Application: MultiCom Network and Rogue

GotGame released Rogue on November 20, 2008. It allowed PC gamers an option beside the old Alt-Tab and windowed screen stand-bys to view something else inside their full-screen game. Since then GotGame has been toiling on improving Rogue functionality for more games. While GotGame was working on Rogue, another developer found it and decided that it could be used for another purpose — an in-game communication and operating system, deemed the MultiCom Network, for the MMO Face of Mankind.

I had the great opportunity to discuss the MultiCom Network with Project Manager Chase Noble, about MCN and the importance that Rogue played in completing and implementing the extensive plans that the MCN team had. The foundation of the success of the MultiCom Network is Rogue, providing users a way to always be connected.

History

Face of Mankind was originally released in fall of 2006, a futuristic MMO that emphasized community through factions, groups of users under the same banner. Players ran the universe of Face of Mankind, making choices that affected the entire realm. The game was self-contained, with the world economy running eight billion credits through different planets. They created a legal system, named the Dominion Codex, devised Senate politics, and created what could be the only political MMO.

In May of 2007, Face of Mankind was attacked by a DDoS causing the MMO to stall for many, through the lack of availability. That following November, publisher Ojom stopped development and developer Duplex attempted to continue running the game without the support. Soon after Duplex announced they would restructure the game as Face of Mankind: Rebirth, but in June of 2008 Duplex announced that financial trouble lead to the cancellation of development.

After the game was officially cancelled, a Face of Mankind emulator emerged; allowing players to continue the game. Then in October 2008 after the emulator stopped its own development, Duplex announced Face of Mankind was back in development for re-release.

Project Manager Chase Noble played Face of Mankind since the beginning, through the emulator, and now is developing the MultiCom Network to work in conjunction with Face of Mankind when it officially releases again in 2009. My conversation with him was informative, opening my eyes to the strong community that supported Face of Mankind, and who were excited about MCN inside the game.

How did you become involved with MCN?

I ran the Public News Service, telling users here’s what happening. So you can see what I did, I don’t play the game like most people do; I like to do things in the backend, to watch and write about them. I find it more entertaining, but that’s just me personally. I’m kind of odd.

When FOM went down, the plans for it to come back went down, and the FOM emulator went up; I was talking to other people, and got the lead storyline. I wrote the storyline for the emulator, this was just one of the ideas. Originally, MCN was just to host FOM websites and never meant to be in-game. Neither was the operating system, just something small and managed.

After about a month after the emulator went up with MCN, the emulator stopped developing and I found out that FOM was coming back. We kept working on MCN, found eyeOS, and thought how cool it would be to have a computer as well. A day or two later, we found Rogue and realized what could actually be done with it. We had a great opportunity with Rogue to be placed in the game.

How did you find GotGame Rogue?

Through a Google search, “web browser game overlay.” Nexeon (company hosting the servers for FOM) and I were talking that it would be cool to get something in-game. During our talks, we thought maybe we could do it ourselves, but then thought, someone must have developed something by then. We saw Rogue and saw other options; a couple programmers could do it themselves. Then I got in touch with Andrew (Textor, VP of Business Development and Ad Sales) and the more we worked out, this was a better way to work together and spend more time developing MCN.

Is the MultiCom Network working with Duplex and Face of Mankind?

It’s both, something that Duplex wanted to make sure is known, but not officially part of Duplex. It is an appreciated user interface, all created by the community and not officially packaged with the game. MCN is not officially developed by Duplex.

It’s a labor of love, everything is all independent development. We want the game to succeed, we have a passion for this game and don’t want it to go the way it did before.

Is Duplex using the same base engine for FOM?

They’re using the base engine, but changing features to work with a smaller company. They changed combat, improved how factions work, and it’s completely 100% player run.

What was the plan of how eyeOS would work in MCN?

I talked to every faction and all agreed to use MCN. FOM itself has a “training program,” a general tutorial, but when talking with all the faction’s training departments, everyone felt it was inadequate. So there is going to be one general tutorial and a proper one with the factions as well. Using basic text and video lessons with tests, for example, identifying factions, meaning what they’ll look like.

Also, MCN will have a stock market, something requested in FOM for years. There are mercenaries in FOM, and in the game, they’re contracted out to other factions. A player can create their own cell with a system for rating individual cells. There will be a system for contracting them out too.

The legal system is hosted on MCN. Police can give penalty points, like warrants, and can be arrested and sent to jail. We setup a system where a ticket can be submitted and both sides will be notified. That’s mainly for smaller cases. Bigger cases will affect FOM throughout, with everything being in character on MCN.

We’ve been working on it for four to five months and are already happy about it. It gives people who work on MCN a unique perspective and a way to control storylines. There are no storylines in FOM this time. All info will be relayed through MCN, meaning we will host role-play events. For instance, we have an advertising firm and factions can pay in-game money for advertising to complete role-play events.

We might pay a mercenary cell to take over a player hosted radio station. Within a time limit, players have to find out the information about which station it is and retake it over or the station will be down for a week. Factions have to agree to it, but there will be cash rewards and it will be more fun and practical.

MCN will have its own internet, how are you managing it? Is there any administrative approval process?

There is approval for some stuff. Any content like forums, I can’t look in on those. They are player moderated. The MCN team approves application development and websites. Websites are manually created; there are eighty-one in development right now. Applications have to be manually added as well. Nexeon has administrative approval too because they’re hosting everything. I check all websites before approving them to make sure they complete the continuity and there are no contradictions role-play-wise.

There are a couple sites I don’t really like, but it’s not the right way to go with a community-run project and delete them. I had to admin once, someone posted pornographic material and we don’t have a license for it. We haven’t had enough sites that contradict each other yet. But we work closely with all of them; I always get calls on Skype or MSN.

What’s the most common website?

That’s difficult to say. All the factions have websites and all of those are done. Some other corporations and the public news services. If I had to guess, it would be non-faction based, like corporations, cloning, or housing.

Is MCN going to be part of the beta for FOM?

We have a single spot in the closed beta to test the software. A lot is done and ready. All of MCN and the public news. We won’t get Rogue integration until the closed beta. It feels like I’m already playing the game. What is being done now is already going to be in the game. We had an open beta for MCN to stress test and generally, everyone liked it. There were small bugs and we’re updating to a new OS. It’s an exciting idea to expand.

Any last comments?

We think it’s pretty cool, not supposed to pat our back, but we made things not meant to be used this way. None of it is made for what it’s doing, with user generated features.

During my talk with Chase, he gave me a quick tour around the MultiCom Network. I browsed it through Rogue and was impressed, not just of the scale that MCN was aiming for and in my opinion, reached; but on how immersive MCN was. It was not difficult to imagine how this would work while playing and using Rogue’s overlay abilities to view the online world of FOM while in-game. Many websites were fully functional with animation and sound; one particular site I enjoyed was Room-i-Deal, a website that sold apartments in the world of FOM. The best part of MCN is, it is the year 2398.

While my time in MCN was short, Chase convinced me that a community of gamers can recreate a game into their own image. Combining Rogue and the MultiCom Network together could have potentially been a gigantic failure, but after seeing it for myself, I can’t wait to try it inside Face of Mankind.