Thread: Designing an MMORPG

Originally Posted by sand_man

-venting start-

Obviously the only people that have posted so far are blind mice, myself included, but its just people reading, learning, and contributing to one game instead of seperate games. I fail to see how working in a group to make one game is worse than when Bubba or you (I assume) learned from books and started making engines/games. I also got the vibe that this wasn't recruitment for a serious project, and would be overjoyed if we made an engine that looked like Runescape in 2 years.

Its obvious that it would take a lot of time, and I have seen that Bubba has taken a lot of time to learn DirectX. I see his posts about it go as far back as 2002 or so, and yet his engine is still in development. (of course he lost some in a format).

But you do realize the idea is not like the thread title implies right? Its a simple online game, which is done as a hobby and not for retail. Its not the next World of Warcraft. How is 3 people, who would be looking for more, learning to program c++/DirectX/winsock and pulling it together into one project not worth doing? Many lone programmers out there learn and make single player games, and yes online would be a huge step forward, but thats why its a group project. Group learns as they go, and contributes as they go.

On top of that the OP wants a 2D game, and possibly wants to use wrappers and many libraries. Thats not so out there..

Just thought I'd clarify my idea of what this topic represents (not that wanna-be join a noob group trying to make an Everquest and get rich kind of project) Maybe we should all just wait until our third year in university where a prof who has seen the light can teach us, or at least hope because many profs send you off to use resources (sort of what we got going here *wink* *wink*).

-venting over-

Understand me here. I applaud your vision and your desire to make an MMORPG and I personally think that one day indie companies with similar desires will produce better and more in-depth games than the big boys. Indie companies are not usually limited by guys in suits who don't have a clue what a game or designing a game is all about. Indie companies can produce better games but won't produce as many games, which is not a bad thing given that 75% of what you see on your local Wal-Mart shelf is crap that is churned out by the copy-cat wannabes targeting people like you and me.

However there is a sad reality. Games take time to program and take time to get done right. I used to be of the opinion that more realistic means more fun, but I've changed my mind. Just because it's more like this world we live in does not mean it's going to be any more fun than say living your life - which for the most part is quite anti-climactic. So you don't have to have the latest and greatest physics or the most awesome graphics for the game to be fun.

In fact, how many of you have played some 3D games and afterwards you were like......blech. All the pretty graphics and all the sounds didn't change your opinion of the crappy game hidden underneath.

So my point here is it can be done by people like you and me, however, we are going to have to produce something that the big boys either do not have time for or cannot make money at.
They cannot afford to make games that take forever to create and they cannot put everything they want into it in order to make their milestone builds. But you and I don't depend on a paycheck when we develop our own and so we are not limited by that. In fact we are only limited by our imagination and our skillset.

So build your skillset, build your knowledge and above all get the game design right so that when you code it - it will be fun. Fun can make up for a whole lot in a game - including the latest and greatest flashy graphics. I read a review of Black and White 2 and although it pushes the hardware to the max, the overall feeling was that it was not fun. That is not what you want.
Get books from amazon about the technology and how to do this or that and you can code your game. However, play some common games out there now to find out what you like, don't like, or would like to change. Once you get a feel for what's out there and what's been done then you can begin to eek out your own new style or your own new game. Design is everything. Lack of design is like not having a roadmap in an unfamiliar city. Design your game to be fun, not tiring, not boring, and not burdensome. Make your interface clean, crisp, sharp, flashy and above all easy to use.

Anyone who wants to create a game must have desire, passion, and commitment. After some time of coding the game gets old and the flame of creativity begins to be smothered out by the reality of actually coding it.

It's not that you cannot do it or shouldn't try, but please gather all the knowledge, commited coders, designers, creators, etc,. that you can. My best wishes to you in this endeavour and I hope you succeed. You can do this thing, but you are going to need a lot more than you have now or could imagine having at this moment.

Now go code.

And my 3D engine is alive and kicking. I sent early copies to my dev team and so we did have some backups for it. Also the new editor is coming along quite well. I haven't coded in DirectX for quite some time now - it's all been Win32 and MFC and I'm looking forward to dumping this crappy device context crapola as soon as possible. This DC to that DC to select this Bitmap into this DC......blech....I hate that stuff but it has to be done to make tools in the Windows environment.

If you are looking for a 2D game for this RPG I'm making an editor for just such a thing. The editor supports multiple layer tilemaps with transparency for tiles, movement maps, scripting, object creation, waypoints, bounding boxes, and on-screen animation. Or let's say those are the goals of the editor.

And my 3D engine would have been done by now except I keep trying the latest and greatest wiz bang thingy and really don't get anywhere on the actual game.

But if you would like to use the editor I would be more than glad to give you a copy. And I would also provide the source code for the editor to your dev team so you could alter it as you see fit. I don't normally do this and I could put a shareware license on it (which I might) but I made it to aid our team and I know it would help yours. I'll let you know when it's at least usable.

Yeah... I was just looking to make a game like the ones you see in Intro to Direct3D. I know what it takes, and I cannot, and do not want to make an MMORPG.

I don't know what Bubba and sand_man see in the other posts that makes them think this is some homebrew retail MMORPG. If you look the OP, myself, Raigne, and jmd15 were just looking for a project to work on, online, and able to have a few friends on. The title was obviously misleading and lead to ElastoManiac, and dimirpaw, posting about getting started on an MMO when they aren't the ones that were interested, and I'm not sure understand what it would actually take to make one (what Bubba said, plus years of experience, and financial backup).

This thread really is not making much sense to me. This is really the simple truth, a person alone CANNOT make a MMORPG by themselves, nor can a team of 15 people, with out decades or so of work, on average a MMO team consists of around 100 people, these are not regualr people, these people are the best at programming, grapic design, 3D graphic artists, 2D graphic design, 2D graphic artists, music composer, game designers, producers, supervisors, that is to name a few and most likely have had a passion and desire for it unlike those of us who just program in our downtime for something to do. Im not saying it is impossible for us to make games I am just saying that for an average person (not a rich person) this feat is not really plausible, I mean look at the facts, you have to buy servers, or pay for servers from other companies, and you have to organize a Dev Team, Design every aspect of the game from the names of the different plants, to the design of the stars in the sky, then most really good programmers are going to want to be paid, there are those times when your server system crashes and you have to buy new ones. MMO's are not something we as ordinary people amke but really big rich companies. Such companies are Sony(EverQuest), Mythic(DAoC), Sony (EverQuest2), whoever made ragnarok, thsoe are big companies, they have something we dont money.

Now if you want to change your Idea of this and go for making a single player game yes I will be glad to help, but give up on a MMO unless you get hired by a big companies or Funded by them. That is really all i had to say thanks for your time.

Also referring to the first post, there is NO such thing as a small MMORPG

I'm really struggling here Bubba. I've found at least 3 good books, and 3 good tutorials on OpenGL. However, I've only managed to find one book with a good rating/review for DirectX, "Introduction to 3D Game Programming With DirectX 9.0" - which gets a 5 star rating even though its actually about Direct3D. The others are either quick mock ups, have major errors and such, plainly just aren't that good, or are in C# and still not that good. "Advanced 3D Game Programming Using DirectX 9.0" doesn't get a great review, but I could settle and read that one too, or "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus (2nd Edition)" even though its poorly written and by.. LaMothe. Do you have any recommendations? even if it requires me to settle on one thats okay.

Yeah, I couldn't find good results for Direct3D either. If I were going to use OpenGL, then I would use SDL and possibly OpenAL.

That would be funky.. using OpenGL for graphics, and DirectSound for sound - does that even work? I guess it would, but the purpose seems lost, and what for input? SDL.

Its "The C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup, and its more of a reference than a learning guide. I personally already have my C++ book, "C++ Primer Plus" (ed. 5).

Originally Posted by Raigne

Yes some games use both, I would use DirectX for input as well, the purpose would be that OpenGL is alot easier code than DirectX, I was just stating a opinion.

My opinion would be that if you are spending time to learn how to code DirectSound/Input, then coding Direct3D would not be such a far leap as to go and code OpenGL. Of course I've never coded DirectInput/Sound though so maybe they are 10 times easier. But then why not just use SDL. It would seem like a waste, if I were making a serious game, to use a multi-platform graphics library, and not use a multi-platform sound/input library. But anyway, it doesn't really matter to me much because I plan to learn them all eventually.

Hmm.. I don't care about that right now anyway. I really wanna know Bubba's opinion on a Direct3D/X book. I'm going to bed.

i think it's quite diffrent. U don't need to have the money to buy the servers u just need to fing an investor. That's how it works.

I haven't really used DirectX at all as of yet, so if I am to be helping on this project, I will need a little bit of time to read up on it. Then I can learn as I go. From this thread alone, it looks like we could assemble a team of a few programers. In the end, it should be about having fun, learning, and experiementing.

a small mmorpg game

Yeah, sure. How about not starting with the biggest project you could find ? Like Bubba said, I like your enthusiasm, I just think you should channel it into something that actually has a chance.