You give it flapping wings, thrusters, a large troop quarters, and heavy armor plating, then paint it bright pink. All of these should do exactly what common sense would dictate: the wings would add extra lift and maneuverability, the thrusters would add speed, the troop quarters would increase the number of units you could comfortably fit in it, the heavy armor plating would increase the number of hits it could take, but would slow it down and increase the amount of energy it would require to stay aloft.

None of this, however, should be shown in the form of exact numbers to the player. Certainly, the troop quarters would tell you how many units it was designed for, but it should be possible to overfill it, at the risk of loss of morale.

Too many games with decent customization I've seen fail to live up to what it could have been because either exact numbers were given and thus everyone ended up using the "best" combinations, or the customization had no effect whatsoever on the actual gameplay.

I shouldn't know that giving my recruits steel longswords will add +3 to their attack power, but instead that they're now armed with decent weapons and are thus dealing much more damage.

Players should be expected to play around with the various customization options until they find a combination which fits their playing style.

[Servant Corps]

Tahin: Not only should they be kept secret, but any changes to the secret stats of the weapons you make should also be kept secret. In case it turns out a certain weapon is too powerful, you may decide to secretly nerf it, without annoucing. I know of an MMORPG that manages to control game balance simply by changing search odds on a constant basis.

I believe the metagame will eventually determine the 'stats' of the Units sooner or later, but at least by keeping it secret, you don't encourage mini-maxing right off the bat. Never underestimate the power of the playerbase, especially that of the "Spades"/Explorers who will spend days upon days calcuating how effective each item is...for fun.

EDIT: Though, I do worry that this tactic may backfire, leading to lots of angry players upset that they don't know anything and therefore can't really 'win'.