[MMO] Ryzom is now GPL, who wants to play with it?

This is the basic concept I've got so far, anyone think it's interesting?

Setting is non-Earth fantasy or science fiction; possibly players would be 'kidnapped' from near-future Earth into the fantasy land or sci-fi land at the start of the game. My overall design goal is an MMO with different types of content to please different people, and all content more or less optional, especially players would not be forced to interact socially if they didn't want to. Specifically the types of content would be:
- monster capturing and breeding
- farming sim
- crafting (instead of grinding the player would mostly be crafting a house for themself, and expanded storage, and other one-time creations to benefit themself)
- speedpuzzle minigames
- pvm (monster killing quests, drop-hunting, and dungeons)
- pvp (arena with solo and team rankings and team capture the flag.)

There would also be the opportunity to build personal relationships with NPCs and faction relationships, and the overall story would be an interactive one where the player's actions affected how their life turned out; this would increase replayability, as would the "game+" bonuses granted to players who started a new character after maxing one out. Overall the game would be relatively cheerful with some humor and a bit of soap opera, although some paths through the game and factions would take a more serious attitude.

yeah i heard about this.. What's the big deal? I guess the models/textures etc would be nice but Ryzom is a fairly underpopulated mmo. It's very shallow, just like the rest =/. I would still like to look into it and see what kind of things the source can do 0.o. It's pretty generous of them.

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Original post by 1337 Box yeah i heard about this.. What's the big deal? I guess the models/textures etc would be nice but Ryzom is a fairly underpopulated mmo. It's very shallow, just like the rest =/. I would still like to look into it and see what kind of things the source can do 0.o. It's pretty generous of them.

The big deal is that it's a finished game. It's open sourced, and it's an mmo.
Everyone here making mmo's would be smart to take this code and build upon it.

It's easier to mod, than it is to build.

Respect to Ryzom devs; giving away the engine they made is so sweet.
How much is it moddable though? I wonder if its possible to make the engine more similar to Mount & Blade (Warband?), because I have an interesting idea regarding 3d "fps" games.

They're giving away the complete source code of the server and client - that means if you can understand the code, you can change it however you want. Currently it is lacking some features, but because of the way GPL works if anyone in the community implements a feature they will make their code available to the rest of the community. The only things not included in Ryzom Core are the maps, quests, and some data - the Core includes a demo island and as far as I've heard it includes the basic code for harvesting, crafting, riding a mount, and combat.

The current major problem with it is that all the models are in max format, which is a commercial format not readable by Blender or a similar free tool, and the exported to pack models to Ryzom's format is specific to max. A second large problem is that the game is basically implemented as 2d; currently jumping, flying, or swimming with control of up and down movement are not possible. People are already discussing how to add that.

In 6 months there will probably be an extensive wiki documenting how the core works and all the mods people have produced since then. Currently though they are just getting build procedures and server launch procedures figured out and documented.

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Original post by sunandshadow They're giving away the complete source code of the server and client - that means if you can understand the code, you can change it however you want.

Within reason, any major changes, and you might as well rewrite it from scratch.

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The current major problem with it is that all the models are in max format, which is a commercial format not readable by Blender or a similar free tool, and the exported to pack models to Ryzom's format is specific to max.

Is that really a problem?

.max is not a format meant to be passed around, or used to load a program's assets from. It's specific to the 3DS Max software, and stores all the data that max needs internally to work on a scene. All software specific scene files would be meaningless in other software.

The code for loading the models will be in the source, and new tools and exporters can be written from that. A python script for Blender can be written that will export a model into the proper format.

OR

You simply add code to Ryzom read whatever format you want into the game's data structures.

Either way, it just needs a little grunt work to solve.

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A second large problem is that the game is basically implemented as 2d; currently jumping, flying, or swimming with control of up and down movement are not possible. People are already discussing how to add that.

A lot of games use 2D states and render a 3d graphical representation of that.

If the game's design doesn't fit with your own design goals, why do you want to use it as a base instead of something else that more closely fits your needs?

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Original post by Daaark Quote: Original post by sunandshadow The current major problem with it is that all the models are in max format, which is a commercial format not readable by Blender or a similar free tool, and the exported to pack models to Ryzom's format is specific to max. Is that really a problem? .max is not a format meant to be passed around, or used to load a program's assets from. It's specific to the 3DS Max software, and stores all the data that max needs internally to work on a scene. All software specific scene files would be meaningless in other software. The code for loading the models will be in the source, and new tools and exporters can be written from that. A python script for Blender can be written that will export a model into the proper format.

It is a problem because from what I've read the animations for the objects can't be exported from max to any other format. So yeah you can export a tree and look at it to make a new tree which will be the same proportions and scaling and polycount as the provided trees. But if you don't have max you can't currently get your new tree into Ryzom. And you can't export a monster to hack on it without losing all the animation, which is the valuable part because animating is harder than modeling.

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Quote: A second large problem is that the game is basically implemented as 2d; currently jumping, flying, or swimming with control of up and down movement are not possible. People are already discussing how to add that. A lot of games use 2D states and render a 3d graphical representation of that. If the game's design doesn't fit with your own design goals, why do you want to use it as a base instead of something else that more closely fits your needs?

I was describing what the community sees as current problems, not my own opinion. I have no solid design yet, so I have no idea whether an eventual design would require jumping, flying, or whatever.

Still looking for people who like the basic MMO concept described above and have some design ideas of their own to propose. [smile]

Maybe intrested after checking out the coding and engine to see mod worthyness.

I am interested, but unsure of how much commitment I can make to a project.

An idea I ahve ratteling around my head for a while is to make an MMO game in a similar style of "Sowrd of the Samurai", where the players are nobles and are vieing between them to rule the land.

They would be playing a "family" rather than a specific character and the individual faily members can grow old, die and have children. It would be a game more about player/player interactions (but not necesarily PvP) than PvE questing and such.

@agentleo - Cool, let me know your opinion of it. [smile]

@Edtharan - No commitment is necessary as long as you don't mind anything you might contribute being used, possibly for profit, regardless of whether you remain with the team or not. [smile] Here's a conceptual challenge for you - how would you include a pet capturing and breeding system within a Sword of the Samurai type game?

Im interested.

Im going to download the source and see how I go getting it running.

I like monster capturing and breeding, although merging it with Edtharan could be alot of fun, since his idea matches a series I enjoy reading Empire Trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts

Lets see, a family wealth and power is decided by the strength of there collection of monsters, a powerful family would be known by the size and skill of there monsters, so a family that had a collection of wolfs that have been breed and trained would be well respected.

Conflict would happen between the monsters, leaving them AI controlled in an arena to fight

Players would have a property, this property can grow and shrink in relation to their overall strength compared to other players, controlled by their ranking in the arenas

Even though its open source, you wouldn't expect many players, so each player having a whole family of avatars wouldn't really overcrowd, and if it did, then you could always open a new shard..

Ill look over and the code tonight and post more later..

I think tactical turn-based combat would make more interesting combat than letting AIs run things, unless you mean AI opponents to fight against, that would be good. Tactical turn-based is probably the best suited type of combat for an army of monsters. Eternal Eyes is an example of a TTB monster battling game. Although RTS could also work. Modern MMOs do fine with the monster capturing part, but don't generally allow the player to use more than one monster at a time. MixMaster allows 3 at a time but you have no control at all over what they do and can barely tell what they are doing.

A different possibility is that monster battling could be a minigame or alternative type of combat, so it could use a different combat system from whatever the main kind of combat is. In addition to the possibilities mentioned above, captured monsters might be used as 'cards' in a CCG.

I'm interested.

I'm also curious about the farming sim and crafting aspects. You mention the players crafting their own housing; will that tie in with the farming sim aspect? i.e. An entire instanced area per player that includes not only the house but a small plot of potentially expandable land on which they could plant crops etc in addition to crafting and expanding their living space?

Or is it intended more along the lines of communal farming areas with "farming points" or something similar?

I was thinking that housing would be portable, and the player would only unpack their house and yard when using it to do something such as crafting. The house would contain the player's monster breeding facilities, farming facilities, and crafting facilities. A Tale in the Desert's housing is a good example of what I have in mind, as are the farms in various Harvest Moons. I don't want it to be an instance because I want other players walking by to be able to see what the player is doing in their house.

Players would craft their housing because one of the first crafting quests would be to unlock the house and learn to use it. At first there wouldn't be much there but an empty field - maybe a tent. Each addition of architecture or machinery to the house would also be a craft.


Hmm since the actual portable thing is a yard, and the house is only built on one part of that yard, I guess it's inaccurate to call the whole thing a house. Maybe "homestead"? Or "estate"? What would you all call a personal piece of land and associated buildings?

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No commitment is necessary as long as you don't mind anything you might contribute being used, possibly for profit, regardless of whether you remain with the team or not.

Due to a physical injury (which is permenent) I am not in a position to impliment these ideas, yet I would like to see these kinds of ideas actually produced. So I am not concerned what happens to these ideas (ideas are a dime a dozen anyway - it is the implimentation that is where the real work goes).

If I was concerened about these ideas getting out and being used for profit, I wouldn't post them on a public forum.

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Here's a conceptual challenge for you - how would you include a pet capturing and breeding system within a Sword of the Samurai type game?

Good challenge. I wasn't thinking of it like that when I posted the concept, but now that you have said that, I think I could actually do something with it.

Lets see (not a fully developed idea yet):
The basic idea is that of a Genetic Algorithm. For those that don't know what this is, it is an algorithm designed to work like DNA and evolution.

You ahve a string of information encoded into descreet packets. Then you produce lots of them and weed out those that aren't very good. Those that are left you make more coppies of (introduceing occasinal, small, random changes) and then repeat the weeding out process and reproduction.

This will be the core idea of the creature capture and breeding game play.

Eaach player can have a number of creatures that they get from capturing them, breeding them, or trading them (trading will be the glue to make the game multiplayer).

The idea is that the players can breed their creatures to produce different genetic variations. The genes of the creature will determine the various abilities of the creature, the development (how it responds over time and to training), what creatures it can successfully breed with (to create distinct breeding lines/species) and even the apperance of the creature (shape and colour patterns on the skin).

To do this the "DNA" of the creatures will need to be put into several "Chomosomes" (this is not how real chromosomes work, but it will be how these creature's chromosomes work). Each chromosome encodes the properties of each part of the creature (Abilities and Development, mate selection for breeding, apperance.

So the DNA would look like this:
[Abilities and Development][Mate Selection][Apperance]

Each Chromosome will be a specific length. The better a gene is the more space it will take up in the chromosome which means that any genes in a chromosome will compeate with the other genese in the chromosome for space as they improve.

The whole encoding of the genes would work a bit like build points in a tradiational RPG game. The size of a chromosome determines the number of build points the creature has and number of compies of a particular gene indicate how many of those build points is alloted to that particular aspect of the creature.

[Abilities and Devleopment]
Each creature has a life cycle of: Infant -> Young -> Addolecent -> Adult -> Senesient

In each part of the life cycle, the DNA describes the creature's responses to various environmental inputs (food, training, healing, etc), the growth rate and the time the creature spend in that part of their life cycle.

The better a creatures responses to the environment a creature is in that part of the life cycle, the more resources it will need (food, etc), but the more effective training will be and such will be.

The faster the growth rate the more resources the creature will need, but the better it can become.

THe longer a creature is in a particular part of its life cycle, the more time it has to develop.

Also included here are thing like armour, health, attacks and attack types, etc. More will need to be developed here as the design is fleshed out. One idea is to include special abilities of creatures.

[Mate selection]
This section of the genetic code describes what constraints the creature ahs for mating. I this, the Genes describe the variation that can exist for particular attributes of the creature that will still allow for a successful mating.

This will not just include the abilities of the creature, but will also contain apperance variations as well.

The more offten a gene appears in this string, the more variation is allowed in that respective attribute of the creature. If no gene for an attribute appears in this section, then only if the mating creature is a 100% match in that attribute can mate with it.

[Apperance]
The apperance chromosome describes the visual apperance of the creature in its various life cycle stages. It will include a shape and length of various parts, and a texture as a bitmap for the UV maps of the parts. In effect this would be a bit like how player can change the apperences of an avatar on character creation.

In this chromosome, there won't be any competition of the gnenes as each section will take up a specified amount of space in the chromosome. However, this will allow players to breed in apperences for their creatures.

Ok, that is a brief overview of the breeding aspects of the game, but, why are the players doing this?

Players can trade their creatures (typically the offspring) between each other. So breeding succeful creatures is one way to gain money.

Players can also use their creatures in hunting down other creatures to capture them (which can then be used to breed from).

Players can sow off their creatings in show events and people viewing the event can vote for the creatures they like best in a "Dog" show. This will give players who just want to breed for looks something to do in the game.

Players can also enter their creatures into tournements and other players can bet on the results of the matches (more ways to money). These could be anything from races, to combat.

These tournements and shows are the main way the players can gain prestige. Winning tournements will give the prestige and loosing them is cause their prestige to be reduced. Certain places will need a minimum amount of prestige to enter, so player must compete to gain enough to reach these more exclusive locations. (NB: this still needs work - what I want here is a metagame similar to the way the nobility treated the gladiatorial games of aincient rome where sometime deliberately loosing is the better strategic thing to do).

Players will also be able to buy things for their creatures: training gear, more space for pens/stables, etc.

The idea (if using this commecially) is to use micro transaction as the income source. As players will essentially make their own plots, there will not be much development needed for this aspect of the game (which also means less map and quest creation work is needed too).

The micro transations will give the player a small income which needs to be spent on land rent (stroage space for your creatures), food for oyur creatures, medical treatment for the creatures (to heal form combat), money for trading, and so on.

It should be possible for a player to not have to do any micro transaction is they can earn enough money form in game sources (winnings, trading, etc). However, as space, food, items, etc are constant money sinks it will mean that some money will always need to be spent by players in micro transactions or they will nto be able to continue playing.

This way you reward good players by reducing the costs for them. There might be a small monthly subscription fee (around $5 as an account fee to cover the costs of hosting the game and the infrestructure) which also gives a small monthly income for their character (enough to keep 1 creature in a basic setup). IIRC players will typically spend aorund $100 on average (so some player will spend less and some will spend more) on micro transactions, and this will create a larger income stream than a set monthly subcrition fee.

I am VERY interested in working in this team on this project. I have a wealth of concepts and even a design doc that corresponds to the type of subject matter you guys are talking about (monster pet trading/breeding/battling sim) I would happily contribute my time, skills and even money to this project. Originally the concept i had was for a Flash (AS3) application.

I am rather annoyed with myself for not looking at this thread sooner, because my concept shares a wealth of ideas with what you are saying here; specifically the farming/training aspects. Although I hadn't originally intended a multiplayer of sorts due to the difficulty of achieving this it remained a single player sim, but there was always the option of making it multiplayer (or possible pseudo-mmo a la social games)

I am a skilled 2d artist (specifically illustrator, photoshop and traditional drawing)

I am also well versed in web design, flash design(AS 3.0), graphic design and advertising as academic routes.

I have also run prvate servers in the past and have been involved in server administation; modifying SQL databases and tables (such as for double exp events etc.) for various large MMORPG many of which you are probably aware of.

I am more interested in the artistic/design side but if we were to start such a project I would be happy do set up website/graphic design etc. And would even purchase the domain and hosting myself if you were interested.

I would greatly appreciate if you could please contact/reply to me via PM or on this thread as I am very interested in sharing ideas with you.

EDIT: also I forgot to add, compensation is nice but for this particular project it wouldn't be my driving force; i'm just interested in getting something out there, I also think my concept will not be as good as a concept that is built from the concepts of several different people, if that makes sense? :D

Just a small idea to augment Edtharan's idea in terms of abilities:

Ability trees could be selected at the "birth" or creation of the monster in question, also through chromosomes (I apologise if this was suggested and I missed it - I do that sometimes). In the same way as the competing-for-size attribute and so on chromosomes, you would have to choose one tree of abilities (the chromosome evolves with training/food/whatever and the ability becomes stronger), say slash or fire or something of the sort. Of course, different ability trees would be represented by different sized chromosomes and maybe you could get two weaker trees into the mix, or only one of the stronger trees or something similar. Perhaps it could even be a small jigsaw puzzle on its own.

Since the whole thing is based on "Genetic Alogrithm", suggesting more of a Sci-Fi setting, Genetic Engineering and Modification could be introduced, whereby you can, for a price, swap out one ability tree for another at a later date, sacrificing any growth of the current tree and starting afresh with the new one.

In terms of the name for the living area, I think "Homestead" works better than "Estate" - Estate suggests something more static to me. But it could possibly have its own super-technical-jargon name in a Sci-Fi setting.

Also - in terms of additional skills, I have a background in creative writing and work primarily as a Composer.

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Since the whole thing is based on "Genetic Alogrithm", suggesting more of a Sci-Fi setting, Genetic Engineering and Modification could be introduced, whereby you can, for a price, swap out one ability tree for another at a later date, sacrificing any growth of the current tree and starting afresh with the new one.

The idea with the genetic algorithm is that the player would not necesarily be able to directly see or evne manipulate it (although that could be possible if it is wanted). The idea would be this game would be similar to breeding domesticated animals and the only effects of the Genetic Algorith that the player sees is the end creature.

I didn't include anyhting specific to the setting (sci-fi or fantasy) as my ideas could apply equally well to either. Although, going around collecting alien species for gladiatorial games is different enough that it would be easily seen as unique.

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Ability trees could be selected at the "birth" or creation of the monster in question, also through chromosomes (I apologise if this was suggested and I missed it - I do that sometimes). In the same way as the competing-for-size attribute and so on chromosomes, you would have to choose one tree of abilities (the chromosome evolves with training/food/whatever and the ability becomes stronger), say slash or fire or something of the sort. Of course, different ability trees would be represented by different sized chromosomes and maybe you could get two weaker trees into the mix, or only one of the stronger trees or something similar. Perhaps it could even be a small jigsaw puzzle on its own.

It is possible to expand the genome of the creatures to include a new chromosome for special abilities, or even add it into an existing chromosome (so special abilities compeat with normal abilities for genetic space)

It could be integrated into my system like this:
A new chromosome called [Powers] is included.

[Powers]
This chromosome describes how quickly the creature can learn particular types of powers, and to what extent they can get to.

The faster a creature can learn a power and the higher the level it can get to, the more resources (food, etc) it needs to consume.

What this means is a balance has to be reached between the speed of power development and the maximum value it can reach as well as the resource needs of the creature.

If a creature has a high maximum power development level, but a slow power development rate, then they might never be able to reach that high power level in their life time. However, if the development rate is too high, then they will quickly reach their development limit and the resources needed to sustain the developement rate would be too excessive for the creature (causing it to starve or not bea able to resources into other aspects of it).

As the more coppies of a single gene the creature has the better that trait is, then the higher the level of the powers the more copies of the gene that encodes for that power is needed. The faster the creature develops that power the more copies of the gene for that power's development rate is needed. So the need for power levels, and the rate of power increase also has a secondary competition for space in the genome too.

The more powers the creature has, the less powerful they can be, the slower they will develop and the more resources the creature will need.

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Looking back as my eariler post on the GA, I realised I left something out: The Gestation life cycle state.

In the gestation state, a creature gets its resources directly from the mother (so this ends up being a drain on the mother's resources). However, it can develop various abilities and form (apperence, etc) within that state as well as powers too. After the time period stated by the genes describing this state has elapsed, the creature is born and enters the infant life cycle state.

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The genetic Algorithm revisitied

The description of the genetic algorithm (GA for short) I posted eariler is only a basic overview wihtout going into the specifics of the encoding.

How a GA is sotred in a computer is a string (or array) of values. These can be specific letters, or jsut integers. As the there it typically only a few values needed it is probably better to store them as a Byte than as a full Integer so that it takes up less storage space. But if space is not a problem then it doesn't matter much the data type of how it is stored.

Also, as the genetic code is not accessed very often, there is not all that much concern over speed of access, which makes the specifics of storage and processing quite flexable.

Each entry in this "genetic" Array does not have to be at the same level as a letter of DNA. Each entry (codon from now on) is a symbolic representation of part of an algorithm, much like a function, procedure or even an object in a normal programing language. Also, each codon can be a completely different function/procedure/object that is referenced. All of this goes together to make GAs a higly flexable way to impliment dynamic content or functionality.

Most of the codons in this GA implimentation will consist of the algorithm:

Add 1 to the relevent stat

But some will describe a bitmap image (for the textures applied to the creature) or specify morphing of a base primative.

If you think of the genetic algorithm as a sequance of function calls, this would be a good way of looking at it. Someimes the order of the sequence can matter (but for this game it probably wouldn't matter much).

Some codons can be used as a state changes for a finite state machine (in real genetics an example would be the start and stop codons to put the cell's DNA reading machinery into a "read" state or end it). Again, these may be used in the game, but probably not, depending on how the GA is actually handeled.

In this game as most of the codons will call the "Add 1 to the relevent stat" functions we will need to look at what stats the creatures will have.

Now, we are doing something a bit more complex that a 1 to 1 mapping between the stats that the codons code for and the final stats of the creature. Because training is part of the game, we are using the stats coded for by the codons as developmental stats that tells the game how well the creature turns training and resources into the final stats of the creature.

Ii si more complex, but this will give a lot more flexability to the final creature and the skills of the player will play an important part of the game. If we jsut had the 1 to 1 mapping, then the player's input to the final creature would be minimal (or even non existant).

This means that for each creature we need 3 versions stored, but as we are not using the gear and inventroy typically found in MMOs, this amount of data will not increase the storage size of the player recode much (if at all), but because the player will ahve several creatures there may be a higher requierment for storage (this is why I had the cost of creature pens as a cost to the player so that they can pay more money for more storage space).

The 3 version of the creatue will be:
Genetic Code
Developmental Stats
Final Stats

the Genetic Code is as I have discissed, just a string or array of values. The Developmental stats are the stats that allow the creature to convert their traiing and resources to their final stats. The final stats are like the typical RPG character sheet in that it directly describes the creatues capabilities and apperances.