Brace yourself! The Spatial OS MMO's are coming!!!

pantaro

Seen someone on massively reference this game in a comment http://www.forsakenlegends.com/ still really early but looks interesting. 

Dibdabs

Well, it doesn't look THAT interesting, to be honest. 

Deivos

The tech is considerably more interesting than the game sadly. They are building the game utilizing the "Spatial OS" which is a new operating system that can be established server-side to run detailed large-scale simulations. What this means is more complex AI, larger and more interactive world spaces, and persistent emulation.

For the most part the game as is being described in the video kind of sounds mostly like an alt-Minecraft type game. So the game description isn't exceptionally interesting and it seems because they are a three man team they aren't really taking a deep level of advantage of the tech yet.

Astropuyo

I dunno i dig the idea that a elk can go agro, kill stuff and be a level 100 elk that newbie 23 dies to and it becomes level 101 elk.

Gotta give em credit. They are trying to do something different.
It's a shit day indeed when any voxel building is minecraft only.

MadFrenchie

Deivos said:

The tech is considerably more interesting than the game sadly. They are building the game utilizing the "Spatial OS" which is a new operating system that can be established server-side to run detailed large-scale simulations. What this means is more complex AI, larger and more interactive world spaces, and persistent emulation.

For the most part the game as is being described in the video kind of sounds mostly like an alt-Minecraft type game. So the game description isn't exceptionally interesting and it seems because they are a three man team they aren't really taking a deep level of advantage of the tech yet.

The complex AI is sure something to salivate, though.


I firmly believe that one area is holding back the entire genre of MMORPGs.  Your living, breathing world is only as interesting as the creatures that inhabit it.

pantaro

Deivos said:

The tech is considerably more interesting than the game sadly. They are building the game utilizing the "Spatial OS" which is a new operating system that can be established server-side to run detailed large-scale simulations. What this means is more complex AI, larger and more interactive world spaces, and persistent emulation.

For the most part the game as is being described in the video kind of sounds mostly like an alt-Minecraft type game. So the game description isn't exceptionally interesting and it seems because they are a three man team they aren't really taking a deep level of advantage of the tech yet.

The tech of Spatial OS is where most of my interest is and how far the right team can really go with what we think of what an MMO could be.i think there are alot of ppl who either dont know or dont care why Spatial OS could be a game changer for this genre.

Deivos

pantaro said:

Deivos said:

The tech is considerably more interesting than the game sadly. They are building the game utilizing the "Spatial OS" which is a new operating system that can be established server-side to run detailed large-scale simulations. What this means is more complex AI, larger and more interactive world spaces, and persistent emulation.

For the most part the game as is being described in the video kind of sounds mostly like an alt-Minecraft type game. So the game description isn't exceptionally interesting and it seems because they are a three man team they aren't really taking a deep level of advantage of the tech yet.

The tech of Spatial OS is where most of my interest is and how far the right team can really go with what we think of what an MMO could be.i think there are alot of ppl who either dont know or dont care why Spatial OS could be a game changer for this genre.

Well it's the tech behind the games, not any game itself.

Most players ain't gonna care much about it sadly.  

DarLorkar

Thousands of players in one area... ya...one of those, i need to see it, and be there, to believe it. 

Hard to get past the huge promises they throw out right at the start:) Sounds too good to be true.

But we shall see i guess. 

Thomas2006

pantaro said:

Deivos said:

The tech is considerably more interesting than the game sadly. They are building the game utilizing the "Spatial OS" which is a new operating system that can be established server-side to run detailed large-scale simulations. What this means is more complex AI, larger and more interactive world spaces, and persistent emulation.

For the most part the game as is being described in the video kind of sounds mostly like an alt-Minecraft type game. So the game description isn't exceptionally interesting and it seems because they are a three man team they aren't really taking a deep level of advantage of the tech yet.

The tech of Spatial OS is where most of my interest is and how far the right team can really go with what we think of what an MMO could be.i think there are alot of ppl who either dont know or dont care why Spatial OS could be a game changer for this genre.

At the end of the day it is still a special OS that runs that ALLOWS you to develop using a bunch of servers as if they where one.

But that still does not solve the problem of developers designing, programming and creating the AI. It is not a magic in a bag solution that provides you with amazing AI, ect. It is a OS that allows you to develop your stuff on top of it. It does not provide the solutions on how to make the AI smarter or anything like that.

It will be interesting to see if Devs push the limits but I am betting most companies and games are going to take the safe right and go with the tryed and true standard AI and designs.

You can have the best most amazing hardware and things that link it all togeather. But at the end of the day if the programmer and designers can not come up with a way to make something interesting on it then it is all for naught.

Case and point is BigWorld offered ALOT of what Spatial OS offered. A way to link MANY (hundreds and even thousands) of servers togeather that dynamicaly scale the work load between them all.  But look at how many dev teams took advantage of that. A properly designs and programmed game on BigWorld could scale to such a size that you would never have experienced lag and could have massive 10k+ battles in a area. The software allowed that by dynamicaly adjusting the load. Just no dev's ever took advantage of it and could program there ideas to take advantage of it.

Spatial OS is just the new buzz in the industry just like BigWorld before it and HeroEngine in between there. It will come and go like the fad it is. Maybe some team will take advantage of it maybe they wont.

Until I see a working game with this next gen amazing AI I will retain my joy as its just coolaid at this time. Wishful dreams that have not been tested in the actual real world. 

Heck the company selling this does not even have it working in there own MMOish game.

Myrdynn

Astropuyo said:

I dunno i dig the idea that a elk can go agro, kill stuff and be a level 100 elk that newbie 23 dies to and it becomes level 101 elk.

Gotta give em credit. They are trying to do something different.
It's a shit day indeed when any voxel building is minecraft only.

Asheron's call had this, mobs that killed people could level up.  We once for fun took an Umbris Shadow and leveled by suicide probably 30 levels.  We then got a group of 9 and it wiped us in 30 seconds, and it leveled again.  We then called basically the entire server, over 200 people showed up and it wiped us all again, it basically leveled so much it became immune.

it was awesome, but soon thereafter they took out mob leveling.

Myrdynn

anyone else read this as Spatula OS?

Deivos

Myrdynn said:

Astropuyo said:

I dunno i dig the idea that a elk can go agro, kill stuff and be a level 100 elk that newbie 23 dies to and it becomes level 101 elk.

Gotta give em credit. They are trying to do something different.
It's a shit day indeed when any voxel building is minecraft only.

Asheron's call had this, mobs that killed people could level up.  We once for fun took an Umbris Shadow and leveled by suicide probably 30 levels.  We then got a group of 9 and it wiped us in 30 seconds, and it leveled again.  We then called basically the entire server, over 200 people showed up and it wiped us all again, it basically leveled so much it became immune.

it was awesome, but soon thereafter they took out mob leveling.

I remember people doing that with banderlings in the noobie areas too.

SpottyGekko

This is tech that will make CoE possible ! 

Or so they claim...

As another poster said earlier in this thread, SpatialOS is just a tool. It's not magic-in-a-box. Somebody still has to design and code the complex behaviour that this tool enables. That's a whole new ball game !

As any experienced programmer will tell you, the more complex and interrelated a piece of software becomes, the more difficult it becomes to maintain and especially, to TEST ! Unexpected consequences result when a small thing is changed in one system. Programmers are notoriously bad at documenting things. I can only shudder at what happens in these small indie teams with massive workloads and backers baying for blood on the forums...

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I always thought the thing that prevented "1000's of players in the same space" wasn't the lack of a tool like SpatialOS, but rather the capability of the player's gfx card. What's the point of having 1000's of players/NPC's in the same place if your gfx card is on it's knees trying to render them ?

SpatialOS runs "in the cloud" and is supposedly infinitely scalable. That's wonderfully impressive marketing, but the dark side of that is that the operating cost of your game can also become infinitely expensive ! Sure, you can just add virtual servers as you need them, but they are not free. Or infinite.

Cloud-based computing is not magic-in-a-box either. Virtual servers are hosted on physical servers. That could potentially mean that part of your calculations are running on computers in a datacenter in Ireland, while the other part is running on computers hosted in California. That's not an issue in business applications, but in action-combat scenario's it could become noticeable.

Deivos

SpottyGekko said:

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I always thought the thing that prevented "1000's of players in the same space" wasn't the lack of a tool like SpatialOS, but rather the capability of the player's gfx card. What's the point of having 1000's of players/NPC's in the same place if your gfx card is on it's knees trying to render them ?

More often it's how the networking layer of the game is built.

While, yes, the ability to render thousands of players at once provides a possible graphical bottleneck, there are ways around that with graphics scaling of cheesing it with low-poly models, LOD, dynamic resolutions, etc.

The primary limitation is the way in which the networking layer is built however. Most game engines are simply not capable of handling a lot of user data efficiently as in many cases the client is processing all of the game data in order to render out what's happening. Servers can handle the bulk of complex processing and synchronization that doesn't necessarily have to be done on the client side, but there is still the need to send the resulting data to the client to let the game/engine know what's up again. The back and forth communication increases in the amount of data with every avatar in the local area and depending on the complexity of processes being run that does two things.

One, it's more interactive objects that the client has to track, render, and collect feedback on/from.

Two, it's more data being sent back and forth between the client and server.

This stacks a lot of processes in the background that the engine has to be able to neatly organize and send off in batches regularly, and there is generally no convenient solution to this matter.

There are creative solutions however. Some engines run secondary components dedicated solely to pulling information from the engine and packaging it to communicate with the server almost like a mini-server on your PC to pad the time everything takes to happen. Some simply run on delayed input that try to maintain synchronization and smoothness by making everyone essentially play in the slight past. Then there's time and step locked servers that batch actions and only run updates in a sequence. And then the much more complex designs of primary and secondary servers communicating back and forth to create multi-stage synchronization of events (secondary server hosts a user region and feeds updates to the primary server, but doesn't necessarily wait for the primary server for updates, using a bias to judge what actions can and cannot be taken until the primary server feeds back a synchronized state with the rest of the secondary servers),

There's a buncha other things too, but point here being, the network code and server structure are the greatest hurdles in allowing a large volume of users interact at once. Most network programmers just aren't able to build the code necessary to pull it off. That's not a slight to them, it's actually that game engine network code is some of the most complex shiz you can decide to do when it comes to large scale data communication.