Is it possible to create Car racing MMO with physics

bizilux
edited November 2013 in DotNet
hello all...

so i am trying to do Car racing MMO...

I started small ofcourse, and right now i have a car with nice physics, and 1 track, and checkpoint system where you drive through gates and you get score +1, this is going to be Capture the flag mode.

Link to playable browser demo!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47341033/Test%20webplayer.html

Now I am trying to put multiplayer in, because i want to have 7 other players in a room, fighting for control over flag... (this is basically almost everything i want for version 0.1)


But i am having problems, i wanted to do it via cloud server. I am using Unity 3D, and Playmaker asset(visual scripting extension for unity), and edy's vehicle physics asset.

Me, and one other guy on playmaker forum who is really good at photon (he also made documentation and examples for using photon with playmaker- his name is jeanfabre) are thinking that this is because of physics. Now i have been reading a bit on forums here, and i found this http://doc.exitgames.com/photon-server/ ... -reference

basically from what i understand, physics wont work just out of the box. here is what was happening with the game: http://vimeo.com/78680122 ... basically it was lagging and out of synchronizing.

here is support topic that i made on playmaker, for more information about the problem: http://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/i ... topic=5395.


so can you guys help me out?
I am not a programmer, sadly. i only know basics of C#, but i am learning it...


and now for the second part of the question. is it able to make MMO like i have in mind? now i know that you can make MMO's with photon, i've seen some examples but still i am asking for this specific project... just want to be on a safe side, because i am also looking at uLink currently and smartfoxserver, but photon is my first choice, since it integrates with playmaker nicely.


let me copy you game description, so that you will understand what i mean by MMO
Few years ago, I used to play racing game called Project Torque. I loved it and played it nonstop, but then it was shut down because of some licencing problems between developers and publisher.

That game was Free to play car racing MMO. There were 10 Tiers of cars, lower tier cars were slow and cheap, and then the higher you went, the better the cars were. And ofcourse they were more expensive. On each car you could upgrade components (suspension, tires, engine, etc..) and also install new body kits, change rims, paint car, put on decals, etc...

You did this with in-game money that you got from winning races or participating in them. You could ofcourse speed the process and buy virtual money for real money, or buy items such as 2x cash per race or 2x XP per race.

There was also leveling system in game, so that you needed certain level in order to buy new cars or upgrade components.

There were few different game modes, such as: Race, Sprint, Capture the flag, Sumo, Drift... My game will have a bit more game modes, such as Demolition Derby, Infected, Bank Heist, Cops vs Robbers and few others... and all of this will be multiplayer, so that means lots of fun!

So as you can imagine i want to make similar game as Project Torque was, but with better game engine(Unity3D), which means everything will be better Posted Image

I plan on having all players from the same region (EU or USA) on 1 server, and the idea is that there would be 1 huge city where there would be all players inside, who are not racing at that time. So players could just hang out and chat, drive around, do some interesting stuff like being taxi driver?, etc... so MMO part of the title comes from this. Basically all players would be at same location and could talk to eachother, and when they wanted to race, they would open server browser and either create room, or join one. So in a sense it would be an open-world game where you could drive around and show everyone your car.

Comments

  • I'm sorry you had to wait for an answer. Usually someone chimes in on these topics.

    I can't help a lot with Playmaker but Jean is excellent at it and knows Photon well.
    I guess the "out of sync" issue you now see is a problem in PUN where we only send direction and velocity but should also send position and rotation. This can be fixed in the next PUN release.

    However, PUN is not great for MMOs and "all players can interact" scenarios. It basically needs the distinction into rooms with up to maybe 32 players or so. Even that will be difficult with PUN, as it doesn't have proper interest management.
    A seamless world will mean you have to work on the server side and probably switch from PUN and PlayMaker to proper coding.

    I am sure you can do a car game with Photon but if you agree on that, depends on your ideas and requirements. Physics in a networked game are not a simple topic, because varying amount of lag and immediate updates via physics don't fit well. To some degree, the player might notice corrections and you must know things are not 100% in sync all the time.

    It's a matter of how your game design copes with these things and what expectations you have.
  • There were 10 Tiers of cars, lower tier cars were slow and cheap, and then the higher you went, the better the cars were. And ofcourse they were more expensive. On each car you could upgrade components (suspension, tires, engine, etc..) and also install new body kits, change rims, paint car, put on decals, etc...



    _____________
    NOOR