Would this not work?

kissodeath

Im not a developer in any since, and SWG was my first MMO. But I cant help but to think that what the MMO industry needs is a Statistic Engine?

Not sure what youd actually call it. Please keep in mind, Im no Neo and going by ear.

If you design a generic code that would manage all info like skill, damage, items.....ect and made it flexible enough to be PreCU or Dumbed down to nge.... all with same code, just would have to change values and select options you want on.

Say your first choice is Skill or level based, will apply ruleset for all future input.

Say you got a gun in your game you want energy damage and weapon speed to be factors, so developer goes to "Gun control" and just turns those two on and sets min- max, it in turn knows (by default but is customizable) that armor will only need energy resist and skill attachment(weapon speed will need to be a lootable), sockets need to exist ect

or

Say you want 8 different damage types and speed and accuracy, accuracy standing ect all are available with a couple blanks for customizing by assigning values for weapons, then it would fill in blanks on armor skill attachments ect or you can just turn on energy dam for a simple game.

then put in max values for resistance and DPS and it would auto calculate and track any damage modifiers so the max value isnt exceeded but also isnt hardcapped, so say later you make a food to improve DPS and itll show you max value you can use in food.

anyway blah blah, but in the end all a MMO  developer would need to do is simply fill in the blanks pick craft or loot based ect.....

Anything with a number would have to go here, all items would be tracked/tallied here also. If you exceed your MAX value then it wouldnt allow you to modify or add and alert you.

This goes for crafting, Resources, mobs, ect, just have to assign values what options are on and skins.

Also would track loot, allowing for precise things like 1-? random drop per day or no more than 3 loots of a certian kind or no control at all

My question is does this exsist already and can it, Seems like all MMOs problems would be solved and on the market alot faster. After perfected would run seamless and cause no bugs.

Seems to me theres just so much skill and so many ways to do it but everyones eating  months up making their own that usually ends up bugged and broke demanding alot of attention too.

I dont think itll leave MMOs using it with that " same o feeling"since. It can range from NGE to SWG depending on what MMO wants to turn on/off. wouldnt share skins or styles just assign numbers and make calculations.

Or am I a NOOBLET whos lost in left feild.............. seems like MMOs needs something like this

Rekrul

The word you're looking for is middleware or framework.

Tools as such exist, from completely general to MMO specific. Turbine or BigWorld are examples of such software.

The problem with those is, that they define a set of rules which you cannot bend. And game industry isn't really comfortable with third-party code. Has to deal with both ego and real limitations of third-party software.

Traditionally (going back to 8086 and even before) game toolkits always existed. But they were all limited to indie applications, since big dogs want and require full control over every aspect of live software. This of course implies either open source or full source disclosure.

Unreal is one of few game engines that sells, but it's also top notch at what it does.

The key thing you're forgetting here is, only a very small part of project is the actual code. Most of effort goes into game design, asset creation, playtesting and administration.

Many companies are trying to bank on frameworks. Reason for this is strictly financial. When raising funds, they are increasing their value by putting an engine/framework/middleware as a bankable asset. If one game fails, they can still sell the core software. The only problem with this is, engines from failed projects don't sell. This results in companies blowing most of their money on developing the engine, but adding no value to it.

SWG's design is based on top of that. Whether they used commercial middle-ware or developed all of it themself was never disclosed. Almost all bugs in SWG come from poor development practices, which resulted in code being untestable and unmaintainable. It has nothing to do with software.

The reason why such middleware is having trouble gaining ground is because it adds very little to no value. Customers don't see the servers. They see client, models, textures, animations, movement, mobs, quests, ... All of which cannot be provided by third party.

Another issue with middleware is, that you can only create the same thing. You cannot turn SWG into CoH, Planetside or Fly4Fun. The changes that were made to SWG, despite their big impact, were trivial.

In the end you need good developers with understanding of existing middleware products that can apply them as effectively as possible. Developing SWG today would be much more trivial due to greater availability of other tools, which would have severly reduced the issues SWG's current engine faces. Of course, management is the key here.

kissodeath

Thanks man, You seem pretty smart any ideas  why NGE was borm?

 Cant beleive it was planned while they revamped professions and added loot for soon to be exctint

Plus it was so incomplete they needed to remove combat spatial to make us think dam was more than our cl. No skills or loot ,makes me think TOOW and  ROTW didnt work in cu and melted down the CU, and NGE was used to fix it ........what you think happened