Gadgetory

my name is David Georgeson I'm the director of development for the everquest franchise at sony online entertainment well as far as optimization challenges go well the obvious ones like frame rate and stuff like that we're overcoming actually the frame rates really good on both the server side and the client side right now we did decide to go fully 64-bit operating system mostly because that gives us access to more RAM or system ramp and we once we made that decision it made our lives a lot easier but really there's one big hurdle that we're still overcoming which is data optimization because this is unlike a regular static MMO kind of world the world is constantly changing the planets that's the whole point of the game his players you're changing everything around you so all that changed it has to be constantly transmitted to everybody in the area if you're playing the Alpha that's when you occasionally see those gears pop up when you're moving across the world that's basically you downloading a bunch of new data and so we're optimizing that process to minimize those kinds of gaps and that'll be an ongoing process as we go through alpha and closed beta well as far as modding goes of course we're an MMO so we don't support private servers which is a lot of times what mod teams like to do but we do have a lot of modding capability inside the game because effectively landmark is a gigantic set of tools that you can build anything with both the you know AI and building and all the different things that that we can do everything that we can do you can do but that includes a specialty things like you I modding tools and things like that we want you to be able to customize the game so that it feels like your home the way that you want to play it as far as NPCs go inside of landmark there's very very few of them we are going to have some merchant in pcs that you'll be able to interact with for turning resources into coin so it's easier to barter with other players but then there also be of course while monsters are coming so we're going to put risk and combat elements into the game very very soon and that'll start to trickle in well well name dates later on but the but it'll ease in so that the risk will increase slowly over time with the game and eventually the players will have all the AI tools that we have so they can start editing and crafting their own AI templates and monster types and things like that which they can then use with their own landmark creations this really is build your own world everybody wants to know about water so we're going to we're going to deliver water in phases because dynamic water in a constantly changing box alized world is extremely difficult as a math problem and so we have to give well it's just going to take some time but we're going to be able to put in static water a lot sooner than that so there will be a lot of bodies of water like ocean and lakes and things like that appearing in the game reasonably soon now that static water so if you dig away the voxels next to it it's just going to hang there but then later on when we have the dynamic water in the game which is still a little ways off it'll start to flow across those voxels and you'll be able to start playing with it as a game elements griefing in landmark is kind of an interesting topic because there's all kinds of new ways to grief that you're not used to in most games like one of the things that we were talking about was because anybody can wander onto your claim but they can't do anything unless you set permissions for it it seemed like the claim was kind of invulnerable to griefing but it's not the case because what they can do if they want to be annoying is just stand right in front of you so you can't see wherever you wonder if you want to do so we're going to have to set in some toggles and stuff like that so that you can turn off the ability to see other players on your claim so that you can build without them getting in the way stuff like that is a constant exploring process as we go through alpha and closed beta and we expect to see more of those kinds of things but in general most of the mechanisms that we have for regular MMOs chat filtering text some things like that those all still work and we don't have to worry too much about people there's a thing in Oakland called this White House which is somebody that built right up against the fence of the of his neighbor just to be a jerk and we wanted to make sure that that stuff was prevented so we have buffer zones that go around your claim and then you can fill up the claims based inside your buffer zone but nobody else can unless you give them permission so where are we going with landmark basically landmark is starting out with these simple building tools but like we've said repeatedly over I'm everything that we can do you're going to be able to do as we build all the tools that we need to build for a request next all of those tools come over into landmarks so that you can do all of it scenario design a I templating monster creation all those different things that we want to be able to do you're going to be able to do so we're starting here and it's amazing the way it is and the players are making it better just constantly they're coming up with ways to use our tools we had no idea you could do and because they're doing that we expect great things when we start rolling out like AI templating and things like that too and well we'll see where we go from there the players are in constant source of amazement we um we have a voxel and the smallest size of a voxel in relation to a human scale is right about like that big and you can't build like stuff that looks really tech with a voxel that looks that big because the modern world has got refined processes this is great for fantasy building but it wasn't fantastic for tech well the players almost immediately figured out ways to shrink that voxel down so that it looks like a dot and then you can string it out to make bars you can make these really detailed things and that was the tip of the iceberg they've come up with six or seven different ways of making stuff in the game that we literally had no idea was possible our lead programmer looked at a screenshot one day and he goes I don't know how they're doing that and we have to stop when that happens to make sure the players aren't breaking the game but they haven't yet they haven't broken it at all it's been a really robust experience but the stuff that they make now is just astounding so yeah it's great working with the players this way we're really happy if you want more information about landmark of course there's eq in landmark com which is our website and it has tons of stuff in it or you can follow the devs on Twitter on Twitter a for instance mine is at Dave Georgeson we're all pretty obvious that way the tweet handles are all on the EQ in landmark comp age we do two extremes we are on reddit we're all over the place so wherever you are will be and we can talk back and forth