#2
To be blunt, if all you have is an idea, then you'll get nowhere unless you have an idea and several million dollars. Don't be offended, but it's a fact that applies to us all, for all business ventures large and small. If you're a writer, then you can use writing to some degree to get your visions across to the team, and you can write content for the game. Better still, if you have a bit of sketching skill (and if you practice, you'll probably find that you have enough to communicate to a better artist that you'll bring on board later), or even better if you can pick up scripting and/or coding. Since we're talking about MMOs, you should also know some things about database design, SQL, installing, configuring and maintaining operating systems, and business. These last skills are must-knows.
What coding offers is that you can sit down and bend the game engine you choose to your will, or with scripting you can test out or implement gameplay features, which is invaluable if you want to be a designer. It's absolutely essential, in my (and many others') opinion. But again, you need at least one (preferably two or more) of these skills.
4) Understand what game engine is best for you: So, by this point, you have a grip on the work involved in MMO projects in general, the scope of your own project in specific, and you have some skills that you bring to the table. So now look for a game engine that suits your needs. Not all game engines are equal, and no engine can be termed "the best". They all have slightly different feature-sets, and that means that you'll spent a couple of weeks comparing engines or reading their documentation to understand what they have to offer you (because just asking if they do on their forums will not yield as good information as if you understand what the docs tell you directly).
After you sort through a bunch and narrow them down, you can compare costs, licensing, and support. Then make your choice, but make it well, because if you choose to switch engine in mid-production, it may sink your project.
5) It Begins! Start scripting/coding... By YOURSELF: Seriously, you should start scripting or coding the gameplay without a team at first. Don't worry if you don't have the best graphics in your gameplay tests, as long as the gameplay is fun. Graphics will come, but icons with stick-figures, placeholder art like cubes, or "stock" art that comes with your engine or purchased for cheap can stand in for better, custom art that you bring in later.
Right now is when you need to be laying the foundation of the game. You do this without a team for as long as you can, because when you finally need a team, you'll have working features, and artists can see their assets in the game right away. If you bring a team on with no functionality to test their assets against, they'll get bored and leave!
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02/01/2009 (7:22 pm)
3) Understand your skills: It takes more than just an idea to build an MMO, and I can tell you that there are 1000 MMOs slated to emerge by the end of 2009, all with ideas. About 95% of them will fail miserably. But by this point, you know what they go through to make those games, and you know what you want yours to be like. Now it's time to look in the mirror and see what you have to offer a team.To be blunt, if all you have is an idea, then you'll get nowhere unless you have an idea and several million dollars. Don't be offended, but it's a fact that applies to us all, for all business ventures large and small. If you're a writer, then you can use writing to some degree to get your visions across to the team, and you can write content for the game. Better still, if you have a bit of sketching skill (and if you practice, you'll probably find that you have enough to communicate to a better artist that you'll bring on board later), or even better if you can pick up scripting and/or coding. Since we're talking about MMOs, you should also know some things about database design, SQL, installing, configuring and maintaining operating systems, and business. These last skills are must-knows.
What coding offers is that you can sit down and bend the game engine you choose to your will, or with scripting you can test out or implement gameplay features, which is invaluable if you want to be a designer. It's absolutely essential, in my (and many others') opinion. But again, you need at least one (preferably two or more) of these skills.
4) Understand what game engine is best for you: So, by this point, you have a grip on the work involved in MMO projects in general, the scope of your own project in specific, and you have some skills that you bring to the table. So now look for a game engine that suits your needs. Not all game engines are equal, and no engine can be termed "the best". They all have slightly different feature-sets, and that means that you'll spent a couple of weeks comparing engines or reading their documentation to understand what they have to offer you (because just asking if they do on their forums will not yield as good information as if you understand what the docs tell you directly).
After you sort through a bunch and narrow them down, you can compare costs, licensing, and support. Then make your choice, but make it well, because if you choose to switch engine in mid-production, it may sink your project.
5) It Begins! Start scripting/coding... By YOURSELF: Seriously, you should start scripting or coding the gameplay without a team at first. Don't worry if you don't have the best graphics in your gameplay tests, as long as the gameplay is fun. Graphics will come, but icons with stick-figures, placeholder art like cubes, or "stock" art that comes with your engine or purchased for cheap can stand in for better, custom art that you bring in later.
Right now is when you need to be laying the foundation of the game. You do this without a team for as long as you can, because when you finally need a team, you'll have working features, and artists can see their assets in the game right away. If you bring a team on with no functionality to test their assets against, they'll get bored and leave!
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#3
Here's the business part: Make sure you have equity agreements in place, as well as NDA's for intellectual property (and that means that you better not be stealing another game for your own, or you'll get sued from here to the moon!). DO THIS RIGHT
Here's the other business part: Make sure you see 3d artists' portfolios, hear musicians' samples, read writers' samples, and get a feel for the knowledge of coders, dba's, and scriptors. If you don't, you'll get sub-standard people, and with no one to blame but yourself.
7) Get to it: So you have a team. Good for you. Get to work, and push until you hit the finish line. Don't be a dick to your team- they're probably working for free, and they'll leave you. Don't deviate from your vision, or you may get lost. And keep development communities aware of your progress, because they can be the start of your viral marketing (and be your first customers!).
8) Done! LOL. No, you're not. Now that you're ready to launch, you need to build the network infrastructure to handle it (you did network stress tests right? Load-balancing? Do you have payment software set up or are you going through a 3rd party solution? Security? Community managers?).
Launch day is the roughest, and expect lots of problems. Knuckle down and get to it. You might be awake for the next 48 hours... And then the real work of maintaining the game begins :)
There you go. It's not pretty and sounds discouraging, but if you can't take reading that, then you have no business doing this. Odds are, if you're reading this, you've made it through okay, so go back to step one and start doing it. You may fail. There's nothing wrong with that. Failure is a learning experience, and if you understand your failure and have enough chutzpah, then you might be able to take another swing at it. Or maybe you'll succeed, and I might be a customer. Who knows.
But if you just jump right at your project before you know anything about it, your odds for failing go way up.
Like I said, don't take this personally, but take it to heart.
02/01/2009 (7:24 pm)
6) You have gameplay, now you need a team! If you've done everything right, you have some skills, documents, and knowledge to attract a team, and a list of working features (maybe backed up by screenshots or vids) to show them the gameplay that they need to make look good! Here's the business part: Make sure you have equity agreements in place, as well as NDA's for intellectual property (and that means that you better not be stealing another game for your own, or you'll get sued from here to the moon!). DO THIS RIGHT
Here's the other business part: Make sure you see 3d artists' portfolios, hear musicians' samples, read writers' samples, and get a feel for the knowledge of coders, dba's, and scriptors. If you don't, you'll get sub-standard people, and with no one to blame but yourself.
7) Get to it: So you have a team. Good for you. Get to work, and push until you hit the finish line. Don't be a dick to your team- they're probably working for free, and they'll leave you. Don't deviate from your vision, or you may get lost. And keep development communities aware of your progress, because they can be the start of your viral marketing (and be your first customers!).
8) Done! LOL. No, you're not. Now that you're ready to launch, you need to build the network infrastructure to handle it (you did network stress tests right? Load-balancing? Do you have payment software set up or are you going through a 3rd party solution? Security? Community managers?).
Launch day is the roughest, and expect lots of problems. Knuckle down and get to it. You might be awake for the next 48 hours... And then the real work of maintaining the game begins :)
There you go. It's not pretty and sounds discouraging, but if you can't take reading that, then you have no business doing this. Odds are, if you're reading this, you've made it through okay, so go back to step one and start doing it. You may fail. There's nothing wrong with that. Failure is a learning experience, and if you understand your failure and have enough chutzpah, then you might be able to take another swing at it. Or maybe you'll succeed, and I might be a customer. Who knows.
But if you just jump right at your project before you know anything about it, your odds for failing go way up.
Like I said, don't take this personally, but take it to heart.
#4
02/02/2009 (3:08 am)
Good advice there Ted..
#6
@Alex: Let's keep the discussion in the forums. Reason being, I have not published my MMO, but there are people here who have published theirs, and so have more information and experience than I do.
As for your worry about supporting 1000 players on a server, it's not a worry you should be having now- especially since that's a pretty high number. Depending on the data that is flying around in your game, you may get 1000 players... Or you might only get 300. As TGEA stands now, I have heard of tests getting up to 300 players in a zone at once, which is actually pretty good- and it's even better when you consider that the 300 limit was caused by not having enough PCs to run more test clients, not the server bogging down, so you can estimate 300-400 as a safe bet for server hardware. But you need to take a fine tooth-comb to the network code to squeeze every ounce of optimization out of it to get there or higher.
MMOs are a long road, project-wise. If you start it now, then it will take well over a year before you look at getting a real server to test with (if your project goes at a nice pace). Hardware specs change every six months, so 18 months from now, the same money will get you a system basically twice as fast as if you bought it now. So always remember to look to the long-haul, and remember that it really is a long haul.
And don't be afraid to use the forum search function. Put in keywords and see what pops up, you'd be surprised how much information you turn up :)
02/02/2009 (7:55 am)
@Andrew: Thanks. I actually saved it for reposting (writing it from scratch can take a while, lol).@Alex: Let's keep the discussion in the forums. Reason being, I have not published my MMO, but there are people here who have published theirs, and so have more information and experience than I do.
As for your worry about supporting 1000 players on a server, it's not a worry you should be having now- especially since that's a pretty high number. Depending on the data that is flying around in your game, you may get 1000 players... Or you might only get 300. As TGEA stands now, I have heard of tests getting up to 300 players in a zone at once, which is actually pretty good- and it's even better when you consider that the 300 limit was caused by not having enough PCs to run more test clients, not the server bogging down, so you can estimate 300-400 as a safe bet for server hardware. But you need to take a fine tooth-comb to the network code to squeeze every ounce of optimization out of it to get there or higher.
MMOs are a long road, project-wise. If you start it now, then it will take well over a year before you look at getting a real server to test with (if your project goes at a nice pace). Hardware specs change every six months, so 18 months from now, the same money will get you a system basically twice as fast as if you bought it now. So always remember to look to the long-haul, and remember that it really is a long haul.
And don't be afraid to use the forum search function. Put in keywords and see what pops up, you'd be surprised how much information you turn up :)
#7
02/02/2009 (10:51 am)
great advice there Ted, words that people should really read, re-read and take to heart before embarking on a long journey to write an MMO
#8
@ted; The Forum Search function would be great, only it doesn't seem to work right now. Have you tried it lately? Search for something like the word "Game" and see what you get.
02/03/2009 (9:54 am)
Who needs an 80$ firewall? There's got to be a free version of ZoneAlarm available online (perhaps oldversion.com?) that you could use. I've been using 6.0.631 and it still proves itself quite useful.@ted; The Forum Search function would be great, only it doesn't seem to work right now. Have you tried it lately? Search for something like the word "Game" and see what you get.
#9
Also, regarding an $80 firewall: $10,000 for Cisco commercial firewalls (higher, or lower depending on what kind of modules you get). A software firewall is completely inappropriate for MMO infrastructure, and simply cannot hope to compete- and besides, if you've got a T3 coming in, you're going to put up a software firewall on the servers and leave your switches and routers unprotected? You need a hardware firewall to protect your network.
And that's not saying anything bad about ZoneAlarm, because it's good for personal use, but not for protecting a high-availability, high-bandwidth, highly-targeted network.
02/03/2009 (10:22 am)
@Steve: It's fine if you workaround the bug: Check All Blogs, Resources, Forums, and Documents, then search. It'll bring up oodles of info after that.Also, regarding an $80 firewall: $10,000 for Cisco commercial firewalls (higher, or lower depending on what kind of modules you get). A software firewall is completely inappropriate for MMO infrastructure, and simply cannot hope to compete- and besides, if you've got a T3 coming in, you're going to put up a software firewall on the servers and leave your switches and routers unprotected? You need a hardware firewall to protect your network.
And that's not saying anything bad about ZoneAlarm, because it's good for personal use, but not for protecting a high-availability, high-bandwidth, highly-targeted network.
#12
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=817831&content=music
You can reach me at basbalfan55@msn.com if you have any questions. I'm a gamer myself so I know what's expected in good video game music. Good luck pulling everything together...it can be such a hassle just getting all the equipment before you even start the creative process.
02/03/2009 (4:40 pm)
If you're looking for a composer, I'm definitely interested. Here are some samples of my music:http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=817831&content=music
You can reach me at basbalfan55@msn.com if you have any questions. I'm a gamer myself so I know what's expected in good video game music. Good luck pulling everything together...it can be such a hassle just getting all the equipment before you even start the creative process.
#13
i think you may be taking things a bit out of order.
the hardware & bandwidth to run an MMO is the least of the hurdles in front of you.
i would very much recommend starting small and seeing if you can pull the software and gameplay together first. if you don't have that then all the hardware and bandwidth in the world isn't going to make your game fun. if you looks like you really can develop a fun game, then worry about the hosting environment.
02/03/2009 (4:44 pm)
alex, i would re-read Ted's initial 5 steps,i think you may be taking things a bit out of order.
the hardware & bandwidth to run an MMO is the least of the hurdles in front of you.
i would very much recommend starting small and seeing if you can pull the software and gameplay together first. if you don't have that then all the hardware and bandwidth in the world isn't going to make your game fun. if you looks like you really can develop a fun game, then worry about the hosting environment.
#16
Here's a hint: You can still do a multiplayer RPG and not have to buy a server or get T3 lines. Just open it up to your friends to play. Torque can easily handle small groups (~50) with RPG frameworks over a DSL or Cable line. The gameplay mechanics would be the same as an MMO too, but you still have to follow those guidelines. And don't open the server to strangers, or you'll either get flooded by people wanting to play a free game, or you'll get hacked, or you'll get "undesirables" in the game that will make it not fun to play.
Good Luck! :)
02/03/2009 (6:23 pm)
@Alex: 13? Well, it's a lofty goal for 13- but it wouldn't hurt you to learn game development (it would put you ahead of a lot of people like myself, who are in their 30s and trying to get into the industry).Here's a hint: You can still do a multiplayer RPG and not have to buy a server or get T3 lines. Just open it up to your friends to play. Torque can easily handle small groups (~50) with RPG frameworks over a DSL or Cable line. The gameplay mechanics would be the same as an MMO too, but you still have to follow those guidelines. And don't open the server to strangers, or you'll either get flooded by people wanting to play a free game, or you'll get hacked, or you'll get "undesirables" in the game that will make it not fun to play.
Good Luck! :)
#17
http://www.theplanet.com/
02/05/2009 (2:26 pm)
check here for servers, you obviously shouldn't use one running from your house.http://www.theplanet.com/
#19
02/21/2009 (2:32 pm)
Search Amazon.com for books by Richard Bartle (who co-wrote the first online RPG) or Jessica Mulligan (who consulted on a few MMOs and wrote a book or two on the subject). Brian Green also has a book or two out, on legal issues I think. 
Torque 3D Owner Ted Southard
Golden Rule: Do not look for a team until it is absolutely necessary. What you should do is:
1) Understand what an MMO is: By that, I don't just mean that you should have played a bunch and know what you would like out of your own MMO, but you should read books about what it takes to create and- most importantly- maintain an MMO. That means hardware costs (more than just a "sick rig", unless you want hackers crawling up your server's wazoo at 2am while you're sleeping), software costs (server OS, antivirus, dev apps, database apps, etc), web hosting (you need a front end website), and community management (who's going to answer the help desk at 2am when the hackers turn your server off?).
That means you need to build up knowledge of the business side of MMOs, and it's not easy. It's not impossible either, so go get the books and start reading.
2) Understand what you want your particular MMO to accomplish: After you understand exactly what it takes to build an MMO, and you're still confident that you have the desire to have a go at it in an indie fashion, then it's time to sit down and flesh out your ideas.
The first thing to realize here is that this is NOT the point to go get a team. This is the point where you need to have a by-yourself-meeting and come up with a backstory for your world, the areas, factions, and what makes the world tick at a high level. Find out what kind of gameplay you want to have in the game (if you can only describe that gameplay in terms of a half-dozen games it would be "like", then you're nowhere near done). Sketch out GUIs, NPCs, weapons, towns/cities, or even scenarios. Realize also that these sketches can be horrible or done on napkins, but it helps you understand what you want.
If you don't understand what you're building, you cannot expect anyone else to build it.
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