EGO is recruiting!

[TheSilence]

EGO, an HL2 mod, is recruiting! EGO is looking for coders, modelers, and 2D artists. The only stipulation on modelers is that they should be able to animate their models. Don't worry, it's not that hard.

EGO is a MMO for HL2. Usually this gets a lot of criticism as people say "MMOs are impossible to do and cost lots of money." This is typically the case, but EGO is a Distributed MMO. Instead of hosting an expensive server farm that everyone connects to, picture the game setup more like what would occur if every CounterStrike server was connected to every other Counterstrike server. This would create a huge persistent network. The technical implementation is defined and in progress. The game itself, however, needs to be started.

EGO is different than other MMOs. In the near future, wars have become so violent that infantry is no longer effective. Battles are now fought by mobile assault vehicles controlled by human operators. Each player can either pilot his own tank or jump in with a partner and man a turret on a supertank. The tanks can be customized from weapon types to engines and so on. However, there is no XP farming in EGO. Instead, your progress in the game is measured by how developed your skills are. The better you are at the game, the higher your reputation, and of course, the bigger your ego. As your skills develop your reputation will give you labels that will make players either fear you or laugh in your face.

If you are interested in applying for a position, please email me at [email protected]

 

[63]

Someone still has to pay for those servers

 

[brutal85]

Looks intresting. Do you have a site or atleast some concept art?

 

[zyd]

If you have someone developing that system for you then why do you need coders ?

 

[TheSilence]

Okay let me respond to everyone one by one:

Someone still has to pay for those servers

Yes, but that's the case with any mod, right? If the community likes the game, then they will run a server to support it. If the game gathers enough momentum, then our mod will have more servers/potential worlds than any other MMO out there. Plus, I think it would be cool to have some kind of peer evaluation community for maps so that servers could run custom maps easily that would mesh well with the game. Also, a content delivery system is also being considered that would patch each players game daily with any new maps that are used in the network.

Looks intresting. Do you have a site or atleast some concept art?

Our website currently is housed at http://www.digitalplight.com/ego. Our moddb entry is located at http://mods.moddb.com/6374/EGO/. I have no concept art and have gotten a lot of criticism about the lack of a fancy website. Personally, I'm not an artist. I'm a programmer. So as for fancy websites and pretty concept art, it's not really there yet. I am really looking for at least one 2D artist and one modeler and they're going to have a lot of say in the look of the game. I have some visualization in my head but I'm horrible at it. I like to focus on the mechanics of the game and all that. If you want to contribute concept art, I'd be very willing to give you credit and all that. If you're interested in joining the team, feel free to drop me an email.

If you have someone developing that system for you then why do you need coders ?

I'm coding the MMO system myself at the moment. I'm only one guy. I'd like to get at least one or two more to work on the Half-Life 2 code with me as it's a lot to develop and in the beginning, most of what is being written is code anyways. I'm a very experienced programmer myself, and I do it for a living. I'm not worried about writing the code alone if necessary, but a little help from friends would not hurt.

 

[zyd]

what are you going to do about the bsp restrictions ? of course you can make everything small to increase the map size but it curtaintly would be hard to get it close to a mmo size

 

[TheSilence]

what are you going to do about the bsp restrictions ? of course you can make everything small to increase the map size but it curtaintly would be hard to get it close to a mmo size

I'm not going to worry about the BSP restrictions. You have to think of this outside the realm of the typical MMO. First, there may be duplicate maps in the network. Second, there may be no global voice chat. To do chat across the network will be hard to pull off but I think it's possible. Finally, the maps can be as large or as small as the server admin wants. I'm not going to require that everyone who runs a server has to make it 256 players on the largest map size possible.

I want this game to be as much about freedom as possible. A planned "Dungeon Master" ability is on the table that will allow players to set up their own battle scenarios on a server at will. They will be able to hand out missions and give rewards. Obviously fitting in with the reputation model, the best leaders will be highly respected by their fellow players.

Most MMOs today lock you into boring, static combat and trade with fake economies. We're going to try and change the mechanics a bit and offer something different. Plus, we realize that the game is going to be different for people than MMOs that they're used to. No one has tried this before. That's why the game is going to be developed in phases. Phase one sees things like combat and individual character creation launched and balanced. Phase two sees us adding things like guilds and worldwide chat. Phase three will finish off with combat missions and the "Dungeon Master" ability. After that, the sky's the limit, but our goal is to at least get to phase three before declaring new objectives.

The goal is to create a game where you don't get static missions with different names put in. Instead, players can weave their own tales and have an effect on the world in which the game operates. You don't farm for XP in this game, you're rewarded for the style with which you play. If you want to go out and kill all the new players in the level, your reputation will be "n00b-killer" or something. If you conduct raids on weak trade convoys, you'll be labeled a pirate. The possibilities are endless, but we'll have to put a limit on it somewhere.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

I was initially going to say "Damnit, you're a numpty for thinking MMO games can actually work on Source", but the way you're actually planning to do it seems feasible. However, how do you determine what servers link where?

You seem to know your stuff, you get a thumbs up from me.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Solaris]

Nice idea. With the while MMo stuff and everything.

The whole tank bit though just sounds crap.
Infantry combat ftw.

 

[zyd]

I'm just still concerned about people having to move from server to server.. it would 80% loading time in the game as they have to change location (server) that often

 

[rambler]

i would just like to take issue with the fact that you say animating is easy. maybe easy to learn but hard to master. modelling and animating are extremely different. i suggest you look for some animators.

 

[crackhead]

animating is certainly not easy atall.

 

[TheSilence]

Okay a few posts to reply to (sorry I was out of town for the weekend) -

i would just like to take issue with the fact that you say animating is easy. maybe easy to learn but hard to master. modelling and animating are extremely different. i suggest you look for some animators.

Okay, I never really meant to put down animators or modelers or anything like that. However, I think that it is reasonable to say that some of the more experienced modelers can learn to animate. I view it as an extension of their profession and who knows, they might like it more than just plain modeling. Anyways, when I worked on my game last year for class, the modeler basically learned how to animate on the fly and she did a pretty good job. Obviously I'm not looking for someone to be an excellent animator and modeler at once, but if you're willing to learn something different I think that's a good sign of someone motivated to work on any mod. I'd be willing to learn to model or work with Hammer if need be, so I expect the same of anyone who'd want to work with me.

However, how do you determine what servers link where?

The underlying network will determine this. This system is very like the peer-to-peer filesharing services that people use (like Kazaa or Limewire), however it is not peer-to-peer, it is a distributed system (P2P is a subset of distributed - Kazaa isn't true P2P anyways, but Limewire is based off of Gnutella which is P2P. For more info, google or wikipedia will probably help). When a server wants to connect to the MMO network, it will connect to a master server (I know how it will find the master but I'm going to leave the implementation out for various reasons) that knows the underlying network architecture. Basically, you'll end up with a ring of rings. So, the smallest network is a ring of at most 10 servers. Each ring has a leader that gets connected to the super ring that the master server belongs to. Each leader is chosen based on latency to every server in its ring and latency to the master. When the new server connects, it gets placed into the fastest small ring after pinging each leader in the network.

I'm trying to give you enough information to understand while leaving enough details out (because this is a really good idea and I guarantee that if this gets pulled off you'll see commercial games implementing systems similar to this - imagine any FPS making their multiplayer MMO for no cost just by implementing this system). For more information about rings and joining networks and if you enjoy research papers, I highly recommend you read Sloppy Hashing and Self-Organizing Clusters, which was published as part of the Coral CDN network. Coral is a distributed caching network for websites, and is basically a P2P system that competes with Akamai.

The whole tank bit though just sounds crap.
Infantry combat ftw.

Well, I thought about infantry in the beginning but I think that there are so many infantry mods out there that I'd like to play around with a tank game instead. At least now you don't have to worry about cheap and lucky headshots

 

[Fluffy Kitten]

Okay, I never really meant to put down animators or modelers or anything like that. However, I think that it is reasonable to say that some of the more experienced modelers can learn to animate. I view it as an extension of their profession and who knows, they might like it more than just plain modeling.

I, personally, don't believe animating is an extension of modelling... it's a totally different set of skills. Sure, if you know the program you're using to model, it's easy to grab some limbs and say "left hand forwards, right hand backwards", but in doing so you'll just create stiff, lifeless zombies.
No matter how good the models look, you can kill whatever "soul" they have by animating them poorly.

 

[rambler]

yes i agree. i definately do not think animating is an extension of the modelling profession. when i was working at framestore (www.framestore-cfc.com) they certainly didn't think so either. in basic terms the three main vocations were: animator, modeller and renderer.

 

[crackhead]

its one thing making a model that looks human but its a whole different dimension making it behave like a human.

 

[TheSilence]

I, personally, don't believe animating is an extension of modelling... it's a totally different set of skills.

Okay, as I said, I'm just a programmer, I'll take it under advisement. I'm sorry if it made me sound insensitive or offended anyone that does either for a living.

 

[rambler]

it's not offensive, it's just inadvisable.

 

[crackhead]

i wish i did either for a living. hopefully i will one day though.