Best Plugins for MMO

You should focus on learning the basics of programming, not a syntax. Use a syntax (programming language) as a tool to practice your knowledge, not to become a better programmer.

 

Unity's scripting languages, C# and UnityScript, will work on all of its platforms. I'd recommend C# though.

 

A good way to start out for free is to use the Unity Learn section section and I also recommend reading Rob Mile's "The C# Programming Yellow Book", which was created as the basis for a first year programming course and is available for free to download. It is not Unity specific, but the book has good examples and will get you started in understanding general C# programming.

 

Sorry if my earlier responses were too rude or harsh.

Kits and stuff can be extremely deceptive you download something click a few buttons and it looks like you have like 2/3 of the game done. The reality is just not like that.

I've put close to a full year into a small RPG. As a gamer I would have thought it would be simple. Hell as a programmer (for about 20 years) I would have thought it was 4-6 months tops. I have another 6 months of work left till it's a solid game.

These things are a lot of work. But, man, it's totally worth it.

 

Okay so I've thought of a more reasonable game that could also incorporate a simple (I think) online feature. How about a fighting game like mortal kombat or injustice? Something a little more simple like the mobile versions. What are your thoughts on that?

 

Fighting games are also quite complex.... n0mad spent around 5 years developing his I believe.

How long have you been a coder? If the answer is less than 1 year, aim much lower.

 

Be very careful. I spent a lot of money on Atavism only to find out I could only create a basic game. The sales guy will tell you otherwise, will coat his words with honey. But if you depend on Atavism to the make the complex things you say you want, you will be disappointed and be out hundreds of dollars. Whatever you do, don't count on the assets he promises. If you want a simple game, pretty much like all the other single developer Atavism guys will make, then fine. But if you want something special, don't use it. Do what we are doing...use uLink or the upcoming uNet and make your own game. It is not impossible at all. Some of the RPG kits and tutorials out there are great for giving the basics and then you have to learn how to make it all work on the servers. uLink has an authoritative server and you can use it for free while in development. uNet will probably be ready by the time you need it anyway. There is lots to do before you get to that stage.

There are plenty of us small teams and single developers making MMO's, not hugely ambitious ones, but ones that are realistic for our skills. We don't talk about it much because people here crucify MMO makers. Not all of us are newbs or dreamers. Just so you know...

But yeah, learn to code or find a programmer.

Make an RPG and go from there...at least start one so you understand how it all works.

 

@Teila I usually heavily customize any assets, so probably would find a way to make Atavism (or other kit) do what I want while not worrying about basic systems like inventory management, etc.

 

Only issue and you should double and triple check is from what I have read the base atavism doesn't allow modification while the higher price tier does.
Just a word of caution here.

 

Good luck! All I can say is the majority of people who work with it, end up dropping it. But..it is your money to spend.

 

To be precise they don't give you the server's source files with the lower tiers and there are concurrent user limitations on them. Removing these restrictions altogether is $1,500, but you can increase the user limit with smaller amounts.

http://www.atavismonline.com/technology/licenses

 

So they say. But no one I know has been able to get many users on Atavism at a time...or NPCs for that matter, not with a full terrain and world populated with items. I would love to see an Atavism game, without major modification, done by a small indie team or a single person actually contain the number of players promised. So far, I have seen 100 npcs on an almost empty world, flat terrain, hardly any objects. Neosworld is not a great example, imho, since they have complete access to the source code.

They do have a small but very intense group of fanbois though and I am sure one of them will come on and show us their great game with 10k people on at a time, beautiful sculpted terrain, a huge world, and lots of items/npcs. Of course, I want proof, like an alpha we can play. Too many "next weeks" and "next months" and too little to show for all the money pledged for me to take anyone's word for it. Trust is a huge issue.

 

If you need plugins from the Asset Store, you probably shouldn't be making an MMO.

 

Okay, sorry, but that is just not true. There are plenty of good plugins out there that can help make an MMO or any game for that matter. Even an MMO starts out as only a game.

I have no idea how the OP is defining plugins. Either he means big system plugins, such as networking, in which case there are plenty, such as Photon or outside of Unity, uLink and many others. A could of ones here on the forum show promise for networking such as Forge and Bolt although they may require some work to actually become Massive.

Or he might mean plugins for visual effects, such as shaders (Alloy, Lux, etc.). Also, RTP and TC for terrain. Image effects from the asset store work fine with any game.

Then there are plugins for GUI and other parts of the game, such as the inventory, quest and dialogue system.

These can be used for any type of game but using them in a multiplayer environment may or may not require extra work.

 

That would be MMORPG

Fighting games are still very complex mate
Theres a sure fire way to know if you have a simple game. You dont need to know how to program, just think 'How does this work'. The, when you say 'Oh well X does Y to make Z', ask yourself how X, Y and Z works. 'Well X works by A and B'. How do A and B work.
And if you end up saying 'I dont know', its probably not a simple game

So lets take the fighting game example
How does the game work
'Well, you use various moves to attack an enemy, who attacks back. First one to die loses'
What are these moves?
How does the enemy attack you?
How does one die
'Well the moves are Kick, Punch, mega punch (?), block and laser beam'
'The enemies attack using AI'
'You die when you reach 0 health'
How does each of them moves work, and how does the player trigger them
How does the AI work
Ill stop here, because you get the picture

 

You'll be stuck on one project for years to come. If you're willing to do that and still be okay with a failed attempt, then go ahead. The "I want to make an MMO" statement is usually uttered by newcomers. I've even seen professional artist/programmers leave the industry to make simple games and end up realizing that what seemed "simple" isn't that simple at all. Believe it or not, big studios with a multimillionaire boss make this mistake too(my first job).

 

Absolutely true. An MMO will take years to complete, even with a group of friends, and it may fail. Any game may fail though and I read about simple mobile games everyday on these forums that fail. So if you are going to develop games, be aware that the size of the project determines the time it takes to completion and the money you must spend to make the game. And any game can fail.

If you are a bunch of buddies who want to make a multiplayer game to learn and have fun playing together, then go for it. If you are planning to make a commercial product, then make sure you have a way to fund the project, whether with your own money or through another means of obtaining funds.

Failure is not always bad, btw. You can learn a great deal by making a game as a hobby, even an MMO. Every success and every failure will make your next game more likely to succeed.

Don't let others dictate to you whether or not you should do this. Be aware of the pitfalls, use your money wisely, and as long as you are having fun and don't have unrealistic expectations, then enjoy. Life is too short not to jump in, as long as you jump in with all the information you need.

Good luck to you!

 

I'm not making a MMO but I once had dreams of it.

One of the key pieces I got hung up on for a good while was how to represent a 3d world on the game server and implement collision. Seems really simple but(for me) ended up being such a pain in the ass I canned it right there. I am assuming you're not using Unity as the server side so you would need to serialize your geometry to some format you can read on the server and then implement some physics and collision based on that data to ensure the clients aren't cheating.

A nice pluggable system just for that would be pretty amazing if someone wanted to write one.

 

Actually wrote a simple system for 2D, for fun a year or so back. Made a system that could take the position and size of box and circle colliders, put it into a XML document, which my custom made Photon Server could read, and transform into my own shapes server side. Also wrote a collision system for it server side. In this manner i could still design my levels in Unity.
Never got further as i did not have time for it.

However, if you dont want to update everything with position and rotation from the server to the client, then you would have to write your own physics as Unitys Phys X is not deterministic. That would be quite some work

 

Yeah, for 2D it is plenty of work but I could see being doable, also there are lots of 2d libraries out there you can plugin.

When I got to 3D however that's when things got a bit crazy. I got as far as serializing out all the vertices of my meshes, decimating them as you don't need that level of detail on server side, and then I hit a brick wall when I started looking for a decent way to calculate collision server side.

I would have been happy with just a basic collision system(without physics) to make sure the player isn't walking through walls or floating in the air but it got much more complicated than I was prepared to deal with at the time. Perhaps there is an easy solution or package to handle this but I never found it.

 

Yeah it really depends on your game. But in most cases you can handle things with simple shapes on the server. its is rarely that you have a game where it is important if you hit different parts of the characters. Even for a game like WoW you can use a simple box or capsule collider, heck you should always aim at using as simple stuff as possible for the sake of performance server side. Collision and physics with simple shapes are not really that much harder to do with 3D compared to 2D.

Using Bounding Box and Seperate Axis Theorem checks will get you a looooong way in most cases.

 

That makes a lot of sense...now I need to fight the urge to look at this again!

 

Make a 3D Pacman MMO! I will play that S***!

 

That wouldn't be a bad way to learn all of the networking and server side of it.

 

He's still learning coding and asking about plugins for character creation, quest systems and inventories. Not asking advice about the best working middleware and server architecture based on his use case.

 

I feel there are two different questions being approached here.

There is nothing innately wrong with using plugins, assets, scripts and general third party stuff. If writing all of your scripts yourself was best practice we would all still be writing our own engines in C++. One of the (arguably) central scripts in Pond Wars is third party. I have no clue how the mesh for displaying the water is generated, and quite frankly don't care. I plug in a set of points and it pumps out some mesh data. In general third party plug ins are great.

On the other hand you still need some basic scripting tools to glue the plugins together. This is pretty important. Without the ability to wire things together even the best plugins will mean nothing.

 

Well...I believe in answering the questions the OP answered, not telling him everything he is doing is wrong. He will figure out his shortcomings very quickly. Too much trying to "parent" the new folks here rather than encouraging them to spread their wings.

As the parent of teens, you need to let them spread their wings a little. They may fall, but it will be their fall and they will pick themselves up or move on. I don't get this need to try to discourage them.

Sorry, nothing personal. I know you were only trying to help.