   OT - MMORPG - help wanted questions and answers...
  ... I am always somewhat supprised by people commenting on how hard these things are to pull off - any decent game is going to be hard - but I rather imagine that a MMORPG is basically a glorrified online database.am I not correct?(i once wrote a heavily bugged MMOStrategyGame called Stevietopia that is now defunct - though may live again!)I''d just like to give moral encouragement to all these rpg dreams i see on this section of the board. I would suggest that to make it happen - just grab a nice simple network API - do it all in TCP/IP and be happy. 
  Please send me photographics when you crash and burn. I can use them in my game, for explosions and stuff.:-) ;quote:Original post by hplus0603  Please send me photographics when you crash and burn. I can use them in my game, for explosions and stuff.:-)   lol! Yeah I won''t lecture you on why an MMORPG is the most difficult type of game to make. You''ll find out on your own. ;  Big differance from a glorified online database.  You have to handle how to get the data too the members, how the members are going to get it to the server, load balancing, player hinting, just to name a few.  Yes, the database portion is important, but you also have to understand it needs to be extensive and expandable.  most stratagy games have 1 large map in which you have access to, it is static (in size), the mmorpg has to be much more dynamic to allow for expansion.  I had once developed a small (Almost MMORPG) style server, using a text based interface similar to nethack.  This alone was extreemly daunting, not to mention all of the CONTENT you are going to have to put into an mmorpg.  Geez.... lol. ;  in a sense it really is just a glorified online database.  the challenge comes when you consider that you are generally used to databases being accessed at web speed (i.e. several seconds of delay on a loaded server).  now try taking that system and making it fast enough for thousands of people to be accessing simultaneously with huge information requests.  now add to that an economy capable of supporting all those players, and enough quests being constantly manufactured to satisfy the uber players who will play for upwards of 30 hours per week, also add to it the extra worry about having hacked client programs out there that would rob the fun from other people.the snowball starts to get really really big really really fast.  the snowball can be solved in pretty much one way -> LOTS of money.  you need BIG servers, a BIG staff and a ridiculuously fast internet pipe.  while i imagine that a group of hobbyist programmers can fairly easily get something up and running that "resembles" a MMPOG it is very unlikely to impossibe that they will be able to sustain a decent number of players even close to approaching what would put them into the _massive_ multiplayer category.  32-64 players, no problem, but you need some serious hardware and some damn good highly scalable code to handle 100+.  i mean you need to get way into the nitty gritty of data caching, SQL optimizations etc (akamai type local node data caching and whatnot).-me   [edited by - Palidine on February 10, 2004 1:11:34 AM];  So whats wrong with 32-64 players? Ever take a look at the zones in EQ? thats pretty much the average number of players in any given zone.Is that what professional next gen MMRPGs should be shooting for ? maybe not. But amateur game developers cutting their teeth on a MMRPG? why not?A MM online game IS just a streaming database. Correctly managing the datastream in a technically sound manner is just logistics and can be done well (although it rarely is.) Taking your datastream and turning it into a brilliant and exciting 3D adventure world is the real magic that has eluded even most of the professional development teams.Dont shoot people for mentioning MM games. Yeah most of them have their head up their backsides but not all. If you people spent as much time helping people as you do flaming them you''d be a lot more useful on this forum.The middleware tools for producing the technical components of a MMRPG are available in ever increasing numbers all over the NET. There are enough public domain software solutions to choke a cow. It''s the vision, forsight and actual ability of someone to bring them all together into a 3D world that someone actually wants to play that is lacking.Mark  Aakrana: The Forgotten LandsIf you have C++ experience and wish toassist in the alpha development of our networktransport using very easy middleware, please contact me.;  The overall client/server design, graphics engine, etc is a drop in the bucket when doing an MMORPG.  The codebase is the smallest job which is why I laugh when I see all of these MMO projects.The two biggest things in MMOs are game design and content development (ie textures, 3d models, etc).  If you look at the games that have been released in the last few years, the ones with little content fail. ;  indeed - for years ive been pondering such a game myself.I feel that with the current crapness of my net connection that (the fascist ISP doesnt allow more than 12(!) connections to a service) then it is easier to - if using tcp/ip to make fun little games - though it is possible to get around that limit using multiple servers hosted on same machine.Otherwise a ''reverse server'' connection where the host machine connects to the ''server'' of the client machines - I may not have described it that well.anyway back to mmorpg - Oneday I wish to be involved in one - perhaps I''ll post a help me request on these boards! and get the flak!my view is that if fundamentally the server is extendable - then if the game becomes big it sort of merely requires improved server side programming and set up. simple pimple?but yes - i do perhaps naively view mmorpg - from a programmer perspective as a glorified online database. pretty mundane stuff (no disrespect intended to those that know better) the main task I see as the creative side. ;  "I am always somewhat supprised by people commenting on how hard these things are to pull off "Thats because they are hard. Don't get it twisted , coding a mmorpg is one of the toughest things you could ever hope to pull off. It's not all about the modeling and texturing and game design. Thats the easy part. Implementing all that is the hard part.As for supporting thousands of players. You need to be on a fast connection yea.. I'd say nothing less than a solid 100mb/sec line which would easily support 2k+ players in one game world.   [edited by - realmsonline on February 15, 2004 9:26:23 AM];quote:Original post by Slyxsith  So whats wrong with 32-64 players?By that definition, would you class Quake2 as an MMOFPS? It can have 64 players in a single server...The MM does have meaning in that acronym.. Massively Multiplayer... 64 players is not massive. I have been in areas of Anarchy Online (an MMORPG) that have had 300+ players in the same building (which is a single zone). That is more what I call Massively Multiplayer. 