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[Morlark]

I wish there would be a better Wurm. With some real code and not this slow ass Java. With real graphics and real animations. Otherwise it's fine.

IMHO, A Tale In The Desert is pretty much that. Ok, it's not exactly Wurm. It doesn't have deformable terrain, and it doesn't have PvP, but other than that it's superior to Wurm in pretty much every way. It has better graphics than Wurm, and without any of that nonsense that is Java. In fact I'd be playing it right now if it weren't for the fact that it requires a credit card to play beyond the 24 hour free trial. Seriously, is it so hard to accept Paypal?

[Shades]

IMHO, A Tale In The Desert is pretty much that. Ok, it's not exactly Wurm. It doesn't have deformable terrain, and it doesn't have PvP, but other than that it's superior to Wurm in pretty much every way.

Isn't deformable terrain pretty much the only thing that makes Wurm different/interesting though? What makes tale in the desert good? (never played it just wanted the view from someone that has)

[Yanlin]

Terraforming isn't overrated. I carved out an entire village from a hillside. Took me days. Felt awesome afterwards.

[Morlark]

Isn't deformable terrain pretty much the only thing that makes Wurm different/interesting though? What makes tale in the desert good? (never played it just wanted the view from someone that has)

Well, I only played the trial, so my experience is somewhat limited, but there were some ideas that I really liked.

There's the idea of technological advancement going on within the game; you contribute resources towards research at universities, and then eventually it unlocks a new technology that everybody can use. So for example, you start off with access to some crappy brickmat for making bricks, but every so often they break and you have to make a new one. But you can research better brickmats that break less often, or don't break at all.

Also, I heard mention of some sort of genetics system, to allow you to develop new strains of crops, for better yields and such, although I never found out how exactly the system works. But there's loads of different things like that.

You can join multiple different guilds as well, so you can contribute to all sorts of different projects, and collaborate with many different people, without tying yourself down to one orgnisation or location.

And then even on an individual scale, you can make a lasting mark on the world. You can build sculptures and stuff, and allow people to rate whether they like it or not. And when I say you can build sculptures, you get to design how it looks and stuff, it's not just a generic 'statue of demon' like in Wurm. Or they have this neat little puzzle game with sliding blocks. You can build them, and design a starting scenario the way you like, with its own unique solution, and then people that pass by can play the game and rate how challenging/interesting they thought it was.

Of course you've also got all of the normal build build build tendencies that Wurm has, so you can build a house out in the desert if you want, or make a village with friends or whatever. Basically it has all of the same resource gathering, building construction, freeform gameplay that makes Wurm (and indeed DF  ) fun to play.

The main thing that's different from Wurm is that there are various challenges that you can try to accomplish in different categories. Not quests like in a normal MMO, but long-ish (depending on the task) achievements which give you a way to define/customise you character. So for instance, if you like building, you can do the architecture tasks, and once you complete the first architecture task you become known as an Initiate of Architecture, and so on.

Umm, yeah, I probably wrote more than I intended to, but I really like this game.

Edit: Oh, did I mention it has better graphics than Wurm? And doesn't run in Java? Ok, I don't mind Wurm's graphics, but that second point is a massive plus, IMO.

[Shades]

To be honest with a well written java program there is no reason you should be able to tell the difference. But that is another matter.

[Sowelu]

ATITD has no combat whatsoever.

It does have crafting that's part of the game instead of a vague numerical thing.  Want to make an awesome hatchet (for chopping trees instead of people, naturally)?  Get some iron and pound it into something like the hatchet shape.  And the closer you get, the higher its quality.  It's not like Wurm where it takes your anvil quality, your hammer quality, and your skill, and poof hatchet.

[Yanlin]

Wurm has the upper hand for being free. But ATITD sounds fun. I'll have a look once I have some cash flow.

[Sowelu]

More pros and cons:

Wurm has awesome terrain and weather.  At least by my standards.  When I hopped on a while back, I met people on this mountainside at night, and then we went and watched the sun rise from a mossy hillside...it was truly mindblowing.  ATITD can't compare to that.

Also, ATITD will suck your time in repetitive tasks.  It's not as varied as Wurm, I think, even if it IS deeper.  Be prepared to make a lot of bricks and grow a lot of flax.

[qwertyuiopas]

But once you make it, can you improve it?
Does it take damage over time?
Is it even 3D?
Does it install viruses?

[Micro102]

I repeat. Nice of you to know nothing about how that stuff works and talk about it.

The lag is caused by server/client traffic. That can be streamlined. If graphics cause lag in WoW, then WoW has very shitty code. VERY shitty. Contrary to popular belief, better hardware is not the only way to make better graphics work. Better coding and more efficient coding does that too.

Hugely crowded areas will always lag no matter what. But like you said, combined with graphics processing, the game stands on chance. That is WRONG. I don't know exactly how WoW is coded, but I'd assume that the location of something is controlled by the CPU and not the GPU. The GPU renders the final image. The CPU gives the GPU the info to render with. Sometimes the GPU also does some of the work.

would you consider the way the envorinment acts as graphics? WoW is set...the landscape is just one solid peice and anything in the envorinment you can act with it ALWAYS there, just it turns invisable and you cant interact with it. WURMs landscape is torn into peices, and can be maniuplated, instead of one solid landscape, its 1000000's of seperate ones, each manipulatable, and all items have their own 3D images, you can drop them, open them, have 100's of items inside containers inside containers inside other contianers like           wemp seeds -> clay pots -> barrels -> carts... as for not knowing anything about games, im 19 your 16 and ive taken a few game developer courses. WURM is 2D, WoW is 3D.....huge difference. you cant combine the two. Wurm is too complicared to make everything 3D

[qwertyuiopas]

Wurm is 3D, the player is just limited to mostly 2D moement. The WoW enviroment simply makes use of Z axis overlaps more.

[Sowelu]

Wurm is not 3d.  The mines kind of look like 3d but they're not--try making two tunnels cross each other at different levels if you don't believe me.

[Micro102]

yeh its only 2D...wonder if making 2 story houses would be 3D, or if it will just be like mines in the opposite direction. WURM would be the most popular game in the world is they were able to make it 3D

[Sowelu]

Two story houses...Hm, they might be able to pull it off.  I don't know if objects obstruct each other at different Z-levels like they did in Doom.

I don't really know what criteria something would have to have for me to really consider it 3d.  I mean you can even have an overhanging cliff, but if that's just a mesh you stuck onto your flat, 2d landscape...  And while you CAN walk on top of a mountain you mined in, well, that's because the mine is just a portal stuck on the mountain face.

I think to call something truly 3d, you'd have to be able to dig into the mountain at an arbitrary place, from an arbitrary angle, and cross other tunnels.

[Rhodan]

I repeat. Nice of you to know nothing about how that stuff works and talk about it.

The lag is caused by server/client traffic. That can be streamlined. If graphics cause lag in WoW, then WoW has very shitty code. VERY shitty. Contrary to popular belief, better hardware is not the only way to make better graphics work. Better coding and more efficient coding does that too.

Hugely crowded areas will always lag no matter what. But like you said, combined with graphics processing, the game stands on chance. That is WRONG. I don't know exactly how WoW is coded, but I'd assume that the location of something is controlled by the CPU and not the GPU. The GPU renders the final image. The CPU gives the GPU the info to render with. Sometimes the GPU also does some of the work.

would you consider the way the envorinment acts as graphics? WoW is set...the landscape is just one solid peice and anything in the envorinment you can act with it ALWAYS there, just it turns invisable and you cant interact with it. WURMs landscape is torn into peices, and can be maniuplated, instead of one solid landscape, its 1000000's of seperate ones, each manipulatable, and all items have their own 3D images, you can drop them, open them, have 100's of items inside containers inside containers inside other contianers like           wemp seeds -> clay pots -> barrels -> carts... as for not knowing anything about games, im 19 your 16 and ive taken a few game developer courses. WURM is 2D, WoW is 3D.....huge difference. you cant combine the two. Wurm is too complicared to make everything 3D

Wurm's map is a grid with lots of squares whose corners can be displaced with a shovel. There's probably an extra layer underneath for tunnels.  The only 'impressive' bit is that it can be manipulated on the fly.  Other than that it's nothing special.  It's certainly not heavier on the server than a WoW map, which just uses a denser grid to make smoother hills.
Most games with big outdoor terrain use a 2D height map.  Any overhangs and bridges are added later as separate models.

If WoW tried to do the stuff Wurm does, you'd get a few kb of extra data sent back and forth with map data now and then, consisting of some numbers saying which nodes when up or down, and which type of wall appeared in which spots, and who said wall belongs to.  All that info hardly takes more bandwidth than a few sentences of chat messages, most likely a lot less.
You'd get more client-side strain as the game applies the textures and items to the updated world map, but other than that you're all set.  Maybe fiddle a bit with craft skills and make them more detailed, which some other MMO's already have, and you're all set.

Wurm's code isn't any more special than what other games have, the only difference is that they had the idea and made it.  The reason nobody else did it is because, well, they probably didn't see it as being very lucrative.  It's certainly very possible to make a WURM-style game with WoW graphics.
Take Second Life, for example.  It's not a game, but the players can make their own objects using 3D modeling tools and apply their own textures, buy land and deform the terrain and write scripts for the objects to use.  And because models are player-made, textures and data have to be sent over the server in order for people to see them.  Take away the textures and models being sent back and forth, and you still have an online environment that is much more complex than Wurm is.

as for not knowing anything about games, im 19 your 16 and ive taken a few game developer courses.

Thank you for proving that age doesn't say anything about a person, and that people should be judged on their intelligence and knowledge of the subject at hand.  A lot of young people will be grateful to you.