Middleware vs In house dev. from scratch !! State your opinions!!
Author
We are a team of gaming programmers plannin to make an MMORPG. We are torn between using Middleware and scratch made game engines.
Your suggestions wud be very valuable to us. Please state your opinions based on the PROS and CONS (stating them if possible). Thanx again !!
Someone will answer this better than me and with greater extent, but let me just tell you the major pros and cons that come to my mind right now.
Doing your own engine
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PROS
The code is yours, meaning you can do anything you want with it. You may sell your games or make them freeware. And your engine is also a product you can sell or release as open source.
CONS
Much bigger planing and development time. Also you need a bigger team. There's the engine, the edition tools and the game to develop.
Using a 3rd party engine
------------------------
PROS
It's done and ready to use. There are lots of amazing engines out there, some comercial and others free. Unless you are a very focused and professional team I doubt you'll make an engine from scratch that will beat anything out there.
CONS
Comercial engines are usually very expensive - they can go to the 100,000s of dollars. Free engines are... free, but sometimes there are restrictions to their usage. If you change the engine you may have to release the code as open source, or you may not be able to use it on comercial games, etc. Some engines have no restrictions of these kind, though. Also, after choosing your engine, you may later find out that you have to change it in order to make it work the way you want it to and that means you'll have to make your way through lots of 3rd party code.
My opinion is that you should use a 3rd party engine at least to make a demo. If things work out alright you might get some funding and then develop your own engine, in case you'll need it. Making things from scratch is the main reason many teams never complete their games, because that means months and months of hard work and nothing to see. And even when you have a working engine, it probably won't look as good as a 3rd party engine. That's highly unmotivating.
Also, please don't tell me this is your first project and you're starting with a MMORPG.
PLEASE.
Hope this helps.
Best of luck to you and your team.
Doing your own engine
---------------------
PROS
The code is yours, meaning you can do anything you want with it. You may sell your games or make them freeware. And your engine is also a product you can sell or release as open source.
CONS
Much bigger planing and development time. Also you need a bigger team. There's the engine, the edition tools and the game to develop.
Using a 3rd party engine
------------------------
PROS
It's done and ready to use. There are lots of amazing engines out there, some comercial and others free. Unless you are a very focused and professional team I doubt you'll make an engine from scratch that will beat anything out there.
CONS
Comercial engines are usually very expensive - they can go to the 100,000s of dollars. Free engines are... free, but sometimes there are restrictions to their usage. If you change the engine you may have to release the code as open source, or you may not be able to use it on comercial games, etc. Some engines have no restrictions of these kind, though. Also, after choosing your engine, you may later find out that you have to change it in order to make it work the way you want it to and that means you'll have to make your way through lots of 3rd party code.
My opinion is that you should use a 3rd party engine at least to make a demo. If things work out alright you might get some funding and then develop your own engine, in case you'll need it. Making things from scratch is the main reason many teams never complete their games, because that means months and months of hard work and nothing to see. And even when you have a working engine, it probably won't look as good as a 3rd party engine. That's highly unmotivating.
Also, please don't tell me this is your first project and you're starting with a MMORPG.
PLEASE.
Hope this helps.
Best of luck to you and your team.
2 krashnburn: Get DarkPlaces engine or FTE engine. Both based on GLQuake engine by iD Software. It's GPL engines, but you can sell your game as long as you provide source code with it. And it's industry proven engine. If you want to tell me that it's old, I am gonna laught :P That modified engines do perpixel lighting like Doom3 and alot more. Of cos they have limitation cos it's Quake legacy.. But I think it's a best deal for indies. If you interested - I'll give you links later cos right now I am at work.
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