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In the form of a MU* (as has already been tried)

4 (4.3%)

Empire building browser-based game, using the Frost and Flame engine or making it from scratch

10 (10.9%)

Adventure RPG browser-based game, using the Dragon Knights engine or making it from scratch

4 (4.3%)

A dungone crawler or maybe cooperative fortress builder client-based game using the Eclipse engine (would be real time, and have better graphics than browser-based games)

25 (27.2%)

Cooperative fortress building browser-based game, with traditional DF top-view 2D tiles

45 (48.9%)

a deviant of the cooperative fortress building browser-based game, were the tiles are grouped into bigger "sections"

3 (3.3%)

Other (propose it in the thread please)

1 (1.1%)

Total Members Voted: 92

[Servant Corps]

Kinda hard to hawk my own skills when the ideas for this DF MMORPG is drifting away from my expertise, but this idea of running Drawf Fortresses could be 'manually' done via Dragon Knights (meaning you need a mod to carefully control the balance of the game). There can be a village, and for the village to prosper...you can go around and do stuff, such as Mining and Fishing. Eventually, you gain levels and can expand and find other villages and try to claim them for your own Drawven Clan. Maybe one day, war between Drawven Clans can be implemented.

Of course, the only way to Mine and to Fish is to engage in "encounters" and "fighting"...meaning that a Gold Mine may succed in killing you but...

[Hawkfrost]

Sounds cool, and funny, but it might not be good for this project.
I donno, it will need fine-tuning anyway.

[webadict]

Kinda hard to hawk my own skills when the ideas for this DF MMORPG is drifting away from my expertise, but this idea of running Drawf Fortresses could be 'manually' done via Dragon Knights (meaning you need a mod to carefully control the balance of the game). There can be a village, and for the village to prosper...you can go around and do stuff, such as Mining and Fishing. Eventually, you gain levels and can expand and find other villages and try to claim them for your own Drawven Clan. Maybe one day, war between Drawven Clans can be implemented.

Of course, the only way to Mine and to Fish is to engage in "encounters" and "fighting"...meaning that a Gold Mine may succed in killing you but...

You strike the gold mine in the rock with the pick.
It flies off in a bloody arc!
The gold mine strikes you in the arm with the rock.
It is blocked!
You counterattack!
You strike the gold mine in the rock with the pick.
It is blocked!
The gold mine strikes you in the head with the rock.
It flies off in a bloody arc!

[Servant Corps]

Sounds cool, and funny, but it might not be good for this project.
I donno, it will need fine-tuning anyway.

I think I finally got a better idea. Mining and Fishing and all that menial tasks can be 'quests'. The first part of the quest is actually finding where the Mine is located. Once you find it, you press the button stating "Mine", and volia, you did it, helping the Drawven community. The problem is that if you do it as a quest, you would not be able to repeat it again...which is why I at first did not consider it. (Prehaps these Mines can move...after a certain amount of drawves find and 'Mined' the area, it may be out of materials and be seen as abanonded.)

Attacking mines however seem far more stupid though.

Anyway, I always saw the main draw of MMORPGs is the mass genocide and destruction that the player avatar usually does within the game...not simply hitting rocks.

[Poltifar]

Wow, I go get some sleep and when I get back, so many new replies...

Well, lets start making a list of suggestions:
-Empire building kind of game using FAF (frost and flame) as the base engine, or made from scratch
-Adventure game using Dragon Knights as base engine, or made from scratch
-Using Eclipse engine to make more of a dungeon crawl game (not really browser based since it needs a client, but still good enough)
-Cooperative fortress building, with traditional 2D top view with tiles
-Qwertyuiopas' deviant of the fortress building, with a more general grouping of tiles and buildings
-And the ULTIMATE goal (in my opinion), the combination of all the aspects of DF as Servant Corps proposed, as in the choice to be adventurer or fortress leader, and have these different playstyles interract in a consistent way in a consistent world. This should probably be classified into a very long term goal, we should start with one play style and then expand into the other gradually.



As for how to actually make the game, it definitely depends on wether we want it to be a real time game with graphics (even if minimal), or a text based and tick-based more traditional browser game. If we go with the real-time, I think Eclpise is the best choice. If more traditional browser based, either use one of the afformentioned engines, or PHP or ASP to make ours from scratch.

(I'll put all this in a poll now, tell me if I forgot any other suggestion)

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I'm in favor of using the Eclipse engine, and for the game to turn out like Hawkfrost said, like FF1-3 and similar games. I really like these games

[Istrian]

I know flash a tiny bit, and I could learn java in a short while.

I'll help wherever I can.

Fortress Mode sounds veeery interesting.
The coding might be tough for all the jobs though, but it would be pretty sweet.
Maybe we could have more than one fort that people could join, and eventually there could be wars/trading between them.

Works perfectly with my idea as well. I was kinda hoping that would be the case, except what would happen when one fortress got too big. Please say Tantrum Spiral, because that would be awesome.

When a fortress gets too big it gets bigger sieges (and sieging armies would be controlled by us, instead of an AI). It will also get other random events, until it dies, or until the players get bored.

I am not sure about having to "fight" to gather resources. Perhaps having the right tool for the job should be enough. Also, IMHO death of a dwarf should be permanent to encourage digging coffins. Of course the player can then make another dwarf who will come as a migrant.

As for my proposal, we can work progressively towards an empire-building game with the following milestones :
1) One fortress, unlimited living dwarves, no world map, sieges from nowhere, caravans from nowhere.
2) Multiple fortresses, limited number of living dwarves in each, simple abstract world map, sieges from nowhere, caravans from nowhere.
3) Fortresses can siege each other, can send caravans to each other, can create new fortresses, dwarves can migrate between fortresses.
4) Sites other than fortresses (like goblin towers, ruins, caves) that can be sieged/adventured into.
5) Umm... the previous objectives should take a lot of time as they are.

[Akroma]

I am for the traditional top 2d view, but not for the cooperative fortress build

that would lead to too much chaos

I'd say a cooperative world, where everyone builds his own fortress


this implies army arc gets finished before we can make this game

to solve the problem of varying computer speeds, I'd say it should be turn-based

one season is one turn
overland battles can take place in an additional turn

[Poltifar]

I'd prefer cooperative fortress building, because if its only each one builds his own fortress, it'll be almost identical to any other empire-building game that is turned based. All you would do is, for example, choose from a drop down list what the fortress would do this turn, check how much generic 'food' resourse and 'money' resource you had, and log off for today, since there would be no use in adding micromanagement stuff...

On the other hand, if each player is a single dwarf and not a whole fortress, the exact food you eat, the item you make, the square you mine... all of this can be interesting, especially when other players help/hinder your work. Heck, the whole point of multiplayer DF would be the chaos!

I'm not sure that what I'm saying is understandable, I just can't describe my exact ideas, maybe later when I have a more concrete idea... Basically, I really want single-dwarf-control, with NPC dwarfs if there aren't enough players, and instead of turn-based, how about 'energy' based? You have X amount of energy per real-life day, each action costs Y energy, etc. that way even if people have less time/less fast computers, the game can still be balanced. Also, an advantage of single-dwarf-control would be that it is very easy to add adventure mode into the game.

[Istrian]

that would lead to too much chaos

Kind of the whole point : players who can't organize in their fort get wiped out by wild creatures or the first siege. Players who manage somehow to work as a team get better, bigger fortresses. This will lead to some interesting twists : some fortresses will try to encourage people to work as a team by using rewards, others will choose to exclude those who want to play "hermit", while some will kill anyone who doesn't fit in.

Too much chaos = tantrum spiral, the Bane of all Forts

I'd say a cooperative world, where everyone builds his own fortress
this implies army arc gets finished before we can make this game

The game does not require DF to be played. I don't see what Army Arc has to do with it.

to solve the problem of varying computer speeds, I'd say it should be turn-based

Real-time could work as well since the game won't require a fast computer as it is likely to be a browser-based game. Of course real-time would imply a fast internet connection.

NPC dwarfs if there aren't enough players, and instead of turn-based, how about 'energy' based? You have X amount of energy per real-life day, each action costs Y energy, etc. that way even if people have less time/less fast computers, the game can still be balanced.

And energy would be replenished by sleeping/eating/drinking. Sleep occurs whenever a player disconnects, and the energy bar slowly fills until the player reconnects. Eating and drinking would instantaneously fill a bit of the energy bar but would require resources (food, drink). The only problem I can see with that is when a siege occurs when everyone is sleeping, but that can be solved by generating sieges only when a certain number of dwarves are active.

As for NPCs I'm not too sure. They would require a rather heavy AI to be really useful.

[qwertyuiopas]

So here are the essential decisions:

Developers:
-One developer
-Team of developers
-Anone who wants to help

Type:
-Browser based MMO
-Browser based non-MMO

Language:
*PHP
+Fast to set up
+Would work on most web servers
+Can run on any internet enabled device
-No real time interactivity
-A certain level of abstraction is required
-Need web server to test

*JAVA
+Real time
+Allows 3D
+Fast
+Better graphics than PHP
-Requires custom client-server code
-Client can be hacked
-Hard to learn
-Requires download or is large

*FLASH
+Fast
+Real time
+Good graphics
+Easier than JAVA
-Client can be hacked
-Requires download
-Must write own client-server code



So, what will it be?

[webadict]

Choose PHP. It's not necessary to be Java or flash, at least not yet. If we start with PHP, we can get an idea of what we want in the game, and then move to a real-time version if it would work better.

It'd be MMO Fortress where each dwarf is individually controlled to acquire (or hopelessly squander) resources.

[Istrian]

I'd be in favor of a small core team of developpers each with his own responsibilities, but anyone wanting to help would be given something to do according to his skills.

An MMO sounds like a better idea since a non-MMO would not even need to be browser-based : it could be a stand-alone game.

As for the technologies to use I would think Java or Flash are better suited to the task, even though the game would not need 3D graphics (ASCII is good). Though I would still prefer to have a design document ready before choosing our tools as by then we would have a better idea of what we want and what we need to get it done. It is never easy nor fast to convert code to another language should we decide to change during development.

[Poltifar]

I don't know about the number of developper stuff, but I definitely think it should be an MMO.

For the programming launguage, I don't like the idea of Java or flash, mostly because of them being harder to learn than PHP, and also because of the fact that the client could be hacked (like qwertyuiopas  said), and good graphics are not very important, so I think a 100% server-sided game using PHP would be preferable.

We *could* use ASP instead of PHP, since Microsoft's Visual Studio Web Developper is easy to use and saves alot of time on the more complicated and/or tedious things to do, but sadly, it's harder to find people that are accomplished ASP programmers, and web servers that support it are also hard to find...

Istrian, what exactly should the design document contain for us to be able to begin? Just basic concepts and ideas, or more detailed stuff like formulas for skill calculation/etc...

[Nilocy]

I'd quite like to see a co-op fortress building game. It would be quite interesting to see maybe everyone whose playing, 7 or something, take over one of the dwarves and get on with building a fort and then each wave of imigrants get shared between the 7 people or something.

I'd also be happy to test this game and report stuff in great detail. I'm nothing at coding

[Hawkfrost]

ASCII graphics would work fine, but I don't know much about PHP, but I could learn.
I say we don't go with Java or Flash, because hacking=unfairness, and we are DF players, we don't care about graphics.