The Legendary Empires MMORPG project

[Qcode]

I tried to make a basic platformer for my first game. I wouldn't say it turned out terrible, but it certainly wasn't as nice as I wanted it. I released it, then just gave up because I was so tired of it. I had to restart around 3 times as well. My code was messy, it just was a bad scene. Make basic stuff first. It's good to be ambitious, just keep the huge projects until you get more experienced.

[spynaz]

How is MMO games so hard to make?

Have you ever actually produced an entire game from A to Z? Up to release and beyond?

Making a simple arcade game is harder than you think.

Making an MMO? That's basically every developer's first idea. "I want to be a huge, big, badass game with tons of everything in it!!!". And the sooner you get past this phase, and realize you should start small, the better.

Ok and what genre are you saying I should start with first?

[Taehl]

How is MMO games so hard to make?

Well, you have to have ball-breakingly efficient network code, will almost certainly have to distribute the server across multiple high-powered machines (increasing complexity immensely) with expensive high-speed Internet connections, you'll need persistence (surprisingly tricky to do well), auth and security for accounts (I hope you know your crypto), some way of gamestate self-maintenance to ensure uptime, a number of highly scalable and super-efficient databases, and a client that can make sense of all this...

... And you'd need to make an actual game, too. One which is fun by yourself, with a few people, or many people. One which has lots of places for all those places to go. Lots of things for all of them to be doing. And don't forget BALANCE! Blizzard has spent how many millions of dollars and how many years, with a team of hundreds of professionals, and they're still trying to balance WoW.

MMOs are the biggest, hardest-to-make game genre ever created. You're trying to pull off deep-space colonization before you've even tried building a treehouse.

Ok and what genre are you saying I should start with first?

Try a platformer or a puzzle game. The former should rather gently introduce you to a lot of concepts for realtime games, and the latter would teach design and game-theory. After that, try some kind of basic multiplayer game, maybe a racing game or something. Networking is NOT easy, so start small. Look to old PC games and arcade games for ideas.

[spynaz]

Ok what if I don't make it a game online? It will just be a game you download but you'll still be able to play multiplayer. (Kind of like Minecraft)

[Robin]

Whoops, didn't see those posts there. Whatever, someone else might still benefit from reading my brain dump below.

How is MMO games so hard to make?

A simple single player game is doable, but can still be pretty hard to pull off (and I speak as someone who has made quite a few of them). Two players locally (either "hot seat" or "fighting over the keyboard") is a bit harder. Two players over a network is at least an order of magnitude harder than two players locally: networking, negotiation about what "happened" in the game world, lag, connectivity issues, player communication... A group of 3-8 players? Much harder still: a lot more negotiation and related issues. 10-1000 players? Every issue you had before compounds, and you get scaling issues extra. 1000-10000? Scaling issues get worse and worse, you need loads of servers to keep things going (and you need some way to distribute players over servers -- can two players on different servers still interact? If so, it gets even harder)...

(Actually, it's worse: MMOs are more than just networking. You need that too.)

Also, read So you want to make your own MMORPG...

The most important thing, though, is not that you're MMO idea is a pipe dream (although it is, painfully so). We kind of like pipe dreams over here. No, the problem is that this is not interesting. You have told us nothing that would make us interested in your idea. Working on this thing sounds boring. Really, really boring. We've got loads of other games we can work on that do interest us and, hey, most of those actually have some chance of actually being finished and released and get actual players. That sounds so much better than this.

You want someone to do this boring thing? Fine, but make it worth it. Pay loads and loads of cash. Then, after years and years, something is produced. It will work (sort of), but it won't be polished and it won't be fresh or original in any way. Worse, it won't be fun. No-one will want to play it, not even you (unless you pay them, I guess). The persons you paid to produce that thing will then leave, because you're broke and can't pay them any more.

So. Don't do that. What other options do you have?

Make it yourself, as you said earlier in this thread. So you work on this, really hard. You don't have time for a day job, and you hope you will make it back with subscription fees once the game is finished. Day after day, you work on your MMO. Then, after decades, something is produced. It will work (sort of), but it won't be polished and it won't be fresh or original in any way. Worse, it won't be fun. No-one will want to play it, not even you (unless you pay them, I guess). You lose the motivation to work on this. On top of that, you're broke and not getting any money from subscription fees.

That's bad too. What's left?

Stop it. Drop this thing, this MMO. Do something small. What kind of games have you made? Make something small, something you like. Something original. Something slightly larger than the largest thing you've made, finished and was a success. Repeat.

This community suggests you do that. Don't like it? Here's the last alternative: get rich in some other way. Then you can pay others to make whatever you want.

[spynaz]

Whoops, didn't see those posts there. Whatever, someone else might still benefit from reading my brain dump below.

How is MMO games so hard to make?

A simple single player game is doable, but can still be pretty hard to pull off (and I speak as someone who has made quite a few of them). Two players locally (either "hot seat" or "fighting over the keyboard") is a bit harder. Two players over a network is at least an order of magnitude harder than two players locally: networking, negotiation about what "happened" in the game world, lag, connectivity issues, player communication... A group of 3-8 players? Much harder still: a lot more negotiation and related issues. 10-1000 players? Every issue you had before compounds, and you get scaling issues extra. 1000-10000? Scaling issues get worse and worse, you need loads of servers to keep things going (and you need some way to distribute players over servers -- can two players on different servers still interact? If so, it gets even harder)...

(Actually, it's worse: MMOs are more than just networking. You need that too.)

Also, read So you want to make your own MMORPG...

The most important thing, though, is not that you're MMO idea is a pipe dream (although it is, painfully so). We kind of like pipe dreams over here. No, the problem is that this is not interesting. You have told us nothing that would make us interested in your idea. Working on this thing sounds boring. Really, really boring. We've got loads of other games we can work on that do interest us and, hey, most of those actually have some chance of actually being finished and released and get actual players. That sounds so much better than this.

You want someone to do this boring thing? Fine, but make it worth it. Pay loads and loads of cash. Then, after years and years, something is produced. It will work (sort of), but it won't be polished and it won't be fresh or original in any way. Worse, it won't be fun. No-one will want to play it, not even you (unless you pay them, I guess). The persons you paid to produce that thing will then leave, because you're broke and can't pay them any more.

So. Don't do that. What other options do you have?

Make it yourself, as you said earlier in this thread. So you work on this, really hard. You don't have time for a day job, and you hope you will make it back with subscription fees once the game is finished. Day after day, you work on your MMO. Then, after decades, something is produced. It will work (sort of), but it won't be polished and it won't be fresh or original in any way. Worse, it won't be fun. No-one will want to play it, not even you (unless you pay them, I guess). You lose the motivation to work on this. On top of that, you're broke and not getting any money from subscription fees.

That's bad too. What's left?

Stop it. Drop this thing, this MMO. Do something small. What kind of games have you made? Make something small, something you like. Something original. Something slightly larger than the largest thing you've made, finished and was a success. Repeat.

This community suggests you do that. Don't like it? Here's the last alternative: get rich in some other way. Then you can pay others to make whatever you want.

Thank you for explaining. By the way I wasn't planning to get rich this way, just do it for fun.

Also...I need to know how multilayer with love2d works.
How would you set up a server?
Do you need to port forward?
What ip and port do you use? Your computer's?

Wait can't you make games online for free with love2d WebGl?

[Automatik]

Thank you for explaining. By the way I wasn't planning to get rich this way, just do it for fun.

But it won't be fun. Buying servers($$$), optimizing, coding the server software, all of that isn't fun.

Also...I need to know how multilayer with love2d works.
How would you set up a server?
Do you need to port forward?
What ip and port do you use? Your computer's?

Well, you can use lua socket, but I really advise you to start on a smaller game(I'm assuming you never did any game before, since you didn't show any, and you are wondering why making a Mmo is hard(Something that's plainly obvious to anyone who at least tried to make a game))

Wait can't you make games online for free with love2d WebGl?

Yes, you can make online games with love2d WebGl, but it's online as in "You can play this game from anywhere in the world with any modern browser", not as in "play with your friends + a thousand of other peoples" .

[spynaz]

Wait, if I put the game on the internet with love2d then not everybody around the world will be able to play it? Also I know what luasocket is, but don't you still be an ip to connect though?

[Robin]

Wait, if I put the game on the internet with love2d then not everybody around the world will be able to play it?

Yes, they can. Automatik's point was that it is the same for LÖVE WebGL, that it doesn't make your game automatically multiplayer, let alone massively so.

Also I know what luasocket is, but don't you still be an ip to connect though?

Could you rephrase that question? I don't understand it.

[Lafolie]

Also...I need to know how multilayer with love2d works.
How would you set up a server?
Do you need to port forward?
What ip and port do you use? Your computer's?

The fact that you ask these questions screams that you are not ready to create a game of this calibre. Like everyone else has said, start off smaller so that you learn that these shouldn't be questions that anyone should be asking. it's really not hard, in fact I am in the process of doing so.

I've written a few programs and prototypes, and I wanted to try out multiplayer stuff (coincidence that it's a similar field). I found several difficulties that made my idea difficult for me to execute. I wanted to create a simple 2-player shooter like R-Type or Gradius. I recognised when I was defeated and took a step back. Now I'm building a turn-based multiplayer game, have read lots of articles about the involved technologies and the various ways of implementing them. I now have a working network game that I'm hoping to show off sometime later this year. And you know what? The more code I write for it and the more I redefine my understanding of how everything works, should work and doesn't work, the closer I get to being able to step up to the challenge of a real-time game.

Really, the difference is a major hurdle, especially for the hobbyist programmer. Networking is tough stuff, and that's only part of the problem with an MMO. There's so much to consider in the way of data structures, security and stability, more stuff that ends up interfacing with the network components at some point.

In all honesty, I'm finding my little turn-based network game to be somewhat of a mammoth task. I'm pretty well acquainted with lua, sure, but it has nothing to do with lua, it's the philosophy behind it. You could say "I'm an awesome writer, I can type 9001 words per minute!", it doesn't necessarily mean you know anything about rhetoric, grammar or prose (which are in fact thekinds of qualities that make a decent author).

There are so many different conventions and protocols and methods for communication. Having got my game off the ground I'd say that it gets a little easier with experience (of course), but having actually written something designed specifically for multiple players, I can appreciate how intense it must be to create an "MMO" game. Planetside 2 blows my mind when I think of all those physics entities being sync'd, absolutely mental, though not without its own funny glitches.

I honestly feel that your time would be better invested in creating smaller projects that will contribute to greater learning experience. If you try and jump a hurdle this alrge you'll just crash into the ground without getting anywhere near as far as you would if you'd worked your way up to it. As I mentioned before, having written lua stuff before has little to do with it.