2015-01-22-0239-EST

Thu Jan 22 02:39:13 EST 2015

# journal - Long term distributed design ideas
- Distributed servers (Regions)
    - Each server will host a world region
    - Creating an actor costs in game resources
        - Encourage players to host their own region to easily create more than 1 actor
        - The world has a finite amount of actor's based on real world performance
        - In game resources are collected and sunk into creating new actors

    - All regions hosted by (gaming company name) will be trusted regions
        - You can pay us money to have your region become trusted
            - Assess whether this would enable pay-to-win
            - The money pays for us to host your region
        - Resources/skills/experience gained in trusted regions can be
          carried with you as you travel between trusted regions.

        - Resources/skills/exp gained in untrusted regions is bound to that region
          and CANNOT be transfered from region to region

        - Becoming a trusted region wipes the region
            - Advantages of paying for a trusted region
                - Owner regulates the actors created in that region
                    - Could create a huge army by themselves without contesting for
                      the shared resources of another zone
                - Become a member of the greater community

            - Disadvantages
                - Once a region becomes trusted anyone can harvest resources
                  and they transferable to only regions
                - You can't run mods to create new behavior in your region
                    - an arena region that caters to competitive combat
                    - A region with no combat and a fully story driven experience
                    - A battleground region with capture the flag, king of the hill mechanics

        - A modded region could become trusted/endorsed by (gaming company name)
            - We run the servers
            - We encourage players to visit your region before it is trusted
            - The regions source code is open source
                - you cooperate with us to verify the region's process is running unmodified
                  from the open source

    - Region boundaries
        - with seams
            - players will have to transfer from region to region
            - aka loading times as they connect to the server hosting the destination

        - trusted regions
            - dynamically modify bounds of a region
                - only simulate chunks with active actors
                - preload chunks into the quadtree as the actors move around
                - could enable better server performance from the user's experience
                    - less zoning

            - Some sort of overlapping chunk simulation
                - bridge between 2 simulation regions
                - could enable more seamless movement between simulation regions
                - region servers cooperate to preload actors transferring from server to server
                - both servers will calculate the state for the overlapping region
                - one server would be authoritative until the other verifies the connection
                    - then they would flip authority

### Why have trusted and untrusted regions?
Untrusted regions are a wild wild west. It gives anyone the ability to
build an AI and test without taxing the real game servers. It gives
anyone playing a risk free place to explore and meet others playing
the game. While the trusted zones have more risk involved because
it is verified that no one is duping gold, reporting invalid health values,
etc(cheating).

Untrusted regions enables anyone to make a modded version of the game.
You go and change some numbers or remove a skill, play with the games
balance or resource generation. It allows the players
to experiment with the game itself. The interface for actors to
perform input and receive output stays the same allowing  anyone playing
to zone from region to region and explore the universe.

The game will encourage player regulation. From politics to behavior,
I want the players to feel like they are shaping the world they
are playing in. Untrusted regions could be ranked, rated, reviewed
by the players. Again traveling from the trusted world to the untrusted
world is risk free. Anything that happens in the trusted world is
safe from the sea of potential hackers and exploiters in the untrusted
world.

Thu Jan 22 03:24:18 EST 2015