well, the reason you haven''t found any code on something that simple, is the fact that it isn''t that simple at all. I would suggest you learn the tutorials inside out at nehe.gamedev.net opengl will serve your purpose well. Patients and determination are the biggest attributes you can possess. Don''t be afraid to ask questions, but search the forums before hand, chances are someone else has already asked the question. Best of luck

There''s a difference between running a Halflife server and an MMORPG. I mean, I assume you want more than 24 or so people in your world, right?

Some idiotic guy at my school decided to run a server for people to download movies and whatnot. I think the reason he got his internet shut off was not because it was pirated (the university might not even have known what it was) but the high traffic it caused. I''d imagine you would expect similar strain with a larger server of people.

Just trying to point out potential flaws before they crop up.

I'm going to do the initial testing with the client & server on my own machine. I also decided to make the framerate as low as possible, like 12 fps (that's what cartoons are isn't it?) to minimize the data transfer. I would also like to compress the data as much as possible.
Does anyone know if it's theoretically possible to sent out hella packets at the same time to different places? Maybe if the server used a different port for each client?

later,
Ziphren

http://ziphren.iuma.com
http://www.newscientist.com/news/

[edited by - ziphren on October 25, 2003 8:33:50 PM]

12 FPS would be dizzyingly painful to the eyes for a 3D game with the full perspective rotating constantly. Don''t bother encoding, it''ll just slow it down even more. If you mean compress, do that last, because it probably won''t give you much of an advantage. Using different ports to send several packets at once wouldn''t be any faster, because it can''t increase the physical speed of you''re connection. Remember, there''s only one cord, not one for each port

1. 12 fps is almost totally unplayable, bare minimum should be 30

2. you have to only send out bare minimum necessary data to the server, your character''s EXACT facing and animation arn''t usually necissary, a close approximation is what most games do. Even on a high speed connection it could be annoying for a game to be using that much bandwidth.

3. if you want a mmorpg, you''re going to need a large dedicated server to host it.

4. how are you advertising your game? nobody wants to play a mmorpg with only 24 players in the world at any given time, you need to get massive player attention.

5. how are you funding your project?

6. as for the "which language to use" question, use the language which you already know how to program a standard online 3d rpg in.

good ideas are a dime a dozen, sucessfull implementation of them is rare.

oh, and as for a 3d engine to use, does everyone just kinda forget about jet3d or something? (genesis3d 2.0)
jet3d

I can tell you are not yet that efficent in the understanding of networking in order to create a decent system. Not that im trying to be offensive or anything. Even if your coding skills are great, you have alot to read up on as far as networking goes, and I would try to build up some sort of base on that (before you implement an MMORPG on top of it).

For starters, chances are you dont want to be dishing out packets every frame to people, that is way over-bandwidth-budget for even the most major of titles, send packets every 1 second if you are doing it a per-frame basis, and interpolate between the frames.

Also, when it comes to network apps, I have always distributed chatting proticals, and simplified packet sends to the point of the client sending a message stating "Im doing this ...." the server either sends "It worked" or "It failed". If it works, it may send a few parimeters aswell. This is only for things that will affect gameplay such as status and location. If you are chatting, sending emotions, i would just send it directly to all clients in your area. If it is something like going through your menus, or reading a book, i wouldent even send a packet on it.

Just my 2c
Richard

Thanks for the ideas and corrections, and yes, I am basically learning everything as I go.
Right now I''m not thinking about advertising and stuff like that, I just want to get the foundations developed. If anyone wants to see my design doc and will keep it confidential, I would gladly show them so I can get the extra help.

is it possible to use streaming audio to represent data?

Since Audio can be compressed a hellahellahellahella of a lot, you could compress it, then uncompress & error-check copies of it rapidly, right?

later,
Ziphren

http://ziphren.iuma.com
http://www.newscientist.com/news/

No you cannot do that. Audio compression is not conservative, and you loose some of the information, resulting in quality lose. When dealing with important data, you just don''t want to do that.

I am in the process of reading "Chris Crawford on game design".
If you really want to focus on the design of the game I would highly suggest that you read this or any other good design book.
I can guarantee you that you will find at least some major flaws in your design while reading the first few chapters.
Good Luck,
Adi.

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I rather sprintf than sprint