I think my idea is too good for frozen status, but what to do, to push it into practice?

News & General Discussion
1

Hi all!

I’m a big fan of mmos and at one point you stumble over Unity Engine.

I’m not a normal player with an idea, no worries. I’ve the complete background from marketing & webdesign, I am not professional in the following programs, but I know about the following topics and know how much work a goal X maybe take, about problems and so on:

Webdesign, programming, databank programming & management, 3D software & art, rendering, administration of forums, marketing, music production. Again: I’m not a professional in all this topics, but I’m aware of it and I had first contact with thruespace (3d art) for example, since it was aviable in the free light version many years ago. Just the same, I’m into music production for over 20 years.

Some days ago I tested Enderal and my idea was calling me again from deep into my mind (drawer compartment: frozen ideas that will never be realized for 1000 reasons) and I came up with an old old question: Is it really impossible to realize my idea?

Ok, I say: It is possible to do a working tech demo with ultra low graphics, just showing the game mechanics and on the other side do some concept art to cover the visual what could it look like in the end part.

I can’t accept to see my idea bein frozen for ever, but I see no key to start. My problems?

  1. I can’t do it alone, sure
  2. some gamefeatures definately go way byond my basic knowledge of programming and 3d design
  3. I’ve absolutely no clue when it comes to the technical multiplayer part of mmos
  4. how about agreements with people that will be involved
  5. how to protect some of the sensitive ideas
  6. how to start without monetisation and get the swing then to monetize

I think the easiest way would be to search people and just pay for the single parts, but a) I can’t pay and b) you just have parts of an idea - not a workin’ techdemo. At the moment I think the best way would be to sell the techdemo then with a x% voice for the future. Dunno.

Over the years I was plaing many mmo’s, some I just played for education, to analyze what’s wrong with them, long time motivation, triggers to keep player interested.

Sure ther’s 2 things you could ask now:

a) if you think your ideas are so damn good, why you didn’t try to do more?
Answer: Because I learned lots and lots about how fast you can suffer in business and so it’s not a good way normally to try to run against walls

b) better to forget the whole thing!
Answer: Some of my ideas are totally new as far as I know and when it comes to game mechanics I’m sure they are a fundametal key for long time motivation and also get more female players

There is no complete written down concept of my idea, cos I never had to share it with someone, but it’s possible to write it down in one day.

Any tips, ideas?

2

If you have no idea on how to get started with the technical implementation but want a prototype as soon as possible then your options are basically limited to a premade solution from the asset store. Just happens over the past few days I was investigating options for building a small scale online persistent world and stumbled upon uMMORPG.

You’d want to ask the developer how much you’d need to know to modify it to suit your needs but it has a lot of features out of the box and is very actively maintained.

https://discussions.unity.com/t/610676

3

Ty for help, but nearly everything of this I don’t need… lol

My idea has no premade or automatically generated world, neither the loot is.

Update: There is also no normal character and not the classical guild/clansystem.

That’s why my questions doesn’t contain conventional mmorpg terms.

4

I thought that might be the case. There is another approach I’ve been reading up on where developers have been using Unity’s high level networking API (HLAPI) for the individual instances in the game with a master server to handle player transitions between them as well as accounts and long term data.

There’s just the problem that HLAPI isn’t designed for the “massive” in MMO…

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UNetUsingHLAPI.html
https://github.com/alvyxaz/barebones-masterserver/wiki

5

Ty for help Ryiah…

102 views, just one opinion? Impressive! lol

6

They’re strangely behaving themselves. :stuck_out_tongue:

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7

I’m just going to ignore all the actual game-specific information other than that it’s too big for 1 person to handle and that no off-the-shelf system will do it for you.

Your first problem seems to be “where to start”. My answer is that it doesn’t matter where you start. Get something started. Anything. Then move on to something else when forced to. Just keep doing that.

When it comes to something you can’t do, hire someone. Or find an asset on the store that’ll do it and buy it.

Just like walking, put 1 foot in front of the other, repeatedly. It doesn’t matter which foot is first.

3 Likes
8

Speaking as someone who is currently building an MMO, the problem with making a prototype of an MMO is it is hard to get around all the network backend work, which is most of the work when building an MMO, without taking the “massive” out of it. But doing so is exactly what you need to do to build just a prototype within a reasonable amount of time. Using simplified art, such as primitives or stand ins instead of final artwork, only saves a small amount of the total project work otherwise.

What you need to do primarily is save yourself work on the network architecture. You could save yourself a lot of time avoiding a server cluster for example, or whatever multiple server strategy your real game would use, in favor of a single server that won’t scale with large numbers of users. Without a cluster of servers all needing access to the same character and world data, you could then avoid using a database and just have all that info stored in memory in the single server. That probably would cut down the most work from the project out of any short cuts.

In my own MMO project I have found that over 50% of my work involves dealing with multiple servers, getting information to and from the database server and the various servers, and getting that all in sync with the clients even as they transition between servers. You save a lot of work just forgetting about multiple servers for a prototype.

1 Like
9

Ty for the answers… Decision done - prototype will be singleplayer with faked other players. :wink: