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programming for entertainment
http://forums.osdever.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=186
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Author:  Ford [ Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: programming for entertainment

You still have all of the game world to take into account. Quad core.

You could probably pull this off with a AMD Athlon II X4, 4GB RAM, and an HDD to store everything. You would also need a high end network connection, and a really really good reliable NIC. That kind of system runs about 200USD if you build it yourself (at least where I am), assuming that you already have the case and optical drive.

I think you are low balling the processing requirements of a system like this. You are talking about a massive amount of scripting language code being sent to a machine rather frequently, and then keeping tabs on how that code interacts with other code in the game world. I am assuming that you are going to make all of these little character bots objects, and that there will be predefined object attributes that must be filled in, and then others that players can create? I am also assuming that there would be a base level of world interaction? Would there be weapons that these bots can wield? Can players create those weapons or are those static in game objects? Can players create bots to build things in the game world? If so, you will potentially need quite a bit of storage space. How are you going to prevent people from writing malicious character bots that could potentially crash the game world?

Author:  chibicitiberiu [ Thu Aug 12, 2010 12:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: programming for entertainment

The system requirements depend on the complexity of the world. You want to go for 3D, you want realistic physics (like in crysis for example :D), and each character to have it's own model... than you will need way more than that.
And you will also need a way to transfer really fast the model from the server to the client, since no one wants to wait a day to download all the models that are on the server, and the whole map.

If you want the user to be able to use controllers, keyboard, mouse etc. you need bandwidth, etc.
It really depends on the complexity you want to go for.

But what about this approach: the user downloads an SDK from the game's website, and installs it, and in the preferred IDE he writes a program using the given SDK. Under the hood, this SDK should send constantly information to the server (position, current weapon and all possible attributes). The server should send back information about other players, the map model and everything else. Also the server should have some 'physics' rules, like max_walking_speed, and so on.

So the player runs the program on his computer, and interacts the way he wants (AI, controller etc).

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