Continuing from here: http://www.gamedev.n...rs-for-newbies/

Here are the programs which were suggested for newbies to make 3D MMORPGs, and what I found out about their costs/restrictions. If anyone could further elaborate on any of these programs so I can have a complete review on them, that would be great. I'm interested in cost, restrictions/charges after you actually make a game, OS restrictions on the final product, how easy/hard the scripting/languages are to learn, and the restrictions in what the program can actually do plus anything else that might be useful. If anyone knows if more programs that can make 3D MMORPGs, please post them and review them if possible (cost is not an issue, I want a breakdown of all the options out there even if they cost millions).

[size="4"]I'm not looking for opinions on whether or not I should make a MMORPG, on if I should make other games first, or anything else unrelated.

HeroEngine:
Their end-result games are only compatible on Windows but Macintosh and iOS support should be out later this year. If your team is twenty-five people or smaller, they keep 30% of revenue (if you make your game free, they don't charge you anything either) from the game but give you their software and control your servers for "free". If you have a larger team, you don't have to pay revenue and you can use your own servers but a license cost could possibly run up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to some comments on this forum (it would be great if anyone knew actual costs other than speculation). You have to use your own graphics and everything, but they have some basics you can use for reference.

In terms of how easy it is to make things and have them work in the game, this seems to be the best program in the list.

Realmcrafter Professional:
Apparently the non-professional one is useless and the professional one is still in beta testing. $165 currently but normally costs $300. No info on restrictions found yet, they haven't answered my Email yet either.

Big World:
"Big World Indie": Runs on Windows. Can help you with servers if you want them to. For a team of twenty-five people or less, $299 per year. They take 10% gross royalty on revenue. You can only have a max of 10,000 subscribers/accounts. Source code uses Python.

"Big World Indie Source": Team of twenty-five or less. $2,999 annually. Max 10,000 subscribers/accounts, 10% gross royalty on any commercial revenue from the game. Source code stuff in Python and C++.

"Big World Commercial": $200,000+. Access to Python and C++ source code.


UDK:
Can make games on/for(?) Windows or iOS. It's free if you're using it for education or making a non-commercial game. If you make a game you're going to make money off of, you have to pay $99 US up-front, and then after your game makes over $50,000 you have to give them 25% royalty on whatever future money you make from it.

Unity:
Can be run on both Windows and Macintosh, and the end-result games can be played on either platform (unsure about Linux/Ubuntu/etc.) and games can also be make for computers, online, handhelds, or consoles. Haven't yet found if they charge you anything.

Neither UDK or Unity comes with anything that even resembles a MMO backend and in the case of UDK it appears to be almost impossible to even use it for the client (You don't have enough control over the networking to replace the server side of the engine). With unity you can make a MMO client but the hard part (the server) is completely missing.

For the other 3 the primary restrictions i know of is that RealmCrafter only scales using zones and instances (Given the power of modern server hardware this isn't a huge problem unless you need to run complex AI or physics for alot of npcs or other entities aswell)

Thanks guys.

Unity and UDK were listed by someone else as tools that would work to build MMORPGs and I had only glanced at the sites a bit before I posted them here, but I'll strike them from the list now.

Unity can be used for MMO clients and is being used by funcom(Makers of Age of Conan) and for their upcoming MMO so its definitly possible and Unity has quite a few advantages of its own, (Runs on multiple platforms, inside browsers, the game doesn't require installation, it supports streaming of terrain and other data etc), it just won't be as easy as it would be with dedicated MMO engines (But it would still be easier than it would be to not use any engine at all or hack around UDKs restrictions)

Continuing from here: http://www.gamedev.n...rs-for-newbies/

Here are the programs which were suggested for newbies to make 3D MMORPGs, and what I found out about their costs/restrictions. If anyone could further elaborate on any of these programs so I can have a complete review on them, that would be great. I'm interested in cost, restrictions/charges after you actually make a game, OS restrictions on the final product, how easy/hard the scripting/languages are to learn, and the restrictions in what the program can actually do plus anything else that might be useful. If anyone knows if more programs that can make 3D MMORPGs, please post them and review them if possible (cost is not an issue, I want a breakdown of all the options out there even if they cost millions).

[size="4"]I'm not looking for opinions on whether or not I should make a MMORPG, on if I should make other games first, or anything else unrelated.

HeroEngine:
Their end-result games are only compatible on Windows but Macintosh and iOS support should be out later this year. If your team is twenty-five people or smaller, they keep 30% of revenue (if you make your game free, they don't charge you anything either) from the game but give you their software and control your servers for "free". If you have a larger team, you don't have to pay revenue and you can use your own servers but a license cost could possibly run up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to some comments on this forum (it would be great if anyone knew actual costs other than speculation). You have to use your own graphics and everything, but they have some basics you can use for reference.

In terms of how easy it is to make things and have them work in the game, this seems to be the best program in the list.

Realmcrafter Professional:
Apparently the non-professional one is useless and the professional one is still in beta testing. $165 currently but normally costs $300. No info on restrictions found yet, they haven't answered my Email yet either.

Neither UDK or Unity comes with anything that even resembles a MMO backend and in the case of UDK it appears to be almost impossible to even use it for the client (You don't have enough control over the networking to replace the server side of the engine). With unity you can make a MMO client but the hard part (the server) is completely missing.

[quote name='SimonForsman' timestamp='1307583963' post='4821165']
...the primary restrictions i know of is that RealmCrafter only scales using zones and instances (Given the power of modern server hardware this isn't a huge problem unless you need to run complex AI or physics for alot of npcs or other entities aswell)

Big World:
"Big World Indie": Runs on Windows. Can help you with servers if you want them to. For a team of twenty-five people or less, $299 per year. They take 10% gross royalty on revenue. You can only have a max of 10,000 subscribers/accounts. Source code uses Python.

"Big World Indie Source": Team of twenty-five or less. $2,999 annually. Max 10,000 subscribers/accounts, 10% gross royalty on any commercial revenue from the game. Source code stuff in Python and C++.

"Big World Commercial": $200,000+. Access to Python and C++ source code.
[/quote]


I know your not looking for criticism as far as making an MMO is concerned but theres a few factors I don't think anyone mentioned to you. I understand that its fine and dandy you and your team want to explore, you want to start from scratch, you want to learn and thats fine. But theres a few things that are flawed with your logic of why you want to do it if your thinking of starting an MMO based off an MMO for "newbs" package.

In no way are these clients/server/tools a "newb" program to begin with.

However sticking with the topic I will throw my 2 cents in with however little your exchange rate ratio is to my 2 cents. I personally have dealt with all these and a few you didn't mention. I never was able to launch a successful client/game but was close on 2 different occasions. Being so my programming experiance is web and database related and I am learning C++ currently thanks to some help from people here. However rest assured I do have experiance as a game developer/programmer and even carry the little paper from Kaplan saying I at least know the fundimentals of Game Design (what a sham right?).

---------Without further adou----------

Hero Engine:
This software suite is notourious with flashy crap, all these assets and a bunch of cool things. The problem is like you said pricing. Sure its all nice that its free, but have you tried to look at HeroScript? I think they deliberatly leave information out on the API on purpose to have you attend there seminars which could cost your team several of thousands of dollars to learn how to create basic class structure and balance. The tools themselves are nice, its a very simple click drag procedure given your art department/render team work with your programmers to make basic scripts on how they should act. The engine is not as simple as going into Photoshop or Maya creating an animation and then drag dropping. You need to be very adiment on keyframing using there script on how things should work and how it should be called based on simple logic gates.

Speaking of Logic Gates, the demo they have showing linking of two smart entities is absoultly false. Its more of a gimmick to show how easy you can reuse assets. However the way they explain it is drag and drop, and "Smart" logic gates figure it out. What you don't see is the 299 line logic gate code of IF/around and IF/near components. If you try to drag something close buy prepare for having to use scripting to change it. As far as the Hero'Cloud' thing is, its a fad. The word Cloud is being appended to anything, icloud, freedomcloud, hostingcloud, Herocloud. Its all the same thing as it was prior just a rename. Think circa 2009 with 3G. Although it simulates a cloud network, Hero Cloud is not a cloud based networking system. Your pipeline on HeroEngine is also very limited without the proper Hero Tools to help you out. You start to feel as if they are pressure saling you into buying the full version so you can control. Great marketing ploy personally.

All in all simple review for HeroEngine:
Graphic Engine: 5/5
Usability of the tools: 5/5
Pipeline: (free) 1/5 , paid with all the tools you need 5/5
Tutorials: 2/5
Scripting: 3/5 (the language is simple and you can use multiple languages, but you confuse the engine very fast)
Newb Rating: 0/5 - I really do not reccomend this to new game developers, this is an authoring tool used for very sophistacted programmers/engineers. Not a childs toy, nor a learning tool.


RealmCrafter:
Realmcrafter used to be a good tool as a starting point to kinda see how things work. Unfortunatly 'thegamecreators' bought out the company (or merged the two not quite sure) and started to take over the project. When Realmcraft first came out there was alot of youtube videos showing how to do basic things, however no one ever really made it past that, that i know of*. The tool set it came with was almost like 3D studio max with the ability to create items in game then skin it etc. They added the ability to import assets, however the scripting for it severly lacked. When Game Creators bought it they were going to add DarkBasicPro from what I remember. A couple years later an almost complete rewrite happened and they done messed up everything. Using the darkbasicpro they did exactly what everyone didnt want them to do. They essentially made another game creator software, ala FPSCreator. The engine runs poor, the server lacks any support over a 50 player cap, and things just keep going down hill. The new PRO version is just the ability to do things that were originally free, but a few tweaks to the engine. All in all RealmCraft honestly is a horrid design flaw from the begginning. I do not reccomend it in any ways. I remember while planning a game with a few others a member suggested we use RealmCrafter, after playing around with it, immediatly we went to something else.

Unity and Shiva:
Unity and Shiva are essentially the same tool. They are really powerful editors and are very useful enviroments to play around in. Unity though kinda lacks the server aspect as mentioned earlier. While its not impossible to do, a good article is over on www.3dbuzz.com . Its about how some high knowledge programmers are working on creating a Unity based MMO for fun and for the learning experiance to see what is capable of Unity.

Shiva (http://stonetrip.com) may be more up your ally. Its similiar to how Unity works, and they have an MMO framework for handling servers available. However don't expect to create a high profile game using it, it has been used by a few to generate some ineteresting things, they are still lacking in alot of things from the server. They however update the source:git executables weekly and have quite a bit of help. Its not free, you will have to pay but honestly this is your best bet if your going to try a Unity based like authoring tool. I HIGHLY reccomend Shiva as it has saved a few people I know hours of complicated issues with the simple clicks of a button.

------------------------------
Here is a few things I reccomend I suggest a person who wants to get into MMO check out.

VBGore: VBgore.com , though its a 2D framework/editor is a good starting point to look how things work. Especially since your talking about learning programming, its an OPENSOURCE framework and even has a compelete executable to test it out. Its not that hard to modify it to a 3D based engine either infact I think there are a few ports out there floating around that have plugins for shaders/rendering and a few others. They just did a massive overhaul on there website so it may be hard to find information on it. They were originally coded in VB.net and have since turned to C#.net to continue development.

RPG Creator + Vampyr Net Client: Once again, another 2D based hack, but this allows you to have a newbie everything. RPGMKER2k and VX are a great tool for people that want to make small profile games to play with and expand on learning simple things. The actual game has its own script language which is based on RUBY, its caleld RGGS2(i think). Its a very easy way to get into creating games as everything is 2d based and you can learn about effecient spriting, as well as how spritemaps and parralax works. Everything is customizable and a few have even created addons with Ruby to make Psuedo 3D ala PaperMario 2 style.

When you feel you understand a little more about how it works you can check out this thread: http://rmrk.net/index.php?topic=34844.0 which is the offical release links for Vampyr Net Client, allowing you to turn your RPGMaker into an online style game. *very steep learning curve if you just start out there*. You can also read a little more from the author here: http://vampyr.axxim.net/


Hopefully that helps out and good luck! Let me know which you decided to go with and I can probably hook you up with alot of tutorials to save you the pain of searching the web as alot of them are hidden on archived message boards, and SEO spam.

-Mayple

http://unity3d.com/u...gine/networking

MMO integration for Unity. Never tried any of them myself, so I can't say whether it's good or not.