Articles Media Community of Tomorrow
Detailed documentation about the game engine.
Summary
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow
A game engine and virtual experience builder. E.P.C.O.T allows users to contribute towards a city built by all users. Users can explore the city and make improvements. Users can make spaces separate from the city with the same tools that are used to make the city. Open source contributions not only benefit those that build there own experiences on the engine but also support the overall development of the city.
Open development means you can peak at our progress today. Although we are far from ready, we already have an early working demo that can be played. Spaces can be created and populated with very basic objects and limited physics settings.
At the Articles Media Community Games page, or at an AWS data center depending on how you look at it?
Our countries cities and communities are lacking much needed innovation.
Keep reading below to see the full plan to pull this off. In short show people it can be done, acquire funds, build it, move in, it's that easy! Right?
Goals
- Create a working virtual community of tomorrow to prove to people/investors it is possible and desired.
- Gamification of city building aspects to recruit talent and promote collaboration in building the city.
- Real time collaboration / Multiplayer.
- Open source codebase to recruit talent and promote collaboration.
- Monetization of closed source / partner cosmetic assets as well as revenue sharing from income generated through user spaces/experiences.
- Mixed use of a game world to promote the end goal of a real city. The main game world serves as the model for the city and the world in which players can complete missions in a MMORPG experience.
- Use of game engine/tools to allow others to make there own worlds/spaces to encourage developer investment in ecosystem and encourage open source contributions.
- Promotion of Articles Media political policy, services, and branding throughout the game experience.
- Not get sued by Disney.
- Not get sued by 343 Industries/Microsoft.
API
Phases
Planning
The current phase
Permit Approval
Building
Opening
Monetization and Fundraising
For sustainability purposes this game needs to be positioned to support itself without dipping into Articles Media primary operation funds. At a certain point spending and time is justified on this project for talent attraction and promotion of Articles Media but a plan is needed for the future. In game cosmetics and battle passes if done right have proved as a valid revenue generation model for plenty of online games. Articles membership exclusive features promoted throughout the MMORPG game world can also serve as a sign up funnel. At no point do we expect to raise enough money for construction of the city through the game. What we do expect is to develop a solid technical working plan/demo and public support. Once we have that we can partner with development companies and investment firms to cover the rest through loans and stock options. Using the same tools that are used to develop the city, we allow users to make their own spaces/games. If funding can not be secured then at least when the next sucker comes along to do something similar they have a open source platform to work on. By keeping the project open source the community can also keep the project going if we ever cease efforts. Open sourcing also keeps us in check from community revolts and forked repos.
Inspirations
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Fallout 4 settlements system is a huge inspiration and I would love to somehow create a game demo for EPCOT in Creation Kit for Fallout 5 one day. Similar to what we are building with our tools, both games end up tricking you into building better settlements for your people!
Truly let you build whatever world you wanted to as long as it did not include any furniture or vertical half slabs. Despite many criticisms I have of the game it is my most played. Minecraft made me get started with programming. Amazing mods/experiences came from the community like Buildcraft, Industrial Craft, Shadow of Israphel, and Dynamp to name a few yet Mojang still provides no official support for modders and decided to favor bedrock experiences at the direction of Microsoft.
Halo Forge mode made me feel like a game developer without being one. A feeling I wish to recreate inside this game. Including all the games across series, Halo is my second most played game. Another game with amazing custom game content created by the community that sadly got neglected because of Microsoft.
Potentially the closest market product to what I hope eventually becomes of AMCOT. I have spent hundreds of hours playing many unique experiences/gamemodes on Garry's Mod. Sometimes I recall games I played randomly trying to remember what game it was that I was playing, realizing it was just a Garry's Mod mode. Raft wars, Sled Race, TTT, Minecraft, RP, you name it. Many games with custom content all end up feeling close in the ball park to the base game but Gary's Mod pushed user content to the limit. Still to this day no games come close to what GMod has pulled off.
From a kid I was always interested while playing Toontown how things worked under the hood and wishing I could work on the game one day. Toontown had a very similar universe to what I am trying to accomplish with AM-EPCOT, at face value you would think it is a MMORPG. But Toontown had many weird gamemodes nested within itself, more then most games still till this day. Toontown had so many modes that people have no clue about. Home decoration, fishing, character customization, pets, gardening, puzzles, obstacles courses, golfing, racing and more. Some of the other games on Articles Media are recreated and refreshed Toontown Trolly games!
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Some games that do allow user generated content gate keep the tools delivered to users. This can be for a variety of reasons.
- IP Protectiontest
- Content Ratingtest
- PerformanceSometimes tools and features are limited in games because they need to support a wide range of devices. One tool may be easy to provide on one device, but may be hard to provide on another. A lot to take in before you go spending time making some other company money.
- Target AudienceGames on consoles need to respect ratings to a degree even though online interactions are not rated by the ESRB.
- Laziness/PrioritiesWe are all human, most these games we enjoy have very bureaucratic structures that prevent things getting done at an expected pace. An employee can avoid a ticket, a team can continue to push deadlines, management can decide to scrap completed features and games in pursuit of dreams. By keeping the engine open source we can very easily fix this issue.
feel entitled to the content that the users have generated.
We think we can offer a better space for sharing content.
Games that force an periodic/always online connection do not allow you to keep the content you make if offline or if they stop their servers. Some games allow exporting but there needs to be a community that can rely on a more promising future.
Technical Requirements
Market Assessments
This tech space moves fast. This section makes note of notable players in the space that could be of use or opposition. If there are better technologies that meet the technical requirements that we should keep track of they will also be listed here. If there are players in the space that are working towards something similar they can also be listed and tracked.
Disney is listed here because if anyone could pull off something similar it would still be Disney. Disney is involved in the business of designing and construction parks, hotels, and neighborhoods at this time. Full scale communities and cities still seem off the table, but plans do exist. Development will continue to be tracked.
As Epic Games extends the functionality of the Unreal Engine and the Fortnite Experience builder, it would be foolish to assume that something like what are building could not be made in their engine. However at this time they are still lacking some functionality for us. Also worth noting that Disney and Epic are working to build an online experience inside of the Fortnite engine. Collaboration between Fortnite and AMCOT Spaces would be possible if they extended their API.
Unity can not be trusted. Plus the exported HTML5 Canvas feels like an afterthought and has no Javascript API wrapper at this time. Would be nice to be able to interact with the game outside the canvas.
The current Florida administration has made this projects original geographical location not possible but as we build out the model we will continue to show visuals of the original location.
Subsidies for a project that would bring this type of value to Americans would be useful and welcomed. Provision of city management tools and shares in the city could be leveraged.
Similar project worth tracking and possibly integrating with.
Lawsuit Contingency Plan
Certain terms are being used throughout this project out of homage/respect. As the project is being built we are doing so in a way that allows us to swap out terminology easily in the event of property disputes. Included below is the risky terms.
Some mixed terminology is being used across the site at this time but before we launch we will be making sure all use of the name is switched to AMCOT to still be similar but avoid lawsuits and public confusion. To be honest Dinsey should give us the EPCOT copyright and they should rightfully rename there park... /s?
While I like the term Forge, if 343/Microsoft become little cry babies then a term is needed to replace this.
Roadmap
In site model uploader, GLTF -> JSX tool, and GLTF -> NavMesh tool.
In site audio uploader, and scene audio tool.
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Node editor style interface for managing logic inside a space once it has started.
Blender Plugin for exporting a scene to a space, and adding gamemode and navmesh support inside blender.
Changelog
The game is currently in alpha and no changelog is really being kept outside of the Articles Media GitHub repo. Changes are well documented there for now. Once game is in beta a dedicated changelog will be kept.
The game will go into beta once the Spaces Engine is in a stable state. This means all tools needed for AMCOT MMO.
The game will be released once the AMCOT Spaces Engine and MMO are ready.