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Sopwith Online: a revolution of MMOPG?

Sopwith Online: a revolution of MMOPG?

There is something strangely compelling about the early years of aerial combat. Pilots, often noblemen, were akin to mounted knights from a feudal era. Some of them became legendary figures, like the "Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen. As man was learning to fight in a new element, the arsenal and tactics developed at an unprecedented pace. The earliest aerial skirmishes saw pilots firing pistols and throwing grenades at each other, but in a few years fighter aircraft were armed with highly accurate and powerful machine guns. This creates an ideal setting for an online multiplayer game, where players will experience the new wonders of flight first hand, gain fame and fortune for their pilot character, and earn faster aircraft and new armament to help them in their quest. Welcome to the world of Sopwith Online!

The original Sopwith game was written in 1982 by David L. Clark of BMB Compuscience as a demo for the company's network system, Imaginet. Sopwith was a fast-paced, side-scrolling arcade shooter in an era when there were few good arcade games for the PC. Not surprisingly, its popularity soon outpaced the product it was supposed to advertise. However, the vast majority of players were limited to the single-player mode, as Sopwith's multiplayer required proprietary Imaginet hardware. The multiplayer option was there, tantalizing but unreachable for millions of players. This became the driving force behind two Sopwith remakes, most notably Sopwith 3, released in 2003 by Josh Horowitz, Andrew Jenner and Andrew Durdin. Now Korean developer Harmony Studios is working on a new remake, and stepping things up another notch.

Fifteen years of computer game evolution made manifest

The above is actually as big an understatement as I confess to ever have made. What we've seen about Sopwith Online so far is jaw-dropping, and if everything pans out as intended, the game will be a technological tour de force. The most striking feature of Sopwith Online is its gorgeous 3D game world, rendered in OpenGL 2.1 rather than DirectX for multi-platform support. Sopwith Online's graphics engine features advanced lighting effects, including reflections, refractions, incandescence, subsurface scattering, and global illumination with dynamic ambient occlusion. Also featured is a realistic day-and-night cycle, which adjusts to the player character's geographical location on the game map. The various biplane and triplane aircraft are painstakingly modeled, using the latest features such as texture parallax mapping. HDR lighting and post-processing effects such as motion blur are supported by the engine, but as a graphics design choice they are used sparingly and tastefully to avoid a too-modern look. At full graphics fidelity the game is an amazing treat for the eyes, but even in the alpha version there are extensive options for scaling the detail down to run on low-end systems, all the way to OpenGL 1.0 and even an experimental software rendering option.

Less obvious, but perhaps even more impressive is the networking engine of Sopwith Online. Harmony Studios not only relies on players to handle the advertising of their first title, they also attempt to solve the logistics problems of a massively multiplayer game environment by adapting the BitTorrent protocol for their game. Most of the network traffic happens between clients, while a certalized tracker only has to take care of teaming up players and storing their statistics. What this means for the player is that they don't have to look for or host servers - start up the game, and you automatically share the same map with a theoretically unlimited number of other players. At the same time Harmony, the small developer, does not have to bear the mind-boggling cost of running dedicated servers for the game.

The game map is another stroke of genious. Harmony has licensed Google Earth's satellite imagery for Sopwith Online, so that players effectively fly on the real world map - post-processed to look like it's from the turn of the 20th century. Detailed modeling of a certain area, such as buildings, settlements, small rivers and bonus items, are randomly created by the first player entering an area. The details are kept on that player's client, and transferred to other players who enter the same area. If all players leave the area, all randomly generated details are lost. The game allows for some persistence, though, as players can own property and influence certain other map details with their actions. Whenever a player is online, these details are transferred to other nearby players. There are also persistent bonus items in the game, encouraging players to a kind of virtual, archaic GPS Cache hunt. We were told that there will be may be quests that mix game and real locations, but details on that remain a mystery.

Skies full of biplanes, drama and adventure

Even though the game is still in closed alpha testing, we were amazed at all the activity going on and the planes we saw buzzing around. By default, the game intelligently groups players up: you don't have to fly alone, unless you choose to go adventuring on your own. At the moment, Harmony is still working on the side and alignment system of Sopwith Online. There are five sides or Colors to choose from, Red, Green, Cyan, Magenta and White, but these are working titles and may not end up in the final version. There is no World War going on in the game, but smaller conflicts and skirmishes will happen between players' squadrons. Recent tester notes have hinted at global events, though, so we will have to wait and see what Harmony cooks up. Sopwith Online is not intended to be an all-out shooter but a character development MPOG, so getting tangled in a dogfight should be an exciting and even slightly terrifying situation every time it happens. There will be plenty of action, though, in mini-games as well as actual fights.

Cheating is a major concern in multiplayer online games, where a few bad apples can ruin everyone else's fun and the publisher's bottom line. Sopwith Online tackles cheaters by several mechanisms, including peer to peer review, a possibility for non-competitive gameplay, an adjutant system for player vs. player dogfights and finally a free zone, where cheaters can try out their tools without fear of reprisal. The last is particularly interesting, as it allows the developers a chance to discover vulnerabilities in the game, and hackers a place to show off their exploit skills without disrupting normal gameplay. The adjutant system is another novel feature, where two players can only participate in a duel if both bring an adjutant, who must be an unconcerned third party. The adjutants are charged to visually confirm the fairness of the duel, while their clients also monitor that there is no foul play going on.

Acting as adjutant in a duel and doing similar tasks will build your player character's reputation. Other statistics in the game are fame, notoriety and honor - flying skills are entirely up to the player, and cannot be increased artificially. The stat system is still undergoing fine-tuning, but a player's increasing reputation will unlock special missions for them, and they may appear in newspapers. Forming guilds is entirely up to the player community, and at the moment there isn't even any hierarchy to the different Colors. Players will be responsible for assuming duties in their organizations should they choose to, or they can choose to fly solo. The possibilities for trade, diplomacy, scheming and war are endless. Duels can increase both fame and notoriety, so shooting your way up through the ranks might end up making you a feared and despised figure.

I can't wait to get my hands on the final version of Sopwith Online - literally can't, so I've applied for the closed beta that should start sometime this month. Don't miss the new online sensation: register now, and don't forget to tell your friends. Climb high into the blue with Sopwith Online!

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