I’ve noticed looking through a blog about how someone made an MMO from scratch about the amount of software they used.
How much of it is actually necessary?
He used: Netbeans 6.9.1
Java JDK 6 update 22
XAMPP for Windows 1.7.3
Unity 3D 3.1
Symfony 1.4.8
OpenJPA 2.0.1
SmartFoxServer 2x 2.0.0 RC1 (RC1a patch)
Visual Studio 2010
I don’t know what each of these in turn actually does but i know some of them involve server side programming of all sorts.
What software is absolutely necessary and what isn’t?
Technically the only thing required is Unity, a text editor and a compiler to compile some raw socket code of your choice
If you go with Unity 3D and SFS, then you need at least these 2 things and the JDK (for SFS), thats the pure minimum.
But normally you want to use some good IDE to write the code for SFS and Unity which normally means Visual Studio for Unity and either Eclipse or Netbeans for SFS Java coding.
XAMPP, Symfony and OpenJPA are only required if you use these functionality. XAMPP is often used to allow external users without a game client at the time to chat with users in the game
I have a mac so i think that I have java installed
What does the IDE do? (you may have already guessed that I’m a programming noob)
At the moment i have unity, blender and sfs pro and sfs 2x (Which I hope to end up using)
Often this means that the editor/environment you are working in knows something about the code/platform you are writing for so will help you out with code completion, etc…
On the Mac with Unity you have one with MonoDevelop, but you’ll need to code in C# to really take advantage of many of it’s components. There are other 3rd party IDEs out there and each will have its strength.
So, is Xcode a good IDE?
I would webtrawl for a bit but as I’m not entirely sure what to look for so I’d rather use what people who know what they are doing use.
I have recently been using Xcode for Iphone development. Its actually pretty good. Its interface is done well, and has the basic IDE features you would expect. But, MonoDevelop comes with Unity, and if I was using Unity currently, thats what I would use instead.
XCode is useless in this context.
Its java support can’t compete with eclipse and netbeans and for any unity language its completely of no use as it supports none of them
“…I’m only asking what is absolutely necessary and what i don’t need, jeez”
Then you don’t understand the point of tools.
Your going to build a house - how many tools do you need?
It ranges from none (bare hands) to hundreds/thousands dependent on what your doing and how you want to do it.
The absolute minimum is probably a computer and the ability to write in machine code - though this might be equated to building a modern sky scrapper with your hands and some rock. Feasible - but not in your lifetime.
It is not feasible to build a modern sky scraper with just hands and rock.
Why did you even bother posting if you were only going to say "I won’t answer, because “it depends”.
You should have provided at least a generic set of tools that ALL multiplayer games or MMO’s require.
And yes… you HAVE to have some tools for ANY game.
