So You Want To Write Your Own MMORPG

Jari Komppa writes "After getting tired of tons of newbies starting MMORPG projects as their first programming project and calling for help on flipcode message boards, I decided to write a little rant in attempt to give these people some idea of the magnitude of the project they're starting. There seems to be hundreds of these projects out there.."

Comments

Re:What's the point?

[Guru1]

Or they'll bite off more than they can chew, get really depressed, and never get around to contributing anything to anyone. They've got to get it in their heads to start simple, otherwise they'll never achieve great things.

Like many coders, I enjoy the process of designing and writing my own code simply for the sake of making something work. I started my own MMORPG a couple years ago and it's working out well so far. No, I'm not ready to go public, and yes, there's a good chance it will never go anywhere, but that's not necessarily the point is it?

Since starting I have learned piles of things about Java, threads, networking, different ways to cache things, etc etc.. it's a great learning experience. Just as many people first learned to program from writing basic games on their old apple IIe's, I think it's a great learning experience.

Actually I would say that it's a better thing to practice programming than any other type of "game" that you could play around with. Online games of this sort tend to involve incredible flexability in the types of things they cover. Security for hackers trying to break your game, connection speed and threads for the hundreds of people you're planning on having connecting, memory usage for the hundreds of objects and rooms you'll have, speed since you'll want your game to not crawl, data storage since you'll have all sorts of data to store about people, areas, etc etc etc.

I'd view this almost the same way parents view their children reading. Every coder should try to write a MMORPG at some point in time.. you could learn a lot while having fun.

MMORPG Development Kit

[Don't Exist]

I must mad as anything then to start this project.

MMORPGDK

Trying to provide the server systems that handle all the objects, the user accounts, the messaging, the scripting system and then provide the client(s) to the game server system and last of all also provide gui tools for just about anybody to create their own game objects, their quests, their own skill/attribute system and install and run the thing must be real mad now that I think of it. The goal is such that anybody should be able to use it, import their content or create their content and get their game running. Your opinions please.