Hello all, I am currently gathering people together to start on an MMO game project which includes the desire to make an entire physical planet as a persistent object to serve as the game world. What are the possibilities of this? I have a few ideas but I'm a little hazy as far as knowledge of hardware specifics and such.

0.00001%

Sry to say but Ideas are worthless, coming up with good Ideas is only 1% of the work.

0.00001%

Sry to say but Ideas are worthless, coming up with good Ideas is only 1% of the work.

haha yes but 1% of work done is closer to 100% than 0%.
I know ideas aren't everything in bringing something into being, but that why I'm posting the question here. Trying to get closer to that 100

Hello all, I am currently gathering people together to start on an MMO game project which includes the desire to make an entire physical planet as a persistent object to serve as the game world. What are the possibilities of this?

You run a real risk of running out of materials if you go down this route. I would recommend using an existing planet instead.

The idea is to somehow have in the game data all the information as to the form and makeup of the planet in question while all that is visually generated is everything within the visible distance of the player. It has been suggested that the computer randomly generates the terrain like minecraft but with a mmo I'm worried that players could get different terrains from what another player had seen in the same place. But I'm wanting it to be a bit further than just surface terrain, the idea is that depending on the tools that the player possesses they could dig their way to the core and burn up if they wished to do so.

[quote name='Blink.Riddle' timestamp='1305303643' post='4810282']
Hello all, I am currently gathering people together to start on an MMO game project which includes the desire to make an entire physical planet as a persistent object to serve as the game world. What are the possibilities of this?

You run a real risk of running out of materials if you go down this route. I would recommend using an existing planet instead.
[/quote]

Is that a joke? If so: LOL. If not: What do you mean?

How much money do you have? Implied in "entire planet" is the ability to host a planet's worth of people (or at least a significant portion thereof). If you don't have enough users how will the world feel full? If you do have enough users you will need a LOT of network infrastructure and bandwidth. (modern day MMO budget of significant scale -> a couple hundred million dollars).

Maybe you want to think smaller? What about a large asteroid? Something in the 10k population range.

-me

[quote name='Blink.Riddle' timestamp='1305303643' post='4810282']
Hello all, I am currently gathering people together to start on an MMO game project which includes the desire to make an entire physical planet as a persistent object to serve as the game world. What are the possibilities of this?

You run a real risk of running out of materials if you go down this route. I would recommend using an existing planet instead.
[/quote]

Sorry this is so offtopic, but I want to express how hilarious i found this! Still laughing!
It reminds me of "Pinky and The Brain" where the mice build a 1:1 copy of the earth in paper-mache and lure all humans to that with the distribution of free t-shirts.

Ok, -it is friday after all! Sorry man!

Ok Blink.Riddle, start with basic game development and integrate your idea as soon as you possibly can.
(You'll probably see then that there was a smarter way to go, and you'll have to start over and such, but you'll be on the right track!)
Good luck with your project!

The planet in question would be rather smaller than an actual scale to earth, and as far as the world feel, the idea (i know ideas are just purely that, but ideas dont always go nowhere) is taht the moment the first players log on, they will choose a region to start in, they will not create a single player but in fact a small family (2 to 5 people) and will find themselves alone in the game world, not many other players, maybe a few npc's, no homes, cities or anything, just an open landscape. This is because they will be representing the dawn of man (sorta, i think it would be cool to implement some sort of race editor if the player wishes and the location they start in would allow a new race to emerge) It would start out as sort of a single player feel and the challenge would just be to survive, to fend off wild animals, protect themselves from storms and such. The player would be able to have access to a few craftable items depending on what kind of materials they can find. They will play as a member of their family and be able to switch between them or give orders to each other to accomplish tasks such as build shelter, find food, etc. Again, I know that just an idea can be nothing but, and that i need to be careful to not bite off too much for me to chew. I am gathering a team together (which is going slow but thats what you have to epect when you have nothing to show for yourself at the time) and we will be starting small but not before we have discussions and such to know what to start to work on.