MMOFS (Massive Multi-player On-line Flight Sim).
FS2 is rather powerful. FS2_SCP extends the power by almost double, if not greater. But on-line support, before and after SCP, seems to be week. Here's the part that bothers me:
In FS2 and FS2_SCP, the game works mission based, from 1 to a number which is incremented by at least 1. This means if you fail a mission, you do not really decrement back into mission 1. Why is this so important? If we have any interest in making FS2 MMOFS compatible, players must be able to return into entities which they originated from. FS2 does not support this.
There is also another draw back to FS2 not decrementing missions. If I wanted to design an arena, and not necessarily a MMOFS, I would have to focus FS2 into one mission (which isn't very productive because it seriously limits all effects I may want to add to the game). In my case, I may want an arena based on three mission entities; home for team 1, home for team 2, center. The game starts at center, objectives must be met. Which ever team meets the objectives first, wins the mission and completes entity "center". Assuming team 1 was the winner, FS2 would then load entity "Home for Team 2". Now new different objectives must be met. Assuming team 2 won; mission would end, and the entity "center" would be reloaded. Assuming team 1 met the objectives, entire campaign was completed, server would restart.
The above can not be done because FS2 does not support decrementing into a previously completed mission. As a one player game, this would not be important, but as a multi-player game, I feel this is vital.
Back on the subject of a MMOFS, 3rd party server software could be created to load more then one mission at one given time. If FS2 supported both incrementing and decrementing mission loading, it could sent data to the server to initatate the request for a player to enter a mission. Triggers in the mission controled by the server could allow multi-player support for that mission at active time. When all players leave, the mission could still be enabled thanks to 3rd party software, and tirggers in the mission would allow players to re-enter the mission within the scope of what FS2 can handle. In addition, ships with AI and status flags applied to them, could be carried over from one mission to another fully under supervision of the 3rd party software. This would need to be a seperate project of it's own, but if FS2 does not support decrementing, there is no reason to start the project, and no interest to design FS2 to support MMOFS nor interest to design software to promote FS2 to support MMOFS.
That's my 2 cents, anyone agree/disagree?
