I am looking for a Client/Server solution for an MMO semi-persistent world for an RPG my colleagues and I are working on. I am the one who decided to use Unity3D since it’s dev environment has a ‘one-click game test mode’.
I am not fluent in JS or C#, but I am willing to learn… The amount of traffic I’m expecting to start with, for critical testing is about 1000 players at once (but a more realistic 100-250 players would be the optimal starting point).
I’m not necessarily looking for some code guru to one-off some source code for me, but I’d like to see an approach that could work, alter it to suit me needs, and test it in a super-simple 3D environment to see all is well.
After all of this, I’d also have to implement security and player registry credentials into the framework… Then onto an inventory system, semi-random encounters, and other such things most dungeon crawlers have implemented. It’s just that I’m trying to figure out all of what Unity3D has, and trying unsuccessfully with it… >_<
Also, tutorials and e-books for Unity3D would be helpful as well, since I think these could be helpful for gaining a rudimentary understanding of what Unity can do, what it’s best designed for, and how to work with it’s strengths.
Thank you for looking and perusing my dilemma. Please feel free to PM me for more details/clarification or reply to this thread.
No Unity specific book is going to cover this. In fact, you’re going to have to learn to love serious programming. Honestly, to go from not being able to program much to trying this is frankly silly.
It has some choices there, but don’t know of any that would fit 100%… but most should be able to be modified to fit. It really all depends on what you need the server to actually do.
Congrats on picking Unity, I think you guys will be very happy with the ease and speed of the workflow.
So you are not fluent in any of the programming languages unity uses, but you want to start with building one of the hardest things possible? It feels a bit like you’re starting in the wrong end.
Good, because that is not possible. No one is going to be able to explain an “approach that works” to you, because there is no such approach. Building a game which can run 1000 players in the same world is an immense task, and while there might be general guide lines (like: Don’t have one thread per connection, etc.) no one is going to be able to explain to you what to do.
If you have not already built a server which can handle a game at a MMO scale, you’re going to have spend years learning, making mistakes, re-building, etc. before you have something that actually works. And there is no way around this, this is such a complex topic that the only way to learn what actually works is to try and fail, and then try again.
Edit:
And this assumes you’re already a decent network programmer, that knows your way around the lower levels of the networking stack, etc.
Most of these things are not even problems on the grand scheme of an MMO. If you don’t even know how to implement a database backed inventory/item system or player registration/login you should seriously re-consider what you want to do.
Final advice, don’t try to build an MMO. You’re not going to succeed and you will end up wasting months or years of time on it with nothing to show for it in the end.
Create an MMORPG is the hardest thing to do for a video game.
It should be understood that the creation of networks, server architecture and the database will determine the proper functioning of the game
In addition, converting an RPG in MMORPG is almost impossible. To make an MMO you have to start from the beginning itself.
GL HF.
The whole issue is that I’ve chosen Unity because the Hero Engine is that I do not have the thousands of dollars for 3ds Max or Maya 2010 for the CG stuff. It’s also recommended that I have the 64-bit version of anything Windows 7 (I have the x86 Windows 7 Ultimate that I upgraded from Vista Home Premium.)
Though Hero Engine allows 99 developers on a single license, as soon as I get the ‘game’ published, they get 30% with no ending limit to the royalties… I wanted Unity for the single source licensing and that once I had a game ready, I could release the ‘client’ for free, dropping the ‘server’ somewhere to host it, and allowing people to assist me by purchasing a ‘premium’ version out of the gate, so to speak, tied to their beta testing. Once the game has been released to the general public, those who pre-purchased the beta for a Premium account would receive additional content (model add-ons and such) for their characters. Also, no Mac support… >_<
I’m looking at this from a different point of view, I think… I said I wasn’t fluent in these languages, but I’m not a beginner programmer. I have crafted some awesome single player games using Pascal and C++ upto a few years ago, but I have never thought they were ‘professional’ enough to get published. True, I do not know much about client/server systems and databases, but the few books that I’ve purchased for PHP/MySQL have left me feeling that the software I need is not available or of a different version than the books seem to refer to. >_<
Then allow me pose these queries:
If an MMO is too hard for a novice programmer to tackle in Unity, how about a single-player RPG to get everything correct and working? Then, while the game is being downloaded and purchased, I would learn more about databases, PHP and MySQL.
I have to write the databases for the items and inventory and character creation and weapons and such anyway, prior to even starting the RPG. What is the most up-to-date resource to learn PHP/MySQL to be able to implement it quickly? If I can create the Character Creation system and the WHOLE tutorial level in Unity (even if it’s just a single-player romp), this would be enough for a publisher to take an interest in the game project.
Which is better, internal databases or PHP/MySQL for RPG databases?