Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[Samwise]

From the dev chat it sounds like they've just barely coded up the chat module, so I'm guessing that they're a ways off from having a basic inventory module, much less something that can be persistent across worlds.  Although I bet that with all the interconnectivity between worlds you could have a world that was devoted to inventory management and let selected other worlds access it.

[Tale]

Have them go make a world, then give them an object that links to it from yours. It could be a doorway so you walk into it to go there, it could be an object that using it launches a separate experience, or it could happen right there in the same client. That's a big part of the point of doing it this way. ;)

She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will. Then she leaped backward, back arched and fur on end, tail held out stiffly. Will knew cat behavior. He watched more alertly as the cat approached the spot again, just an empty patch of grass between the hornbeams and the bushes of a garden hedge, and patted the air once more.

Again she leaped back, but less far and with less alarm this time. After another few seconds of sniffing, touching, and whisker twitching, curiosity overcame wariness.

The cat stepped forward and vanished.

Will blinked. Then he stood still, close to the trunk of the nearest tree, as a truck came around the circle and swept its lights over him. When it had gone past, he crossed the road, keeping his eyes on the spot where the cat had been investigating. It wasn't easy, because there was nothing to fix on, but when he came to the place and cast about to look closely, he saw it.

At least, he saw it from some angles. It looked as if someone had cut a patch out of the air, about two yards from the edge of the road, a patch roughly square in shape and less than a yard across. If you were level with the patch so that it was edge-on, it was nearly invisible, and it was completely invisible from behind. You could see it only from the side nearest the road, and you couldn't see it easily even from there, because all you could see through it was exactly the same kind of thing that lay in front of it on this side: a patch of grass lit by a streetlight.

But Will knew without the slightest doubt that that patch of grass on the other side was in a different world.

He couldn't possibly have said why. He knew it at once, as strongly as he knew that fire burned and kindness was good. He was looking at something profoundly alien.

And for that reason alone, it enticed him to stoop and look further. What he saw made his head swim and his heart thump harder, but he didn't hesitate: he pushed his tote bag through, and then scrambled through himself, through the hole in the fabric of this world and into another.

The Subtle Knife (read full extract)

[Raguel]

Have them go make a world, then give them an object that links to it from yours. It could be a doorway so you walk into it to go there, it could be an object that using it launches a separate experience, or it could happen right there in the same client. That's a big part of the point of doing it this way. ;)

She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will. Then she leaped backward, back arched and fur on end, tail held out stiffly. Will knew cat behavior. He watched more alertly as the cat approached the spot again, just an empty patch of grass between the hornbeams and the bushes of a garden hedge, and patted the air once more.

Again she leaped back, but less far and with less alarm this time. After another few seconds of sniffing, touching, and whisker twitching, curiosity overcame wariness.

The cat stepped forward and vanished.

Will blinked. Then he stood still, close to the trunk of the nearest tree, as a truck came around the circle and swept its lights over him. When it had gone past, he crossed the road, keeping his eyes on the spot where the cat had been investigating. It wasn't easy, because there was nothing to fix on, but when he came to the place and cast about to look closely, he saw it.

At least, he saw it from some angles. It looked as if someone had cut a patch out of the air, about two yards from the edge of the road, a patch roughly square in shape and less than a yard across. If you were level with the patch so that it was edge-on, it was nearly invisible, and it was completely invisible from behind. You could see it only from the side nearest the road, and you couldn't see it easily even from there, because all you could see through it was exactly the same kind of thing that lay in front of it on this side: a patch of grass lit by a streetlight.

But Will knew without the slightest doubt that that patch of grass on the other side was in a different world.

He couldn't possibly have said why. He knew it at once, as strongly as he knew that fire burned and kindness was good. He was looking at something profoundly alien.

And for that reason alone, it enticed him to stoop and look further. What he saw made his head swim and his heart thump harder, but he didn't hesitate: he pushed his tote bag through, and then scrambled through himself, through the hole in the fabric of this world and into another.

The Subtle Knife (read full extract)

So many ideas have swarmed in my head about this, which is why I asked the question. Hopefully they can all be implemented identically, and all I have to change is how a player creates/interacts with it.  Now if only my talents and Metaplace are equal to the challenge. I suspect I'm the weakest link in the chain, but I'd like to give it a go.

[Raph]

You can pass arbitrary data from another context along with the login -- be it stuff from a webpage, or from another world -- and then it's up to that world to try to handle it.

[Raguel]

It's more realistic that trying to make a whole game, IMHO. :) We've found most Metaplace builders are most successful when they are modding or extending rather than trying to create from scratch.

I've only played a couple of mods, and neither of those added (as far as I could tell) a new mechanic/system. They may have added some new skins and artwork, but the basic game was still there. What if i wanted to make a game that drew inspiration from several genres,  and no game existed that had already had what I needed in place? For example, if I wanted to add platformish elements (I think that's what they are called: Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia type games) into a Diku. Is that something a newbie would be able to handle? I don't mean in a polished sense (e.g. does it make sense to make a raid dungeon platform-y when there's nothing to inform the player it's a mechanic/skill to learn about? Can the player even "go through the hoops" to make it to where he needs to go?), I mean, If I have a rpg (and/or a platform game for that matter) to play with, is this something I can do in a reasonable amount of time?

[Obo]

I'll be the shill. 

Public stress test later today on one of Raph's little puzzle games.

We’d like to invite everyone for a public test of a puzzle game that we’ve created called Wheelwright!  This test is not to focus test the game itself (it is not in a complete or polished state) but to test our platform technology.  We will be testing our platform’s ability to create and maintain a large number of singleplayer game instances.  Additionally, we will be testing chat between instances and persistence. 

We hope to see a large number of participants help us with this stress test.  Please join us by coming here on Friday, February 15 at 5pm PST for a brief chat before playing the game, then followed up by a short wrap-up chat.  See you there!

[Samwise]

I've only played a couple of mods, and neither of those added (as far as I could tell) a new mechanic/system. They may have added some new skins and artwork, but the basic game was still there.

Counter-Strike?  Natural Selection?  The Ship?  Zombie Panic?  All of those were basically Half-Life Deathmatch now?

[sidereal]

IOS, which turns Half-Life into FIFA?

But you know, no new mechanics or anything

[cmlancas]

C'mon, anybody could use a gravity gun and shoot a ball into a net.

[WayAbvPar]

C'mon, anybody could use a gravity gun and shoot in the general vicinity of an Italian national team member, causing him to go into a writhing screaming pile on the pitch.

FIFY. Realism ftw.

[Yegolev]

So I missed this by two hours, did I?  Anyone care to give a summary so I don't have to read the MP forums?

[Obo]

Went smoothly enough.
There was ongoing random chat in the general chat room as well as people playing the game, which also had its own common chat room.
I think it peaked with 130 people playing the game, with an average of 50/60 people in the general chatroom (most people being in both at the same time, and some with multiple game instances open). Devs had us button mashing a bit to spam the server, which ended up uncovering a bug that was fixed within a minute or two.
One of the users crashed everyones browser a couple of times by trying to insert html img tags into the games chat window (it was allowing html). But other than that it ran fine. Although for some people it was laggy.

Game was a single player puzzle game, where you had to match up the pieces in 3x3 squares. Was pretty fun. And apparently inspired by Will Wright?

[Raguel]

I've only played a couple of mods, and neither of those added (as far as I could tell) a new mechanic/system. They may have added some new skins and artwork, but the basic game was still there.

Counter-Strike?  Natural Selection?  The Ship?  Zombie Panic?  All of those were basically Half-Life Deathmatch now?

As I said, I've only played a few mods. I've heard of CS, but not the others. In any event, I wasn't trying to disparage any mods or the modders (or claim there weren't any mods that added new mechanics/systems), but trying to get a feel for what someone like myself can realistically achieve using Metaplace.

[Samwise]

In any event, I wasn't trying to disparage any mods or the modders (or claim there weren't any mods that added new mechanics/systems), but trying to get a feel for what someone like myself can realistically achieve using Metaplace.

If you don't have any prior software or game design experience, I don't think you (or anyone) will know what you can achieve until you try.  Any answer to "how hard is it to do this?" that someone familiar with Metaplace would be able to give you would have to be made by way of comparison to other more familar tools, but if you're not familiar with them, that's not much help.     Best to just wait and see.  Or maybe try cutting your teeth on something that's already out there (like a text adventure game toolkit or something) so you can get some general idea of what might be involved in making a simple game.

[Slyfeind]

Ahhhhh crap, I missed it. More tests plx.

[TripleDES]

As I said, I've only played a few mods. I've heard of CS, but not the others. In any event, I wasn't trying to disparage any mods or the modders (or claim there weren't any mods that added new mechanics/systems), but trying to get a feel for what someone like myself can realistically achieve using Metaplace.

You've played multiple Halflife mods and never ever got in touch with Counterstrike? rofl

[Obo]

Ahhhhh crap, I missed it. More tests plx.

I think the next test is supposed to be with a SubSpace clone in a few weeks.

[Raph]

Several years ago at a design talk at GDC, Will talked about sources of inspiration. He showed a typical "idea desk at IDEO, and there was this plastic netting in there. And it gave me a game idea on the spot, which i then spent the rest of the talk designing rather than listening. It was a game where you had a grid of stuff, and moved a mesh that had squares larger than the grid squares over it. When you hit a button, each set of small blocks would "tumble,"and you tried to get a match.

So I prototyped it. It was awful. So I axed the mesh and kept the tumbling part. The result was pretty fun. So then I added a bit of difficulty ramp, etc. Eventually got around to adding immovable pieces, the notion of bonus pieces, etc.

Then a year or more later, out comes Hexic. ;)

[Phred]

NM, I necroed a 5 month old  post.

[Raguel]

In any event, I wasn't trying to disparage any mods or the modders (or claim there weren't any mods that added new mechanics/systems), but trying to get a feel for what someone like myself can realistically achieve using Metaplace.

If you don't have any prior software or game design experience, I don't think you (or anyone) will know what you can achieve until you try.  Any answer to "how hard is it to do this?" that someone familiar with Metaplace would be able to give you would have to be made by way of comparison to other more familar tools, but if you're not familiar with them, that's not much help.     Best to just wait and see.  Or maybe try cutting your teeth on something that's already out there (like a text adventure game toolkit or something) so you can get some general idea of what might be involved in making a simple game.

Thanks, I'll try that.

[Raph]

Another stress test is happening this Saturday.

http://www.metaplace.com/blog/35.html

[WayAbvPar]

Got the mail...hope I remember to check it out. Visiting is always on my 'to do' list, but it gets bumped a lot 

[Viin]

I plan on trying to make it too.

However, I just wanted to comment that when I'm just glancing at my inbox, I think the email subject says 'Meatplace' instead of 'Metaplace', and I almost delete it for spam.

 

[Stormwaltz]

Another stress test is happening this Saturday.

http://www.metaplace.com/blog/35.html

Uberspace?

Is this the same game made by Jon McClure and Andrew Southwick?

[Raph]

Nope... in fact, never heard of that. Hurm.

And I can't find any descriptions or references either... all dead links. Got a URL?

[Yoru]

Man. You run all the cool events while I'm either at conferences or traveling.

[Stormwaltz]

Nope... in fact, never heard of that. Hurm.

And I can't find any descriptions or references either... all dead links. Got a URL?

Not anymore. I worked with Jon and Andrew at an MMG startup that died young. Their Uberspace was a self-funded project that didn't get a backer before it ran out of money. I believe Andrew is at Romero's company now, and Jon left the industry to be married and stable. I was wondering if they were giving it another shot.

They used to own the uberspace.com URL.

[Raph]

This test is in a few hours... noon Pacific.

[Samwise]

Test is in progress.

I look forward to the addition of negative ping netcode.   

[Raph]

It went very well from our perspective. Crashed the server a few times, got tons of great data, and people seems to have fun when it worked. :) I saw some familiar handles...

[Jerrith]

Played, it was fun. :) Messed around and set my client to a high resolution (2200x1400 or so) and while you didn't get to see the arena walls, you could see other ships and power ups outside the standard area.   Power ups other than + health seemed rather rare.  I got 4x a few times, and bounce shot rarely, but beyond that, nothing except for one time when everyone else disconnected from my room, it filled up with a few other goodies (shield, and spread shot).  Never managed to get mines or missiles. :(

Looking forward to seeing the design side of it some day. :)

[Samwise]

Was anyone able to play with reasonably low latency?  While it's interesting that it's possible to make games like this with Metaplace, it doesn't seem like twitch is likely to be one of the platform's big strengths.  Even with great netcode on your end, the sort of latency you're likely to get (just by virtue of being web-based and highly centralized) is higher than what most games have to deal with.  And the delay between hitting "forward" and seeing my ship start to move was...  

[Jerrith]

When everything was running normally, I was able to get good, responsive play in, yes.  It was meant to be a stress test though, so the times when it wasn't as responsive (or responsive at all) didn't really concern me.

[Obo]

When I actually had control of the ship and not flying through walls, which was the majority of the time, the controls seemed responsive enough. I could probably blame any inability to shoot straight on my part on my suckiness rmore so than lag. Took me a while to figure out you couldn't shoot while turning! 

[Slyfeind]

I was pretty surprised how well it ran, all things considered. I agree this might not be a good platform for big shooters, though. 1v1 would probably be ok.

Probably the coolest thing was playing a game with Raph chatting in the background. Almost felt like old-school UO there. :)