Chapter 78: The MMORPG Project Finally Begins
Chapter 78: The MMORPG Project Finally Begins
Once Yoo Juyeon understood Brian’s words, the team members’ gazes gathered on Insu. Insu nodded with a calm expression.
“That’s right. The required specs will rise sharply.”
“But by the time TLF Online is released, computer performance will have risen even more than that. Of course, just because better computers come out doesn’t mean everyone will immediately replace theirs, but considering how rapidly adoption rates are climbing, the proportion of people using the latest computers will be higher than expected.”
“...That’s true.”
The team members easily nodded at Insu’s answer. As developers, they were already feeling this firsthand.
Moreover, a new computer model had just recently been released.
It was the 586. In Insu’s previous life, it had been released under the name Pentium, but here, it simply followed the previous series and came out with a number.
The 586’s performance improvement was truly astonishing.
Its simple clock speed increased several times at once, but beyond that, it added a host of technologies powerful for games and networking: a core structure capable of executing two instructions simultaneously, strengthened floating-point operations, improved multimedia performance, parallel instruction processing, and more.
There were many cases where 1990s computers felt like game consoles compared to what came before. This was not only because users became absorbed in games, but because from the Pentium onward, computers really did contain many game-specialized functions.
As a result, they became a major turning point for game developers as well, and many astonishing games began appearing. So the feeling that they were like game consoles was not exactly a misconception.
“First, everyone understands what a server-client structure is, right?”
(Translator’s Note: Server-Client Structure — Network architecture model where centralized servers process and distribute data to connected client programs in real time.)
Together with Brian, Insu first explained the basic concepts of MMORPGs to the team members. Insu would direct the work and break it down for them, but development would be smoother if they understood the basic framework.
And in this era, except for a very small number of developers, namely MUD game developers, the server-client structure itself was unfamiliar.
“Yes. The server calculates most of the important things, and the client receives that and handles showing it to the gamer. Is that right?”
Receiving Insu’s gaze, Emily slowly explained what she understood. As expected, since they were all developers and already had experience making a game, they accepted the concept without much difficulty.
“That’s right. In practice, the players are playing in the world on the server, and the client displays that.”
Afterward, Insu spent a long time explaining the server-client structure he had designed so far.
Even if the concept itself could be understood quickly, creating an actually functioning program from theory was a completely different matter. In particular, the communication protocol between server and client, data synchronization method, exception-handling logic, and similar issues were not problems that could be solved through simple concepts alone.
(Translator’s Note: Data Synchronization — Real-time process ensuring all connected players and systems share consistent game-state information across the network.)
Insu, Brian, and Yoonsu had designed it while truly racking their brains.
Of course, even this was only a conceptual design, and the fine details would be handled again later after more time was spent and specialized personnel joined.
“It will be difficult to remember all of this, but you need to keep it in your head to some degree.”
However, even if it was called a server-client structure, it was not easy to build both sides in a completely separated state from the beginning.
The complexity would increase exponentially, and debugging and testing would become far more difficult. Also, because everything would have to go through communication each time, the experimentation speed would slow down, and they would need to build the network environment before even making the game. Furthermore, even while developing one side, they would always have to design with the other side in mind, so the burden could only be heavy.
That was why, ordinarily, they would first implement the entire logic inside one program, like a single-player game, then later tear it apart and separate it into server and client.
In his previous life, Insu had learned this as a “local simulation” or “single-player prototype.”
However, even if they built it that way, if they developed recklessly without considering the later separation, the disaster of having to remake everything from the beginning could occur. That was why becoming familiar with this concept in advance was essential.
“Of course, since an MMORPG has multiple users connecting with different permissions and roles, additional design will be needed. But for now, since all logic also applies identically from the perspective of a single user, we’ll expand it later by adding multi-user functions and permission separation. For now, you can make it like a single-player game.”
(Translator’s Note: Permission Separation — System design dividing users by different access rights and roles.)
But that did not mean they could actually make a true single-player game. They had to assume a multiplayer environment.
For example, convenience systems such as pausing the game or having the game itself stop when entering a menu had to be removed, and everything had to run in real time.
Of course, combat would be turn-based, but that applied only to combat. Time in the world itself would continue flowing.
Another important difference was the economy system. No matter how much freedom the TLF series had, in the end, there was only one player, so every trade partner was an NPC. But in an MMORPG, they had to consider the players’ share.
Early MMORPGs originally had fairly simple economy systems. In practice, they were almost like single-player games with player-to-player trading added.
This caused no particular issues early in service. But as the service period accumulated, various problems began to occur.
First, severe inflation was a problem.
Money kept accumulating through various routes such as hunting, quests, and trading with NPCs, but there were limited places to spend it, so the value of money continued dropping.
Moreover, materials also kept piling up, causing their value to drop. Later, most of them were sold to shops, creating gold again, lowering the value of money further. At the same time, since materials stopped being traded, money became less useful.
Eventually, enormous amounts of useless money piled up in storage.
“The simplest solution is naturally to create places to spend money. Everyone, please come up with ideas.”
The gold recovery methods Insu remembered included attaching small costs to various services, such as repair fees, teleport fees, and auction house commissions. There were also gambling-style systems like enhancement and gacha, but Insu was not very favorable toward that approach. There were ethical issues, but more than anything, he believed it overly simplified the game structure.
(Translator’s Note: Gacha — Randomized reward acquisition system commonly used in mobile games, heavily influenced by collectible card mechanics.)
Strength would be determined not by diverse items, strategies, or techniques, but merely by the + number attached to equipment. And once gold was poured into enhancement, the capital needed for other strategies disappeared.
Moreover, if the government took issue with these gambling-style systems, they could cause fatal problems such as age restrictions or service suspension.
“What about adding inheritance tax?”
It was Yoonsu’s opinion. Considering the feature where characters had lifespans and play continued through generations, inheritance tax would definitely be an effective way to reduce the amount of currency.
However, after briefly thinking it over, Insu shook his head.
“That might provoke too much resistance from gamers. In reality, people pay it because they have no choice, but in a game, if something feels too irritating, they might quit entirely.”
“Ah. That’s definitely true.”
“Moreover, there may already be gamers who feel stressed by the character dying and moving on to the next character, so adding inheritance tax could increase that stress.”
Perhaps because everyone was still young, they did not seem to have much resistance toward inheritance tax itself, but they immediately accepted the idea once they heard that strong aversion could make players quit.
“Then what about using medieval accuracy and charging tolls?”
This was Emily’s opinion. Since she had the sturdiest build on the team, hearing her say “toll” somehow made it feel immediately convincing.
And in the games Insu knew, there were systems that charged fees when entering dungeons and similar areas, though not exactly tolls, so it sounded fairly plausible.
“That sounds good. A toll is something paid selectively, after all. But it would feel lacking if it were just mechanically collected, so adding more systems might be good.”
“Hmm. Then what about exempting people from paying if their rank becomes higher or something like that?”
“That’s good.”
Insu additionally suggested methods such as fighting through, or using skills like [Speechcraft] and [Bribery] to get past. Brian reacted as though he found it interesting.
“That sounds fun. It could stimulate the desire to grow, and it could also add realism to the honor system.”
Afterward, various opinions came out, and Insu accepted them appropriately.
However, simply increasing the number of places to spend money still felt lacking.
So after thinking for a long time, Insu came up with several systems.
First, he would transplant TLF2’s trading system while modifying it to be closer to reality. He would apply the laws of supply and demand to NPC merchants, so that if the ratio of sales volume to total supply exceeded a certain level, prices would rise or fall.
Supply would combine a fixed amount automatically replenished every day or every few hours with the quantity sold to that merchant by players.
However, while realism was good, if demand overflowed too much or hoarding prevented ordinary players from buying an item, it would interfere with gameplay and reduce interest. Therefore, each player could purchase a limited amount corresponding to a certain percentage of the total supply regardless of actual inventory.
However, this basic guaranteed quantity would be marked as untradable. It could only be used for actual purposes such as crafting or magic materials. And this basic guaranteed quantity would only activate after ordinary stock ran out.
(Translator’s Note: Basic Guaranteed Quantity — Player-specific minimum purchase allowance that remains available even when ordinary stock runs out, marked as untradable.)
Of course, its price would be the price determined by the supply-demand system.
And he planned to add one more system to this trading system.
It was the decay system.
As a system in the same vein as characters having lifespans and dying, most items would also have lifespans, and after enough time passed, they would rot and disappear.
This would add realism to the game, but it would also prevent items from piling up infinitely and crashing in value. Accordingly, the amount of money used to purchase items would be maintained, and at the same time, that money would disappear, helping maintain currency value.
It would also help prevent hoarding. During trade, players would have to consider that items might rot, so they could not travel too far. If time was delayed by variables such as bandits or monsters, the items might rot, creating tension and forcing strategic choices, which he expected would multiply the fun.
The problem is how to implement it.
Naturally, attaching a timer to every single item was impossible. Processing that on the server would require tremendous resources, and if every item had a different state, it would also be difficult for players to manage.
For miscellaneous loot that piled up during hunting, if dozens or hundreds of items each had timers and were separated individually, the inventory would become unusable.
Fortunately, game developers had created a useful method for this.
We can use ticks, right?
It was a system used during the MUD era, when network environments were poor, and in simulations that needed state updates at set intervals. The method divided time into larger units and updated states when a certain time passed.
For example, if one hour was divided into six ticks, states would only update once every ten minutes, and regardless of the starting time, the update would occur at the same time for everything.