This post is either going to get the most flames in history...or make a lot of people happy. Its a running cliche around here that people come in to want to make an MMO and have no clue what the workload is - not contributing anything themselves. There are multiple stickies for just this occasion. The RealmCrafter from Solstar Studios is planning on releasing a WYSIWYG MMO creator. Of course the number of man hours on good content...something worthplaying will still be high, but games will be possible right out of the box. It uses Blitz3d and BlitzBasic as its underpinnings, so anything really unique will need someone who knows those languages. Tools include: A World editor, used to put together game areas and levels, place scripts on actors, set event triggers and waypoints, place NPC's and monsters, and designate area transitions in the virtual world. A Terrain Editor that creates mesh terrain real-time and uses a spray paint technique of map texturing. The Actor Editor is the editor you use to add all playable characters, monsters, bosses and NPCs to your game. T The Particle Editor is the editor you use to design the particle system effects for your game. You can set up different effects to be used by the World Editor, the scripting language, or other parts of the engine. The Item editor is used to design the items that you want in your game. These items could be anything from magical swords to laser guns, potions to med packs. Attributes of each item can be set using this editor. The scripting Editor is the tool you would use to design your scripts written in the powerful Realm Crafter scripting language. scripts are used to customize your game by adding behaviors, attributes, actions to actors and the game world. If you really have coding skill, you can use BlitzBasic and Blitz3d to begin altering source code and make your game highly unique. No, Im not selling the software LOL...just thought others might be interested in finding out about it. With the number of people who will buy the software, only certain games will stand out from the pack based on storyline, art assets, and the actual content. Hope this perks someone's interest. After working on our project with slow results, it definitely perked ours. Have fun, - Vanquish [Edited by - Vanquish on April 25, 2005 12:44:13 PM]

sorry hadnt seen it here. in fact, looking back at least 2 pages I dont see it in the topic either here or other general areas.

not my intention to add to the spam. sorry.

Definitely. And it will be interesting to see if these RC games follow that model of distribution.

Just how many people will make decent games?
Of those how many will get exposure?
Of that how many will "blow up"?

Will this usher in an age of personal MMOs for a clan...bring back (fond for me) intimate DMing?

Or will this get wholly unused?

Im highly curious.

This will follow the ways of "3D game maker" me thinks.

Dont quite remember "3d game maker"...I vaguely remember chuckling at a book at Barnes & Noble by a similar name.

TBH if you really look at the editors included, they dont look half bad. And if you really can create a game with their included assets, Im wondering how far it might take off?

To be sure projects that have unique assets and people who can script and code Blitzlang will be much better, but whats to stop this from becoming the new darling of the mod community?

I remember fondly the days of table top gaming...Im wondering if this can bring back that feel. Perhaps thats too far a stretch.

Well it's only DirectX 7, but some nice graphics can be done with that.

Take a look at some of the Blitz Gallery

But to look at the broader picture, if the graphics are decent and it sparks some unique, enthralling gameplay might you overlook the graphics?

Maybe 1 out of 100 projects using this might really come to fruition. And the chances of one of those being an EQ killer are slim to none, because that primarily has a lot to do with promotion and publishing.

What might happen is that people will go back to playing in smaller communities with rulesets they can have an impact on. I mean think about producing an mmo for 200 people 2000 people, much like MUDs, where if you start a link on the forum boards you might actually influence the devs? That would be cool (assuming the rules didnt see-saw all the time).

Im sounding like a cheerleader and vastly naive, but its intriguing me :)