Question and Answer Session with the Developers of The Repopulation!

username509

Seems like the developers of The Repopulation have been VERY busy.  This is shaping up to be a good game.

The mods don't like it when I copy paste entire articles so here's a link.

http://sandboxer.org/?p=426

 

From the interview it states that the game is heavily influenced from both SWG and UO.  It looks like the Sandbox I've been waiting for.  I'll have to devide my time up between The Repopulation and Mortal Online when The Repop is released.  

 

An excert about combat

"J.C. Smith: You can toggle between them at any time. There is actually no

difference between the two to the server. The difference is all client

side and just a matter of personal preference. Server side in a

traditional RPG system you have a set target (or position) and an

ability or spell that is being used. Our system still works in the exact

same manner, even in action mode. When in action mode you just aim and

shoot, and it uses the speed of clicks, what you were aimed at, and the

position of previous clicks to determine the action. Rather than the

ability being sent to the server and then responded to, in Action mode

you’ll play the FX client side first. So you see what your doing.

However, it goes through a determination scheme client side to determine

which ability was used and then it just sends that to the server in the

same way that you just clicked an action button and the server then

sends back the result, which is played to others and which may include

additional FX for you.

So I guess a good real world example there. Let’s say you have a Rifle

equipped and you fired in an area near an opponent who was ducking

behind cover. None of those shots hit him, but they were spread in the

area nearby. The client would check to see if you had the the

Suppressing Fire ability, and if you did and it was not on a cooldown it

would send the Suppressing Fire request to the server as your ability

used. This is all validated on the server side in the same way that a

normal RPG press would take place. There is no additional server load

here, except that we needed to allow for ability requests to come

through more quickly.

In action mode there are three basic functions, which will be remappable.

The left mouse button is your fire or interact button. The right mouse

button uses a Momentum based action, and the CTRL key toggles a

Defensive action. You interact with whatever you are aimed at, which

probably works best in first person mode. If you click on a friendly

target then it takes into account the previous mouse movements, the type of

action and if your target was friendly or hostile and it

automatically determines an appropriate ability. There are fallback

abilities that are used if an ability is on cooldown or otherwise not

useable. For example if you had two types of Head shots available, the

strongest version would be used by default, but if that was currently on a

cooldown it would fall back to the weaker ability.

In the end the difference between the two modes is just a preference, with there

being no real advantage one way or the other."