Which raises questions about how to implement saves. Would you only be able to save and resume a game on your own server? Would uber allow you to upload/store/download saves on their servers? The saves would possibly be based on the replay/chronocam format, which for a massively long game could become too big to conceivably move or store.
Well, you only really need to save *one frame* of the Chronocam format to resume a game. I'm guessing the way Chronocam works is that it stores all of the entities that are ever created in a game, and then uses curves to move them about, as well as hide them, show them and change their states. So you could logically pick up off of one frame. And I'm also guessing here, but I'm sure each client stores its own Chronocam recording, which should be able to be saved by that client.
Hm... good point! Maybe slots ought to be reservable for "friends of player x" or "members of group y" in the game setup screen. They could join either before the game starts or (re)-join a game in progres, then. Maybe the AI could play when nobody is directly controlling them, and/or control of their units could pass on to team members when they're not present. It'd be useful in shorter games, too! Of course, there'd need to be some configurables governing how many slots someone can reserve and whether they're for shared control, different teams, or both. And probably a kick/ban vote system to prevent people from griefing with the slot reservations, even before the game starts... yadda yadda.
Don't forget that by the end of the game there could be relatively few of the original planets lefts as some will end up.... ANNIHILATED!!!
I'm pretty sure the server has the saved gamestate that is used for ChronoCam(tm), and as such, as long as the file is intact you should be able to "resume" from any point once the server is back up. Clients don't have enough access to the sim to be able to create one, as they only render what they know about; the server is not sending them info on the entire gamestate at all times So, redundant storage on hot-standby server clusters FTW! Since the server already allows "drop-in" type functionality for reconnecting players, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to have it on for team options, it would be more a case of putting the tools and options in place to be able to define which players can connect, and what team(s) they can select when connecting, on game creation. In fact I'm pretty sure I recall neutrino saying as much in one of the early livestreams, that one of the visions was for massive, long-running, drop-in drop-out games.
I really dont see the point of drop in drop out games, maybe if there are huge clans it could work but as a friendly it would feel like a waste of time.. And what would be the point? if there is no ladder or competition why is a clan gonna sit down to arrange this? It sounds epic in theory but i am not sure.
Spot on. Galactic war and larger Clan Battles will actually need this. On a full-sized, 40 player game, lets say in a Binary star system with 15-20 planets, it isn't going to be a few-hours long game. Your average competitive 1v1 lasts 20-50 minutes depending on player skill; teamgames only get longer.
No, I think join-in-progress features are interesting to almost everyone, not just clans. First of all, it is my experience that in any online game that is played 10v10 or so, it is almost guaranteed that 2+ people have to leave within the next hour. And even more will leave when it's getting late in the EU/US (on the EU/US servers I play on, anyways). New players need to join or the game will presumably end in frustration due to one team being outnumbered. Besides, anyone can have a social obligation to play with their friends. If you can't bring friends into your currently running game, well, you pretty much have to leave it. Because letting them wait for 1-2 hours until a strategy game match is complete doesn't really work. Lastly, I think it is simply extremely common that people drop from a game (due to networking problems, power outages, security updates restarting their PC, overheating, cat jumped on the power switch or pulled the cable, ...). They should be able to rejoin the game when that happens. And I just don't think there is much of a technical difference between rejoining and join-in-progress on an existing team / new team - so it probably isn't much of a "waste of time" to support the more generic concept, anyhow. PS: I haven't addressed the "drop-out" part because obviously this is already a feature of the game. You can't stop people from quitting.
In order for these epic long games to be a reality one of two things has to happen: 1) Game gets optimized to run 5x better than it does now. 2) Intel releases a processor that is faster than sandybridge, released January 2011. Very doubtful that #2 will happen in the next few years so hoping on #1.
Good thing is is only an Alpha eh? Optimizations are very, very common in Alphas and even Betas to an extent. Mike
