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Advice wanted: Best engine for a sandbox/action mmo?
deadarmour
Member Posts: 7
Hello people.
I write seeking advice/recommendation on a proprietary engine or combination of middleware that would allow:
- live action combat (such as mount and blade, chivalry, war of the roses/vikings)
- collision detection
- ability to handle many players in an area on a non-instanced server
A rough explanation of what I have in mind to create is a pseudo historical medieval sandbox game with no quests, no factions, no monsters, no magic, no abilities, no classes, no levels, no enchanted items, no dungeons, no instances, no battlegrounds, no arenas, no fast travel, no world chat channel, no story, no npcs. Only guilds, crafting, trade, player made modular buildings, development of crafting and martial skills, real-time action combat, open world pvp, stamina, carry weight, full loot, theft, elements of survival and the interactions that happen between players as a result of the game's sandbox nature.
Possibly thinking the Havok Vision Engine, UE4, the Hero Engine or BigWorld, but I'd like to hear from people in the know.
I should also note that we as a small group so far have very little knowledge of coding, so the ease of learning the tools is also a factor to take into consideration (myself being a concept artist with some experience in Maya, my friends being a sound engineer, and an additional member eager to learn how to program).
We plan to build a prototype over the next year and a half/two years before getting all the legal stuff sorted, crowdfunding and attracting more members to the team (if we haven't already).
PS: I've searched and come up with nothing, but my apologies if similar has been asked before.
Comments
In the red, forget that and make it sci-fi
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
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I know little about running a NFL franchise, but I sure want to run one!!
*GO COWBOYS, I WILL LEAD YOU TO THE PROMISED LAND
*edit, im a freaking idiot!!!!!!
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
Going to be friendly,
You have a long road ahead of you, I would not worry about engines yet, if you are truly serious and committed.
A couple of simple points:
- Scope your game out, Design it in, Visio or even paper on how it would flow and work together and I mean everything, from a minor close window icon to your psychics systems
- Do some sole searching, maybe join a team that has already started and try to help to get your ears wet and actually understand how complex this is.
- Determine how you handle decisions about the direction of the game and how you will work with them
one last piece of advice, the hardest part about developing like this is keeping your team happy and focused, the programming and modelling and technical arts, sound, 2d concepts, tool developers, etc etc is nothing compared to this.
Some thoughts....
about the engines, all can do the job but all you have listed are way about your knowledge level, go learn more basics because if you start to learn while you design the architecture your game at the same time you are asking for a nightmare....
Heard of Divergence?
That's a valid point. We intend to make the game as simple as possible; no ai, npcs, quests, limited assets etc, so that it would be achievable by a small team. We hope to use the prototype and concept of the game as a means of attracting programmers.
In the red, no way you are serious about Divergence. That dude has ripped people off so much. Sure I hope he can pull it off, but COME ON MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
hmmm no... I don't think so.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
You make me like charity
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.
Yeah, we're not jumping in head first, but are currently in the early process of writing up the game design document and research/development. Reason why we wanted to find out about different engines was to determine which programming language we should focus on learning (at the moment C++).
Though I do feel a little naive, we know enough to know that we don't know what we don't know. We're under no delusion in thinking that this will be easy or that it's going to take anywhere less than 4 or more years.
Regarding your last point, we plan to develop prototypes for the game in stand-alone modules so as to learn how to develop each system/ how they would work individually, before starting separately on the larger prototype (which we would then use to seek crowdfunding and hire other members).
howdy,
we haven't made anything public as of yet, but your post was so spot on to us i had to comment. My team has been working on a project with 90% of the features you listed and we will be on steam within 6-8 weeks hopefully. we will be contacting mmorpg with game footage and be on greenlight around the same time frame. Think of the games Rust, War of the Roses, and stronghold kingdoms mashed into one and that is the multi-player experience we will be delivering soon. Can't disclose anymore information but keep an eye out for a game like you described and that will be us
BTW, we quit our jobs emptied our 401k's to do this project. we felt kickstarter was not an option because we believed in our project and the risk should fall on us not others, since the reward is ours as well.
I am NOT an expert in this, but I will share what I know ( I am computer science student who has wondered some of these things as well.)
If you are using a pre-build engine, you will be mainly focusing on scripting. Engines like Unity utilize scripts written in C#, javascript, or boo.
Scripting languages are much higher level (meaning less control of system resources, but often easier to use), than languages like C++.
An engine like Unity is probably a good bet if you want to spend most of you time designing the game, instead of programming an engine.
Learn some scripting: I recommend javascript mainly because is has such a broad range of applications these days (look up node.js)
Again, I am not an expert, but hope this helps
Well, it's about immersion.
Ai is still very poor, let alone in mmo games. So why not remove it from being an issue?
Quests and lore/backstory are contrived and totally disassociated from the player. Why not have none? Why not have the players give quests such as bounty hunting, mercenary work, trading etc. like is seen in Eve?
Think guild alliances and enemies, fighting over territory and resources. Think Mount and Blade crossed with Eve and Second Life.
there's nothing wrong with asking advice on an engine in itself.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Awesome, I look forward to seeing what you've been working on. The point of us wanting to make a game has been that there hasn't been such a thing available, so I watch with vested interest.
Thanks.
Yeah, that's why we wanted to use a proprietary engine; none of us are programmers, so we thought best to use a pre-made one.
"As simple as possible" necessarily means "single player, purely offline". That's where you should start, even if you hope to eventually make it into an online game.
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You're looking at this all wrong. Licensing a game engine doesn't replace the need to have a good programmer (or multiple good programmers, depending on the scale of the project).
The right way to use a game engine is to have people able to create their own working game engine on your team and know what the engine needs to be able to do. Then you license a game engine that does a lot of the things that you want in the way that you want them done and does them pretty efficiently. You use some parts of the game engine code as is, slightly modify other parts that are pretty close to what you want, toss out parts that you don't have any use for, and write a bunch of your own code to do the stuff you need that the game engine doesn't have built in.
Note that this requires you to have the full source code to whatever game engine you use, and that typically costs a lot of money. You should think of using a game engine without the source code as being a demo or trial version of an engine, not something you can actually launch a commercial product with.
Don't think of pieces of code that you use at the level of "this does collision detection" or "this does crafting". When deciding which parts of a game engine you're going to use, you need to look much lower level than that. For example, in my own project, the latest little piece that I've been working on is "given an ellipse and three parallel lines, this finds all intersections between the ellipse and any of the lines". (That's going to end up as one subroutine used in hair physics.)
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The most common programming language for games is probably C++. Java has a reputation as the easiest to learn. Any compiled language (as opposed to a scripting language like Python or Perl) that has the basic capabilities you need (e.g., make sure that it has OpenGL and/or DirectX available, as well as networking and sound if you need them) would probably work.
If you do decide to press forward with making a game, one thing you should probably decide on the basis of what skills you have is whether to make the game 2D or 3D.
If you want 3D graphics, being good at linear algebra and multivariable calculus is basically the entry level--and "passed a class" is a long way from "is good at". Ideally, you'd like to know manifolds, triangulations, and vector bundles in order to do modern 3D graphics the right way.
If you want the game to be 2D, then you can get by with merely a good understanding of high school math, especially coordinate systems.
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Programming is a scarce skill in making games, because it's not something that everyone and his neighbor's dog can do adequately--and those who can do it well can get paid well to do so. Usually the way to get some other programmer to code your game for you is a paycheck. That's not an option for an amateur game, so if you want to get a volunteer programmer who is competent, you're probably at minimum going to have to let a programmer have massive say in game mechanics, even overriding a lot of your own preferences. Otherwise, someone inclined to program an amateur game would be better off ignoring you and making his own game.
This is a fantastic plan, stick with it. Don't let other people get you down because your plan seems unrealistic to THEM.
I wouldn't be rich and famous if I had listened to every loser telling me my goals are impossibru to achieve
+1
I would get your little group together and complete and publish at least 2 or 3 simple games, and throw in multiplayer on the last two.
Once you have that experience and expertise, perhaps consider an MMO. (Which would still be fairly unrealistic)
Engine choice I would go with, right now for an MMO, would be UE4, with SmartFox as a networking stack.
Unity 5 is having a lighting engine overhaul, and uLink or PikkoServer would be a great networking stack for Unity.
monstertruckracingarenas.com
Look into UE4, it's extremely cheap, by far the cheapest engine you can purchase and likely the best one with tons of documentation and help available. It does use c++ which isn't the most newb-friendly language to start off learning since there is so much to it but it also shouldn't be too difficult. With that said you might be able to bypass some programming with their new blueprint system, that will also take some getting used to but it might be easier since it's far more visual than just writing code (and there are plenty of tutorials and help available for it like I said). Aside from that, since c++ is so widely used in so many things there will be plenty of books and tutorials available.
UE4 is still very new though so I am honestly not sure how it will handle certain things like a bunch of players on screen all at once but I can't imagine another engine that would do it better. Either way if you're serious about it, UE4 offers the least amount of risk since it's only 19 dollars. I believe CryEngine will also offer a very cheap monthly sub soon if it doesn't already, but I don't know all the details about it or how user friendly it is or how many resources and help is available for that since I've never used it. With that said if you cancel your monthly sub for UE4 you are still able to keep the engine and publish games, you just wont get future updates so it's by far the lowest risk option that's also very polished and run by a competent team that promises updates often.
As for learning programming languages, it doesn't matter too much what you start off with. The important thing is learning all of the programming concepts in a language you are comfortable with. After you learn all of the major concepts you can apply them to any other programming language you choose to learn, the only difference will be the syntax really. Maybe start off with c# if you want something a bit easier but I really don't think it would make a big difference. Just stick with one thing until you're comfortable with it then you can jump around and explore other languages when you have a solid grasp on the big programming concepts.
Lastly, I wouldn't recommend starting off with something as ambitious as an MMO... They fail all the time and there are large teams behind them with tons of money as well. They are probably the most expensive types of games to create and maintain. Make some simple minigames with whoever is going to learn to program so they can apply what they're learning to actual games. If you guys are artists you have a big advantage, your game probably wont look like crap, so even if it's simple it should still appeal to people. While learning and creating these minigames think of ways to apply the concepts you learn into your big MMO project.
Lastly lastly, don't be pressured into hiring a programmer. Don't hire the first programmer who likes your idea and is willing to work for free. Don't settle for anything you can find. A crappy programmer is not better than no programmer. If you're going to look for someone you don't know to work with you, get to know that person, ask a lot of questions, make sure they are competent and know what they're doing. Ask a lot of questions, even if you don't know the answer, they should. And they should have no problem telling you what techniques they will use to implement "X" idea. If the answer sounds like complete bullshit or like they don't know what they're doing or aren't confident in their answer, move on to someone else. You can waste A LOT of time working with someone by dedicating all your time to them only to find out they don't know what the hell they're doing or simply aren't good enough due to lack of experience. Be patient when looking for people and don't settle for any random stranger without knowing they can do it.
Humm..
OK so serious advice.
Had my hands on Hero Engine, Multiverse, Massiv, Ryzom and Bigworlds as far as MMO engines are concerned.
You mention nothing really needing the horsepower of BW. Maybe HE. It is MUCH easier to learn than BigWorlds. If you dont have a clue to programming stay away from BigWorlds! It is highly technical engine and is not for a novice at all. It has zero support so if you go buying it as a indie youre on your own! If you have a lot of money like $500,000 bucks then buy commercial and get a lot of support. Well, neither is Multiverse, massiv or Ryzom since they are a bit complex due to lack of documentation so that pretty much leaves you with Unity (not really a mmo engine) or Hero Engine which has a lot of community to help you with it.
I have a couple videos up with BW in which the server code is working for my game but I havent touched anything on the client side yet. I will say again it is all server side stuff at the moment and it is now persistent across server shut down and restart.
sped up footage of basic mining.
sandbox world building.
I been programming for 34 years and this engine is a tough cookie because of its complexities. Hero Engine was much easier to get things working but, by my game design,HE didnt fix my requirements and this is where BW engine shines.
Good luck!
If you are interested in making a MMO maybe visit my page to get a free open source engine.
I want to thank everyone for your advice in this thread.
We have decided to shift our focus onto smaller projects, simpler games, and to build up our experience slowly.