Multiplayer Dungeon Master

[ParuNexus]

The PSO mechanics would work well in DM multiplayer if it was to be played as a co-op, namely the 4 players, 1 switch. It could be used to guard treasure or unlock a hoard of dragons!!! (Do dragons come in hoards lol?)

1. The age old question of how are the champions / other players going to be represented in the game on the other players' screens? And if they are shown as champions, how will all the different weapons and armour going to be shown?

2. Level design can essentially make or break a game. Dungeon Master's design is one we all know and love but it is designed for one player and one player only. If multiplayer DM was to be made, then some killer levels would have to be made or it would itself be killed.

3. I really am disliking this MMORPG thing. As I mentoned about the levels, the dungeon in DM is only designed for a maximum of 4 champions. Having more than 4 would, for me, destroy the DM experience as it would start feeling overcrowded. A better option would be to have a town or villiage as a central meeting hub then lots of dungeons around for up to 4 characters. These dungeons needn't be dungeons at all - forests, caves or even haunted villiages! This would make DM feel more like an adventure rather than a one-off quest - perfect for online gaming and frolics!

I have been planning, for a while now, a Dungeon Master themed mod for the UT2k4 engine which would be played co-op as well (still only 4 players, mind you). Got a story and some initial ideas, it's just getting round to implementing it! Mind you, Source engine looks promising as well...

Remember folks, all these ideas are great and I'm not trying to steer anyone clear of the prospect of a multiplayer DM, quite the opposite in fact - it'd be great! It would just be a shame to see a great concept go to waste.

1) rip models from Nexus? ok here are a few very basic idea's. firstly for sake of keeping the game easier, the characters don't have "visable items" save for like the hands. again take the pso character generator... since PSO items have 3 attacks it makes it easy to do that animation for weapons. we already got models for them. magical effects or "hurt parts" are not shown. armor and trading or whatever chan be done in "profile view" aka character, items, levels and all that stuff.
and becuase this will be asked at some point: thoughts about death?
that ball of light seen in PSO works great. the ball of light moves as the person controlls it. like in the old day's find a VI alter.

2) and Adapated for Multi player...

3)hmm an outpost for making a group to go into the dungeons... how about that? merhaps change death to include or only do "respawn in town".
one thingto change of course is the scripted end. again sorta like PSO's system say "forest" levels are like DM upon defeating chaos you unlock caves(CSB? skullkeep?) all that realyl needs is the tiles to be setup in sets. i mean look at some of the different graphics people are doing with RTC. replace rock walls with tree's for a forest effect, draw more on walls and turn it into another type of building. put iron bars or something and give it a gardyard\abby or something haunted.

that's it for now.

[Wismerhill]

Hi,

Currently working on a multiplayer DMJava, I'm redoing the whole sound thing. I think that I could share some thinking with you about that.

First, as the game becomes multiplayer, I have to manage sounds in quite a realistic way. It means a sound must have a source, a radius and that the game must compute who is able to hear it, and moreover, will there be any sound played. e.g. on the server software side, no sound will be ever be played whereas the client softwares must be informed that a sound has to be played. Im not sure I'm crystal clear here.

Anyway, that means new gameplay possibilities.
For example, does DM take into account walls and doors to attenuate the monsters' footsteps ?
Also, now, a party will hear another party's sounds: footsteps, swings, gulp, warcry, etc. If you want to hide from another player, that's a new element to take into account.
Other point: are monsters in DM able to track the player using its sounds ? In a multiplayer environment, that would make sense.
Other idea: a monster could hear another monster screams and decide to help it. What if monsters fight themself, as in Doom ?

Finally, the implementation that I'm thinking about is that any action that is noisy will produce a virtual sound. Parties and monsters within reach are informed of the sound through network communications, taking into account the maze topology (walls, doors) to attenuate it. Concerned players will hear the sound thanks to their client software and monsters AIs will react to this signal in appropriate ways.

And uh, I also plan to script monsters AI. This way, anybody will be able to easily change monsters AIs. I think of using http://www.beanshell.org/ which is quite simple but powerfull. It could also be used to script NPCs.

All right, this post is getting long.

[Guest]

I agree that an MMORPG wouldn't feel like DM. I like the idea of limited online mulitplayer game, along the lines of Diablo2 or Never Winter Nights. People getting together in a virtual meeting place be it somehting akin to a Battlenet channel or 'virtual Market Place'. Then 1-4 people getting together and exploring player made dungeons, I love the idea of different types of dungeons like villages, mines etc This could allow a lot of player modding to make dungeons. Each player controls 1 champion and they can move freely ie they are not all tied to the one square.

I think players should be able to make their own character that they keep through their different adventures. They should be represented as proper models and it should be possible to model the different armours and weapons, just like any MMORPG nowadays ie the armour would change the texture in a part of the model. There would need to be a character model generator to allow each person to design their own avatar, it would have to be felixible enough to make Gothmog toons as well as Tiggy Tamal toons, somehting lke the SWG toon generator would work. Alternativly a limited number of models like the Anarchy Online generator, after all eveyrone looks the same when covered in plate mail. Of course players should be allowed to roll their toons stats.

Level design is importnat, Bloodwych had some great levels and their ideas could be implemented into a multiplayer DM. For example at various stages the bloodwych parties had to split up and do seperate mazes in order to progress. I can envisage something like that in DM eg at a level like Choose Your Door, Choose Your Fate. The 4 players have to split up and are in seperate mini mazes that they need to complete to find keys to help the whole team progress. They would not be able to join each other in their minimazes ie 1 player per maze, and can only meet up afterwards back at the door they need to open. Other mazes could be populated with veryhard monsters that they need to cooperate to take out or mazes that involve puzzle solving so the players need to work together in the same maze eg all 4 stand on pressure pads at the same time to open a door.

I think it could be a great game.

[Wismerhill]

I think it could be a great game.

Definitely ! Thanks for your input.

[Tom Hatfield]

It didn't cocur to me until now, but if you want a multiplayer dungeon crawl, you should look into Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan. It has its share of flaws, but it is strangely addictive, and you can have as many players as you want, with up to four characters per player, plus charmed/summoned creatures. In case anyone is interested, here's the web site:

http://www.pharaoh-productions.com/demise/news.php

I do have a copy of the game myself, though I haven't played it in several months. I was thinking about starting up a new party if I find the time. An expansion has also been announced, which could vastly improve the game. I hope.

[Wismerhill]

It didn't cocur to me until now, but if you want a multiplayer dungeon crawl, you should look into Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan. It has its share of flaws, but it is strangely addictive, and you can have as many players as you want, with up to four characters per player, plus charmed/summoned creatures. In case anyone is interested, here's the web site:

http://www.pharaoh-productions.com/demise/news.php

Thank you! Lot of ideas.

[Wismerhill]

In the spirit of my previous post about the sound in a multiplayer setting, the light comes to mind.

In DM, the party is the only light source, this simplifies greatly the graphic engine as you just have to darken the view and you're done because the light level is effectively defined for the whole level: there is not such concept as point lights.

But, in a multiplayer setting, each character is a light source in its own, so the graphic engine must manage that in a realistic way, handling parameters as light position, light radius and so on. Maybe this could create new gameplay possibilities. Also, I think that we would be nice to have lighted torches on walls.

[Gambit37]

This is beginning to sound very interesting! I love the idea of playing against another party, and the extra dimension of light and sound actualy affecting how you play against another team could be great fun. I loved the Thief games for their sneaking and 'light management' - it could work just as well here.

Hmmm.... multiplayer DM ..... pipe dream or reality? I hope the latter!

[PadTheMad]

Hmmm.... multiplayer DM ..... pipe dream or reality? I hope the latter!

So do I. It certainly will be interesting to see how this project develops.

>@Wismerhill - Is DM multiplayer actually in development or is it still only in the ideas stage. Either way, will you be using the original DM graphics and sounds or the DMJava ones?

[Wismerhill]

Is DM multiplayer actually in development or is it still only in the ideas stage. Either way, will you be using the original DM graphics and sounds or the DMJava ones?

Yes, it is currently in development ! That's why I've talked about light and sound, because I'm currently architecturing the code and I have to think how I'll do that kind of things. Multiplayer is such a beast. DMJava was not developed with reuse in mind and is totally unsuitable for multiplayer. Nonetheless, it's a great starting point for me as it serves as a great reference for the DM game mechanisms. Alandale is the man.

For the graphics, I really don't know. I would like to use the original DM GFX to have a real DM multiplayer but I also plan to do a highly customizable game, where quite everything can be modded. For example, when you join a server, you could browse a list of dungeons, chose to enter one and then the game would download all the necessary resources automatically. To ease dungeon sharing, I also think that a kind of pack file à la Quake would be great: everything would be in a compressed file: gfx, sounds, maps, GUI, etc.

Anyway, go back to coding.

[Tom Hatfield]

Light is something I've always tussled with where 2D graphics are concerned. In 3D it's no problem because the hardware handles it, but I've never really been interested in 3D programming, except as a means of using it for accelerated 2D. This light problem is actually the most important reason I haven't made my own clone. It's difficult to achieve realistic lighting without a whole mess of supplemental graphics.

I really wish I knew more about 3D programming, particularly where shadowing it concerned. I don't know how to write a fragment shader, and I don't know how to use shadow volumes. I do know how to generate shadows maps, but I don't know how to project them. Anyway, if anyone wants to help me tackle the lighting problem, ideas are welcome.

At the moment I'm considering techniques that involve software bump mapping using normal maps. Not sure about dynamic shadows. This is really a project for the Doom 3 engine.

[Tom Hatfield]

Okay, after some consideration I have a viable solution, but it will require some explanation. We need to be able to modulate sprite colors at each corner, so we'll be rendering the scene as quads using T&L vertices in screen-space. (D3DXSprite will not suffice for this; we need access to individual vertices. Fortunately, this allows us to use multiple texture stages for shadow/bump maps.)

Let's assume our map is a 2D array of tile structures. Each tile contains a light value, accounting for both color and luminosity. We modulate the vertex color at each tile corner with the light value of the four surrounding tiles. You can use any sampling filter you like: linear, bilinear, bicubic, or something more complicated. The idea is that you only process modulation on parts of the scene that are being rendered, so even bicubic interpolation would yield acceptable performance (and the best visual result).

Here are some pictures demonstrating this:


These are linear, bilinear, and bicubic sample maps for a 7x7 tile area.

EDIT: Added point samples to the above image.





Above are the resultant dungeons for each sample map. Obviously some additional calculations need to be done to determine if a surface is facing away from the light source, in which case it should be darkened. This is cumbersome but technically feasible. If anyone has a better idea, I'm open to suggestions. This scene could be drastically enhanced with some shadow and bump maps.

[Wismerhill]

Yeah, this is a classic vertex lighting. I will probably use a free Java 3D engine, based on OpenGL, so it should not be an issue. The world and the meshes are quite simple in DM and moreover the distance view is short, so it should run flawlessly on even old computers. Nonetheless, the graphic engine is one of the last things I'll work on, the eye candy is fun but is better done after less funny things like network protocol or gameplay.

[MitchB1990]

I think it would be possible to play Masters of Chaos over the Windows Remote Assistant by playing on one persons computer.

[Adamo]

isn`t lighting already possible in RTC/DSB? you can assign a light to the nearest dungeon cells in DM2 (burning torches on the walls etc).
I had an idea for a monsters (like black flames) to be used the same way (giving light in the nearest cells like the bonfire).