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Role Playing (Games)

Solipsis - a Decentralized Open-Source MMORPG 43

Posted by Zonk from the reality's-building-blocks dept.
Anonymous Reader writes "Calling it an MMORPG is a bit of a misnomer because at this point there aren't any players, much less hit points, monsters, or flaming swords. Solipsis is an open-source project that aims to create a decentralized multi-user virtual world. It's still very much in its infancy, and as such the visuals are a bit lacking, but the aim is to create an endlessly scalable user-contributed world and it seems it's a nice platform to play with."
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Solipsis - a Decentralized Open-Source MMORPG More

Solipsis - a Decentralized Open-Source MMORPG

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  • but you just know that this place is going to end up with n00bs making whorehouses and warez trading places. but, it's an interesting idea... i hope they can keep the stupid idiot factor down....
  • This program is no more than a glorified decentralized chat proggy. Anybody figured out where to find people yet? The Hive

  • most MMOs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HTL2001 ( 836298 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @05:37PM (#12481857)
    most MMOs forbid client modification... this makes it easy!

    and since its decentralized, server modification also. unless they store user data securly on a central server, cheating is gonna be BAD.
    • If it's peer to peer then your internet connection will go down whenever some a-hole takes a dislike to you.

    • Re:most MMOs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Monday May 09, 2005 @07:45PM (#12483216) Journal
      unless they store user data securly on a central server, cheating is gonna be BAD.
      No, cheating is going to be redefined. While they're a billion miles from Metaverse-like, Neal Stephenson already worked this out pretty well. While you're walking along the street, the computers that run the street place limits on the appearance of your avatar. The sunbeams shooting out of your hairdo do not extend across everything else on the street.

      When you get into a fight on one server (in a bar, for example :), they can track your stats. If several servers agree that they trust each other, then they could share stats. Everyone knows there's no cheating in the Black Sun.

      If you're worried that the <Lord Pants; Level 60> floating above your head won't mean anything because anyone will be able to do that... then yeah, you're exactly right. Some servers will follow conventions and some won't and that's fine. Hang out in the areas where you like the rules.
      • This will make the MMO MORE like real life than others, if what you describe is true. There are certain areas of each city that you do not venture into. Be it for violence, drugs, etc. this creates the first true MMORPG ghetto.
        • Just read Snow Crash. There's no reason to think that these guys are going to be the ones to build the Metaverse, given how many people have been trying since the book came out (1996?), but yeah. That's the idea.

  • Croquet (Score:5, Informative)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Monday May 09, 2005 @05:44PM (#12481963) Journal
    Also vaguely interesting and along similar lines is Alan Kay's Croquet [opencroquet.org] project.

    It's not particularly mind blowing, but it has potential.

  • Cool... Let's see where this leads to. (Score:4, Informative)

    by obi ( 118631 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @05:47PM (#12482008)
    I'm quite interested in such a system. However, for a true decentralized system you need to put trust metrics at the core of the system, because cheating would just be too easy otherwise.

    With a client/server model, you can just say: "everyone trusts what the server says, what the server says goes". With a P2P model you have no such easy way out.

    Anyway, I'll be very closely watching this - the only distributed system that comes close is opencroquet, but that's not really suitale for a real-time environment.

    While they might not necessarily succeed, it'll be very interesting to see their experience and conclusions once their prototypes start being used.


  • it should be. they should call the game "hackers vs. GMs". oodles of fun! i'm serious. it would be awesome!
  • Isn't this something that could have been implemented with NWN and the portals that allow connections between different worlds?

    As others have mentioned, the cheating and stupidity will be the biggest hurdles to overcome.

  • As an oldtimer, let me say... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:00PM (#12482183)

    *Waves cane*

    We called them MUDs in our day! And people played with the concept of decentralizing them back then as well. Nothing ever came of it, AFAIK. As other posters have said, trust is a huge issue. There are other problems with latency, bandwidth, synchronization, etc.

  • Hacks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:06PM (#12482255) Journal
    When you do that client side stuff, you need to put checks on hackers. I won't get into much detail because maybe .01% of people who read this care, but you can pull off anti-hack tricks. Its important not to allow players to know the anti-hack tricks because they'd work around them. But if you make people pay for the game, and ban them, the overhead of loss will prevent most hackers.

    For example: Have every client connect to the main server to track stats. If a stat gets modified faster than it could be changed in game, then an alarm goes off.

    If you set up tons of trip wires like this, and institute a player based police system such as Halo 2 has, then you're set. If you don't protect a client side game against hacks, then if it gets popular, it will be hacked into the ground.

    • Re:Hacks (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cbr2702 ( 750255 )
      Or you can make a fully decentralized system and pay no heed to cheating. You don't need to have a global idea of stats to have a good game. Each player can run a server component. Different servers correspond to different parts of the world, with a registration/transfer system. Sort of like the web with hyperlinks. Let players decide which servers they like. A server can keep stats, protect names, restrict avatars, or not. Servers with silly rules won't get used. Let econ do the work for you.

    • Re:Hacks (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jahf ( 21968 )

      For example: Have every client connect to the main server to track stats. If a stat gets modified faster than it could be changed in game, then an alarm goes off.

      Under that assumption you have to at least allow 20 hours if not 24 hours of change. Sorry, but given the rate of casual players this would still screw them. You could still advance your character (characters with multiple computers or program instances) as if you were playing all day every day. Not nearly as fast as an insta-cheat, but still f
  • I read this and thought "metaverse" anyone else think that too??
    • To be honest i would love the idea of a metaverse. But its never going to happen. Ever. Because its a useless tech. Unless we can get full immersion like snow crash people wont use it. I've thought how awesome a metaverse would be, hell snowcrash is my all time favorite novel but 3d chat just wont cut it.
  • Sounds like it's welcoming a lot of trouble from those who are ill-prepared to properly contribute (sort of like people who don't know better and set their P2P clients to be full hubs) and people who want to intentionally introduce problems or cracks into the system.

    Hopefully people would still have to pay to play. I think that subscriptions to MMORPGs set an entry level to prevent a lot of troublemakers from joining up and disrupting everything.
  • I think Tad Williams may be intrested in this. And if you are reading this Tad, try fitting a story into less then 700 pages sometime. I may stay intrested that way.

  • Nice... but unfortunately. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AzraelKans ( 697974 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:54PM (#12482763) Homepage
    Unfortunately this is nothing "new" a good bunch of indie developers have tried to keep down the costs of creating a indie mmorpg by not having a central server (include myself to that list), and keeping it peer to peer instead.

    However so far is a lot more of theory (and some mixed bag tech demos) than actual results. Lets face it, if a super MMORPG (like WOW) is having trouble to keep a lag free (more or less) environment by using centralized state of the art equipment and systems with lots of bandwidth to spare. What chances does a run of the mill client in a home PC have? (which is usually connected to a bandwidth sucker proxy which is connected to a bunch of dumb users with a lot of spyware installed) a: none. The lag would be completely unbareable is hardly noticeable for web surfing but for a system sending an update of several dozens of users each 2-3 seconds is a killer.

    In the future we are going to see more systems like "guild wars" in which areas are instantiated for a limited number of users (including user based servers I think) instead of one server farm trying to handle all the users all the time. Now thats an idea that actually works! (although it takes the "massive" mostly out of the equation.) and it should be interesting for small developers.
    • bandwidth sucker proxy

      Is that like The Hudsucker Proxy [imdb.com]?

    • The lag would be completely unbareable is hardly noticeable for web surfing but for a system sending an update of several dozens of users each 2-3 seconds is a killer.
      I don't think the real lag would be worse then with normal server based MMORPG. The thing is, to play a game you have to interact not only with server, but with other client. Whatever lag other client have will affect you too while you are interacting with it in the normal MMORPG. In the central server case clients connect through the serv
      • Whatever lag other client have will affect you too while you are interacting with it in the normal MMORPG.

        It May look that way but actually is not, the server (or the client) is capable of interpolating the data between packets transmitted, also is able to timeout a client if it lags too much. So although it influences lag, is only until the server chooses to kill it off.

        In the central server case clients connect through the server. In the distributed case they connect directly.

        Exactly, but t
  • Back in the MUD days, Marcus J. Ranum created UnterMud, which allowed people to connect their own personal muds and transfer objects between them. Nothing really became of it, though; although players want user extensibility, they also need a structured ruleset within which they can play, which they can rely on to provide a consistent framework for their play. They don't want the risk of radical rules changing whenever they move from one server to another.

    Bruce

  • Missing the point (Score:3, Interesting)

    by istewart ( 463887 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @07:30PM (#12483099)
    I think the guy who said that it's basically a glorified decentralized chat system hit it right on the head. I read this and thought "Metaverse," and their webpage/wiki says as much. I don't think it's meant to be any sort of a coherent game, although doubtless someone will use it as such.

    I think world boundaries and "streets" and other such metaphors for the physical world can be set up by using connection forwarding through other servers. For instance, if your Solipsis server is hosting a structure that's down the "street" from your buddy's server, then you would only accept incoming connections from your buddy's server. You would also block connection spoofing and maintain the illusion by checking back with his server to ask, "is XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX connected to you, and is it headed my way (trying to connect to me)?" Of course, lag issues would have to be worked out, but I certainly think it's something to work from.

    I think goofy hacks will run wild, just like in Snow Crash, but server security can be set up to maintain a coherent world and keep out people you don't want around.

  • Better in theory than in practice (Score:3, Interesting)

    by petrus4 ( 213815 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @07:41PM (#12483192) Homepage Journal
    I had a look at this a week or so back, since there was a link to it on Terra [blogs.com] Nova [blogs.com].
    I really wasn't particularly impressed, to be honest, although I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it is still very much early days as far as the project is concerned.

    There would also be a couple of major obstacles to this in the real world, sadly.

    a) With regards to content in particular, Sturgeon's Law [jargon.net] would probably apply with a brutal vengeance.

    b) With client-side character files and (worse yet) individual control of bandwidth from peers, you'd see 14 year old Neo wannabes swarming out of the woodwork everywhere, with things like the recent Blizzard speed hack, item duping, and so forth.

    c) Although most people might, not everybody has broadband yet, sadly...and for this, everyone would need to. (I'm still on a 56k modem myself)

    At least in terms of its level of progress, Croquet [opencroquet.org] is far more interesting. I downloaded it and had a mess around with it...and although there are some issues which could be majorly improved, (texture size needs to be made uniform, for one thing) it's coming along well. It will be a while I think before a sufficient portion of the online population will have the processing capacity or bandwidth for a networked version of Croquet to be large-scale viable...but when we get to that point it could be very interesting. It essentially looks like an ancestor of the sort of completely 3D, networked virtual environment that Gibson and others wrote about.
  • Sounds like a MUD to me. Or did I miss something?
  • Internet drinking game: take one drink whenever someone proclaims that they want to make a multi-user system resembling Neal Stephenson's Metaverse. The last player who hasn't died of alcohol poisoning by the end of the week wins.

  • When I first saw this article on Solipsis, I thought "w00t! Megaman Battle Network would become a reality!" For those of you who are not familiar with MMBN, it's a Megaman series game by Capcom. Basically, everybody lives in a world where everything electronic is/can be connected to the world network. There, people's avatars can move around, surf the net, delete virii, and such. That's what I thought of Solipsis.
    I imagine that, sooner or later, through Solipsis or something else, people can set up their ow

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