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Presentation of Infinity (sci-fi, space & planet based MMO)
Nyast
Member Posts: 84
Hello,
I'm here to present you a new sci-fi MMO in development ( space and planet based ) called Infinity. I tried to send some news to mmorpg.com a couple of times before but didn't get any answer, so i thought i might give a try to the forums instead now.
Infinity is heavily inspired by the old classic "Elite" and its sequel, "Frontier". The goal is to reproduce a huge and immersive universe, composed of millions of solar systems ( all unique, and generated on-the-fly by procedural techniques, similar to what 64 KB demo coders do ) with dynamic orbits and realistic distances & scales. One of the main features is the ability to land anywhere on planets, using seamless & trickless space to atmosphere transitions. This effect can be seen on the videos available on the website.
Planned features include: action-based combat ( not character oriented, but done in real-time ), a dynamic economy, trading & scientific research, corporations, forming business & factories, player-owned stations & planets, cities, full PvP, quests & missions, a player-influenced storyline, newtonian physics with computer assistance, and more.
The game is roughly at 35% of its development, and is not planned to be released before end 2007.
More informations, screenshots and videos can be seen on the official website:
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity
Here is a small selection of screenshots:
(Note: these screenshots are a work-in-progress and many features are missing, like some special effects, vegetation on planets, clouds, cities, etc..)
Comments
The videos look awesome too.
wow, if they get the gameplay mechanics right Eve might actually have some competition in the Sci-fi genre
Make of it what you will.
Those are very pretty screenshots.
I'm going to be critical here b/c I like to see you guys succeed, so here we go.
I saw the features page and you're proposing some interesting stuff that I'd like to see you guys pull off, but then I saw your development page:
* Generic 3D engine: ~70% (kernel, textures, scene graph, mesh/objects, shaders, etc..)
* Planet/Space 3D engine: ~55% (terrain, planet textures, starfield, nebulaes, water, clouds, vegetation, etc..)
* Astrophysics: ~55% (galaxy generation, system gen, planets heightfields, orbits, parameters, etc..)
* Newtonian physics: ~25% (spaceships physics, collision detection, flight navigation)
* Sound engine: ~10% (3D sounds and musics)
* Networking: ~25% (TCP/UDP, network protocol, login/out, databases, etc..)
* User interface: ~5% (user input, widgets, windows)
* Gameplay: ~3% (actual game logic)
* Content: ~5% (spaceships/stations/cities 3D models and textures, misc. 2D art, sounds & musics)
Those are some scary development numbers if you guys are already 35% into development. You've barely begun to scratch the surface of the development issues that'll drive your game design. When I look at what you guys are proposing for game features and how much development effort you've put into it, I walk away with the feeling that you guys don't have anything substantial to backup those propositions.
It's great to see this project shooting for a persistant universe. Please keep in mind that a persistant universe means that gameplay will spill over into the real world and will therefore need a support infrastructure.
Best of luck guys.
Wow...
Definitely going to check this out
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
I made the assumption that there is more than one person working on this b/c quite frankly any project of this scope and nature requires more man-hours and more skill sets than any one person can humanly do.
Of course if there is only 1 person doing the development so far, then that's another area of concern.
A few thousands per server. Players will not be uniformely spread through the universe, but concentrated into the core systems ( a few thousand inhabited systems ). 99.9% of the galaxy will probably never be explored except by a few intrepid people.
The website is.. innacurate. I am the only programmer, but the team includes many artists and musicians. If you think this isn't possible for one programmer, i suggest you document yourself on what procedural programming is. Of course, i'm not saying it is easy either. If you want a better idea of the grand picture and what the current developments are, you can follow all the progress week by week on the forums with the dev. journals.
Infinity: The Quest for Earth, space-sim MMO with a seamless procedural galaxy.
Thank you for your answer. Could you detail it ? What issues are you thinking to, exactly ? I do have professional experience in the industry and i've already spent an insane amount of time on this project ( probably close to 5000 man-hours work not counting the research / prototyping, that's close to a second full-time job for me ) in the past years, so if that's "not much development effort", i don't really know what is.
Infinity: The Quest for Earth, space-sim MMO with a seamless procedural galaxy.
Crikey!
If you can pull this off then you have yourself a customer.
No longer visiting MMORPG.com.
Hm, 5000 man-hours? - that is roughly 2.5 man-years - given about 100 man-years for all aspects of a game of that size, programming and debugging is about 15-20% of the task = 15-20 man-years. So if you want to work alone on the programming part, you will need about 6-8 times of what you have done already and the game will come out in 2020.
Even if this game would just need 25 man-years of total effort, the programming part would still be about 5 years and the game might come out in the year 2009, if the rest of 20 man-years work will done by your partners just in time. 20/2.5 = 8 people working full-time on the rest of the game.
As I see it for this simple calculation there is no way to launch that game with any chance of success in the year 2007 with only you programming. You definately need help.
Ragosch
How did you came up with that 100 man-years work number ? And what makes you think programming is only 20% of the work ?
Infinity: The Quest for Earth, space-sim MMO with a seamless procedural galaxy.
Programming is just 5% of the work, programming and debugging is around 20%.
I see it from the simple fact that most game developers have studios with around 25-30 people in the developing team and such a game needs about 3-4 years to develop. This is something in between 75 and 120 man-year, am I right? - ok, I have chose 100, because it is a number good to remember.
I am in programming for over 30 years and the programming part of an applciation including debugging was never more than 25-30% or the effort needed to produce the sellable product. Ok, this was not in the gaming industry nor did those applications need high-quality graphics, but they needed much networking ... and there is a huge pitfall if you think that is done in an instance. With tens of thousands of players online at the same time you might discover problems never seen before.
Ragosch
"Fear not death; for the sooner we die, the longer shall we be immortal."
The problem with your calculation is that i'm not doing an Everquest clone in space, or a normal software. You are discarding pretty much all the things specific to this project: the space-based setting ( which means no items to model or characters to skin or animate ), the procedural programming ( which means almost no world design to do manually ), the low amount of content ( i'm not planning to start with hundreds of ships, a few tens at most ), all the prototyping already done ( including the networking / database ), the experience i already have in all domains related to game programming, etc.. Don't make me wrong: i'm not saying it is easy or certain that it will be ready by end 2007. But these are my own estimations and so far i haven't experienced any big delay in my deadlines.
Infinity: The Quest for Earth, space-sim MMO with a seamless procedural galaxy.
I have to say I'm very impressed by what you've done so far. I do share the concerns of others that only 1 person is doing the programming but this is definitely a title I will be keeping a sharp sharp eye on.
I would make 1 recommendation: Don't make the mistake that Frontier did. Avoid pure newtonian physics or you'll wind up with a VERY fringe game because most people don't like having to deal with force and mass vectors to figure out how to fly. Stick to standard flight or maybe use Jumpgate as a model and go with partial newtonian but mostly atmospheric flight style for ships.
I *loved* elite I also loved privateer. I hated frontier witha passion though because the newtonian physics were such a PITA to deal with. Combat turned into a game of "get big ship and run over the badguy with it" for me.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
An interview has recently been published on the site moddb.com and it might be of interest to a few of you if you do not want to dig into the website:
Moddb.com interview
Infinity: The Quest for Earth, space-sim MMO with a seamless procedural galaxy.
Nyast, first of all I want to say that your work looks pretty good so far. A bit too good maybe, because i found in your forum that you are worrying about those things if a spaceship might reflect nicely in some reflecting parts of a space station ... honestly, am I there to mirror myself in a space station or am I doing business at that station?- Dont loose yourself into too much detail which most of the people will atmost recognize once and then forget about it.
What you said about your progress sounds a bit different that those statements on your development site, maybe you should update it, because it is misleading. Especially this made me wonder ...
* Networking: ~25% (TCP/UDP, network protocol, login/out, databases, etc..)
* User interface: ~5% (user input, widgets, windows)
* Gameplay: ~3% (actual game logic)
* Content: ~5% (spaceships/stations/cities 3D models and textures, misc. 2D art, sounds & musics)
When I read this I assume ...
Networking 25% - tested with how many concurrent connections?
User interface 5% - you just have an idea of it, but already coded is nothing, correct?
Gameplay 3% - much worse than user interface, atmost an idea of how it might work, correct?
Content 5% - hm, what do I need thousands of worlds for where I can land on each of them, if there is no original content there (procedural content is meaningless, not worth visiting)?
Just a few questions coming to my mind when I read those percentages. I really hope you might complete your work just because it looks great, I really wish you much, much luck, but unfortunately I think you will really need it.
Ragosch
Do you remember Noctis?
This looks like a 21st century version so far. I'd like to say like the seemless terrian/space engine, but as another poster pointed out, you have to actually have interesting things to do in that vast space.
Having a lot of players in a FFA PvP by itself could be interesting, but eventually you'll need the kind of content you can't create with math formula
I'm a big fan of small projects so I'll keep my eye on how things are going. Hope to see this kind of open-ended game do well.
This definetly starting to pan out. If you start being more public you can probably get yourself some publishers to step into this project and help flesh the rest out. As soon as you get a tech demo up and if the game is as good as it looks then it should be pretty easy to get some corporate sponsers and expand your development team to push the game out sooner.
Wow, one person on this whole project?? VERY impressive, but somewhat doubtful. But you seem very experienced and looks like you know what you're doing.
If this works out, I'll be you're best friend
. Lol
Oh! And I'll play also. Haha.
This siggy is CGI that my cousin made in 4 hours.
Wow.. this looks absolutely beautiful.
Being an ex-EvE player of 2 1/2 years, I am looking foward to seeing more. EvE is a great game but lacks something ALLOT of people, including myself, have wanted for a long time. The ability to land and simply walk around.. see other characters. Even if there's absolutely nothing on most the planets except for vegetation and some lower animal species, at least it would be something different.
Looks great, keep it up!