Have you thought about using a 3rd party platform to micromanage the world?

ArchivedUser

I have just joined the community and have been reading up on the game. It seems that you are looking to have a very dynamic world in which events such as a special tree being cut near a node causes the game to spawn evil tree gnomes.

This kind of game logic is really suited to some 3rd party integrated gaming platforms, such as <a href="https://spatialos.improbable.io/">SpatialOS</a>. In essence you can have the platform integrated into monitoring and maintaining the state of every entity in the game, constantly. The game would be able to spawn a mithril node in an area where there isn't many people, encouraging exploring. Or it could see that there is a node that is undeveloped, so it could make the area more resource rich to encourage travellers to move in. They tend to be made to work with common engines like Unreal/Unity and this seems exactly the kind of micromanagement that the team would need in order to create a hugely dynamic, reactive world.

Just a thought.

ArchivedUser

I've been reading a lot about the game and starting to get involved with the community. One thing I see is that you expect a lot of procedural generation and lots of worldwide elements that need to be managed by the game. For example, the game looks at what is happening at a node, it turns out that a special tree was cut down - so now I will spawn evil tree gnomes. This kind of game logic is ideal for a 3rd party platform like SpacialOS, has the development team thought about platforms like this? They may free up a lot of resources and tend to be designed for common engines like Unreal. In essence you can have the platform integrated into monitoring and maintaining the state of every entity in the game, constantly. The game would be able to spawn a mithril node in an area where there isn't many people, encouraging exploring. Or it could see that there is a node that is undeveloped, so it could make the area more resource rich to encourage travellers to move in. It could strategically place rare, dangerous beasts and monitor them so that they change behaviour after a certain length of time. It seems like a good fit for the kind of MMO you guys are shooting for. Just a thought.

ArchivedUser

Being an Sr. Windows Systems Engineer who has systems that have 3rd party apps that plug into mission critical systems, I can tell you that I would recommend not using 3rd party apps. First if SpartialOS fails and need the vendor to fix it you are likely talking a huge contract to be a 24x7 support. I have a vendor for our Royalties systems that charges us 250K a year in support and its only 9x5 support and anything outside those hours is time and material. Second is the prohibitive cost of maintenance contracts, you are not talking a few thousand dollars which is easily absorbed.

Its better use of money for them to develop their own and support their own. 3rd Party software is great for your accounting systems as an MMORPG company not building into your game when it will cause players to stop playing because the 3rd party vendor is fucking around because they know they have you by the balls.

ArchivedUser

Well I know that doesn't happen with SpatialOS. It is integrated into the backend, rather than all their side. It allows multiple servers to pool resources in order to produce a single world that is more dynamically controlled by the engine. From what I see there are many MMO startups using platforms like this, which suggests it isn't prohibitively expensive. From what I gather, developing a similar platform as a small developer would be far more expensive and resource demanding.

I appreciate there may be drawbacks, however it seems ideal for AoC's dynamic world approach and should be something to consider. Albeit i'm not an expert and likely naive to the bigger picture.

ArchivedUser

Wonderboy,

The problem is when ever you integrate 3rd party software you lose control. SpatialOS is a cool tool that can really enhance Ashes, BUT the problem is what happens when that tool breaks? What is the chain reaction to the game. Does it cause everything like spawns to just stop? If that happens people in the world will be upset. So how do you fix it? It it a simple reboot? How often does this happen?

I have an application that has 2 3rd party software pieces tied into it. They are so critical that students homework will not get graded if these 2 pieces are not working. One Vendor is so bad that I cannot even restart the windows service, we have to wait for him to start it up because the way the contract is written. I can tell you that it cost us money because of trash like this.

I am not saying SpatialOS cannot help Ashes. Its a Great idea. But you have to understand everything around implementing a tool like this into your game. Everything from who are you going to call at 2am because the application is down to the effect of using such a tool.

I tend not to want 3rd party tools installed into a home grown application because often times that team is ill-equipped to fix the issue with the 3rd party tool outside of simple fixes because 3rd party vendors tend to not want you to touch their code. They also do not have 24x7 support and if they do their contract demands are so dam high its ridiculous. I been in the IT field for 14 years and seen all kinds of BS go on with Vendors. Some good some bad. When you deal with these things in house its a labor cost not an upfront plus contract cost for support.