5 ms·

"This book is targeted towards at least somewhat experienced developers (in other words, it is NOT “how to develop your first program” book with IDE screenshots

by ldd 11y ago

"This book is targeted towards at least somewhat experienced developers (in other words, it is NOT “how to develop your first program” book with IDE screenshots and copy-paste examples). If your game project is your very first programming project – you’re likely to have difficulties understanding this boo" After spending sometime around people that want to become indie developers, I cannot emphasize this enough. Please do not try to make an MMO as a first game.

jonesb6 11y ago
I remember one of my first hobby projects was trying to simulate the universe with python (thousands of 3d celestial bodies gravitating around each other). About a month later I tried to simulate a economic system with Ruby. Let's not become the old people telling the kids not to have any fun.
- MaulingMonkey 11y ago
  The problem with making MMOs is that they're massive projects that are difficult for large teams of seasoned developers with large budgets to complete and succeed with. Just how much fun is someone going to have trying to tackle one of these things as their first game? It's a guaranteed setup for failure, for being overwhelmed by the scope of your project, for not knowing how to even begin to tackle the problem, for - well, mostly a lot of frustration and not a lot of fun. I see it happen over and over again. People join gamedev communities, ask how to make an MMO, and then get fustrated, leave, and never return when nobody has a tutorial on "how to make an MMO from scratch with no previous experience required in 21 days". Kids, go have fun. Make things. Accomplish things. Dream big - but start small and work your way up to those big things. You'll get to your goal quicker anyways - more feedback from more projects - successful or not - means you learn faster.
  - jonesb6 11y ago
    Equally however people who attempt large projects will accomplish at least a number of small successes along the way, each carrying value as a learning / growth opportunity. Many times those small accomplishments could never have been had with a small or even medium size project. People learn and engage differently. Some people will gain a lot from starting at a fundamental level and working their way up. Others will be much more stimulated at the macro level, and let's be honest the goal of learning is rarely to create a true product but for the sake of learning itself.
    - MaulingMonkey 11y ago
      > Equally however people who attempt large projects will accomplish at least a number of small successes along the way That frequently hasn't borne out from what I've seen. People try to tackle MMOs without even understanding basic programming. They're so focused on trying to build their MMO that they can't be bothered to read a programming tutorial long enough to learn what loops are. They just become help vampires - accomplishing nothing truly on their own, frustrating both themselves and those around them. Small successes require small projects, sub-projects, or sub-sub-projects. You can carve some of them out of projects where you've bitten off more than you can chew, but MMOs tend to be an additional magnitude of order larger - and from what I've seen, that much more difficult to get even small successes off of. > Many times those small accomplishments could never have been had with a small or even medium size project. I'd question this. Care to share any examples? I can't think of any sub-projects which can't be spun off into project of their own. > People learn and engage differently. Some people will gain a lot from starting at a fundamental level and working their way up. Others will be much more stimulated at the macro level, Sure. Keep dreaming big. I'm not knocking it's effect on motivation. I am questioning how motivating the actual act of trying to tackle an MMO as your first game is, and how much you'll learn from it. Where are all the indie developers trying to jump straight to making MMOs with no smaller games in the middle? How many of them have gotten so far as making a chat server? Why can I count the number I'm aware of on one hand - outnumbered by the number of entire communities of indies, each bristling with untold numbers of games - both in the progress of being made, and outright completed? Where are all the indie MMO developers, if it's so motivating? > and let's be honest the goal of learning is rarely to create a true product but for the sake of learning itself. This is bordering on a truism - the goal of learning is to learn? Sure. But if that's your only goal - why make games? And is tackling an impossibly large project really the most effective way to accomplish that learning? Another extremely common goal of making games - I'd argue far more common than the goal of pure learning - is to have fun playing the game with the idea you had. Which project is going to let you actually scratch that itch - the never-complete MMO or the quick and dirty shmup? Which one can you share with your friends and have them play? Which looks better on your portfolio when applying to that game development studio that makes MMOs, giving you hands on experience with the real deal?
  - e12e 11y ago
    Maybe, maybe not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta_Online#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta_Online#Development [ed: But sure, as a first game/application, maybe not]
  - srpeck 11y ago
    MMOs do not have to require massive development if you strip the requirements back to the bare essentials. There are a lot of software engineering concepts involved (and tons of messy business logic), but this just makes MMOs better as learning projects/teaching tools. For example, as an exercise to test the ability of code golf-style/APL/array programming languages to handle messy business logic, I recently built a 2D tick-based MMO in kdb+/q: https://github.com/srpeck/kchess https://github.com/srpeck/kchess Note the design decisions/constraints that reduced development time: - High programmer efficiency kdb+/q platform - Simple client-server architecture - All-on-one-box - kdb+ is both the front-end server and the datastore - Websocket-based networking - Tick-based - 1 second ticks to limit latency issues, though the server fully supports near-realtime ticks - No differentiation between players and AI - both are networked clients (e.g., see here for the simple websocket client docs: https://github.com/srpeck/kchess/blob/gh-pages/docs/kchessdoc.md https://github.com/srpeck/kchess/blob/gh-pages/docs/kchessdo...) - No player identities (generally a commercial showstopper, but not for a side project) - No 'content' - simple 2D graphics (though making the engine 3D would be trivial due to the vector paradigm), no progression/quests/RPG elements Of course, there are the MMO pieces that generally increase development time: - Game state cannot be globally fanned out given the sheer number of possible client connections (the first M - Massively) - Untrusted players/clients But once you have a simple, solid base engine, converting the result into an instance-based MOBA or a full MMORPG is not difficult, just time-consuming.
dexwiz 11y ago
Agreed. There is a reason MMOs didn't appear until 30-40 years after the first video games. They are extremely complex, require a large number of assets, and a large testing team. I am still waiting for that 100% science based dragon MMO.
- bcoates 11y ago
  MUD came out about 5 years after Adventure. It's not really a tech limited genre.

by ldd 11y ago

jonesb6 11y ago

I remember one of my first hobby projects was trying to simulate the universe with python (thousands of 3d celestial bodies gravitating around each other). About a month later I tried to simulate a economic system with Ruby. Let's not become the old people telling the kids not to have any fun.

MaulingMonkey 11y ago
The problem with making MMOs is that they're massive projects that are difficult for large teams of seasoned developers with large budgets to complete and succeed with. Just how much fun is someone going to have trying to tackle one of these things as their first game? It's a guaranteed setup for failure, for being overwhelmed by the scope of your project, for not knowing how to even begin to tackle the problem, for - well, mostly a lot of frustration and not a lot of fun. I see it happen over and over again. People join gamedev communities, ask how to make an MMO, and then get fustrated, leave, and never return when nobody has a tutorial on "how to make an MMO from scratch with no previous experience required in 21 days". Kids, go have fun. Make things. Accomplish things. Dream big - but start small and work your way up to those big things. You'll get to your goal quicker anyways - more feedback from more projects - successful or not - means you learn faster.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  Equally however people who attempt large projects will accomplish at least a number of small successes along the way, each carrying value as a learning / growth opportunity. Many times those small accomplishments could never have been had with a small or even medium size project. People learn and engage differently. Some people will gain a lot from starting at a fundamental level and working their way up. Others will be much more stimulated at the macro level, and let's be honest the goal of learning is rarely to create a true product but for the sake of learning itself.
  - MaulingMonkey 11y ago
    > Equally however people who attempt large projects will accomplish at least a number of small successes along the way That frequently hasn't borne out from what I've seen. People try to tackle MMOs without even understanding basic programming. They're so focused on trying to build their MMO that they can't be bothered to read a programming tutorial long enough to learn what loops are. They just become help vampires - accomplishing nothing truly on their own, frustrating both themselves and those around them. Small successes require small projects, sub-projects, or sub-sub-projects. You can carve some of them out of projects where you've bitten off more than you can chew, but MMOs tend to be an additional magnitude of order larger - and from what I've seen, that much more difficult to get even small successes off of. > Many times those small accomplishments could never have been had with a small or even medium size project. I'd question this. Care to share any examples? I can't think of any sub-projects which can't be spun off into project of their own. > People learn and engage differently. Some people will gain a lot from starting at a fundamental level and working their way up. Others will be much more stimulated at the macro level, Sure. Keep dreaming big. I'm not knocking it's effect on motivation. I am questioning how motivating the actual act of trying to tackle an MMO as your first game is, and how much you'll learn from it. Where are all the indie developers trying to jump straight to making MMOs with no smaller games in the middle? How many of them have gotten so far as making a chat server? Why can I count the number I'm aware of on one hand - outnumbered by the number of entire communities of indies, each bristling with untold numbers of games - both in the progress of being made, and outright completed? Where are all the indie MMO developers, if it's so motivating? > and let's be honest the goal of learning is rarely to create a true product but for the sake of learning itself. This is bordering on a truism - the goal of learning is to learn? Sure. But if that's your only goal - why make games? And is tackling an impossibly large project really the most effective way to accomplish that learning? Another extremely common goal of making games - I'd argue far more common than the goal of pure learning - is to have fun playing the game with the idea you had. Which project is going to let you actually scratch that itch - the never-complete MMO or the quick and dirty shmup? Which one can you share with your friends and have them play? Which looks better on your portfolio when applying to that game development studio that makes MMOs, giving you hands on experience with the real deal?
- e12e 11y ago
  Maybe, maybe not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta_Online#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta_Online#Development [ed: But sure, as a first game/application, maybe not]
- srpeck 11y ago
  MMOs do not have to require massive development if you strip the requirements back to the bare essentials. There are a lot of software engineering concepts involved (and tons of messy business logic), but this just makes MMOs better as learning projects/teaching tools. For example, as an exercise to test the ability of code golf-style/APL/array programming languages to handle messy business logic, I recently built a 2D tick-based MMO in kdb+/q: https://github.com/srpeck/kchess https://github.com/srpeck/kchess Note the design decisions/constraints that reduced development time: - High programmer efficiency kdb+/q platform - Simple client-server architecture - All-on-one-box - kdb+ is both the front-end server and the datastore - Websocket-based networking - Tick-based - 1 second ticks to limit latency issues, though the server fully supports near-realtime ticks - No differentiation between players and AI - both are networked clients (e.g., see here for the simple websocket client docs: https://github.com/srpeck/kchess/blob/gh-pages/docs/kchessdoc.md https://github.com/srpeck/kchess/blob/gh-pages/docs/kchessdo...) - No player identities (generally a commercial showstopper, but not for a side project) - No 'content' - simple 2D graphics (though making the engine 3D would be trivial due to the vector paradigm), no progression/quests/RPG elements Of course, there are the MMO pieces that generally increase development time: - Game state cannot be globally fanned out given the sheer number of possible client connections (the first M - Massively) - Untrusted players/clients But once you have a simple, solid base engine, converting the result into an instance-based MOBA or a full MMORPG is not difficult, just time-consuming.

dexwiz 11y ago

Agreed. There is a reason MMOs didn't appear until 30-40 years after the first video games. They are extremely complex, require a large number of assets, and a large testing team. I am still waiting for that 100% science based dragon MMO.

bcoates 11y ago
MUD came out about 5 years after Adventure. It's not really a tech limited genre.