Wing Commander Online

I think 10 dollars a month would be a great fee to pay. I would expect it to be much more than that though. Isnt UO like 30 a month? Hell, I spend 10 a month on AOL and i only see it for about 5 to 10 minutes a day when i check my mail. AIM is much better for chatting. Frosty is right in that 10 is an easily payable figure for most people and actually a good deal if your on all the time playing.
 
Let me see I bought WCPG which got me to WCIV DOS. I then bought WCIV Win95, I bought the CL DVD Encore 5x just to get the WCIV DVD. I have both versions of P2. I spend days online searching for KS. I went to like 9 difference malls to find P1, Academy and Admada. I don't know, do you think I'll spend a $100.00 a month to play WC online?:rolleyes:

[Edited by Johnl12 on 05-24-2001 at 02:52]
 
I don't think $9.95 a month is enough -- it encourages players who don't particularly care about the game. Charge thirty bucks and you'll only have people who really, really want to live in the Ultima universe <G>
 
Yeah but its Ultima. Ultima is fantasy crap! Nothing like our glorious game which deserves its name in a separate paragraph:

WING COMMANDER

There we go! I'd say if I was living in America and had the time I'd be paying $20+ a month for it!

And for what you said before LOAF, I would be acting like those Retros about to die:

"Has the God of Man abandoned us???"

[Edited by redwolf on 05-24-2001 at 05:55]
 
Ultima is a fairly intelligent game, and loving Wing Commander is no reason to hate Ultima -- you don't have to play it, but there's absolutely no reason to hate it. IMO, Ultima promotes a lot of good things... especially some of the later game plots and such -- it's also one of the longest running game series' in history, and one of the few that hasn't compromised its integrity over the years...
 
Originally posted by Frosty
And as for bandwidth, well, coordinate data is coordinate data, a game like Wing commander with 16,000 players wouldn't fare any better or worse than Asheron's Call with 16,000 players.
Click to expand...

I don't entirely agree. While coordinate data is coordinate data, lag is more of a nuisance in a game like Wing Commander.
There's two approaches to handling lag. One is the way UO does it, when you're lagging you can't move or do anything. This is likely to get you killed in UO, and even more so in a WC battle. And there's the question of do you freeze the ship, or let it continue on it's last speed and heading. The first would be disaster in battle, the latter in an asteroid/minefield.
The other way is the way many race games do it. While lagging you can still move, but noone get's your updated position. Instead the computer extrapolates what you were likely to do, and as soon as data is available, all gets updated. This results in people driving through eachother, and cars appearing in front of you out of nowhere as the system updates your position.
In WC, this would amount to you destroying a ship, and seconds later it's backed because it wasn't actually there when you destroyed it, either by your lag or by their lag. It would be even worse if you wasted a torpedo or something on something like that.
Of course their are probably good solutions for that, the people at EA are smart programmers (not smart people per se, they cancelled WC for god's sake!).
If they need help I volunteer, I'm a skilled programmer :)
 
The best way would be to make the clients be almost like miniservers in the sence that the ammount of data transmitted and recieved is kept low eg only data for the system a player is in should be recieved and transmited by them so when they jump theres a delay to get the new data. Anyway as technology and concetions improve the average user has a more advanced machine thus boardband and such will become no existant. Don't belive me than how come you can't run wc1 at a decent speed on your gaming machien without using moslo or the like???
Anyway I still claim that WCO or PO maybe revitalised.
 
To pay a fee to play isnt exactly a bad thing, but I dont want to end up paying monthly fees to be on some waiting list or have to constantly restart from the humble beginings due to the "lag-frags". A MP space sim, would need good connections to the net with all the things going on in the environment, explosions, parts of ships flying around, weapons fire, background stuff. Some MP games are built for the high speed connections, and if your pokin along on a 56k against a hord of dsl gammers, its hopeless. The MP WC game would have to take into account the slower connects as well as the high speed connections. To this day, I think there is only one game that really focused on this issue, and that was Jedi Knight DF II. FS and FS2 seemed to focus on high speed connections, even when setting up the session to adjust the data updates to the 56k'ers more often than the cable/dsl gammers. Lag will always be the killer of any MP game. Im shure the programmers of the next WC game, if there is one, will take into account that there are still alot of dialup users out here. (I hate my phone line!!) :(

RFB
 
I'd suggest those of you interested in MMP Space Sims look at Jumpgate (specifically at their boards and the suggestions people have made, many of them are quite interesting.)

The Jumpgate site is here: http://jumpgate.netdevil.com/

TC
 
I've been thinking about the bandwidth problem I discussed below, and if I have to keep bandwidth of a space sim to an absolute minimum I'd do the following:
1. Every player sends not position, but only heading and speed changes to the server. This may not make much of a difference in a space combat, but will make the general traffic of users not in combat less, so the main servers are less loaded. The server will calculate where the ships are.
2. The server determines for every player what ships/other objects they can see, and sends only the position of those objects.
3. For objects you can't see but are in your vicinity, the server computes where they should end up on the radar, and sends that data, instead of their full position/heading.
4. Additional data may need to be sent about ships behind you for fighters with turrets.
5. Weapons position is not recorded (except guided weapons), but only firing is. All computers can individually determine the weapons trajectory (straight line until it hits something) If either the shooter or the shootee (I mean the person hit) detects a hit, the server updates that info, and the hit is recorded and filtered down to everyone except the one that originally indicated the hit.
Not all of this may be feasable in real world. Especially point 5 I don't know about. You'd have to make sure that no hit get's recorded twice (once by the shooter and the person hit) which would cause double damage. You'd also need to keep all data in sync pretty well. If the shooter sees the hit before the receiving end of the blast detects the shot it could give weird results.
There's also still the matter of having so much lag that you can't move anymore. You'd still be a sitting duck or in way two of my previous you'd get ghost damage as the shooter recorded a hit on a position while you weren't actually there but the server tells you you got hit anyway.
The most drastic method that could be very annoying but solve most lag kills is when the server has one lagging participant it stalls all other players (that have a need to know for that data) until data is available. This could however lead to endless streams of stalls if there's only one slow player in the battle.
You can only minimise the problem, but not get rid of it.

[Edited by Unforgiven on 05-25-2001 at 15:22]
 
I think FS and FS2 stall data to fast connects for the slower ones, but I can assure you, it didnt help much! It did sort of "pamper" the lag to a point where you could still move, but often there was as much as 2 seconds of delay. Way too much time in ANY MP game, cept for role playing games. Even the cable and dsl players in FS and FS2 noticed problems with the stalling of data to fast connects, either objects would dissappear and re-appear at a different point instantly, or the object became a null object (non-solid). But probably is a good example of where MMP net coding should go.

RFB
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
I don't think $9.95 a month is enough -- it encourages players who don't particularly care about the game. Charge thirty bucks and you'll only have people who really, really want to live in the Ultima universe <G>
Click to expand...
Mmmhhh... I don't know if it would be fair, LOAF...
$30.00 a month is A LOT of money for an online game, considering you also have to pay internet connection...
UO would lose tons of customers with such an high price... :(
Perhaps even hardcore fans...
Originally posted by Unforgiven
(...)
I'd be willing to pay $20 a month for that!!
Click to expand...
Well... most of us on this board would... but that's a quite limited number of people... :)

The question is, would such a game be as succesful as UO, considering the success the Privateer series had?
I don't have the numbers, but it seems fair to assume a good deal of those who liked Privateer, would also like Privateer online... but would it be enough for EA?


[Edited by mpanty on 05-25-2001 at 17:39]
 
Originally posted by mpanty
$30.00 a month is A LOT of money for an online game, considering you also have to pay internet connection...
Click to expand...
You're paying for the internet connection anyway, because no one can afford both the subscription andpay European dial-up costs, even if POL were $9.95 a month.
UO would lose tons of customers with such an high price... :( Perhaps even hardcore fans...
Click to expand...
The hardcore fans would be the only ones left, making the game far more enjoyable. And that's the whole point. :) The question is, of course, if there'd be enough hardcore players for them to still make a profit. <G> But we're not really serious about this anyhow.
The question is, would such a game be as succesful as UO, considering the success the Privateer series had?
I don't have the numbers, but it seems fair to assume a good deal of those who liked Privateer, would also like Privateer online... but would it be enough for EA?
Click to expand...
I think an online space-sim, anno 2001, probably would not generate nearly as much as UO. There's a big potential market for it, but external factors, like the internet connection, are a serious problem. Wing Commander has a huge fanbase in Europe (especially Germany), and Europe simply isn't a good place to be for affordable, fast internet access. Credit cards can be a problem too.

Space-sims are far more demanding than an RPG like UO. Plus, everyone seems to be really into this RPG thing. What probably would have worked really well, even two years ago, is a UO-style game, set in the Wing Commander universe. Without, or with reduced, space-combat. I enjoy UO, but I'm not for that sissy "Wanna buy a pink dress? You can play the harp or carve some arrows while I sew it." thing.

I'm interested to see how upcoming sci-fi MMPRPG's will do. http://www.anarchy-online.com is one I have my eye on. http://www.starwarsgalaxies.com too, though you can be sure that one will do well.
 
Originally posted by KrisV
You're paying for the internet connection anyway, because no one can afford both the subscription and pay European dial-up costs, even if POL were $9.95 a month.
Click to expand...
Oh, you're paying for both at the same time? That's cool... :)
Though, if you were using cable (to get a faster connection), you'd still be paying for it, right (PLUS the $9.95 a month)? Unless I did not exactly get what you were trying to say woth "dial-up" cost...
The hardcore fans would be the only ones left, making the game far more enjoyable. And that's the whole point. The question is, of course, if there'd be enough hardcore players for them to still make a profit. <G> But we're not really serious about this anyhow.
Click to expand...
Well... I think non-HC players are essential anyway... they contribute to the richness of the game...
Every universe is made of "serious", "important", "unimportant", and "stupid" people... diversity makes the world so great, don't you agree? (above making EA more rich, with their $9.95 a month... <G> )
I'm interested to see how upcoming sci-fi MMPRPG's will do. http://www.anarchy-online.com is one I have my eye on. http://www.starwarsgalaxies.com too, though you can be sure that one will do well.
Click to expand...
No doubts, no doubts.... Star Wars Galaxies will have a huge success... just look at the millions of fans throughout the world... the problem of customers would not even exist...

Perhaps... a Wing Commander RPG would be quite successful... à la Diablo...

You'd play a character looking for adventure, not necessarily a pilot, but you'd start with a small vessel, that you would "pilot" or move around like in Diablo... with the mouse...
And forget about the combat sim, the game would be in 2D "seen" from above... like Starcraft for example...
For the fights, you'd "click and fire"... you'd land on planets to load up goods or complete "quests"...

In the end, you could even get a small fleet... :cool
Or a spy ship to infiltrate Kilrah...

An idea that requires some thought, but it could work out fine... don't you guys think? :)

[Edited by mpanty on 05-25-2001 at 18:32]
 
Originally posted by mpanty
Oh, you're paying for both at the same time? That's cool... :) Though, if you were using cable (to get a faster connection), you'd still be paying for it, right (PLUS the $9.95 a month)? Unless I did not exactly get what you were trying to say woth "dial-up" cost...
Click to expand...

What I meant was this. If you're on a flat-fee connection (cable, DSL), the internet connection costs are zero. You're online anyway, might as well play something. If you have to dial up to your provider, and pay by the minute, it's a different matter. Then you're paying the game's subscription fee, as well as additional internet connection costs. And that's something I can't imagine too many people doing.
 
Hi!

Newbie on deck! :D

Ok,I'm an WC fan since the release of WC II, and I visit the CIC since the time of WCSO, but didn't get around to post here before.

Confusing, the last post first configuration but still very nice boards.

Ok, now to stay on-topic, I would personally love to see a WC MMORPG. I was disapointed when Privateer Online got axed.

Sadly, I don't think Origin will do it, but they should have put their energy and money on that instead of UO2 who got cancelled recently. After all UO and UO2 were more in competition that UO and PO would have been.

My humble opinion of course. :)



[Edited by LaughingWolf on 05-26-2001 at 17:29]
 
Electronic Arts decides what the money and effort goes in to. Privateer Online would also compete with the upcoming Earth and Beyond.
 
You are right. Oh well, I will have to play the already mentionned SWG instead. Thoses who frequent both boards will know me, I'm the same LaughingWolf. :D


Well, we are talking in theory in any case since EA won't do it (at least I don't think so!) but I see a potential problem with a WC MMORPG. The millitary or merc side is very well developped, but what about the rest? We don't know much about civilian life in the WC universe. Keep in mind that I haven't read much of the WC novels, I may be wrong.

So what kind of non-millitary proffession could we see?



Note: I will do my best but no flame for the occasionnal typo please, english is not my native language. :) Thanks.
 
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