[Archived] Alk MMORPG Framework

Hello all,
I would like to introduce a MMO/MMORPG framework currently being developed for Unity developers.
Taken from one of our own projects and redesigned to be implemented with ease, the framework shall comprise of the base functionally required for developing your own online games and shall also include a MMORPG demo which developers are free to use or modify.

Supported Platforms:

• Windows.
• Mac.
• Android.
• iOS.
• PlayStation Vita.

Framework Features:

• Unity free & pro support.
• Fully Authoritative.
• TCP protocol.
• Asynchronous sockets.
• Distributed server support (multiple servers/daemons).
• No limitation on concurrent users.
• Play Session Management.
• Area of interest system.
• Character creation system (UMA support).
• Enemy spawn & basic logic (AI).
• Secure registration system.
• Secure login system.
• Heightmap exporter (from within Unity Editor).
• Server-side heightmap validation.
• Server-side prediction (movement).
• Client-side prediction (movement).
• C# based server daemons.
• MySQL database.
• Separate class libraries for server/client.
• Client/server data files (quests/items/equipment/NPCs are all stored in proprietary data files.)
• C# WPF data file editors.
• Plugin system (extend system functionality via purchasing or developing plugins).

MMO Features:

• Game Master (GM) system (featuring server-side authentication).
• Chat system (multiple channels e.g. Normal, Party, Guild, Global and Private).
• Party system.
• Friend system.
• Guild system.
• Quest system.
• Item/equipment system.
• Level system.
• Class system.
• Combat system.

The demo shall consist of 3 server daemons:

1. Game Link (GLink) Server - Acts as a master server/proxy and relays data packets to required daemon.
2. GameDB Server - Loads/saves data to persistent storage (MySQL) and runs queries on objects retrieved from persistent storage.
3. World Server - contains the game world and controls all game world specific logic including player movement, combat and quests etc.

The demo shall also include a client with simple art assets to demonstrate the functionality of the system.
Please feel free to add any suggestions you have for additional features for the system.

The expected price upon release will be around €250.
We would like to hear your opinions on this price however please keep in mind that whilst this may appear expensive to some, it has been in development for several months and is aimed more towards developers producing commercial online games.

Progress Update:
Completed | Work in Progress

• Distributed server support (multiple servers/daemons).
• Play Session Management.
• Area of interest system.
• Character creation system (UMA support).
• Enemy spawn & basic logic (AI).
• Secure registration system.
• Secure login system.
• Heightmap exporter (from within Unity Editor).
• Server-side heightmap validation.
• Server-side prediction (movement).
• Client-side prediction (movement).
• Persistent storage (MySQL).
• Client/server data files (quests/items/equipment/NPCs are all stored in proprietary data files.)
• C# WPF data file editors.
• Chat system (multiple channels e.g. Normal, Party, Guild, Global and Private).
• Party system.
• Friend system.
• Guild system.
• Quest system.
• Item/equipment system.
• Level system.
• Class system.
• Combat system.
• Game Master (GM) system (featuring server-side authentication).
• Plugin system.

Beta Tester List

• Gunhi
• SweetBro
• dreamlarp
• Teila
• Shawn67
• liverolA
• I am da bawss
• rpg_gamer
• chiapet1021
• Muber Gaming
• SpectralRook
• pixelquaternion
• Whippets
• lorenalexm
• Hazor
• RobertoGD
• rocki
• taichiu727magnus

 

Here are some quick pictures to demonstrate some elements.

 

This is looking really good and might blow away all the other MMO systems that are currently on the market! Make sure to add some tutorials and documentation to get people going. ;-)

 

Thanks and yes we have full documentation for existing features and are working on the rest .
We shall begin working on some tutorials closer to release, the fully documented demo shall also serve as learning material.

 

Is tcp good for MMOG?

 

Yes, many commercial MMORPGs rely heavily on TCP.
I would discuss TCP vs UDP, but as it is a long discussion.

MMOGs & MMORPGs are perfectly suited to TCP, which is why the majority of the most popular MMO services typically employ TCP. UDP does however have some benefit to real-time systems such as FPS games.

Several Commercial MMOs that use TCP:

• World of Warcraft.
• Lineage I & II.
• Guild Wars.
• Ragnarok Online.
• Star Trek Online.
• Perfect World.

 

Cool,hope we can see it in store soon !!
BTW: the price is a little high,you should set it lower for a introduct price in a limited time.
personal opinion.

 

Thanks and we will take that into consider, however unlike the majority of MMO "frameworks" currently available, this is truely authoritative, you do not need to use any other 3rd party solutions, everything is built from the ground up, there are no limits for player numbers and no additional costs, so you can use this for multiple projects etc. Thus we currently feel the price is justified, however we shall look further into the pricing before release.

 

Added supported platforms to original post. More platforms shall be added when tested.

 

The price may be great depending on what else you will add. Things like UMA support and editors ect..
I would like to see you put up your own website with forums though to better contact and support.

Well at least you did not name it Ultimate blabla whatever like way too many kits on our store. (Just do a search.)
Though keeping up with documentation will be a big task so I hope you guys come across with this kit.

Also a completed features and % of ones not done would help also. This would give us all an idea of how long it will take this kit to come out.

 

Thanks for the suggestions ;-)
Many features are already completed and documented, as this framework is based on a previous project.
Currently we are working on restructuring the code and modifying it to allow for greater freedom out of the box.
A website is currently in the works and should be up in the next few days. I shall also add add the feature % tomorrow as suggested.
We shall definitely consider adding UMA support should there be enough interest in it.

 

I have added a simple feature progression to the original post. Due to the current state of restructuring the code, it is currently not possible to present an accurate completion percentage for uncompleted features.

 

I would say UMA is one of the apps you find most looking to use. But you can also add a poll to this thread or your forums and find out.

P.S.
You might offer an alpha license to developers to get feedback and testing before release at a reduced price.
This would help with development costs and give you a better idea on user needs.

 

Uma would be a way to go for people to customization of avatars. But totally up to you.

 

Also seeing that you do not have that feature done yet it would save you time and open it up to those who have made UMA outfits ect..

 

Many thanks for the insight, we shall definitely work on incorporating UMA into our solution.
I have added UMA support to the list of features

We are currently researching viable licensing solutions to incorporate into the framework, which may allow us to offer some form of alpha testing/evaluation.

 

Interesting. How difficult will it be to modify the base product? Could one use skill-based rather than class-based? Can we access enough of the code to create plugins for various assets such as Unistorm or create our own plug-ins?

Is this an entire networking system or does it plug into something like uLink or Photon? I am assuming the first but just want to check.

We have already invested in one MMO solution that is turning out to be much less than expected but looked so professional on their website. I think you would definitely attract some users if you allow an evaluation version for free and a development version. Too often these things end up not working as expected and we all end up losing. Bad reviews destroys the product and too much money spent on things that don't work destroys the trust of those of us who invest. Sorry, but I have a rather sour taste in my mouth at the moment regarding MMOkits. One thing I will never do again is pay hundreds of dollars for pre-alpha! Looks like you already have a good start though.


Yours sounds promising though and I will report to my team and keep watching! We are a team that is developing for commercial purposes and the price seems pretty good actually as long as we can evaluate it with limited users first.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for your interest.
The main component of the framework is the networking library, which is built from the ground up based upon asynchronous .Net sockets. The library deals with packet management and base classes for connection types, clients and clients etc. which provide basic functionality to be expanded upon. Thus the framework does not rely on any other networking solution such as Photon etc.

The rest of the "base" product is a demonstrative MMORPG product built upon the networking library, featuring 3 separate server daemons and a client. This product shall be well documented and is intended to be as open as possible for expansion/modification. As such one could simply create one single player class (i.e. Human) or simply remove any class based code with ease to create a skill-based system. The class system within the product will not be strict and will simply consist of a class-type definitions and class restrictions on skills/item...all of which are easy to remove or modify.

The provided MMO product is fully open so you are free to modify and integrate separate 3rd party solutions as you see fit.

We wont be offering a free/demo version of the actual framework, however, once we have finished the MMO sample product of the framework, we shall open up a server in which potential buyer can freely play/test the provided sample MMO.

 

This sounds fine. Thank you for responding so quickly. I will relay your information to our programmers who will be able to ask any further questions and interpret the responses much better than I can.

 

Two features should be consider in the demo,ignore if they are already in
1.Show how to switch from one unity scene(Level/map) to another.
2.smart-spawn other players when goto a new scene,which we have seen in lots of MMOG,
other players will be spawned gradually,and only spawn the players in AOI,so we won't stuck when
switch to another new scene/map.

The assetstore do need a Real MMO kit,this one is most complete,so keep up,
make it be the popstar

 

I can happily report that both those features are are already included ;-)

 

Hello again,
We are currently evaluating the possibility of releasing the framework in a modular manner, in which you will be able to purchase or even possibly develop plugins to add additional functionality to the system.

Would you be interested in the framework featuring such a plugin system?

 

This would be the best method. You have many skilled users who will want to add plugins to your engine. You will also want to make it modular to give freedom to add or remove features.

 

Thanks for your opinion, we shall look at developing a simple yet robust system for plugins. We may even segregate some of the default template functionality into separate plugins so developers may add/remove default features to suit their needs.

 

Good. For instance some will use an exp level system and others will use a skill gain. The same with things like day/night systems ect..

As long as the base features are covered the specific game features can be made modular and added as needed.

Just FYI this is a good added income for you if you make feature packs like wow features or skyrim feature packs.

It should also be easy to make combined type games that mix features without breaking the system.

One of the hardest thing about using independent plugins in the unity community is making them work together. Build your system with all your features easy to plug and play and that will put you up there with users.

 

Updated original post to add 2 new features:

• Game Master (GM) system (featuring server-side authentication).
• Plugin system.

 

Nice thought!

 

bookmarked
looks promised
any videos for for now?

 

Currentry we do not feel that we have anything worthy of releasing, video wise. When we have more features completed we shall begin recording development videos.

 

when will you release the package? is there any beta, demo or something

 

Will there be support for NGUI or DF-GUI or are you gonna wait new Unity GUI?

 

We are aiming to have the framework ready within ~2 weeks, however this is subject to change should any bugs etc arise, as we do not want to release a flawed system.

Once the framework is released, we shall open a dedicated server for potential customers to test a live version of the included MMO game template. There are currently no plans to provide a demo of the actual networking framework, testing may be carried on the game service demo.

 

The included template game shall utilize Unity GUI. Preparations are also underway for the implementation of the new GUI system coming with the introduction on Unity 4.6.

NGUI/DF-GUI support may be added after initial release if there is a demand. However the template is easily editable so integration should be simple for customers.

 

I'm really interested in this.
is there any inconvenient for Unity on MAC?
Source code in C# or DLL? is there any chance to extend specific features that the main Framework doesn't have? like craft system, items level, skill levels and so on

 

Both unity and Mac operate perfectly fine with the framework. The actual networking component is supplied as a compiled DLL, the source code for the client and server daemons are provided with full c# source. The framework can be extended via modifying the provided source or via implementing the proposed plugin system mentioned a few posts above. The included MMO centric features are listed in the first post and may be provided as a plugin for modularity.

 

This is some interesting stuff. Making it 'pluggable' or whatnot is definitely the way to go, as everyone is going to want to do it differently and it would also allow others to create plugins / create your own solution. Very interested in seeing where this goes.

 

yes, and it should be like that. Others developer can develop or even sell that plug-ins to fill up what the framework missing. Closed system is just something really amateur.

 

The plugin system is progressing well. We are hoping to have the plugin API finished soon.

 

The UMA should be the last on the roadmap,most of us don't use it!
It's on an alpha stage which still has so much to improve!

 

Not sure where you get "most of us don't use it" from. Among the group of developers I know making MMO's, they all plan to use UMA. I wouldn't consider a kit that didn't use it. Integrating it early will encourage people to invest.

 

Most of people are developing mobile games,including MMO,UMA seems heavy for a mobile game.
They use a custom character system.Also,this is a personal opinion.The author decides.

 

Yes, it is a personal opinion, which is why I felt the need to add mine. Unity is going more toward mobile but a successful product will attempt to reach everyone. It is better to include features for both than exclude for one. That is my opinion. Regardless, there is quite a bit of competition for the MMO market here at Unity and I am sure there will be enough choices for all of us.

 

Uma support is a newly added feature to our roadmap, thus Uma development won't pish back essential MMO centric features. For the time being we shall try to gain some familiarity with the UMA system whilst working on the core functionality of the framework.

 

yeah, +1 for mobile here. So UMA should be considered at the last of roadmap or in the coming update.

 

"Most of people are developing mobile games,including MMO,UMA seems heavy for a mobile game.
They use a custom character system.Also,this is a personal opinion.The author decides."

I do not know where you get the most people are developing mobile games either. Some are true but not most. And a MMO kit without robust character creation will be left behind. Take a look at Atavism. they have a great model for a kit like this with UMA being one of the first add-on's and many being developed by the users.

The fact is the bulk of those working on mobile games could not even work with something of this scale. The development of a MMO is a much bigger task then most developers know. If you are aiming this kit at mobile developers I would say you will be loosing the bulk of serious developers.

 

From my personal experience, the character creation system of an MMO is fairly generic in core functionality and is trivial when deciding to develop for a different platform.
However keep in mind that whilst we shall work on adding support for UMA, it is a client only feature and can easily be removed if porting to a mobile platform.

 

Whilst we are hard at work, can I get a rough list of those people interested in beta testing the framework.

 

me, first one ^__^. Do you need my email or something to assess the Beta?

I bookmarked this topic when was created

 

I'd be interested in giving the beta a test assuming that the documentation is in order.

 

The beta wont be occurring for the next week or two as some documentation still needs to be written and some features are still being worked on.

I shall contact interested parties once all documentation etc is ready