Some time back me and Lethal Illusion tossed about the idea of a controlled save system.
The map would need to be for a private population but the idea was that instead of a 32 character code you could make account/PIN.
At the end of day all achievements and progress could be recorded and added to accounts. This requires constant maintainance and uploading downloading.
The advantage is however you can update a character with ease by making DC's variables for all attributes. More Soon (char limit)
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In my opinion there's really no possible way that a map could be big enough that this would be required. Also, if it's for a private population, I'm assuming it would be single player for each game, as it would be messy for more than one. If the latter, then StarCraft's save feature is more than enough for saving.
The idea was for a competitive RPG for SEN.
Trading would be easy as "switch X players sword with Y players sword if both agree."
Pylon DC goes from 1 to 38 on X Player account.
Pylon DC goes from 38 to 1 on Y players account.
It's a simple save/load with a trigger per account as opposed to a complex save/load with a trigger per ability/gold/hp/weapon/et cetra.
It also means a map can be released half done and 'patched' with better terrain and enemies with ease.
The idea was monthly pay of mins.
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A person that wishes to cheat will find a way to cheat. But with a controlled population banning / prevention becomes a possibility.
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You might as well just leave the map open and have people just edit the triggers themselves so that they start out with whatever they had in previous games.
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A) Cheating isn't that easy. The argument behind open source is you can improve upon a map. If the map is already being updated daily, who's going to need to improve it?
It's harder to cheat than a regular system as it is.
B) If you update the map yourself then cheating is A) easier and B) not going to work. The idea behind me updating it is creating a universal medium that all members can play without downloading off another person.
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I think there was an RPG called Xuru RPG that had a save feature with a bunch of numbers that you'd input.
What's wrong with that? Honest question.
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This reminds me of singleplayer/open-realm D2
I think the success of this depends on whether or not the map is worth playing and if there is a nice group of people willing to do this.
I think it would just be easier to have each person playing the map just update or load in their own information through a code system. Using you as a middleman would be too inconvenient and unnecessary. The integrity of the game already is in the hands of the people playing so it wouldn't make a difference, because if a player wants to cheat they would do it anyway. People would just play with the people they believe are legit.
What I'm saying is pretty much the way singleplayer/open-realm D2 works where all the person's character info is stored locally. Essentially the player is free to edit his own character info and "cheat" but if people use the honor system then they are expected not to.
Also how will the information be recorded and sent to you? If it's in the form of a code then that's the same thing a conventional save/load system would use. The user would still have to write all that info down and store it themselves. The only difference between your method and the conventional method is the input would be slightly easier. I don't see any difference in output, unless you're doing more work like watching replays of the game and getting the info yourself rather than having the player provide it.
One thing I thought of for sending information would be to set up a dedicated bot in a channel like op SEN and have people whisper them the output code when they're done playing. If you created some sort of script to go with it you might even be able to get it to output the triggers for you based on the code it receives.
And since people would report their progress using whispers the codes could even be somewhat lengthy and encrypted because the reporting would be as simple as typing /m rpgbot fa4325432iqjfasf
Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Aug 13 2009, 8:21 am by Pariah.
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We toggled with a few ideas but at the end of the day no decision was ever truely made.
This is just an idea we came up with, if someone wished to fill the gaps and use it, they're more than welcome.
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If you really want to get hardcore then get someone to program some kind of cilent that will automatically download new versions of the map. And also code a program that will automatically update the map based on information the bot receives from players reporting their progress and host the map somewhere for the other client program to automatically download.
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That's not within my power until I come across the money for a laptop.
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>be faceless void >mfw I have no face
I'm not sure I totally understand this, but couldn't you have a map, probably an rpg, and it can be multiplayer. People dl the latest version, and input their code. It loads their character, and they play. When they save, it gives them a new number. When new versions come out, the code still works, but any new features are added when you next save. And if the problem is cheating in the form of unprotecting the map and changing stats, there are ways to fix that. Trigger-edits would be harder but still possible. If the map detects that stats have been edited, it gives a 'cheater' code. Next time the cheater loads his character, it tells him he is an idiot for cheating or playing edited versions, and then drops him or something.
Red classic.
"In short, their absurdities are so extreme that it is painful even to quote them."
I do stuff and thingies... Try widening and reducing the number of small nooks and crannies to correct the problem.
if you want to make a fully save/load feature, you may have to input much, very much...
if I would do that with my D1 map, the people would have to type maybe 20 long numbers...
You could easily accomplish it via modding. When the player saves, store their code somewhere that can be easily read by a plugin, then have a plugin that reads the data and writes it to a file. In the same plugin, detect if the file exists at game start, and if so, load all the data.
Of course, it would be version-dependent, which pretty much limits you to single-player unless you want to force all your players to use Hamachi or SFR. However, the incredible flexibility the plugin would give you would probably outweigh this. eg. You could send the file to a website somewhere where people can trade items. Or you could edit unit stats on the fly, creating infinite types of enemies. If you were really clever, you could even make totally customizable items with no limits on what items can be created.
I would write this mod for you but I don't know enough C++ yet. I could probably learn, though.
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How is it better to make someone type in a huge long code instead of just loading a file? I'll admit there are some advantages (like not being version-dependent) but I think the advantages of the mod are better than the advantages of not using it.
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