Art

The DTS art pipeline works well, but I'd like to support another art pipeline as well. I chose the MDL format because of the significant number of people that have created art other games which use MDL file format and already know how to export from many popular modeling packages.

1. Resource Manager enhancements to directly support KEY/BIF/HAK files. (These are file types that are like ZIP files. Support for these file types will make distributing art easier)
2. Create new MDLShape, MDLShapeInstance, MDLShapeBase, and MDLShapeBaseData classes to provide the same functionality that TSShape, TSShapeInstance, ShapeBase and ShapeBaseData provide.
3. Add texture / material support.
4. Add animation support.
5. Add node support for mount points to allow models to be mounted on other models (wepaons, armor, etc)
6. Add support for danglymesh nodes and soft-bodies (cloth and hair)
7. Add support for particles and other special effects (this should be above the soft-body implementation, but it's dependent on TSE particle implementation, which is not yet complete.)

Networking

For any MMO, networking is a critical issue. The better your network code, the more players you can support before you start to introduce "lag," which is a key factor in keeping players. Key definitions: A server zone is an area in the 3D world for which a server is responsible. Triggers are items you can touch, like doors and teleport pads. Portals are doorways which you can walk through. A server handoff is where a player or other item leaves one zone and enters another zone. A non-transparent handoff occurs when a player moves from one zone to another while a "loading" screen is displayed. A transparent handoff occurs without showing any loading screen or the player experiencing any significant delays. This is also called "seamless worlds." Transparent portal handoffs require the artists / mappers to create choke points where players must move through to move out of one zone and into another. Transparent zone handoffs don't require any choke points or portals and the player is free to roam the entire world.

1. Enhance Server / Network code to support multiple servers and Peer to Peer server connections.
2. Re-write server zones implementation from old MMO project, including rendering zones for debugging purposes.
3. Implement non-transparent "trigger" based server handoffs.
4. Implement non-transparent "portal" based server handoffs.
5. Implement transparent "portal" based server handoffs.
6. Implement transparent "zone" based server handoffs.

Database

For persistent worlds, handling logins, etc, a database is needed.

1. Database agnostic layer (AKA DBI)
2. Expose DBI to Torque Scripting
3. Mission Information load / save to database instead of script file
4. Metadata layer to abstract game information

Scripting and AI

Non-player characters are extremely important for an immersive world. Torque has a great scripting language and the beginnings of a good AI, but these aren't quite right for an MMO, so a lot of it will have to be done again (i.e. keeping original in tact, like DTS vs MDL, and adding a new scripting language)

1. Event based scripting enhancements at the Torque Script level
2. AI manager enhancements for route following, etc.
3. New event based scripting language to control NPC's and scenes
4. Item manager to handle in-gmae unique and non-unique items
5. Enhanced AI / NPC manager to support a huge number of NPC's (might require another type of server which becomes the AI server. This would allow the number of NPC's to scale)

Gameplay

I'm not actually interested in creating a game at this point, but I would like to make it easier for others to do so. I'd like to include a rules engine and a rules database that could handle all sorts of gameplay. D20 is one type. I'm not going to enter all of the D20 rules, but the gameplay engine should be able to handle the rules should someone enter them.

1. Create Gameplay engine to support generic gameplay rules
2. Test with full D20 rule set
3. Test with alternate rule set (try to create something totally different, like my idea for creating a Tribes style MMO RTS / FPS type game.) Enhance as necessary to support the new types of rules needed.