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clintbellanger / flare

Free Libre Action Roleplaying Engine
http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/
GNU General Public License v3.0
166 stars 41 forks source link

Multiplayer #672

Closed igorko closed 11 years ago

igorko commented 11 years ago

I know that it's not priority atm, but I really would like to see Flare multiplayer. There is manasource.org project, that builds a complete 2D MMORPG platform on SDL. It is really cool and maybe Flare could share it's code. So if anyone is interested in porting - do it!

clintbellanger commented 11 years ago

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/36jk22/

I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but it's worth saying here too. There are several reason why Flare isn't multiplayer.

I don't have much experience writing network code. I understand the fundamentals but haven't done much beyond that. I do know that single player games are vastly simpler.

Already Flare is borderline too ambitious. The project is about 3 years old and we're almost to the point where we can start making the first game. Many projects would have died by now. One reason we've survived this long is I've taken a strong stance to keep the scope in check. I doubt we'd have ever finished a multiplayer game.

Secondly, I vastly prefer single-player games. For example, I played Diablo I, II, and III almost entirely single-player. So I'm setting out to make games that focus on what I really like. That keeps me motivated.

Flare 1.0 (the engine) will not have multiplayer. I vastly simplified the code's layout thanks to relying on single player. E.g. having all the action based on a fixed frame rate. A proper multiplayer game would have a completely different architecture from day one. If someone wanted to take Flare and make it multiplayer, I'd suggest taking an existing multiplayer engine (or writing a new one) and adding Flare-like game logic on top of it. That would be easier than trying to retrofit multiplayer code into Flare's source.

stefanbeller commented 11 years ago

Personally I'd use mana/manasource technology for the networking part and hack all required parts into that (such as isometric maps and some map events are not supported by the server so far), but that would bring a working infrastructure on networking, which I'd consider a huge milestone.

Ablu commented 11 years ago

Still. Adding isometric support to mana and manaserv (less work here) is still a lot to do.

igorko commented 11 years ago

Well, my initial idea was to add multiplayer mode to Flare, but not transforming it into MMORPG. These are very different things. Also I'm sure manasource mechanics is cool, but just adding Flare art to manasource and calling it Flare Multiplayer is bad idea. Flare is original game with it's cool features and it should not became a "mod" of manasource.

stefanbeller commented 11 years ago

Continue discussion at https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare-engine/issues/431