Multiplayer City Simulation

[keldon85]

Things aren’t all black and white. It’s not either charge everyone or allow access for poor people. Like I said, runescape and habbo can be played for free or with money. You can have 2 tier, besides your server isn’t going to pay itself. You can use donations, but either way the server needs money in some form or another.

Money doesn’t inspire bigger things, but it allows them to happen. Sure you can have volunteers put down their time, but in comparison to free and paid you get less. And then in the end time equates to money, i.e. I’m worth $50 an hour, so my 10 hours work is equivalent to me waiving you $500.

Look at no$gba, his philosophy is that those with money will pay more and those without will pay less. Of course you need to make payment more explicit so that those with money will pay and those without simply will not.

[erikd]

[quote]- I’m not sure that you are more motivated when you know that you can turn your talent into money
[/quote]
You bet I am!

[quote]- Money does not inspire bigger things, it depends on the way of thinking of the artist. Maybe many people think that you are right.
[/quote]
Yes, it depends if the artist wants to create bigger things. You, for example were talking about planning for a multiplayer game but the lack of money for a dedicated server that’s holding you back. That’s exactly what I mean.
And then there’s the possibility of collaboration, which of course results in more mouths to feed and more bills to pay.

But let’s not discuss this further in this thread, maybe this discussion should be moved to a new thread in the ‘business discussion’ board.

[gouessej]

@erikd

You bet I am!
Yes, it depends if the artist wants to create bigger things. You, for example were talking about planning for a multiplayer game but the lack of money for a dedicated server that’s holding you back. That’s exactly what I mean.
And then there’s the possibility of collaboration, which of course results in more mouths to feed and more bills to pay.

But let’s not discuss this further in this thread, maybe this discussion should be moved to a new thread in the ‘business discussion’ board.

You’re right. I shouldn’t speak about that here. To conclude, I only want to tell you that the lack of money in a step of development may become a problem but I won’t give up at all (see the thread about my game for further details).

[keldon85]

Well that’s all the reason to develop your game for single player first, add network play, and maybe think of p2p.

[Orangy_Tang]

@keldon85

Well that’s all the reason to develop your game for single player first, add network play, and maybe think of p2p.

Trying to crowbar in network play to an existing game is a painful process (although less so if it’s not a twitch game and can tolerate a certain degree of lag).

kingaschi: looks really cool. ;D I love pixely isometric stuff, but it seems to be going out of fashion.

[keldon85]

@Orangy Tang

Trying to crowbar in network play to an existing game is a painful process (although less so if it’s not a twitch game and can tolerate a certain degree of lag).

kingaschi: looks really cool. ;D I love pixely isometric stuff, but it seems to be going out of fashion.

Well your game does have to be able to deal with the lag, but you can code your single player game in such a way that you simply provide a different implementation of an interface. One guy did that in our Cluedo SE project, so the project was single player but with a few changes (i.e. providing a different interface) he was able to make it play over the internet.

[gouessej]

@Orangy Tang

Trying to crowbar in network play to an existing game is a painful process (although less so if it’s not a twitch game and can tolerate a certain degree of lag).

kingaschi: looks really cool. ;D I love pixely isometric stuff, but it seems to be going out of fashion.

I agree with you. That is why I advice you to have a tough software modeling to make it easier to convert a single player game to a multiplayer game. Use the design patterns MVC and use an Aspect Oriented Programming approach. If you need a short example of online game using RMI, go to my website, there is an example with the source code.

[keldon85]

And managing your game using a list of actions can help if your game model supports it. You can even include data to allow an undo, so if something comes late you can undo the last actions - but processing a list of actions has its benefits.

I really can’t remember the name of that pattern/approach (note to self to revise patten names)

[kingaschi]

I already started implementing it with multiplayer in mind! There won’t be any bigger problems converting it to multiplayer later on. It’s just easier to get the single player version out first and then deal with the database, networking and server stuff for the multiplayer version…

@keldon85: I am not sure about the pattern name either, but I am using the action-based approach you mention.
@gouessej: yes, it’s MVC.

[gouessej]

@kingaschi

I already started implementing it with multiplayer in mind! There won’t be any bigger problems converting it to multiplayer later on. It’s just easier to get the single player version out first and then deal with the database, networking and server stuff for the multiplayer version…

@keldon85: I am not sure about the pattern name either, but I am using the action-based approach you mention.
@gouessej: yes, it’s MVC.

Don’t forget component architecture, it’s in relationship with AOP and MVC but in a higher abstract view. Good luck

[Demonpants]

This looks awesome, I’d love to play it when it’s done. I went and downloaded Sim City 2000 the other day because it is now abandonware, and I continue to love it.

[keldon85]

So how’s it coming along?

[kingaschi]

I was traveling all month and didn’t get done much …