Vanguard is using a bastardized hacked up version of Unreal 3 so we really shouldn't count that one.
Vanguard raped the Unreal 2.5 engine. The Unreal 3 supports seamless terrain and world, they wouldn't need to mess up that one.
Originally posted by CleffyII
Also there is the Quake Engine which WoW uses.
Lol. Wow doesn't use the Quake engine. No mmo uses the Quake engine. Wow uses Blizzards own game engine.
If the HL2 engine would make a good mmo engine? Nope, not at all. The source engine isn't even a good game engine. It was pretty dated when it was released. Only good feature it had, and still has, was the facial animations. Besides that nothing special. And for some stupid reason they choose the box approach for the game levels. That at a time where most fps engines started to move over on seamless terrain rendering. With "box approach" I mean the way levels usually where created back in the HL1, Quake and early Unreal days. You have a skybox around your level and inside that skybox you build a level, usually with a very boxy look "think Counterstrike" levels. Works fine for indoor stuff, but once you move outside it looks terrible. Hl2's terrain was terrible.
Not to mention that the menu system seems to be hardcoded into the game engine, making every game released with it so far look like some free mod rather than a full fletched game.
A modern game engine should support some way of terrain rendering. And specially a engine for mmo's. The best fps engines out there for mmo's imo, are the Unreal engine (Specially nr 3) and the cry engine. With the Unreal engine clearly being the winner so far, it's clearly being used the most, and if you look away from Vanguard it has been put to good use.
Maybe the question in the poll should have been, Direct 3D vs Open GL?
Open GL dosent seem to have faired well in MMO's. Though I'm sure they exsist, I cant think of a single game that used OGL except maybe Dark and Light. That game attempted to give a true to the horizon view (you could see 15 miles in any direction) which for the record was awesome. Framerates were pretty horrible, anyone wilth less than a GeForce 5900 series or better was pretty much suckin. All ATI cards had issues. I'm not sure if that was related to OGL itself of crappy programming. I was using a 6800gt and the game was more or less acceptable, but at the time (june 06) I thnk its safe to say the majority wasent usiing cards that fast.
I think maybe, if everyone starting using the HL2 engine, sure it'd look great, but it'd be so obvious that they just used the game engine, it's like with korean grind games, I'm not sure which engine it is, but I just know from looks that 9Dragons, Rappelz and so on all use the same one, or at least it looks very similar, games developers NEED to create their own engines to give their game a unique flare. As a 3D Artist now, I look at the popular MMORPG's in the industry and I often just think "My god, I've seen those trees and rocks somewhere before" or "I've seen that kind of movement before" it's like with Vanguard, I wouldn't touch that game simply because it reeked of the Everquest 1 updated game engine where they had put new graphics in it this thing was made years ago back when Everquest 1 was the best game out there.
I also find it sad that developers are no longer putting the work in graphics that they used to, before I barely noticed this in MMORPG's but there were really obvious flaws, tree's look all square and blocky, even the rocks don't look right, in WoW I just couldn't stand looking at the game because it looked so plain and randomly generated, even with the foliage (this was with the graphics turned up on high) It just looked like a 2D texture someone had lazily painted on to look 3D and while the water was shiny it barely moved and it was literally only just bumps. It may be me being a purist, but I just can't stand playing games like that, because it just shows that overall the developers have taken a really half-assed approach to the whole thing, a game is supposed to be something that developers work passionately for to get into the games industry and make money not some cheap drag and place system they've taken from somewhere else or made themselves to make a quick load of cash.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
To be honest I think FPS game engines make the best engines for games as long as they are used for FPS play! Woohoo! Let's see more MMOFPS's come out. Let's see a skill based and not level based game. Wish to improve your character with a new skill. Pick that skill and work up the tree for that skill. Wish to learn something new. Stop the advancement on one skill and pick up another. Careful though you are limited to how many skills you can have and you can only earn so many skill points to put into those skills.
We need more skill based and less level based games. Who here would love to play an good FPS shooter MMORPG that allows you to shoot say velociraptors or if during play you come across, after shooting the velocitraptor, is an enemy player - then shoot them too! LOL. I love a good MMOFPS and not one since Planetside has done it right and it doesn't look like any of the others are going to get it right in the future with their psuedo FPS game play(SOE had a great chance with SWG to add real FPS game play and totally blew it with no LOS and whatever that psuedo FPS they added to combat - yuck!). Games like Tabula Rasa use a psuedo FPS and is not a true FPS. In Tabula Rasa get your crosshairs close and they'll lock onto the target for you. ::rolls her eyes:: Please...that takes the challenge of keeping your crosshairs on the target while it is moving. Where is the fun in that?
Huxley might, might be OK...but I dunno...I was watching a couple of in game play videos and it took way to many shots to bring anything down in that game. Looks like a tedious FPS lol if there can be such a thing - Huxley maybe it.
Is there not any game designers out there that have the "vision"(sorry couldn't resist ) to bring to us a great MMOFPSRPG? We're waiting.
I think maybe, if everyone starting using the HL2 engine, sure it'd look great, but it'd be so obvious that they just used the game engine, it's like with korean grind games, I'm not sure which engine it is, but I just know from looks that 9Dragons, Rappelz and so on all use the same one, or at least it looks very similar, games developers NEED to create their own engines to give their game a unique flare. As a 3D Artist now, I look at the popular MMORPG's in the industry and I often just think "My god, I've seen those trees and rocks somewhere before" or "I've seen that kind of movement before" it's like with Vanguard, I wouldn't touch that game simply because it reeked of the Everquest 1 updated game engine where they had put new graphics in it this thing was made years ago back when Everquest 1 was the best game out there.
I also find it sad that developers are no longer putting the work in graphics that they used to, before I barely noticed this in MMORPG's but there were really obvious flaws, tree's look all square and blocky, even the rocks don't look right, in WoW I just couldn't stand looking at the game because it looked so plain and randomly generated, even with the foliage (this was with the graphics turned up on high) It just looked like a 2D texture someone had lazily painted on to look 3D and while the water was shiny it barely moved and it was literally only just bumps. It may be me being a purist, but I just can't stand playing games like that, because it just shows that overall the developers have taken a really half-assed approach to the whole thing, a game is supposed to be something that developers work passionately for to get into the games industry and make money not some cheap drag and place system they've taken from somewhere else or made themselves to make a quick load of cash.
I like your enthusiasim....But when making an MMO I would think time is always working against you. Technology and hardware are moving at a pace that is so fast that trying to perfect one aspect of your game might not leave enough time for perfection in another aspect. Look at Darkfall Online....I hear jokes about the European work eithic, but personally I belive they are working to prefect the game before it comes out. my understanding is the world will be one of the largest ever and it was all crafted by hand. the skill system will have 1000+ skills, but in the time they have taken to develop it we have seen 4 versions of windows and 3 versions of DirectX.
Don't misunderstand, I look at the world often as you do. I see rocks, trees and water effects and appreciate them for there graphic beauty, that I see it more from the mechanical sense then the artistic sense.....
I think Blizzard has the opportunity to make the game you speak of, they have deep pockets, scores of devs......But I have little faith that something like that would ever happen.
Ok the engine they are using for Crysis by Crytek the Cry2 engine... If you have an HD capable monitor you have to watch the game videos from this game. ::sigh:: Imagine Planetside with a game engine like this.
Well I've thought about it and thought again, and while it could work, it wouldn't.
There are lots of MMO's every year and 95% of them (just a guess) die out quicker than they were made. I don't think this would work because most of the successful MMO's that make it more than a couple of years are original. One made out of source would be, just another source game.
I'm more an FPS player then MMO player (except for the few superbe exceptions!)
While I played many, i've also got to build levels, create little mods and such and what I quickly learned from these engine is this.
Unreal, Doom and Half Life engines are not only for FPS. You can build anything you want with the right tools and codes. All you need to do, is build around the engine and the magic is done. ok ok ok, it's easy to say, hard to do but it's really as simple as that.
Now you have failures like Vanguard that forgot to optimize the whole software for the engine... but from what I see, they started with unreal 2 engine and ported the game to Unreal 3 instead of starting from scratch.
Now is the core of HL2 powerfull enough to make an MMO? Perhaps not but then again, the base engine of Doom 3 can barely run a server for more then 8 players. So why can Quake Wars run 64 players in one shot?
Optimization and add-ons
These engines are flexible, all you need is a capable person behind the project. Not just a coder, but a producer, artists and solid QA.
Seriously, the SNES Zelda engine is powerfull enough to make an MMO. If you know what you're doing and taking the time to do it, you really don't need much
Take Quake Wars for example. The load on the server is cut by alot by simple tweaks such as:
If a player is really far from you, then all your client need to know is where he is. You don't need to know that he has 45 Health and 3 grenades left in his inventory. If ever he's close enough to effect you, then the information will start to flow between the database and the clients (you).
That simple tweak looks silly but imagine that a full character is worth 200K of information. If the map or zone you're in currently contains like 200 players.. then that's ALOT of information going in and out of your client and the database plus, what are the odds that you meet each of these 200 players face to face?
Now if you manage to cut down that information in 2 different types.
A: when the player is closer enough for you to interact, your client gets the full info (gear, hair colour, size and etc). 200K
B: If the player is in the same zone but so far away that all you really need to know is that he's there. (1 to 5K of info... enough to know that he's Bob the Orc Warrior from the guild GRUNT)
That simple tweak just made the load on your client alot lighter.
Now that's only one example
But if I was a coder, i'm sure I could come up with at least a douzen more per night before falling asleep.
In the end, if you understand that principal, have the art ressource, coding knowledge and obviously the licensed engine. Imagine what you could do?
pretty much anything that you want
PS: I only talked about network tweaks but the same RULE applies to graphics and physics!
Comments
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
Vanguard is using a bastardized hacked up version of Unreal 3 so we really shouldn't count that one.
Vanguard raped the Unreal 2.5 engine. The Unreal 3 supports seamless terrain and world, they wouldn't need to mess up that one.Lol. Wow doesn't use the Quake engine. No mmo uses the Quake engine. Wow uses Blizzards own game engine.
If the HL2 engine would make a good mmo engine? Nope, not at all. The source engine isn't even a good game engine. It was pretty dated when it was released. Only good feature it had, and still has, was the facial animations. Besides that nothing special. And for some stupid reason they choose the box approach for the game levels. That at a time where most fps engines started to move over on seamless terrain rendering. With "box approach" I mean the way levels usually where created back in the HL1, Quake and early Unreal days. You have a skybox around your level and inside that skybox you build a level, usually with a very boxy look "think Counterstrike" levels. Works fine for indoor stuff, but once you move outside it looks terrible. Hl2's terrain was terrible.
Not to mention that the menu system seems to be hardcoded into the game engine, making every game released with it so far look like some free mod rather than a full fletched game.
A modern game engine should support some way of terrain rendering. And specially a engine for mmo's. The best fps engines out there for mmo's imo, are the Unreal engine (Specially nr 3) and the cry engine. With the Unreal engine clearly being the winner so far, it's clearly being used the most, and if you look away from Vanguard it has been put to good use.
Maybe the question in the poll should have been, Direct 3D vs Open GL?
Open GL dosent seem to have faired well in MMO's. Though I'm sure they exsist, I cant think of a single game that used OGL except maybe Dark and Light. That game attempted to give a true to the horizon view (you could see 15 miles in any direction) which for the record was awesome. Framerates were pretty horrible, anyone wilth less than a GeForce 5900 series or better was pretty much suckin. All ATI cards had issues. I'm not sure if that was related to OGL itself of crappy programming. I was using a 6800gt and the game was more or less acceptable, but at the time (june 06) I thnk its safe to say the majority wasent usiing cards that fast.
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
I also find it sad that developers are no longer putting the work in graphics that they used to, before I barely noticed this in MMORPG's but there were really obvious flaws, tree's look all square and blocky, even the rocks don't look right, in WoW I just couldn't stand looking at the game because it looked so plain and randomly generated, even with the foliage (this was with the graphics turned up on high) It just looked like a 2D texture someone had lazily painted on to look 3D and while the water was shiny it barely moved and it was literally only just bumps. It may be me being a purist, but I just can't stand playing games like that, because it just shows that overall the developers have taken a really half-assed approach to the whole thing, a game is supposed to be something that developers work passionately for to get into the games industry and make money not some cheap drag and place system they've taken from somewhere else or made themselves to make a quick load of cash.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
To be honest I think FPS game engines make the best engines for games as long as they are used for FPS play! Woohoo! Let's see more MMOFPS's come out. Let's see a skill based and not level based game. Wish to improve your character with a new skill. Pick that skill and work up the tree for that skill. Wish to learn something new. Stop the advancement on one skill and pick up another. Careful though you are limited to how many skills you can have and you can only earn so many skill points to put into those skills.
We need more skill based and less level based games. Who here would love to play an good FPS shooter MMORPG that allows you to shoot say velociraptors or if during play you come across, after shooting the velocitraptor, is an enemy player - then shoot them too! LOL. I love a good MMOFPS and not one since Planetside has done it right and it doesn't look like any of the others are going to get it right in the future with their psuedo FPS game play(SOE had a great chance with SWG to add real FPS game play and totally blew it with no LOS and whatever that psuedo FPS they added to combat - yuck!). Games like Tabula Rasa use a psuedo FPS and is not a true FPS. In Tabula Rasa get your crosshairs close and they'll lock onto the target for you. ::rolls her eyes:: Please...that takes the challenge of keeping your crosshairs on the target while it is moving. Where is the fun in that?
Huxley might, might be OK...but I dunno...I was watching a couple of in game play videos and it took way to many shots to bring anything down in that game. Looks like a tedious FPS lol if there can be such a thing - Huxley maybe it.
Is there not any game designers out there that have the "vision"(sorry couldn't resist
) to bring to us a great MMOFPSRPG? We're waiting.
Only engine I trust is Daoc's which can support 500 players in the same zone and same area fighting eachother.
Don't misunderstand, I look at the world often as you do. I see rocks, trees and water effects and appreciate them for there graphic beauty, that I see it more from the mechanical sense then the artistic sense.....
I think Blizzard has the opportunity to make the game you speak of, they have deep pockets, scores of devs......But I have little faith that something like that would ever happen.
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
Ok the engine they are using for Crysis by Crytek the Cry2 engine... If you have an HD capable monitor you have to watch the game videos from this game. ::sigh:: Imagine Planetside with a game engine like this.
www.gametrailers.com/player.php
Make sure you go to the Game Media to find the Crysis game trailers.
The blood...do you think we'll be able to turn that off in Crysis? Why is it needed?
There are lots of MMO's every year and 95% of them (just a guess) die out quicker than they were made. I don't think this would work because most of the successful MMO's that make it more than a couple of years are original. One made out of source would be, just another source game.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
While I played many, i've also got to build levels, create little mods and such and what I quickly learned from these engine is this.
Unreal, Doom and Half Life engines are not only for FPS. You can build anything you want with the right tools and codes. All you need to do, is build around the engine and the magic is done. ok ok ok, it's easy to say, hard to do but it's really as simple as that.
Now you have failures like Vanguard that forgot to optimize the whole software for the engine... but from what I see, they started with unreal 2 engine and ported the game to Unreal 3 instead of starting from scratch.
Now is the core of HL2 powerfull enough to make an MMO? Perhaps not but then again, the base engine of Doom 3 can barely run a server for more then 8 players. So why can Quake Wars run 64 players in one shot?
Optimization and add-ons
These engines are flexible, all you need is a capable person behind the project. Not just a coder, but a producer, artists and solid QA.
Seriously, the SNES Zelda engine is powerfull enough to make an MMO. If you know what you're doing and taking the time to do it, you really don't need much
Take Quake Wars for example. The load on the server is cut by alot by simple tweaks such as:
If a player is really far from you, then all your client need to know is where he is. You don't need to know that he has 45 Health and 3 grenades left in his inventory. If ever he's close enough to effect you, then the information will start to flow between the database and the clients (you).
That simple tweak looks silly but imagine that a full character is worth 200K of information. If the map or zone you're in currently contains like 200 players.. then that's ALOT of information going in and out of your client and the database plus, what are the odds that you meet each of these 200 players face to face?
Now if you manage to cut down that information in 2 different types.
A: when the player is closer enough for you to interact, your client gets the full info (gear, hair colour, size and etc). 200K
B: If the player is in the same zone but so far away that all you really need to know is that he's there. (1 to 5K of info... enough to know that he's Bob the Orc Warrior from the guild GRUNT)
That simple tweak just made the load on your client alot lighter.
Now that's only one example
But if I was a coder, i'm sure I could come up with at least a douzen more per night before falling asleep.
In the end, if you understand that principal, have the art ressource, coding knowledge and obviously the licensed engine. Imagine what you could do?
pretty much anything that you want
PS: I only talked about network tweaks but the same RULE applies to graphics and physics!