Originally posted by hakubylicks

Gurantee you 100% that Darkfall is no where even remotely near the quality Archlord is.

For once i agree with you, Darkfall is 100x better.

i agree those numbers are a bit unrealistic, especially as the percentages reported in your subject add to 125%...

DF devs have said they plan to start with a small number of servers and grow from there, which is IMO the smart way to go. if done well, and not too hardcore, i could see DF getting 250K subscribers over a year or 2.

DF fans may be optimistic, but DF trolls are flat-out stupid.

Originally posted by hakubylicks

Originally posted by Trogg13

 dude the client is not in Java. the server *is* the game, where all the world geometry is, the physics, the AI, loot, etc - all the rules of the game are there.

Do you even know how much it costs to build a professional grade server for a MMORPG?

It costs hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why do you think Engines like Hero and Big World cost 1 million dollars to own a license to?

Now please someone tell me how Aventurine with their measly 20 or 30 amateurs can build a professional grade server and networking system capable of supporting 10,000 or even 3,000 people online at once... in a FPS style gameplay setup.

Well, i've been coding commercial internet-facing applications professionally for over 10 years so i believe i do know a thing or 2 about programming and software development.

you're miles wrong on numerous things:

- 100s of thousands of $$ to build a 50 PC cluster is nothing. depending on your supplier, it may well cost you quite a bit less than 6 figures too.

- 10K simultaneous connections to a well-built load-balanced server is nothing, as long as you have the bandwidth.

- the bandwidth required per connection while playing is actually very small, typically less than 5KB/sec.

- EVE handles > 35K concurrent players every night for example, and the architecture described for DF is much more robust & flexible than EVE's.

- licenses for the unreal engine start at $300K, anyone can write a 3d game engine, and many people have. they are often written by a single programmer and the amount of code required is relatively small, less than 200K lines for instance. it's the capabilities and speed of the engine that is where the differentiation is.

- everything i've read about Darkfall's technical details has been spot on the money for technical accuracy, and has also come across as a really smart way to approach mmo server design de novo.

i understand why you're incredulous, you don't see other MMO trying to do asynchronous zone loading, dynamic distribution & load balancing to try to get high concurrency numbers but frankly this tech has been used for other server applications for many years, it's just been ignored by the conventional game development companies because - i presume - they are more interested in churning games out, not in spending a couplle of years perfecting their server architecture. 

Originally posted by erawropav

Wake up. Darkfall is a complete innovation. It's been revolutionising the way people think about PVP MMOs for years already. The only thing that has slowed down its release, despite the fact that several people who have actually seen it report how good it looked, is because the devs are obsessive about the game's quality and want the public beta to be relatively bug-free.

fixed. and now i agree with you too.

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Originally posted by roguetech

we know the client has some Java in it.

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Physics can be in the client, if the server has a check to prevent cheating. The "world" could also be in the client, again, with a check against cheating. Any instanced AI could be included in the client. ANY instanced content (some AI, loot, character physics, etc., can be included in the client, to remove load from the server.
For instance, you shoot an arrow at an enemy. If there is no one else around, your client determines the trajectory, and draws the arrow, and determines the damage. This data is sent to the server, which double checks (using a simple "pointing in the right direction" equation) that it was a hit, and that the damage is in the right ball park. If there are other people near enough to see it, the server tells them the position and character info (i.e. what weapon/arrow), and environmental data (if necessary, such as wind), and the client on that person's computer would render the arrow flight. When the creature dies, and you loot it, your client could determine what loot, and the server check that it is valid loot for that creature.

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none of that is right. all the physics, collision, loot, AI etc - ie: everything to do with the game - is determined by the server, otherwise it's too easy to packet sniff the netwrok traffic and reverse-engineer a client or mod that allows cheating.

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Although I'm sure most MMORPG's limit the power of the client to prevent cheating, I'm also sure they push as much computation to the client as possible. Considering the "fancy mp3 player with graphics" can be more than 10GB on some MMO's, I have to say the mp3 player is certainly fancy enough to qualify as a smattering of "game logic".

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Originally posted by Arcken

Still waiting on that promised video....

Yep. We all are.

dude the client is not in Java. the server *is* the game, where all the world geometry is, the physics, the AI, loot, etc - all the rules of the game are there. the client is basically just a fancy mp3 player with graphics that displays what it's told to by the server.

Originally posted by Theodgrim

If you want me to summarize my thoughts, here you go: they are amatuers making their first game and learning the hard way. 

I think there are strong elements of that. IMO they also come across as quite obsessive about getting it all "just right". Put it all together, the game was always going to take a long time.

Originally posted by Arcken

At least it has a publisher.

So does Darkfall.

ZING!!!!!

Funny that you love WOW so much you're here following Darkfall too.

DOUBLE ZING!!!!

now that's what i call pwned.

Originally posted by Arcken

Originally posted by Trogg13

Originally posted by hakubylicks

Please don't make yourself look like an ass by trying to degrade Blizzard modellers and artists which are basically the best in the world.

World of Warcraft quality of work completely destroys Darkfall in every single area from modelling to texturing and everything in between.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/37992.html

 

I disagree, i find Darkfall's graphics and graphical style to be considerably better. WOW graphics are seriously outdated.

 

Ill take an out dated game over vaporware any day.

except WotLK isn't released either.

ZING!!!

and i would rather do anything than play the pointless, mindless, repetition that is WOW.

Originally posted by hakubylicks

Please don't make yourself look like an ass by trying to degrade Blizzard modellers and artists which are basically the best in the world.

World of Warcraft quality of work completely destroys Darkfall in every single area from modelling to texturing and everything in between.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/37992.html

From a graphics sperspective that video is seriously mediocre. below mediocre.

WOW graphics are seriously outdated, I find Darkfall's graphics and graphical style to be considerably better.

I agree, it's high time they started putting out more videos/screenshots. Or maybe the August one will be so amazing it'll be enough, who knows. Point is though, pretty much everything they said they would show, they have shown, or are showing soon.

Originally posted by AnIrishPunk

Wasn't Origin NEW to the concept of MMO's when they released UO.. and look how far it went before EA took over.

 

Just my two cents.

yeah and Half-Life was Valve's first game, etc etc. The trolls choose to ignore the obvious facts in favour of irrelevant minutia, unfounded speculation, and blatant lies, often all three in the one response. the level of delusion can be really quite impressive.

Originally posted by Polarization

It might all just be a coincedence, but i doubt it, but of course you or anyone else is free to decide for themselves.

Oh i know he *has* worked on darkfall, we just don't know if he still is (or not). the last reference to AI programmer we have is Mirco, as i linked.

Originally posted by zaxtor99

 

No health bar? NO UI at all? Bullshit.

Maybe you should try watching the videos... 

I can't understand why u come here when you just keep embarrassing yourself with your lack of knowledge of the game. Try watching all 6 videos and tell us again there's no UI.

so sad...

otherwise, please share with us your theory that all 6 videos and 600+ screenshots are all faked because i need a good laugh.

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Originally posted by zaxtor99

If they show actual in game footage with a UI and all

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it's a minimal UI people, wake up...

you want to see bags of stuff (god knows why...)? ok it's here.

duh.

oh and all 6 darkfall videos are in-game footage.

Originally posted by Polarization

 

 http://www.peakware.com/logs.html?log=5928&PHPSESSID=50e0e1fc3a69e34fd4047d1de44b0a55

 

Bjorn Eirik Larsen listed as Aventurines only AI programmer for Darkfall in 2004 previously only credited as music composer for the graphical adventure game The longest journey from 2000, seems to of [edit: *have*]  found the time to enjoy a spot of hiking in Greece.

I wonder if 4 years later he’s still "playing around" with the same ideas he was talking about on the garage games forum 4 years ago for Darkfall’s AI whilst hiking in Greece or if he’s made more substantial progress, or perhaps if he’s even working for Aventurine anymore.

Either way it appears he had a nice time.

yet more utterly irrelvant info... <yawn>

Also, you realise that's an extremely common name in scandanavia, roughly equivalent to John Erik Smith or the like. Very good chance it's not even the same person. In any case i'd like to do that trek sometime too.

And finally, Darkfall's AI programmer is Mirco Sanguinetti.

Originally posted by hakubylicks

sorry to burst your bubble but those pathetic excuses for Videos they have released are nothing like what AoC and Warhammer have released.

And even the game was in develpment for only 4 years they still should have about 100 xxxx more videos and material to show besides 2 or 3 crappy looking alpha videos that are nothing more than a fly by of buildings and some generic combat system. 

Funny that both AoC and Warhammer are both officially pieces of shit. Maybe they should have followed Darkfall's model and spent all that money and time actually making good GAMEPLAY instead of polished game videos. Warhammer may yet turn out OK (though they are dropping content like whoa) but AoC is 100% for sure a piece of overhyped, buggy & laggy crap.

Don't bother responding, everyone knows this is true.

Originally posted by dwillpower

Originally posted by Trogg13

So sit back, relax and see what happens over the next few months.

 

 

People have been saying that for years about darkfall...am i right?

Yep, except for the part about a few months. They haven't set a release date before until now, although they have threatened to release 2-3 times over the course of development but (for not entirely known/disclosed reasons - game wasn't good enough for them?) have chosen otherwise.

Personally, i think the main reason is that the DF devs all have bad OCD.

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Originally posted by roguetech

Haven't done a great deal of research on the developers, but Ricki Sickenger (Lead Tools/ Game Logic) has a lot of Java experience, and very little C++ (from circumstantial Google data). Can't find much on Kjetil Helland (Lead 3D/Client Programmer), but he may have more of a management background.

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Kjetil is the lead coder and main author of the 3d engine.

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"Displays stuff" and "takes user input" is a hell of a lot of the "gameplay". You could just as easily say, all the server genius is AI and some databases.
That said, a lot of MMORPG's have clients written in Java.

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OK, you're misunderstanding what 'gameplay' is - gameplay is what's left once you take away all the main game subsystems - input, network stack, graphics engine, sound & mixing libraries, UI widget libraries, etc -- ie: gameplay is the content, the stuff i listed is the vehicle of that content.

By the way, there are basically no MMOs with a game client written in 100% java that don't run in a browser.