Fields of War - 200 players mech action MMO

Greetings all,

We're proud to announce our first game, Fields of War is in beta!

A short teaser:

Taken from our Greenlight page:

Fields of War is a massive multiplayer third-person-shooter focused on large scale battles, territory control, skill and most importantly team play.
The players are divided into two factions, North and South, coming from different climates and landscapes, and fight over control of the entire land.

Key features:
• A persistent world, hosted on our servers.
• Up to 200 players per server.
• AI bot replace absent players.
• Full dynamic day-night cycle.
• Two distinct landscapes, offering strategic gameplay.
• Node-based territory control mechanic.
• Five distinct mech classes with different play styles.
• Customize your mech’s colors and camo pattern.
• PC, Mac and Linux support.
• Unified multi-platform account – buy once, play on any supported platform.
• Cross-platform multiplayer.

A more detailed and complete information about the game can be found on our website here: www.thermalerosion.com/fow/info

Please vote for us on Greenlight!


Thank you for your time and interest, and we hope to see you all!

 

Looks incredible! And 200 players? SOLD!
Hope to see more of it. Bookmarked!

 

That looks wicked awesome.

 

awesome, how do you guys keep it running so smooth with 200 players?

 

They say they don't have 200 actual players in the beginning, they want beta testers.

 

What koyima said. The teaser was taken with dumb AI bots that we created to get a feel for what the game will be like.

Thank you! ^-^

 

good job, i liked it more than hawken...

 

Looking pretty epic!

 

Looks fun, and the fact there can be 200 players makes it more "appealing"

 

Looks pretty good! Kinda reminds me of some Star Wars game I've played years ago. Keep it up!

 

Thanks! That's really flattering

Thank you.

Well, I'm glad you appreciates it.. wasn't easy, haha.

 

Just wanted to remind anyone who is interested that we'll be running an open event today (Sunday, March 10) beginning at 15:00 UTC. ^^

 

Looks awesome keep up the great work!

 

I've updated the first post with a new trailer we've made from the last beta event.
I think we've made some progress since that pre-alpha video ^_^

 

200 players? May I ask what kind of networking setup your using? Ulink? Photon? Also for some feedback, the mechs you have are good but they look more or less the same. Perhaps there could be more walker types such as 4 legged walkers , 6 legged, and so on.

 

We're using the built-in networking. It's good enough

Regarding your feedback:
I think this gif helps show that the mechs are not so similar after all:
View attachment 51067

We thought about making non-bipedal mechs , but eventually decided against it. We aim towards faster and more arcade-ish gameplay rather than 'mech simulator'.

 

Hello everyone!

We've scheduled the next beta event to Sunday, May 12 2013.

In this event we want to try out our new, simplified account system.
You'll need a key to enter the game this time, so we've opened registration in our forums, here: http://www.tecommunity.com/index.php?showtopic=538

Just post in the topic and we'll try to get back to you with a key as soon as possible.
As we've re-written the entire system from scratch, your old key won't work. So even if you already have a beta key, please use the link above to get a new one.

The event agenda is as follows:
12/05/2013 12:00 - Game Server Online
12/05/2013 19:00 - Game Server Shutdown

* Date/Time format: Day/Month/Year, 24-hour clock, UTC time zone

We'll see you all on the battlefield!

 

It looks pretty neat. I like how open the game world is, ability to see distant and an expansive landscape with lots of action taking place... I also didn't totally realize that those other players/machines out there are actual human players (potentially) which is quite impressive, but I'm a total newb when it comes to multiplayer online games.

 

Looks a nice game
But how can you handle built-in network if it only supports 32 players? Are you using any kind of external Raknet with Unity built-in network?
Keep it up!!

 

Looking really good I'm also curious as to what you are using for networking?
Are you using your own server code? Photon? Unity?
Considering the amount of data 200 players would require in FPS I can imagine there has to be a lot of work on optimizing it so that not every player sends it's updated to every other player? But rather somewhat distance/visibility based?

 

He already stated he is using built in networking

Also the game looks great! Ill be participating in the beta for sure

 

Yeah, thought almost the same, Justei. He said above that he is using the built-in network, but it can only handle 32 connections.
I am using Photon for some prototypes (cloud) and it is working good. But 200 is a really heavy load, so, I am curious.. if he can share this with us, it would be great. The game is looking nice, I really miss some good mech games out there.

 

Thanks! We've been working hard on the terrain/sky and it's nice that you appreciate it.

We're not using any external Raknet. It's possible to support more than 32 players using the built-in networking API.
We have a dedicated server, and we've done a lot of optimizations of what we send and what not in terms of precision and visibility.
It's complicated, so maybe one day we'll write a detailed article on what exactly we did to achieve this.

By the way, we signed up to the Unity Awards competition under Technical Achievement, so if we win we'll definitely share our research. ^_^

P.S
We'll be holding a beta event on Sunday (May 12) so if any of you wants to drop in and see for yourselves, sign up for a key here: http://www.tecommunity.com/index.php?showtopic=538#entry714

 

Nice, great work then
We are following this. Keep it up!

 

Looks excellent. Graphics and terrain are very good. Gameplay also looks good. It looks well suited to multiplayer.

 

Looks pretty neat. I think it would be more fun with jumping or jetpacks.

 

Thanks people!

@jessee03 - we have one mech who can jump using a jetpack. ^^

 

Looks really good. Gotta love big mechs fighting it out! Keep up the great work.

 

Good work ! I love mech stuff !

 

Thank you, thank you! ^_^


We're also thrilled to announce that Fields of War is now also available for purchase from GamersGate!

Please check out our page:

​

We're also pretty excited that GameSpot has featured our beta gameplay video on their channel, so please head over there and give us a thumbs up?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRbChjWIkTo

 

Stunning, and glad to see you kept up with everything.

Also, congrats on the release.

 

Thanks, Cure!

 

-irrelevant-

 

It's a little necromancery, but these news are worth it.

We're finally out of beta, and we've very proud to announce the launch of Fields of War!

It's available from our store here: https://thermalerosion.squarespace.com/store
We have a Greenlight page here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=128428658
And we have a shiny new launch trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyOHkKtEZWI

See you all on the battlefield!

 

There is no limit to Unitys built-in networking. I don't know why everyone thinks it's 32...

I'd also like to read a bit on how you (asafsitner and team) did manage 200 players.

 

Well. I guess that they basically did what we did. Take a look at the Blog we wrote about networking and how we achieve high player counts, here: http://www.fsegames.eu/devblog1.html

This document is not very detailed, it is written for normal players, that do not understand anything about networking, programming etc., but it should at least give a rough overview. The document is a bit outdated too. We are now using a lot more techniques and much less data. But it is a good start.

What we noticed though, is that the networking part of the game is not a huge problem. The cpu side of things however... Well lets say, it is gave us quite some problems. Physics and colliders and all that stuff, all on a single dedicated server, running on a single core... That is where the real problem is hidden. To achieve that, we had to write our very own character controllers and collision detection systems.

 

very nice ill vote for it

 

What's interesting is most of these techniques are standard practice when it comes to multiplayer networking, so I'm curious how many developers forget to do this as it is far from new. Some of these techniques are even mentioned in Valves networking docs, and the game is over 8 years old. Generally games that have also released for consoles don't go over 32 as that is the recommended limit for that platform. PC games can range between 64-120 without many issues, but rarely the designers want to embrace those kinds of numbers.

 

I think they do not want to take the risk. They rather spend their time on a good looking nice and new engine, instead of optimizing Network Code. Valves network code is not really the best, when it comes to terms of bandwidth usage. I think most company's nowadays use some kind of "Valve like" network code.

 

If anyone is interested, there's 20 hours to get the game for whatever price you want on IndieGameStand!
https://indiegamestand.com/deal/

 

whats the average number of players ?

Sounds fun playing with so many players but I wonder how many are actually there to play?

 

Fields of War is also available for pre-purchase on Desura: http://www.desura.com/games/fields-of-war
Full release scheduled to January 15.

Information on how to get Desura keys for existing owners will be given on January 15.

 

Looks nice but the GUI(and icons) doesn't look good. Imo you should hire someone for this if you want to be PRO. (imo)

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Great game! It has potential, that's why I registered this forum to give feedback. Why no option/tool to host server? I would like to play it with my friends with a lesser bots, because I can't progress on capturing bases by myself against 100 bots lol. Besides, when the official server went down, game'll be dead. I read a statement VM'll no longer work on it, that's a shame. However, I understood the decision, it's too late to revive the game.

Well, good luck on your future projects. I'm tracking.

 

amazingle awesome great game sir

 

Indeed, we are no longer working on FoW.
We'll discuss the idea of providing self-deployed server builds, but that's not on our schedule right now.
However, we've said it before and I'll say it again: we will keep the server alive for a sensible amount of time regardless of population size.

We appreciate the feedback, and certainly hope you'll be as excited about our next game as we are.
Details coming.... When It's Ready™

On the behalf of the entire Virtual Mirror team, I thank you.

 

this is absolutely amazing. very well done. I especially like your terrains.they are very well done

 

Thank you!
It's all the work of the amazing Harel Jann, our very own art wizard.