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Top Secret Design

Top Secret Design

Current game specifications and topics are taken from the PTS Wiki Design Doc

Key:

Red delineates requirements in the design doc.

Green delineates our comments.

Primary Elements

Scalable MMO

The game must be a scalable multiplayer game able to handle up to 1,000,000 simultaneous players, based across multiple servers.

Using our Goddess system, an unlimited number of players can share the game world.

Action Racing - PvE and PvP

We have action racing implemented now with full physics and working PvP/PvE/PvPvE.

Trading, Growing, Breeding and Training Beasts

These are all doable, but we will require more artists to join the team or community content to complete it quickly.

Strong Multiplayer Social Systems

With a combination of Goddess managing the web presence and the built-in Steam community functionality, all players can communicate from anywhere within the game world or web.

Secondary Elements

Betting

This is an extremely easy requirement and implementation.

Sponsorships

Again, easy.

Real Time Audience

Using HLTV, we can support an unlimited amount of real time spectators.

Real Time Commentators

This can be done with a few additions to the voice comms system in the source engine.

Lobby / Town / 3D Character avatars & NPCs

This is already working in our Follow Freeman project, and it is simply a matter of presenting it within the game world and context of your choice.

Technical Specs

Server Details

Each server must contain a separate, identical instance of the complete game world.

This is a core function of the Goddess system.

Servers should individually support approximately 3000 users.

3000 concurrent users all on one map as playing characters would be a problem; however, if you mean 3000 users sharing in the same game world but not necessarily on one map, then no problem. Goddess will handle a limitless amount of users (we may need some mirrors, though).

New servers will be added as necessary to support the growing number of users.

Excellent. There is nothing worse than servers clogging up just when you need them the most.

Players will initially choose a server to join, but may switch to any other server that is not full.

No problem here, either. Goddess will manage the players and give them a choice on which server to play, and they will get their assets in that server immediately upon connection (not like WOW realms).

Player Numbers

Total combined player population of one million or greater.

Yes, we can do this using our Goddess system: an unlimited amount of players can share the game world.

Recommended Client Hardware

Minimum 512 MB RAM
2 GHz or faster Intel or AMD processor
Minimum 256 MB Dedicated Video RAM
Shader Model 2.0 or higher
Broadband Internet Connection (1.5 Mbps or higher)
5 GB hard drive space

Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
1.2 ghz processor
256 mb of ram
direct x 7 or above
HD space depends how big the game world is; however, the source engine supports running the content from a compressed file so we can make it as small as possible (HL2 with HL2DM and CSS is around 4.5 GB).

Game Modes

Racing Modes

Interactive environments. There can be up to 8 rider/mounts. Innate mount abilities, rider weapons, rider/mount skills can be used to create various effects on themselves, opponents, or on the environment. There will be destructible items in the environments. Environments will also have movable objects and other threats to the gamers. There should be options available for gamers to create their own races and specify various aspects (weather, challenges, level caps, skill caps, mount/rider type limitations, etc.). There can also be different types of racing modes--time trials, first person across the finish line, championship elimination, etc. Actions and results may contribute to experience and/or rank.

All the above can be done with no problem, and with the advanced physics of the source engine, it will provide fast and furious game-play. Most of the configuration options above can be easily implemented using the existing game control console systems we have in Follow Freeman

PvP Modes

This mode will leverage the same environments as racing. Here, up to 8 players can go head-to-head using their abilities to "disable" other opponents. Depending on the gamer designed settings, gamers may respawn. Other modes may be "last man standing." Actions and results may contribute to experience and/or rank.

Although Follow Freeman is a co-op mod, we have developed full PvP support as can be seen in our battle zone maps which are designed as a PVP/PVE sandbox. We have released 6 different maps with different mission objectives. This gives a good framework to add PvP modes.

Other Modes

  • Basic "casual" racing
  • Free for all battle mode which could be based on "last man standing" approach
  • Time trials
  • Game announcer mode
  • Hostile crowd mode
  • Chase/tag mode
  • Designate someone as "it" who gets chased by a rabid beast--the "it" person has to tag others before the beast disables them--the winners are the ones that survive.
  • Mount mortal combat/Primal Rage (one-on-one battle)
  • Coliseum battle between riders (one-on-one or group)

A resounding "Yes" to all the types above. Also, our NPCs are very good at attacking people and throwing physics objects at them too!

Further sections in the design document go into detail about how everything should be done and lists of content, but we are going to stop here for now. We won't bore you by going through each one individually, and we feel that some decisions are best left until the right time comes to make them. In development, we feel the time for decision making is when there is a working alpha of the game so you can best see what is easily doable and what will be worth dedicating development to.

For us, its no great leap of imagination to see this game in its full glory using the source engine and our unique and proven development systems.