My mythical Planetside Upgrade Project

[DviddLeff]

UPDATE: I have been hard at work making concepts for PS2, check them out here: https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/

Original 2009 Post:

Below you can see my basic ideas for a Planetside Upgrade Project, essentially forging the existing game into PS2. I wrote this over the Summer, when I had my holiday (teachings not too bad and before PSNext was even rumoured. As I cancelled my subscription to PS about 3 years ago, and only played since for the recent reactivation some of my ideas may not be consistent with the current state of the game and I unfortunatly can not post this on the official forums. Anyway, enough babble and onto the good stuff.

Planetside Upgrade Project
The Planetside Upgrade Project (PUP) is an open development team, made up of fans of the game who are interested in improving the game to continue its lifespan. This requires support from the existing Planetside development personnel, particularly in accessing the required files for editing. Without this support and access PUP will never get off the ground.

This is entirely community run, we need volunteers who are willing to put time and effort in to improve the game for all, as well as input from players as to what aspects of PUP is worth pursuing.

The project is broken down into three phases which would ideally be completed in order, but do not have to be;

Phase 1 This is aimed at improving the existing graphics; upgrading textures and models to more detailed versions, and increasing the draw distance, especially on distant hills. This would be an optional download.
Details:

• Terrain Textures
• Building Textures
• Infantry Armour Textures + Models
• Weapon Textures + Models
• Vehicle Textures + Models
• Long distance terrain visible
• Enhanced Water Effects (add meteors and earthquakes as weather types).
• Enhanced Weather
• HUD Upgrades (eg Better missile lock on cross hairs)

Phase 2 is about improving existing game systems; for example giving infantry a separate hit box for the head, allowing head shots to deal more damage. This would also carry across to vehicles, giving them weaker rear armour and buggy/ATV drivers being able to be killed within the vehicle as originally intended. Phase 2 would also include redesigning continents and the bases and towers on them, making each base unique is the ultimate goal. This would include upgrades to outfit systems; giving them more visibility, usefulness and their leaders more control over them. This would be a necessary download.
Details:

• Real night and lighting systems (not included in Phase 1 as it requires the addition of lighting points on infantry, vehicles and buildings).
• Infantry head hit box (200% damage).
• Vehicle weak point hit boxes (eg rear armour takes 200% damage)
• Open vehicle direct crew damage.
• Facility Redesign (making them unique)
• Tower Redesign
• Core Combat Overhaul (see Planetside Idealab)
• Outfit Improvements
• Outfit owned bases (see Planetside Idealab).
• ANT Bombs brought back.
• Command Support Tree and command upgrades (see Planetside Idealab).
• Terrain cover upgrades (denser trees, more small rocks and cover for infantry)
• Reduce base hack timer to 10 minutes
• After capturing continents lock for an hour against your enemies (is this already in game?).
• Make MAX units take damage like infantry, adjust Decimator to kill all infantry including MAXs in 3 hits, empire specific AV stays the same kill rate on MAX units, and less time on infantry. This will need intensive balancing and play testing.
• When killed the player retains a blurry first person view, and the enemy can “finish off” the player immediately sending them to a respawn screen so that player cannot be revived.
• Vehicle driver and gunners must be in standard armour (except buggies and transports)
• Agile armour has VS MAX style jump jets, 3x6 weapon holster instead of 3x9 (tied into adding empire specific SMGs and a light AV weapon).
• Aircraft take 10% extra damage from all AI/AV weaponry.

Phase 3 would concern new additions to the game, giving players new equipment to use; both weaponry, vehicles and support equipment. This could also include my proposed Vehicle Hard Point System. This would be a necessary download.
Details:

• Vehicle Hard Point System
• BFR Overhaul (require 3 or 4 crew, increased armour, option for one of shield, flight pack, cloaking bubble or roof turret)
• Lodestar Overhaul
• Galaxy Overhaul
• AMS Overhaul
• Add ANT, Harasser, Skyguard, Raider and Prowler driver weapons.
• Merge Light Vehicle Weapons into infantry weapon certifications:
• Common Pool and Empire Specific Infantry Anti Aircraft Weapon (stripped down versions of the AA MAX weapons and the Common Pool Wasp AA Missile Pod).
• Machine Gun Certification (3 points): Empire Specific (TR 15mm, VS Quasar, NC Scatter cannon) and common pool (12mm) machine guns (deployed to fire).
• Add MAX and vehicle weapons to AV Certification.
• Change MAX weaponry so that they can equip one Medium Hard Point Weapon, but TR MAXs would get to choose 2 light weapons; one for each arm. This makes MAXs into a hybrid of infantry and vehicles.
• Empire Specific Aircraft Chassis
• Small (1 pilot)
• Medium (2-3 crew)
• Large (4-5 crew) Require Dropship Centre vehicle terminal to acquire.
• Empire Specific sub machine guns
• Light (3x6) AV weapon added
• Sanctuary Overhaul
• Sanctuary Virtual Reality Squad Training
• Sanctuary Strikes (once captured, the winning empire gets to use the conquered ones empire specific weapons for a week, while the loser loses access to all but one continent from their warpgates).
• Outfit Barracks
• Residential buildings (turn Sanctuaries into cities), possible player housing?
• Emplacement System (see the Planetside Idealab).
• Capturable villages and towns around the landscape, in some cases built around the facilities or inserted into the lattice elsewhere.
• Additional Equipment (eg, binoculars, signal beacon, flash bangs, stamina booster and oxygen).
• Addition Implants.
• Additional Merits (for new equipment and others).
• Long term empire goals

A variety of these changes are controversial and would have to be decided by the community whether the PUP should include them or not. However, these would not be votes on the forums, these would be votes in the game world.

All proposed changes would be discussed in detail before implementation, and could be tested for at least a week before the patch and could be rolled back if necessary.

[JackEarthrider]

Sounds great and all, but I'm worried that the server wouldn't be able to handle this much detail; or at the very least individual computers wouldn't be able to run without hardcore lag.

I'm not sure, but sometimes simple is best.

[DviddLeff]

Fair points; the players PCs not coping is taken into account by the optional graphics upgrade, which is Phase 1, which simply makes the game look better rather than actually changing the way game play works (bar the meteors and earthquakes as weather types, which are already in game).

Phase 2 is where we would see the game stretched seriously, with more hit boxes for players and vehicles which would add extra lode to the network. You would also see massive downloads as the continents are upgraded 1 by 1, but these days even a game demo weighs in at 1.5GB, so a large download for a brand new continent would be worth it, especially if it was only released every couple of weeks, and even then you could let people play the game but deny them access to a specific continent until they download it.

In my eyes this project would do for PS what CCP has done for EVE over the years (they both came out the same year) and revitalise the game and essentially upgrade it into PS2, which is what EVE has done year on year.

[JackEarthrider]

Thats a good point, EVE has done a good job chaning their game year by year to keep it up to par.

Its just too bad most MMO companies don't have that kind of commitment to their games. Here's to hoping!

[Kumoblade]

You have a lot of cool ideas, dude. Must have taken some time and dedication to get it all thought out. Kudos.

As for Systems/Servers not being able to handle it. Newer games have barely begun to put loads on network traffic. It may sound like a lot of information being passed to and forth, and it is, but its nowhere near what new servers can handle. On my standard PC with a FIOS 15meg/5meg Line, I could host a 150 client Radio broadcast with ease while enjoying an online game at the same time. (something I'm in the works on. maybe i'll make a planetside radio broadcast )

With the Multi-threaded RISC Architecture that's out with dozens of CPUs and TBs of memory per server, handling several thousand people per game world isn't out of the ordinary, especially if its a cluster of servers.

If Sony is smart in managing whats client side and whats server side, We could have 300-400 member battles with the servers barely breaking a sweat.

Look at EVE online for example. The whole game is on 1 server (or server farm). While there may be a lot of dead space, its still space and the game has to keep track of your coordinates and where you are. Warping may teleport you, but if you wanted, you could literally fly from 1 point in the galaxy to the other and it'll take weeks. and theres the players, the bases, the planets, etc..

CCP did a great job in maximizing network efficiency.

[Kumoblade]

I just realized. it's sad to know that World War II Online has updated their game more than Planetside =(.

[DviddLeff]

Good info Kumo, I know very little about networks so its nice to know that it should be possible.

EVE and shortly WW20 are showing how MMOs should be supported, and how they can be revitalised if the company wishes to do so. Personally I dont think SOE will do that for PS; there track record shows their lack of support. All we can hope is that they do it right enough initially when/if PS2 is released so that it is intially successful and they then support it properly.

[DviddLeff]

http://sites.google.com/site/planets...deproject/home

Yeah, I spent a bit of time on it

Does someone mind dropping this link on the official forums? I would but I am not subscribed anymore....

[DviddLeff]

I have updated it with come pictures in a few sections and have added comments on pages with a to do list for myself.

Feel free to make comments on the pages as you see fit!

If someone could post the link on the official forums I would appreciate it, and post back the link to that post here so I can check out feedback.

Thanks very much.

[Furret]

for step 1 you could easily put in an option to run the game in high or low quality.

and the reason these MMO's are so popular is because they're fucking huge. PlanetSide had so many options, and that was the reason it was such an amazing game. If PlanetSide Next is going to have a downside, it had better be the fact that its a huge file. I have a good computer, so i'm on the side of make it as big and amazing as possible, although I know there would be tons of people who just couldn't play the game because it's too huge.

I'm also someone who knows nothing about networking and servers and everything, but what if you had every world on a different server. The people with slower computers would only connect to the server that they're currently on, and whenever they changed worlds, it might take longer because they have to switch servers, but their computers would have MUCH less strain. People with computers that could handle all of the packets, would connect to all of the servers while they play, the only gain being much less time switching from world to world.

Also, problems with inter-world communication would arise. One solution that i can think of off the top of my head would be, when someone types something in 'empire wide chat', their message goes to the world server, then to all of the servers, then is displayed as 'global' chat. Again, I have no clue if thats already how it works, but just stating a solution to working with slower computers, and the complications that would come with the solution.

People with networking/server stuff experience, would this work? I'm just wondering.

[DviddLeff]

Added a ton of stuff today; check out the front page for details (mainly pictures).

[DviddLeff]

Updated it since my last post, no idea why I keep thinking about PS when I haven't played in years...

[DviddLeff]

Added a forum.

[DviddLeff]

Updated the website today with a trio of images involving the Terrain Upgrade, showing a fortified ground tower, capital base wall and wall bunker.

The bunker also displays one way shields across the vision slits, which is an option for outfits when they claim a base as detailed in the Outfit Overhaul.

[Hamma]

That is really cool! Would be fun to fight over something like that.