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2d mmo

Name:	Jason Swearingen
Date Posted:	Apr 21, 2007
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Blog post

UPDATE: for current info, check 2dmmo.blogspot.com

April Blog:
I reciently moved to Thailand, and started (or am currently starting, to be exact) a software company. Currently the company is focused on the neubulous area of "Enterprise Software", and is building tools that we are firstly using in-house (is this some weird form of turing completeness?) prior to introduction to the SMB (Small and Medium Business) market.

Thats great, but what does that have to do with 2dMMO?
Well, as every great programmer (yes I am egotistical), I always wanted to get into writing games... not just games, but "good", technically OMGWTFBBQ good (ie: cutting edge) games that take advantage of my self-percieved abilities.

And so, while I manage a team working on tools, I will be prototyping the technologies nessicary to create a game, in the manner that I deem apropriate (IE: cold, calculating, and unemotional)

That's all great, but why blog about it?
Well, there is a supposed, quite hypothetical chance that the game I create could win a contest (with a first place prize of USD$10,000) that provides a significant financial incentive. (more information on this contest can be found at: www.mydreamrpg.com)

One of the requirements of this contest is to write weekly blog status updates regarding the project, which is why I write this, and further entries. Honestly, I'm the "do" rather than "tell" type, and so I find it actually quite dull writing about my suposied pie-in-the-sky MMO game, and would rather just present to the world what I have, after I have it. But, as there is this financial incentive, and I am not so self-infatuated as to not apreciate the motivational benifits that being forced to provide weekly updates can bring.....

Now, what are you actually working on?
This week, I am posting the actual contest entry at: www.mydreamrpg.com/community/showthread.php?t=1647
the contents of which are:

Quote:

Title: 2DMMO (working title)
Engine: TorqueX
Team members: Jason
Website: 2dmmo.blogspot.com (weekly updates, etc)

Description: A dynamic, scaleable, and extendable MMORPG

Purpose: Though the title of the game is obviously very generic, it is titled this way because this is ultimatly the purpose of the project, not to create a game which is rich in mythology, but to design a game which meets the very sophisticated technical requirements needed to create a MMORPG. (A "technical beta" if you will)

With the purpose stated as such, I (or we if it becomes that) will pick some traditional (most likely tolkien-esque) fantasy genre which the beta-content will be based on.

Disclaimer: Honestly, I am not ready to take part in this contest, as I have not performed enough technology based prototyping to have concrete definitions of the technologies and design patterns that will be used. However, since the contest point system rewards for early entry, I have chosen to post this contest entry prematurely.

As such, this contest entry will be extremely different from the entries submitted by other teams. This "MMORPG" projects updates/blog entries will (initially) have a lot less emphasis on the actual game development, and much more on the technology, as indeed, this project is being done "from scratch".

You still havent said what your "working" on!
Okay, so what I'm actually working on, from a technical standpoint, is a generic (in the c# sence of the word) factorymanager class that will provide the base class for all future factorymanager classes in the game, that will provide an abstraction of the functionality needed to manage the in-game objects, providing easy abilities to allocate and deallocate objects as-needed.

Additionally, I will start work on the asynchronous framework that I plan on using, which will allow easy support of multiple CPU's in executing the game logic.

Also, I will be prototyping the actual 2d visualizer that I am going to use, at least for the short-term prototyping of the game.

And lastly, I am posting all these blog entries!

Disclaimer: this is an almost verbatum repost of my blog at: 2dmmo.blogspot.com

Recent Blog Posts

List:	11/25/07 - Novaleaf Software after 1 year 08/29/07 - 2dmmo restart 07/31/07 - 2dMmo update ("outsourcing") 06/27/07 - 2dMmo Monthly update 05/17/07 - 2dMmo: Scope of Milestone 1 04/21/07 - 2d mmo 11/18/06 - leaving on a jetplane 03/31/06 - Mono

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Vashner (Apr 21, 2007 at 08:00 GMT)

Sounds like a cool plan.

Maxim Lyulyukin (Apr 21, 2007 at 13:11 GMT)

cool idea!!! i was thinking about same 2 years ago and found that i am too lazy to develop such idea... but still thinking about this, cause 2d still have power....

J Sears (Apr 21, 2007 at 16:20 GMT)

Since you sound like you do know a lot about programming (where as I know very little) I was wondering about the comments some people made in the forums on here that indies would be better off doing a 2d mmo over a 3d. And not knowing that much about game programming I was wondering how much more work a 3d mmo would be then a 2d? Especially if you consider with TGE/TGEA you already have the 3d rendering part done for you you just have to build the game, which in my head seems it would be the same amount of work for 2d or 3d. I know this is a little off topic of the blog but seemed like you'd be a good person to ask.

Also I would like to say one of my favorite MMOs to date was Ultima Online, so I hope this works out well for you and can't wait to see the progress.

Vashner (Apr 21, 2007 at 17:09 GMT)

Well that's because of Art assests mostly. The hardest thing to find / do it quality character and structure creation.

Also would be something original and what a lot of people think is a bad idea. Heck if space trading worked with text on 300 baud analog modems before the internet was adopted.... Uh just saying old school is cool sometimes with a dash of modern tech tossed in.

J.C. Smith (Apr 21, 2007 at 19:18 GMT)

Welcome to Thailand and best of luck on the project. That makes at least three of us that I know of here in the GG circle in country.

Jason Swearingen (Apr 21, 2007 at 23:42 GMT)

@ J Sears: well, I think if your core developers are already kickass 3d programmers, sure, you might as well start with what they know how to do well. Unfortunatly for me, I have 0 experience writing a game, so yes, this is the main reason why I choose 2d. The second being that I am skilled in C#, and TorqueX is 2d only (for now) :)

But to answer your question, it's easier to keep track of a 2d world than a 3d world, but graphically, both could be represented as either 2d (using 2.5d isometrics for example) or 3d (where the world is "flat"). 2d is also easier on art creation, which is another big reason why I think it's a great bet for this project (I know all the tech that's needed to put good 2d art on the screen, i dont know the tech for 3d art very well)

@ Vashner: yeah, definatly something you dont see much these days (i dont know if doufus counts)

@JC Smith: cool cool, though I think the people I've seen are mostly in Chang Mai.. a little far from where I am (my office is near patpong)

David Montgomery-Blake (Apr 22, 2007 at 14:10 GMT)

Nice! While I'm not a MMO fan by any means, I'm always excited to see talented developers taking off. And knowing about your .NET background, I can't wait to see what you come up with in XNA/TorqueX!

J Sears (Apr 24, 2007 at 01:17 GMT)

Thanks for answering my question. I did see a mention of a French made 2d MMO in some independant game contest (I tried to find it before writing this so I could mention the name but couldn't remember what I read about it on) so there are still a few places doing the 2d mmo, I do think there's still a big place for them because the people who truly truly like MMOs like them for their gameplay, the people who pretend to like MMOs and play WoW only like pretty things. So Ithink the hardcore MMO players (like myself) wouldn't care if it was 2d or 3d if it was quality gameplay.

I've been meaning to look at TorqueX too, might have to do that soon

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