The Elusive PSP MMO.

One question, where is it? With the recent explosion of the MMO market, it strikes me as odd that not a single developer/publisher has as yet stepped forward and announced their intentions to bring the burgeoning genre to Sony’s handheld wonder.

The first thing I thought after picking up and playing Daxter for a few minutes (apart from z0mG! Great Game!) was “wow, this looks a lot like World Of Warcraft”. As I continued to make my way through the game I found myself wishing that I could get online and experience some sort of interactive community. Can you even begin to imagine how awesome it would be to play through a Monster Hunter Portable MMO!? How great would it be to be able to hop into Middle earth for a quick quest on the way to work, or perhaps simply purchase some new parts for that spaceship you’re building?

Read the full article, and find out about an exciting PSP MMO homebrew project.

One question, where is it? With the recent explosion of the MMO market, it strikes me as odd that not a single developer/publisher has as yet stepped forward and announced their intentions to bring the burgeoning genre to Sony’s handheld wonder.

The first thing I thought after picking up and playing Daxter for a few minutes (apart from z0mG! Great Game!) was “wow, this looks a lot like World Of Warcraft”. As I continued to make my way through the game I found myself wishing that I could get online and experience some sort of interactive community. Can you even begin to imagine how awesome it would be to play through a Monster Hunter Portable MMO!? How great would it be to be able to hop into Middle earth for a quick quest on the way to work, or perhaps simply purchase some new parts for that spaceship you’re building?

If the PSP can give us games with graphics as good as this, surely it can’t be a technical issue? Or can it? having said that, it should be noted that there’s no way an MMO like World of Warcraft could be ported to the PSP, at least not in its current form. Traditionally MMO’s have appeared on the PC, not just because of internet connectivity issues, but also because their control schemes are so complex they usually require the added control input that a keyboard and mouse provides. As such for an MMO to really work on the PSP it would have to be tailored specifically for the system.

As usual the homebrew community seems to be moving things forward, and filling the void left by the big guys. I sat down with James aka Psilocybeing on our very own QJ.net forums to talk about MMO’s on the PSP and his very own PSP MMO homebrew project, Traveller.

Moi: What made you decide to start work on Traveller?

Psilocybeing: I’ve been playing MMORPGs for years now, and I always wondered what it was like to be behind the scenes of one, so I decided to start work on one of my very own. The desire to improve my general programming skills and understanding of physics engines also played a large part, as while I have been developing for years game development is something that I had never touched before. Learning new skills and implementing them into something playable, and of a high quality was a large driving force during development.

Moi: Is there a story behind Traveller? Can you expand on the kinds of things players will be able to do?

Psilocybeing: Currently there is no story as such behind Traveller, but my target is to create a world that is fraught with many challenges for the player, while keeping portability in mind. I want players to be able to jump into the pilot seat and instantly find something they can crack on with, be it missions, PVP combat, exploration, or anything else that will finally be added to the game.
 
The work on features at the moment is pretty much non-existent in code, but to be sure I have quite a good idea of the gaming experience I want to create. Currently all of my work has been on the actual gaming engine, the driving force behind the game. I have written it to be as modular as possible, so when I fully implement the net code all of the function calls required to reconstruct the world will be at my disposal, ready and waiting.

Moi: What technical challenges have you run into working with the PSP, particularly related to using its WLAN features?

Psilocybeing: Learning how to use the WLAN adapter on the PSP was a pretty easy step, in fact it was the first thing I learned how to do when developing for the PSP. Thanks to Danzels open source peldet Telnet/IRC client, ripping out the innards behind the networking was a pretty fast job. As with pretty much any other networking lib the data is retrieved using functions similar in form to that of file I/O, so net code is not a large issue at the moment. One challenge that I have yet to completely hammer out is the method behind syncing player locations, not only on the server, but on the other clients as well. As movement is seamless sending an update packet on every position change would be very uneconomical for bandwidth, so I’m going to have to implement some kind of prediction math to the server to take the required bandwidth down by a large chunk.

Moi: Based on what you’ve come to experience in your work on Traveller, why is it that you think publishers and developers haven’t taken to the PSP as  an ideal platform for the MMO as they have the PC?

Psilocybeing: I really cannot fathom why professional developers have not jumped at the chance to create a portable MMO for the PSP. All of the features we need are there, and due to the PSP being a console we have the exact guidelines that we can tailor our client to. While it may not be the fastest piece of kit on the market, it certainly has an extensive array of features and libs available to support a fully functional MMO.
 
The only thing I can think of is that information regarding an MMO has not been released to the public yet, maybe due to the amount of time that MMOs take to develop. I would predict that before this year is out we will see some official games that utilize the PSPs WLAN capabilities to their full extent.

Moi: How much longer do you estimate Traveller will be in development?

Psilocybeing: I really couldn’t say, Traveller is written in my spare time, and it is not the only project I’m working on at the moment. Currently I’ve been switching between four or so different projects. One being Traveller 2D, another being PME, another being getting to grips with PSPGL with the hopes of migrating Traveller from 2D rendering to full 3D rendering, lighting/shading/texturing and all. The fourth..well, you’ll have to wait and see

       
Screens from Traveller

Thanks for the interview and the good work James, I know we all wish you the best of luck. If you’d like to keep track of Psilocybeing’s progress on Traveller you can do so simply by hitting up his blog once in a while.

The way of the world is to avoid cost and yet homebrewers go out of their way to encounter it, whether for the joy of sharing, or the personal challenge it ends up benefiting the entire community and for that we’re always grateful. In the case of the PSP in particular it seems the big guys are always trailing behind the lead of the homebrewers, so maybe some time soon, any day now we’ll finally get a PSP MMO announcement. Don’t hold your breath for it though