Reality Factory

Is this what's being used for RF2? Or is that still undecided?

No. I am writing my own network code. Network is one of my strongest technical assets.

OK. How is it going to be done? Is it going to be UDP? And will it be possible to do a battlenet style pre-game chatroom? Like there are multiple chatrooms, and you can chat on them, and you press join and it has a list of people who are hosting a game.

The design calls for a master server which will list all RF2 based games. I am trying to do a package based game strategy. This means that you don't distribute the RF2 exe with all your games, you zip up all your scripts, art assets, sounds and music and distribute that. If I can get that working, then you will be able to download "Game Packs" from the master server.

Wait, so if someone wants to play your game, they download a client of some sort, and browse avaliable games, and choose the one they want. Then the client downloads it from the server, and you play it from there?

You will be able to distribute your game one of 2 ways:

1. Through the "lobby" on the RF2 master server.
2. Via community website

In RF1, to have someone play your game you must package it with a setup program or zip up everything including the RF executable. What I am trying to do is eliminate the need for a setup package per game and you just distribute your game content. The RF2 executable will be maintained by the RF2 Dev Team.

When the RF2.exe is started, there will be a GUI with a list of "Game Packs". You just select the one you want to play. You can also make a shortcut using command line arguments (rf2.exe -pack "My Cool Game").

This allows us to maintain a standard environment for all RF2 games which makes support and troubleshooting much easier.

Think of RF2 as more of a game environment and not a shell.

EDIT: AutoUpdate of the RF2 Environment will be a feature also.