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MMO in development
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dragonfly3 Offline
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Post: #1
MMO in development
Hi everyone. I've been working on developing an MMORPG for about a year now and have recently decided to use the Esenthel engine. Originally I was going to use the Abyssal Engine (Hero engine before that but they wanted $10,000 for it) but after some not so impressive experiences with the toolset, the absolute lack of support, and the inability to find one single game made with it to see what it can truly do, I changed my mind after stumbling upon the Esenthel engine.

Since I'm switching to Esenthel, I pretty much have to start over on many things but after playing with it I've discovered that it won't be so bad after all because it is very easy to use (compared to what I'm used to)!

It is still in early stages of development but I have been posting on forums about it and how it is coming along because I am forever seeking opinions and insight from gamers. The way I see it, why make a game if you're not up to date on what gamers like?

At any rate, the name of the game is Hedron Online and rather than be redundant and type a very long message here about the game, I'm going to include links so you can get info on it. One of the links is to a kickstarter project I have up which was originally to help me get the full version of the Abyssal. Now it's to help me get the full version of Esenthel wink

Kickstarter: http://kck.st/9JXc8n

Splash page: http://hedrononline.com

Blog: http://hedrononline.com/blog

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=1...1744724455

Twitter: http://twitter.com/hedrononline
Trend: #hedron

Just wanted to say hi and give you a little info about what I'm planning to do with the Esenthel engine smile
11-17-2010 11:00 PM
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Phaelae Offline
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Post: #2
RE: MMO in development
Whoa! It's you, from the onrpg.com forums! Glad you made it over here, and I'm glad that my advice persuaded you to drop that terrible Abyssal Engine and come here.

I look forward to seeing what you do with this engine. I am absolutely loving it.
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2010 11:33 PM by Phaelae.)
11-17-2010 11:22 PM
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Esenthel Offline
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Post: #3
RE: MMO in development
Welcome to the forum, and good luck with your game! smile
11-17-2010 11:39 PM
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dragonfly3 Offline
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Post: #4
RE: MMO in development
Yes, I'm sort of eating my words with the Abyssal. After your post I started to really do some more research and coincidentally I ran into some problems with the toolset around the same time, which caused me to REALLY start rethinking things. That's when I came across Esenthel, downloaded the free version, and started working with it. I was hooked immediately. Its ease of use even allows for some of my less skilled team members to be able to learn and use it.

Thanks for the warm welcome smile
11-17-2010 11:49 PM
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Zervox Offline
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Post: #5
RE: MMO in development
So who are these we your talking about on your kickstarter site etc?, and here you use I? Also what are you going to base your MMO network, account management etc on? Do you have anything else to show than just predefined graphics etc which anyone can clip out of Abyssal vids or make a clip out of from their demos/tutorials sdks?
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2010 11:55 PM by Zervox.)
11-17-2010 11:54 PM
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dragonfly3 Offline
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Post: #6
RE: MMO in development
"We" is myself and 5 other people (currently talking with a 6th person)-kind of hard to make introductions in an online environment. I approached friends and my business partners (for my "real" job-I own a small business) who all have various skills ranging from graphic design to programming to creative writing. They all decided that they wanted to help. I use "I" a lot because the initial concept and idea to try to make the game in the first place was mine and because that is the way the team prefers that we work-I'm the boss. We collaborate on the game of course, but I'm the one with the final say so and I'm the one who is in charge of marketing, promotion, communications, etc. They prefer to remain in the background and do their work. That's what we've chosen, it's what works well for us. Their names are Steve, Justin, Tim, Joe, and Amanda. The people with the highest level of skills and experience in the team are myself, Joe, and Steve.

I'm leaning towards Raknet but haven't chosen an account management company yet. I was looking at Velocity but you can't get a price quote unless you are pretty much already established and ready to go. It will be at least a year before we are (if all goes as planned). I haven't had much luck in my search for other companies. I found an affordable company called Billing Orchard but they have a maximum of 5000 monthly transactions. Now we don't expect to get hundreds of thousands of players, but I also don't want to choose a company that could limit growth potential. They would be good to start out with but if the game is one of the few out there that becomes successful enough to sustain more than 5000 players then I don't want to have to go to the trouble of switching companies and possibly creating an inconvenience for already registered players. Does anyone have any other company suggestions?

I will be purchasing the bulk of the assets from artists at daz3d. The 6th person I'm talking with is a great artist and I'm hoping he comes onboard. If so, he will be creating custom assets.

Anything else we can't do ourselves will be contracted out.

Initially I was going to purchase the Abyssal MMORPG package which supplied the foundation of an MMORPG-4 zones already created, game mechanics already integrated, a huge assets package, etc. So that is why I used snipets from them-it is what we were going to use for the foundation of the game to build on.

But now we've axed that entire idea and decided on the Esenthel and only recently started working with it (for about a week). So no, I don't have much else to show other than what I have posted on the blog, kickstarter updates, website, etc. We have started to create the PvP area with Esenthel but until we can purchase the whole license (hence kickstarter) we can't provide the meat because we can't create it physically. I refuse to publish publicly the design document because I naturally don't want every detail of the game out in the public before it is created.

One thing I've learned in the indie game industry rather quickly is that when someone posts on a message forum anywhere within the gaming community that they are creating an MMO they are met with a pretty bad attitude. People seem to assume that they don't know what they're doing and that they can't do it. I've found myself having to defend myself and prove that I'm not just some 10 year old who has some uber cool idea to make the next WoW. It's sad that so many of these posts saying, "hey, I'm 10 years old and I want to make an MMO but don't know how to make graphics and don't know how to program and don't have any money and want people on my team but I can't pay you so please please help me because I want to be like WoW or Runescape!" has kind of ruined it for serious adults who do have a peg on what they are doing.

Hedron Online is in its early stages. Once we have the full license and can get things rolling then more things will be posted on the website blog.
11-18-2010 02:00 AM
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Zervox Offline
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Post: #7
RE: MMO in development
No, sorry if I seemed at bad attitude, its just that when using I in a mmo, I am not sure if its an actual 1-man team with no real experience or if its a personal spokesman. I'm just worried when so many people comes posting about their "great" mmo plan etc.

Its great experience to try and all that, but lots of people never notices/know/think about the hard work behind it, and to be honest, I've seen alot of blogs etc with all these fancy pictures and ideas etc, but many of these, there are people who A) dont have any programming experience, B)no artist or no-one with experience at all, he only "airs" the idea of his awesome MMO marketing.

and as you said you've noticed this bad attitude alot among indies, but there is a reason for this, usually to be able to start such a project you need a very good base for proof of concept etc.

again sorry if I seemed to come with a bad attitude.
(This post was last modified: 11-18-2010 02:12 AM by Zervox.)
11-18-2010 02:11 AM
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Driklyn Offline
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Post: #8
RE: MMO in development
Good thing you've stumbled onto Esenthel Engine. This thing is pretty awesome!

Btw, if you want to fix your blog so the beginning of your posts don't start to the right of the "Send feedback" link, adding this code to your style.css file should do the trick.

Code:
div.content_full { float: left; margin-top: 20px; }
(This post was last modified: 11-18-2010 06:37 AM by Driklyn.)
11-18-2010 06:35 AM
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Alviss Offline
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Post: #9
RE: MMO in development
Why dump tons of money?

Why not just write your own account server with python? Have it write to a SQL. Put it on a dedicated box in one of your team members basements, haha.

It wouldn't be a permanent solution, but it would work for the developing/alpha/beta and even early stages of release. If you write the Python server to be expandable, and handle packages like a big boy, you could just keep it, and simply transfer it onto a more powerful machine.

Actually, it could be a permanent solution, you'd need a lot of people logging in and out to cause any noticeable latency.
11-18-2010 08:19 AM
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dragonfly3 Offline
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Post: #10
RE: MMO in development
Zervox-no worries, sorry if I came off defensive. Sadly that's what the massive wave of wanna-be posts has caused...I've been almost trained to prepare for people to down me on forums that sometimes I jump the gun.

My team and I are going into this not expecting to be hugely successful. If we make a small group of gamers happy then that's enough for us. We're gamers ourselves and are kind of fed up with what the corporate world keeps spitting at us so we just want to make something for others like us. If by some strange chance it does take off then we'd be more than happy to welcome it of course wink

Driklyn-I just changed the blog skin to make it simpler. I had a couple of people tell me it was kind of hard on the eyes and hard to read so I changed the skin to make it cleaner. It should look better now.

Alviss-Didn't really think of that. My team member Joe could probably get it all set up. He's the main programmer.

Thanks everyone.
11-18-2010 09:34 PM
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Driklyn Offline
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Post: #11
RE: MMO in development
I agree that the blog skin was hard on the eyes, but it appears to have the same skin right now; at least, for me anyways.
11-19-2010 07:44 AM
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dragonfly3 Offline
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Post: #12
RE: MMO in development
Weird. It comes up with the new skin even when I'm not logged in. Did you refresh? I checked the settings and didn't see anything wrong. Not sure why it would still show the old skin.
11-21-2010 05:53 AM
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Zervox Offline
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Post: #13
RE: MMO in development
could be a problem if he has some precache turned on in his browser.
11-21-2010 06:00 AM
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Driklyn Offline
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Post: #14
RE: MMO in development
Just cleared my cache and refreshed the page several times, still appears to be the same.
11-21-2010 08:04 AM
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