Ok, right now i''m not really a programmer perse...i mean yeah i know the languages, but mostly i''ve done application programming, and i''m sick of my job, and since i''m only 19 i say i should have some fun...so me and some friends are looking at making a MMORPG (massively multi-player online role playing game). Now my question is how hard is it to write something like this. Now when i''m asking, i don''t want to run anything like Everquest, we''re looking at Ultima Online type graphics and feel...and i know there''s some emulators out there, but they don''t really do what we need them to do, so i''m going to write one for us. How hard is it to do this, and what types of things would be used to handle all of the information? Another question we have if anyone knows this, is what types of files are used for the maps in a game like Ultima Online, and also graphics files...i know they''re all stored locally on the users hard drive with the client, but i don''t know how they''re stored. And lastly, how hard is it to write a client for a game like this? The world is just an illusion, thought is the reality of our existence.

I think Ultima Online was in production for about 2-3 years. So I would say you have your work cut out for you.

Uh, have fun. I wish you the best of luck, but you just picked about the hardest thing there is.

-BacksideSnap-

quote: Original post by packerfan

Now my question is how hard is it to write something like this.

On a scale of 10... 9

quote:
Now when i'm asking, i don't want to run anything like Everquest, we're looking at Ultima Online type graphics and feel...and i know there's some emulators out there, but they don't really do what we need them to do, so i'm going to write one for us. How hard is it to do this, and what types of things would be used to handle all of the information?

The style of graphics used in UO is refered to as isometric ,you can find a forum on this board for that, as well as some very informative articles contributed by some nice people)

quote:
Another question we have if anyone knows this, is what types of files are used for the maps in a game like Ultima Online, and also graphics files...i know they're all stored locally on the users hard drive with the client, but i don't know how they're stored.

The UO file format is proprietary. There are some reference sites on the net for accessing the data in these files, and someone has written a "browser" to let you view these images.
Basically you take all of your image data and put it in one file, then you write an index file. When you want to access an image you read the index file and then open the image file seeking to a specific location. Alternately you could store both the index and image data in the same file.

quote:
And lastly, how hard is it to write a client for a game like this?

The client is about 40% of the total work (using an isometric engine on the client). The server would take the longest to design/code/test/debug.

Hope that has helped some,


Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Edited by - Dak Lozar on June 27, 2000 3:11:46 PM

We have developed a programming toolkit called BYOND for this purpose. It''s freely available at http://www.byond.com. It can''t handle graphics as fancy as UO, but it does some nice things and takes care of the networking and interface for you. Perhaps it may be of some use.

Good luck!

When I read your post first time I guessed that you''ll get flamed, because of newbie hatre/guru rulez attitude.

Good luck.

have any of you guys actually tired to make a mmorpg? why is there this theory that they are hard to make? its basicly a RPG with a client/server program thrown in there. i am 13 years old and i have already written a working mmorpg demo (with only three functions so far, moving, talking, and fighting). a few friends and myself have been testing it for the past few weeks, just to get some of the bugs out. i'll have some screenshots up soon (thats, as soon as i can get a couple of friends to help me test again).

the only thing i lack is artwork. mmorpgs require MASSIVE amounts of artwork. that will be the only problem for me.

and by the way, it took me about 2 hours to write a isometric engine with collision detection. (but, i had done some squarebased engines before that i recycled some of the collision code from)

Edited by - gameprogrammerwiz on July 1, 2000 4:43:59 AM

Ummm... I suggest making an RPG first, then working on an MMORPG when you think you''re ready. UO isn''t exactly as easy to remake as Tetris...

- DarkMage139
"Real game developers don't change the rules. Real game developers don't break the rules. Real game developers make the rules!"
"Originality (in games) is the spice of life!"

i agree with darkmage. like i said before, a MMORPG is an RPG with client/server code added in afterwards.

A MMORPG is "just" an RPG with a client server model strapped in... I''m not trying to flame anyone, but I''m currently working on one, and they are VERY different beasts. You''ve the issues of what functionality the server will support, and what the client will support, and then you''ve the design of the server itself. Which is complicated by the simple requirement of "massive". I''ll give you a hint though, massive means more than about 20 people on a LAN. I wouldn''t call it massive until you''ve got thousands of simultaneous users.

Well you''ve got your bandwidth requires: huge. Then you want to make the server scalable right? Well that means making it so that you can cluster it across multiple machines. You might also want to use a database server to store your maps and user info since you''ll basically be writing one before you''re done, and this of course helps you make it so that the "server" doesn''t have to physically be just one machine, since you want to loadbalance the suckers so a crash isn''t catastrophic, and so you can take systems down for maintenance.

There are lots of issues to designing a high load server, and if you design it like you would be inclined to design a single player RPG, don''t expect it to work very well once you crank up the load to "massive" levels.

But hey, after all its just a "RPG with client/server code added in afterwards."

Excuse the sarcasm.