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Hazzard

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I am a videogames developer who currently works for a popular browser based role-playing company in the UK. However a colleague and I have long been discussing our own idea of a videogame that we would like to develop as a separate project, eventually as our own videogame product. I have long been a fan of the Orbiter engine and have wondered how successful it could be, used as a videogames engine.

The idea is large-scale and for that reason this engine might be a worthwhile test bed. I would like to know how possible it might be to develop the following ideas using this engine. The idea consists of two teams or factions, with potentially between 10,000 and 1,000,000 players online at any given time taking part in a galaxy scale simulated war. This war would be fought by and conducted by the players themselves from long complex planetary battles that incorporate orbital engagements, right up to deep space naval battles that occur over a potentially large number of systems at once in real time.

A demonstration of our idea with the Orbiter engine, has been a part of our discussion. The proof of concept we had envisioned was a planetary invasion. One faction holding control over a planet with a naval force in orbit, and another faction attempting to destroy the orbiting planets naval force with its own, coupled with a ground invasion force whose mission it would be to take control of the planet. Navies might consist of a few extremely large-scale capital ships per faction (approximately three times larger than today's largest oil tanker), along with many smaller ships for different purposes per faction, frigates, fighters, bombers, gunboats etc. Drop ships would be used by the invasion force to ferry men planet side to attack bases on the planet and dominate the enemy on the ground, where vehicles would be dropped from orbit also, along with fighter support and orbital bombardments from capital ships. Planet bases would have to have enterable structures that can have some form of interaction with doors and some level of complexity. We feel that this scenario would encapsulate many of the different elements that we are trying to achieve for this game.

Every vehicle would be piloted or controlled by a real player, and all characters in the environment are real people. Not taking into consideration the network limitations that exist today, would the Orbiter engine be capable of achieving something of this manner with development in the future, with perhaps say, 10 years maximum development time?

(All IP under copywrite protection)
 
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Hmm, no, I don't think all plans you have can be realized with Orbiter. You should better look for a different game engine.

While simple battles could be simulated in orbiter, if you add a compatible weapon and damage model to the ships, using Orbiter's physics engine for a massive multiplayer environment will not work.

Also, all your IP in the post is already copyrighted by Derek Smart... but even he is not crazy enough to use a realistic physics engine.
 
What's an IP? Does this have someting to do with gathering ideas from various well known SF movies and games and presenting them in one big pack?
 
10 years of development time can allow for a lot.

The new Orbiter Beta (still in private beta) has a decoupled physics and graphics engine. That's getting closer to what's needed of a central server which handles multiplayer and physics. I don't know much about Orbiter's Physics core to know how well it would handle problems. Also since Orbiter has been designed to run on a single machine, it doesn't really address issues of lag and multiple users, but some of the Multiplayer addons do that.

I'd say its possible, but you'll definitely want to talk to Martin Schweiger and the other developers who are helping out.

I don't want to get you in trouble for guessing your company, but Jagex?
 
just reminded, that as far as I remember, there was a notice on m6 (which is down currently), that all Orbiter addons should be at least Freeware. Can anyone back it up?

I'm making an (possibly false) assumption that Hazzard wants to make a commercial addon, because of mentioning the IP. If it's indeed true, then the licencing, apart from Orbiter limitations, may be another thing against this.

And don't get me wrong. I'm generally happy about ambitious projects.
 
Thank you for all of your swift responses.

At this point, as a proof of concept , how feasible would it be to produce a simplified version. Something that could potentially display all of the core mechanics of what we want to achieve, without all of the complex interactive elements that might cause problems with the physics portion of the engine. This proof of concept need not be multiplayer in itself, but an enclosed singlemachine simulation if you will.

Understandably there are many technical issues that arrise from this kind of project. Issues we are aware of. However we hope that with enough development time, and the increase in technological development in that time, something like this may be achievable in the near future. I am well aware however that this kind of project is not quiet practical with contemporary technology, especially with regards to online capabilities.

I have attempted to contact Martin Schweiger, but to no avail. I am sure he is a busy man, but we will continue to try. Again thank you everyone for your help.
 
Make just one spacecraft first and then develop a playable damage model for it as start. Should take enough of your time.
 
Make just one spacecraft first and then develop a playable damage model for it as start. Should take enough of your time.
There are various weapon/damage MFDs in orbithangar, aren't there? It may be as simple as taking the original source code from these projects. It's a start, anyway.
 
I have attempted to contact Martin Schweiger, but to no avail. I am sure he is a busy man, but we will continue to try. Again thank you everyone for your help.
Well that you should, because there is the slight licensing issue:
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/disclaimer.html
ORBITER is free software in the sense that you are free to download, copy and redistribute it for personal and non-commerical purposes...
There will be similar issues to be aware of if planning on using others' source code, per eveningsky339's suggestion.
 
I am a videogames developer who currently works for a popular browser based role-playing company in the UK. However a colleague and I have long been discussing our own idea of a videogame that we would like to develop as a separate project, eventually as our own videogame product. I have long been a fan of the Orbiter engine and have wondered how successful it could be, used as a videogames engine.

Orbiter is not open source. You do NOT want to develop anything on an engine you don't have the complete sources for - believe me, you don't.
 
Orbiter is not open source. You do NOT want to develop anything on an engine you don't have the complete sources for - believe me, you don't.

I have no problem using Irrlicht, without reading the sources, as I am not interested at all in all the sources of it. If it would be closed source, I would not notice a difference.

And Orbiter works well with a open API and a closed source engine. Open-source dogma is worse as closed source software.
 
Mmog with realistical physics as part of gameplay? nah, won't work, where would one find enough interested players in that to make it "massive"?

About using orbiter engine - it is of no importance for a game. The amount of work to realize this project is just huge, orbiter engine looks tiny compared to that. In the end, all orbiter engine does is gives you accurate planetary positions and works as gravity sim. And that is not really iportant for a game. You might as well write your own gravity sim, specifically optimized for game and multiplayer ;-)


Still the idea is great (while hardly realizable IMHO). So do your best and prove me wrong. I will be really gad if you will do this.
 
This has been very useful and I thank everyone for their assistance.

The Orbiter engine need not be used for the final product. For legal reasons we would be unable to develop any retail product using the engine without Mr. Schweiger permission first.

The reason this engine interests me so much, is simply because it already has the scale and simulation levels we hoped to achieve with this project and because of this I thought it might be useful to test some of our ideas. I am still personally interested to see whether or not this engine could be modified to produce something similar but I am well aware of current limitations not only with the engine itself, but with todays technologies.

The idea itself is no small task even for the largest developers and with our team consisting so far of only two full time contributors on a voluntary basis this is something that is far from tangible. However it is a project my colleague and I both feel is worth the time and effort to at least attempt to produce, no matter how unlikely.

Again I thank you all for your help, and I know that this type of video game would have an audience somewhere ;).
 
If you want a cool space war sim with some inertia, buy Independence War 2:Edge of chaos.

I can tell you that a space combat game with an Orbiter like engine would be really boring.
Target, fire, wait a long time until contact is off the grid in an MFD.
It would use lots of fuel and lots of G forces to evade.
It is very unlikely to be realistic.

For space combat I prefer this
http://www.bruneras.com/fgames.htm
I think this style of space game is more appealing for gamers, since I am one.

As far as I know Orbiter engine is not for sale.
You might need to create your own.

Invasion? Take a few marines and open holes in the base so all people die. Then you enter the base, repair holes and fill with oxygen.
Blasting a base? Take an asteroid in collision course. It will be really hard to intercept.
 
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