Orbiter MMORPG

Kaito's Idea of an Orbiter Multiplayer Platform

This was made by Kaito from Orbiter-Forum on November 15th, 2009.

Following a discussion on Orbiter-Forum, someone though of a Orbiter RPG. Everyone pointed him to these multiplayer links. However, if you think about it, there can be two different idea's for multiplayer: an "Orbiter" type multiplayer, where there are no set goals, the goals are made by your brain, or an "RPG" type multiplayer, where you have a goal, no matter how small or insignificant. A common "goal" in most MMORPG's is to become stronger. A goal for an RPG Style Orbiter would be to, say, make a base on the moon, or keep some explorers alive by sending supplies.

Synchronizing time

I have a feeling this would be "simple" (I am not a coder, so I don't know to much about this): Have a server, and when someone connects to this server, change the clients time to the servers time

Lag

Eve Online has exactly one server, and they can support more then 40,000 people on it. Why? Because they have over 1,500 "solar systems", each with their own stations, asteroid belts, etc. All these are "hubs", where nearly everyone gathers. Almost no one is in between these "hubs". If you are not inside one of these "hubs", the ships aren't rendered, so there isn't much lag caused by one client. This same sort of idea can be used in orbiter: Don't retrieve information on it unless it is within rendering range. Now, of course, this causes a problem when you are going to the ISS, and there are 15 people in line, waiting to dock. If this is the case, maybe intentionally slow-down the information sent to the Client. Example: The Rendering Distance is 100km. You are 101km away from ISS, just passing into Rendering Distance now. There are 15 people around the ISS currently, which would surely slow-down your client if the information was sent all at once. So, orbiter renders each ship "separately" based on a "Level of Importance". The ISS would be rendered first, then maybe at 95km, another ship, then at 90km, another ship. This way, You would still see all the ships in time to make adjustments, but your client wasn't flooded all at once with a bunch of information that wont be useful until later.

Goals

The idea of goals and consequences could be what drives Orbiter Multiplayer. Forgetting to de-orbit your fuel tank and having it be a problem for the next guy could lead to a bunch of different things (Space Terrorism and Grieving (Intentionally causing other players to have a bad time)). However, teamwork could also arise: Trying to build a space station by yourself would be difficult, so you would need more people to help construct it, launch, monitor, etc.

Time Acceleration

The nice thing about Orbiter is the ability to make time go fast. You can land on the moon and be back in time for lunch. However, this causes an obvious problem in multiplayer. However, I think this could be resolved in some sort of way: 1) Confine most things to Earth and Moon. If someone has the time and patience to go to Mars, no one is stopping them, but it would be a boring 7 months. 2) If someone would like to time accelerate, put in a "request", which would be sent to everyone on the server at the time. If there is one "decline", then the time acceleration would not go through, until everyone agreed. The "request" would state the degree(10x, 100000x) and time (5 seconds, 10 seconds) of the acceleration. 3) "Off-line" people would be affected by this acceleration, but they could not vote. They would be subject to the needs of everyone else 3.1) This poses a problem. Lets say someone is going to the moon, and they log off. The next day they log on to find out they already passed the moon because of an un-natural amount of time acceleration by other players. I think people would learn that this is a necessary evil of time acceleration 4) Abuse of the system: Yes, people could abuse it, but that's what fair moderators are for