MMO creation in Torque3D

#1 T3D is not an MMO engine, but a game engine. The difference is that T3D is geared towards being used for a wide variety of games, and because of that, cannot focus too heavily on specific game types.

T3D can still make an MMO as well as TGE and TGEA (both of which had been used to make MMOs in the past), and even with Hero Engine, MMOs are difficult to create.

#2 Thanks for the reply Ted. While I knew that Torque was a game engine, I was more concerned with how it would measure up against Visual3d.net and HeroEngine (costing more than $300,000). Would you pay that much for an MMO engine?

Another engine getting a lot of space on forums is something called Unity! It comes in several editions. A $200.00 as well as a $1495.00 edition!

Nevertheless, it seems that I've had made my mind up already. TGE, Torque3D and Blitz3D for my 3d RPG games, while 3D Gamestudio for my FPS and other 3D type games.

BTW Ted, you respond heavily to many posts. It has Torque owner underneath your name here on the forums. Are you a Garage Games employee? Have you yourself made any games? If so, what are they?

#3 are those $300k + engines worth the money hack ya they are though that might change if GG can get there engine alot closer to just one of those high cost engines. i sticking with GG as its with my budget range and its a large community which is very good for learning.

if i had the money though i might of ended up buying one of those high cost ones but i don't so i am here at GG. :P

#4 On the value of the high cost engines... They are certainly good engines, and if you are well funded then maybe they are worth the cost. But Hero Engine is more than $300,000, your looking at $700,000+ and up to and over a million with all the options + a percentage of royalties. If your planning on your game making millions of dollars then that may very well be worth your trouble. But consider that most development studios never see royalties on their own games, and are living off the advances publishers give them for their titles instead, and then you have to wonder, if my profit margin is going to be small, would I be better off sacrificing some options and going with a much cheaper engine?

Of the lower cost engines I think T3D and Unity will be the cream of the crop in the $1000-1500 market in the near future. Very differnet audiences though in my opinoin. Unity is easier to work with and is a godsend for artists or inexperienced programmers. They can get in and get things done on their own with it, and that breaks down some barriers. You may be able to get more done with T3D though, having full source access, that is something that you'll want if you have experienced programmers. In one hand you have Unity which will probably let you build your game quicker and easier, but that will also likely require you to make some compromises if your not developing a cookie cutter title due to no source access. On the other you have Torque 3D where the sky is the limit with a good programmer, but the learning curve and the difficulty of use is higher.

Of the $300 or under engines my two favorite are TGEA and C4. C4 as a rendering engine is fantastic, but you'll have to be able to plug in a lot of code on your own. It's not as feature complete as TGEA. TGEA has the advantage of being able to do a lot more out of the box, but its lighting and shadows are not on par with C4. C4's new terrain is also pretty snazzy. But it's mainly a rendering engine, the other aspects of it are pretty bare bones.

MMOG wise the options would be using a Torque variant with the MMO Kit (www.mmoworkshop.com), Multiverse, Realm Crafter, or there are a couple new options that I haven't fully checked out. Torque has the advantage of being a proven engine that has shipped a game. But its got a steeper learning curve than the other options. Realm Crafter is sort of like the lower cost online rpg specific version of Unity. The editors aren't anywhere near as nice and the graphics are subpar, but it is the easieset to use. Multiverse, I'd personally steer away from, the other options are better. Unity has shipped an MMOG but that is not out of the box functionality. You'd have to be prepared to do a lot on your own.

#5 Hero engine is what I like. Smart objects and character system is really appealing to me. But Ted, do you recommend it? I don't have that much money for sure. I am a teen. I took your idea and am researching right now. I actually made a scheduel and said to my self, three months of research and then getting the hands dirty. I even finished one book named "Developing online games - An insider's guide". Which has amazing tips. But now I really like hero engine.. Would you pick it over TGEA?

And one more thing is this on their license page...

- Starting Quote -

Hosting and Billing

For North American companies who want to focus on the game and leave operations to us, we offer a package that includes HeroEngine plus hosting, billing, and customer service. Our in-house technology includes all forms of billing and pricing – you can charge for subscriptions, in-game item transactions, and sell ads. We can also assist with sales and marketing by working with publishers to secure retail box space and through publicizing your title to the trade press.

- Ending Quote -

I really like that idea. Less hassle for us. If Garagegames wants to attract tones of more customers. They should really have something like that.

#6 @JC: You speak wisdom :)

@CJW: I'm a GG community member, not an employee- apparently, people think I work for GG, even here at GDC in their booth, since they keep asking me about my "product"... At which point I start talking about my MMO ;)

No shipped games yet, but plenty of experience with failed projects, both on the leading side as well as one of the team. I try to impart some of that to people, because when the team breaks up, there is usually no post-mortem and certainly no public discussion of the failure, and so people continue to join the community without knowing any of this- which if they did could possibly help them avoid some of the mistakes of others.

And no, I would not buy the Hero engine or any of the MMO engines out there- and that's strictly a price-point decision for me now, as my money is tight just for living, nevermind trying to lay out some of the money they want for those engines. Torque does quite nicely for me right now :)

@Fusegen: It's not a matter of what I would do. It's a matter of what you should do for your project. A question like that is moot in your position anyway, being a teen with little money to spare for TGEA, not to mention Hero.

But to give some information, Hero has some payment plans, but even Chase Bank is at GDC hawking virtual goods/mobile/paypal/credit card payment offerings (though the guy was acting a bit too lofty for my taste).

You should understand that GG is not in the MMO business. They're in the game engine business. And for them to get into payments... Well, it just doesn't make sense for them to do. It's fast becoming a crowded market even if they did want to.

#7 Not familiar with Visual3D, but certainly T3D is not going to be anywhere near as friendly for MMOs as Hero Engine, since that's Hero's core focus. If you happen to have half a mil to spare and a short schedule then Hero is probably a good choice.

You can make MMOs with Torque, but it's going to be an awful lot of work, especially if you really expect to realize the Massively part.

#8 Okay. Thanks. I emailed them to see if they have any other ideas.

#9 Fusegen Entertainment

they will tell you the price be for saying anything back to your questions. i asked them many questions one of them was pricing they said if there pricing was in my range then we can talk some more. 300k-950k is not in my price range and i don't think its in yours ether its why hosting is free when buying there engine as thats part of your 300k-950k cost your spending on it. :P if you want free hosting in torque then the engine is goign to cost you about 50k-100k more i would think maybe not that much but hosting is not cheap.

#10 No. I am not saying free, I am willing to pay for it. I just do not want to worry about that stuff when I should be worrying about people liking the game.

#11 @ Fusegen -

You realize that the MMO business is fundamentally a service business right?

#12 And then there is the Visual3d.net engine. Something that I have been looking at recently!

Sure, they have a $20,000 version, but they also have a ~$200.00 indie version for someone or a group of people who think that they can write a MMO and serve their community.

What do you guys think of that?

#13 I did some beta testing for the Visual3d engine. I was pretty impressed with it. I have not been to their site for some time now and last I was there you did not receive source code with your purchase.

If you needed the source code you had to come to an agreement with them and of course it was more money on top of that. Source code last time I was there was on a case by case basis.

#14 Why is having the source code to an engine important?
Is not the engine capable of doing what you ask?

#15

Quote:Why is having the source code to an engine important?
Is not the engine capable of doing what you ask?

doing what who asks? You.. me.. Southard, Fishel.. who? That's the point. Using an engine like.. say.. Unity is fine. Unity is a great engine and has excellent points to it.. but you work within the box they provide, end of story, do not pass go. Having the source allows for less constraints and more avenues for the developer(s). Argue anything else, but this is fact.

Having the source is only important if what you intend may go beyond the limitations set by non-source engine companies.

#16 Ok, Mr. Brady why buy such an engine if it limits your creativity?

$700,000 is a lot of money to spend on an engine, if it cannot do what you ask 'out-of-the-box' not to mention $20,000 or $150.00

That's the reason why I purchased Torque, as well as Blitz3D as well, because I can do what I want without wasting time modifying the engine.

If I want to develop a game that doesn't require much attention to code, I'll use TGE or 3DGS. If I need to research code, then Blitz3D will be my choice.

If an engine cannot do what a 'programmer' asks, why spend that much moeny at all. Stick with C++, C#, or XNA as a programming language to develop your game.

#17 CJW I never said having the source code was important. I just put out the information of how Visual3d was set up.

I like having the choice with Torque to change it as I see fit. That is my personal choice. I also have a copy of Unity 2.5 now and am looking at that, I've no complaints that I do not have the source for it. Though, it is just my personal preference that the more options I have with an engine the happier I am.

#18

Quote:That's the reason why I purchased Torque, as well as Blitz3D as well, because I can do what I want without wasting time modifying the engine.

Then you wasted your money. You can download TGEA and use that without modifying the engine, but if you want to do things different, then you'll need to modify the source code. And since we're talking about MMOs here, if you're not planning on modifying TGEA source, then you're planning to watch your MMO choke on players- and not that many, either.

What having source gives you is the ability to do custom things with it that are not done out of the box. Need a fast FSM? Code it. Need ODBC access? Code it. Swapping out physics libraries? Specific audio/animation needs? Extending the mounting? Code it.

Quote:If an engine cannot do what a 'programmer' asks, why spend that much moeny at all. Stick with C++, C#, or XNA as a programming language to develop your game.

The why is simple: Because by getting the source to TGEA, I both saved the time it would have taken for me to learn and implement all the rendering and engine lessons that were put into practice in TGEA (and with bug fixes that come from all the games released with it over the years), while also being able to customize my own code.

With the source, I've added the ODBC resource, the Commander Map (while porting it), exposing script functions, and pushing other functions from script to code to speed them up. I've also done a bit of optimizing of the player and shapebase classes, as well as network communications- all of which is needed (and then some) to get an MMO working. But without source, all I have is a fancy demo.

Should I have gone a completely custom route, then I would have wasted years on just the base engine. If I didn't purchase source code? Less flexibility.

An engine's source code just gives you the ability to modify things to fit what you need, but an engine is not meant to be everything to everyone, no matter what their marketing says.

#19

Quote:Ok, Mr. Brady why buy such an engine if it limits your creativity?

I answered this in my above post. I'm also assuming the rest of what you wrote was directed at other people since it has nothing to do with what I wrote.

#20 Multiverse requires you pay 500k to 2 million dollars for licensing, otherwise you have to display there game portal with your game. If you want everyone to see there broken "demos" also then it's free. They only have 3 games(demos) in there portal and it's not hard to figure out why. Might as well get the Hero Engine and a full team to make you a game for those numbers. Good product, maybe, it's Ogre underneath, worth the price, HECK NO! Realmcrafter Pro... can I have my money back. thought this was an RPG framework, wrong you have to code every single aspect of it, I mean everything, you might as well build an RPG engine in Torque. It has no timeline for source release or pro version, you might be waiting years to touch the source. It lacks tons on mmo essentail features (that require source modifications)at current state. They change there programming languages like underwear, what you make today, probably will not work when the final releases rolls in. Try mmoworkshop.com, very solid start, good community, you will only move forward with it.