I need advice for starting my own game

wookiee

I have alot of great ideas for a MMO, ive worked out the story line, quest line, skill points, abilities, etc... but I have no money, I have no programing skills, I have no art skills.... How the heck can I make my dream into reality?
I can't imagine just walking over to Blizzard and asking for a job making my MMO.

xpowderx

www.ITT.com! Imagination is good, but you still have to put into action! Get some school behind you! And programming!

nomadian

I think you either need to be good at graphics, or programming. Programming you can learn and get on a course for. Alternatively, if you're not too bothered about graphics and about selling a game there are editors with games about. For example, rpgmaker I think is one, or warcraft 3 has one and introduces you to a bit of programming.

ianubisi

http://www.sloperama.com/advice/idea.htm

You have about as much chance of making your game where you are at right now as you do being the first person on Mars. Go to school...get an education in programming or art, and get in a game company as a gopher. You're going to have to work very, very hard to get your idea into reality. Also, don't expect your MMO to be "done" until sometime in the 2010s.

neschria

If you're willing to learn some scripting/programming, you could try prototyping your game as a NWN mod or a MUD. It's not quite the same as a MMO, but it is something to do, you can share the results with friends, and it will help you think through your ideas, and make it pretty clear whether or not they were as good as they looked on paper.

DeathMutant3

EDIT: Double post 

DeathMutant3

I agree with neschria. If you want to get into creating MMORPG's Neverwinter Nights (NWN) is a great place to start. Doing it alone, especially if you're not already a programmer, will be daunting so I recommend you find some buddies either in real-life or on-line and try to build something as a team.

Very few people, unless they are artists, writers, musicians, or experienced managers, have broken into the MMORPG industry without learning to program. You can start in SQA (software quality assurance) as a grunt tester but if you already have some knowledge and skills you will progress much faster.

Building levels for a FPS is helpful too but uses only a subset of the skills needed to create a MMORPG. The NWN toolset covers most of them but is very much simplified -- which makes it a great learning tool. Some NWN module builders have even been hired by Bioware!

ikra

nd find someone to work with, its easier and at least divides the load.. if you want to go solo then good luck.. (get the right education first)

Acaeus

What they said (get and education) not programmer probably if you want to be in the creative part of the business.

Now people tend to overvaluate the idea, the creativity and undervaluate the implementation, the how to. Perhaps we have hollywood to thank for that...
Anyway, maybe to give you an idea, to write your own MMO nowadays is like building a car from scratch. Assuming your an experienced C++/C programmer and know some people who may slave round with you. And after 5 years you do actually finish something up. Now you have to compete with the likes of Blizzard, Mythic and SOE.

In short, those guys don't build stuff from scratch like you'd have to do. They already have a lot of technology that can be reused, not even mentioning know-how. And if allelse fails, they have the cash to buy some technology that they could not build themselves....

Xyang

I'd like to put some perspective on that. The most succesfull MMO money wise are not necessarily those who required the biggest team to create them. Runescape is my best example, Utopia is another good one.(If you have design the whole thing, you only need to find a good artist and programer and you can start your game)

So you don't have to compete against WoW or Daoc. If you have a good concept, keep in mind that there's still a fair market of people with crappy connection and PC that are more then greatfull for being able to play a Java game like runescape, or a text base game like Utopia. As long as your game is "fun", don't let the technical part get to you. Just surround yourself with the right people and give it a shot...

Owyn

You can probably get some good advice over at the MMORPG Maker community

It's a rough site, but a nice community, pretty active.  Good place to ask questions and not get flamed to death.    It's an independant site, just went under the VN servers this past weekend, so they're still getting settled in there, but it's still independantly run.  I know the two admin, they're good people and work hard to keep the forums there active, interesting, and polite.

That aside, college is not a bad idea - even some classes, if you don't want to major in it.  A class in PHP/MySQL would be good, as would classes in Photoshop (check Graphics Design classes), C++, Java, Python, web design, etc.  If you're REALLY lucky, you might be near a college that offers some 3D modeling classes; otherwise you'll need to learn that on your own if you want to do art.

If you want to major in it - get a copy of Game Developer magazine, they usually advertise a dozen or more colleges offering game related degrees.  Places like FullSail, Champlain College, and Cornell University's Guildhouse program are among the best out there.

There are four major options for inexpensive MMO making tools atm (you can get a lot more detail about them on the MMORPG Maker site, which has info about all four): Kaneva (garbage, IMHO), Multiverse (in beta), MyDreamRPG/Torque MMO Kit (excellent, but requires strong coding skills), and RealmCrafter (best bet for a novice, strong engine but weak graphics, however a "RC2" is already in the works that will offer modern graphics).

Other options would include the NeL engine (open source, MAJOR programming required), Planescape (open source, ditto), Hero Engine (costs more than anything else listed here, but still in low 5 figures), and *maybe* 3D Game Studio (again, will need major help, mostly with the networking).

The basic rule though is: NO ONE is going to make your game for you, no matter how well written your idea is, unless you pay for the project out of your pocket.  Every game designer has more cool ideas than they will ever have budget to make into games, and they'd rather use their ideas than yours.  That means if you want to work (or be a hobbyist) in the industry, you need to either a) get the skills to get employed making games for someone else, and hopefully eventually be good enough/well enough known to be able to get your ideas in someday or b) make the darned thing yourself. 

joshuaPhiil

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Originally posted by xpowderx
www.ITT.com! Imagination is good, but you still have to put into action! Get some school behind you! And programming!

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don't bother

no none without a team of at least 15 people with a good 6-10 years of 3d coding experience should be trying to make a mmorpg

xpyrofuryx

check out this thread: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/88371 and because of members like avison people like you will not be able to every create MMORPG games until way later in your life.

nomadian

[quote]
don't bother

no none without a team of at least 15 people with a good 6-10 years of 3d coding experience should be trying to make a mmorpg[/quote]

www.minionsofmirth.com - 2 people made this out of python.

Gameloading

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Originally posted by nomadian
[quote]
don't bother

no none without a team of at least 15 people with a good 6-10 years of 3d coding experience should be trying to make a mmorpg[/quote]
www.minionsofmirth.com - 2 people made this out of python.

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Exactly, you just proved his point.

xpyrofuryx

I'll try this once more.... If you would like to join my team and you have ideas, just PM me or e-mail me.

wookiee

Thanks you guys for all your advice, I will check out Neverwinter Nights to start with.
I will be learning C++ next year in college.

Sycondaman

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Originally posted by wookiee
Thanks you guys for all your advice, I will check out Neverwinter Nights to start with.
I will be learning C++ next year in college.

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Well at least you don't appear to be like other people who post on here with absolutely no knowledge of coding and want to start programming a game right away.  I'd suggest you take some Computer Science courses along with C++ and more in depth programming.  Also, depending on how you want to do it:

1. If you want to start a company founded on the MMO - take some business/economics classes, take some graphics classics, and probably some creative writing.  That is along with programming.

2. If you want to do a sort of home run type thing similar to many free MMORPGs: get some friends interested in the same thing and you guys figure out how to work it all out.  Also remember that you'll need some fairly powerful servers.

3. If you want to join another company - Go straight into programming.

In any case, check out this link: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/idea.htm

siftified

Starting my CompSci major next year  Finishing my classics one right now! Can't wait to get into a little programming and model design.

joshuaPhiil

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Originally posted by Gameloading


www.minionsofmirth.com - 2 people made this out of python.





and it looks like crud     heheh

Aelfinn

Hey, FunCom is hiring right now, they need a few more guys for the one MMO they are maintaining(Anarchy Online), and the two they are working on creating right now(Age of Conan and the World Online). The downside is that its a Norwegian based company, its a great country in many respects but not everyones willing to relocate that far. If you have the skills necessary though, that would be a great way to make a name for yourself.