Meticulously Multitasked Occasional Games
Over the years, many project ideas have sprung into (and out of) my head, but some persist for a worryingly long time. The latest contender in this category is the MMOG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Game.
See, at the start of 2006, I had a great idea; what if there was, like, some game that, like, erm, you could run around with other people that, err, wasn't an MMORPG. Of course, this gap has already been filled by Second Life, and several other lesser-known contenders.
Oblivious to this, and being rather naive, I decided to have a go at writing such a thing, just to see what it was like. Perhaps rather surprisingly, I got a networked game engine that actually synced, passed events around players and streamed all content over the network. It didn't do much else, and at this point my exams appeared, and so 'quspace', as it was codenamed, languished in my Programs folder.
Recently, though, the implementation of things like Second Life has been bugging me. Even the metaverse evangelists readily admit to its problems, the most important of which seems to be the complete reliance on Linden Labs.
Sure, there are things like the framerate, but the lack of decentralisation really worries me. It's not a sustainable model - the Internet is, and that's really very decentralised. So, I got out my thinking tools (some A4 paper and a pen), and decided to think.
I eventually came up with a design for a fully decentralised system, including authentication/identity, multiple worlds, chat, user permissions, and so on. The idea relies on an OpenID-like system, where each user is identified with their username identity server, rather than just by some username which has to be compared againstt a big (central) database.
Worlds need only store information about a user relevant to their system - such as the user's status in this world, how much of any items they have, and so on. The obvious drawback here is that the items/money/whatever values aren't shared between different clusters of Worlds, but then why would you want to? If the 'money' you have in one world is translatable into something in another, then obviously the two Worlds are somehow related, and a sending/exchange system could be implemented.
It's quite analogous to something like IRC; while you may be lord and master of one channel, your status means nothing in another. The idea is extended even further, however; the only thing that needs to be common between two worlds is you. If you want some way to build up virtual items and feel good, you're free to stay on one server. If you want variety, or just to explore, go and visit as many as you can. In this sense it's like the Web; your profile on Digg has no effect on your profile at Reddit. Things can interact if they want to, but it's really not necessary.
The problem is that ideas like this are almost doomed to failure. Perhaps, if you get the right combination, make the barrier to entry low enough, and make it popular, it will work, but there's a lot of competition. Will this deter me from having a go at writing it again? Probably not.
comments
Yes you are right “ideas like this are almost doomed to failure” but if you find the right moment to advertise and meet the right people you might have success.
True, true. I suppose I should take confidence in the fact I seem to have had a lot of right moments over the years.
Being selfish, though, it's still fun getting such a system working, even if only I ever see it! A sense of accomplishment wins over fame for me every time.
Hey Andrew, It's Joe F from Wallington. Ideas also languish in my head for a worryingly large amount of time but I have no impetus or programming competence to implement them. Maybe you can. *devilish grin*
I was thinking about compression techniques in images (both stationary and moving) and how some lossless compression methods can provide a massive drop of size while no corresponding drop in quality.
My understanding of GIF compression is that it is vector based. Instead of describing every single bit in a image, it describes areas. Describing an 1000x1000 area as #000000 will require a lot less memory than describing every bit as the same. Obviously. Moving images will use the same technique, describe an area as a colour, then describe how it moves. This is why when you skip some compressed movie files you continue to see the old colour move on a different 'surface.'
Hopefully you're still getting me.
Music when boiled down is a moving waveform, electronic music, i.e techno is essentially repetitive (allowing for implementation of an LZW algorithm.) Would it be possible to compress music to a great degree (with negligible quality loss) by using a vector based compression algorithm to describe the moving waveform. Has it already been done?
Thanks :)
I hereby release this under the creative commons sharealike licence (no becoming a millionare out of this :))
I'm not sure music would work too well as a 'vector' compression as you describe, since unlike simple images it lacks large areas of similarity. Perhaps a file full of constant tones would work well, but the key is finding a useful compression algorithm, not one that works very well but on 0.1% of cases...
I really really like what you are saying about the impracticality of single-enterprise based MM worlds. Thank you.