Is Torque Capable for creating MMORPG'S

#21 You first game on a new engine, keep it simple. Halo 4. Or how about Pong?

Hmmm, actually that's not bad. Start with the orc in a 3 walled arena and when you fire a ball goes out and hits the walls bouncing around. You have to run back and forth keeping the ball in. Once you get that working, take away the far wall add an AI orc and play pong! It'll get you familiar with the basics of the engine and get you a finished product fairly quickly. Then you can add networking code and play online. 2 players, 4 players, 20 players. Makes some tweaks and you've got dodgeball. If you know art then customize the world and characters, if not, find a friend to help out. I think it'd be a fun project.

#22 Can a MMO be made with torque? Sure it can. You can also make an MMO with notepad and a C++ compiler. But does that mean you have the skills to do it? Nope.

#23 Hey, it's time I said something on both sides...

@ Jaren -
They are right to an extent, you need to figure out what you need to know, on a serious level, so you know what to do in order to do it. Can it be made - possibly, but the possibilities start with you. In light of saying this, I'll acknowledge your current attempt to figure things out with this thread, it's a good start to ask some questions. The serious part though, deals with asking the right questions, for the right reasons. Generalizing your question, can TGE do MMORPGs, could have been answered with a simple search. If you are asking about doing them, why not ask what you need, skills or whatnot, things relative to understanding how you could make an attempt at it, would work much nicer!

Again, maybe you already are capable and on a functional level of understanding...but I doubt it due to your posts. For myself, I have been quite capable for some time, just needing some questions asked based on my design...

...which brings us to:

@ else -
Your perception and response need some work as well, how's a new guy gonna get anywhere when you make a mock of their motion to do something with your raunts. Maybe, sometimes, they are serious, but because everyone generalizes with genres instead of contemplating content and concerning yourselves with the context of the message, the attempt is usually probably lost to a,"Nevermind, let's just go play some games, we'll never figure it out." Instead, maybe next time you 'smart asses' could be a little more 'smart' about your response.

Peace
- Ronixus

#24 Agreed, Chris.

Remember, guys - there IS an indie MMO boom wave coming. It is building momentum. Look out there at the various kits and engines - Multiverse, Realmcrafter, TWO Torque MMO kits, for crying out loud. ;) Other stuff in the works, in various stages.

These folks are not trying to make the next WOW. Don't make the mistake of assuming that. Most are trying to make small persistant world games, perhaps hoping for a few hundred total players, with a few scores online at once. The more wishful thinkers might be shooting for something as big as ATITD (3k subscribers) or Puzzle Pirates (10k subs right after launch, BUCKETS more now) perhaps.

These games are not shooting for 100k players. They want 1k. And at that level, what people are trying to accomplish is suddenly a doable thing.

Compare what's building to the MUD revolutions of the late 80s and most of the 90s. There was a time, prior to the invention of the WWW, when MUDs actually represented over 10% of all internet use. Hundreds (thousands?) of small games, with 10-1000 players each. And that was back when almost no one had a personal computer. Today, with computer use many times as prevailent, there is potentially room for tens of times as many little games.

Look at Josh Ritter, who made $80k in the last year from his non-subscription MMO game at his last blog on the subject. Basically made it between himself, his wife, and some hired out artwork. Expect to see more of that. It's coming. ;)

#25 Sounds like a F.A.Q should be setup.

I know Im short on my game styles, but you get the idea!!!

Q:Can you make a _BLANK(FILL IN YOUR GAME_ with Torque
A:Yes
Q:Can you make a ___RTS____ with Torque
A:Yes
Q:Can you make a ___FPS_____ with Torque
A:Yes
Q:Can you make a __MMORPG___ with Torque
A:Yes
Q:Can you make a ___Racer___ with Torque
A:Yes
Q:Can you make a __Multiplayer_ with Torque
A:Yes
Q:Can you make a __RPG__ with Torque
A:Yes
Q:Can you make a __TEXT ADVENTURE___ with Torque
A:Hell Yes,but why?



Yes, because with Skills and time, you can make any game possible.

#26

Quote:Look at Josh Ritter, who made $80k in the last year from his non-subscription MMO game at his last blog on the subject.

Erhmm, where did you read this ?
That sum would require 2670+ persons out of the advertized 30k registrants/downloaders to have bought the game. And as I know the daily playerload, Im very interested in where to read up on the issue and have been unable to find any specific info myself.

Quote:Basically made it between himself, his wife, and some hired out artwork.

Knowing that there are other coders involved, as well as content managers, and with a rough idea of what is being paied for art/modelling I am pretty sure that even indies have to think large or in alternative ways to survive. So I cant really belive the listed 80 grand is stacks in the pocket...

BTW: I so totally agree that the engine seems capable of a mmo with tweaking. The big question is allways -can the devs handle it ?

#27

Quote:Q:Can you make a __TEXT ADVENTURE___ with Torque
A:Hell Yes,but why?

Because text-based interactive fiction rocks! =D
Case in point!

#28 LOL!....I was just kidding. But Im sure you know what I mean.
You could make anything!

#29 So, here's a more specific question about MMO's or CoMMO's using Torque.

Can the client.server system in torque (as it stands) handle 10's of thousands of clients at once?
--Respecting the idea of either instanced zones, shared zones or a combination of the 2.

If it cannot, can the load be divided up between multiple servers (hardware and software)?

Is there a limit built in to torque for connections?

Can torque run native on a MAC Intel X-SERVER?

For a game that may need to potentially handle 30k + is there some formula on the amount of
hardware needed (I know how to calculate bandwidth)?

I realize with tweaking to the client.server architecture you could create servers that could handle as many clients as needed, but what is it capable of as it stands right out of the box?

#30 Such functionality is not built in. You would need a programmer and network architect to design and optimized and well-organized system with redundancy and backup measures in place. There is no hard limit to the number of connections, but it is easy to bring any system to its knees if you ghost more data than your bandwidth can accommodate.

For such a project, it would require a programmer. And a very good one with knowledge of network infrastructure.

#31 Thanks Blake, though those aren't really the questions I'm asking. Redundancy and back up are really not a functionality of the game engine or it's exact client.server architecture, nor is the bandwidth in question. What i was asking about however is what the out-of-the-box product is capable of handling in dedicated mode?

I'm also not worried about designing the network infrastructure, given that the dedicated server module of torque is capable of "x" amount of clients, this where i need to get an idea of what "x" is. Ultimately i don't want to have to do the extra legwork in order to serve say 5-10k clients if torque can actually handle that amount on a pretty beefy server.

To be more to the point, a mac xserve (2 dual-core xeons) with say an oc3 line is enough to handle around 50-60k connection in an hour (web traffic) without bringing anything to it's knees, but can the torque server as it's designed keep up with that many connections?

For example an xserve that I'm talking about can handle about 1k live connections for quicktime streaming content @ a 100Mbs (max w/o much load balancing) throughput and not stall at all. I know the throughput of the many of the commercial games (Guild Wars, WOW, etc.) don't even touch 1/20th of that bandwidth utilization while playing (ping of 160-200 are still very playable), but again can the engine (server module) handle that kind of traffic native on an xserve box? or even on an nt box that is capable of just shy of 80% utilization of the xserve?

Obviously, there aren't any real world tests that can say for sure, closest I can find is minions of mirth which only has a 30k base (not shabby at all!), which maybe 1/8 are actually logged in and playing all at once. Really, the nitty gritty here is I'm developing a serious mmorpg and want to be able to plan on the durability of torque and it's client.server architecture. If not, i will need to plan on using alternative client.server technology to get the most bang for the buck. Either way though I will be developing the graphics, majority of the base programming (torque scripting) and interface with torque.

#32 You have gotten this the wrong way around Jason. There is no magic happening in Torque or any other networkable engine that makes it support 200, 900 or 1937 players. They can or they can not. Whether it is scalable/performant or not depends on your game and how it works and what your needs for it are.

Quote:
Ultimately i don't want to have to do the extra legwork in order to serve say 5-10k clients if torque can actually handle that amount on a pretty beefy server. Obviously, there aren't any real world tests that can say for sure, closest I can find is minions of mirth which only has a 30k base (not shabby at all!), which maybe 1/8 are actually logged in and playing all at once.

Do you seriously think WoW or any other MMO handles all 5-10k clients on a single non-clustered process? You are so worried about this, and then you mentioned Torque Scripting and how 160-200 is playing in WoW, which again is due to their type of gameplay.

#33 What I'm saying is games *like* WOW handle somewhere between 500-1.5k bps per client, on a 1Mb line, which is nothing, that network bandwidth can handle around 800 (give or take) clients. An xserve feeding a 155Mbs line @ 1.5k can handle well over 10,000 users, thats just bandwidth though, most machine can triple that. During typical game play, a game designed by Torque, with a similar play style can handle how many users/players straight out of the box? It's not that there is magic happening, but server platforms alone have overhead that dictates how many simultaneous users can be supported, even with a 155Mbs (oc3) backbone.

No, i don't believe nor am i under the impression that any commercial game (especially international games) use a single box to feed it's 1 million plus clients. I'm also pretty sure that prairie has a few boxes serving it's 30k all handling separate tasks. I guess the bottom line is who has successfully run a torque, non modified client.server package that can give me a max connected users and specs (game type, machine, connection, etc.) before the machine took a nose dive :)

I have some unconfirmed results that a machine running a pent 4 @ 1.2ghz could handle a not very complicated fps @ over 100 users before players complained of lag, this served off an isdn connection. I'm really looking for some more peoples experience to get a ballpark.

#34 I remember seeing a post (can't remember where) of TGE having a 128 client limit.

However, the best possible way to answer your question would be to set up a simple test game with TGE and invite a bunch of GG people to come bang on the server. See how many you can get connected with
reasonable game speed when the bandwidth is throttled to 1Mbit. Then open it up and see how many you can get going at once before the machine (or the engine) croaks.

I'd be willing to host it. I've got a Verizon FIOS connection at 15Mbit down and 2Mbit up.

Primary server is a P4 3.1GHz with 2Gigs of RAM running Windows Server 2003.

#35 Nope. There is no hard-coded limit.

the 128 "limit" was a server max recommendation for Tribes 2, I believe. Not a physical limit to the engine.

#36 PCD Music Lounge, after tweaking the types and frequency of updates (they aren't doing an MMO FPS after all, but a social networking "lounge" that streams music) has > 300 clients per server. At that point, their performance issue was mainly rendering optimization requirements iirc.

#37 My biggest confusion when this question comes up all the time is why would someone choose TGE over TGEA for an mmo? now that tgea is out that's the one I'd go with, for the seamless zoning alone if not for all the other niceness.

and for the people who were defending the guy from the attackers, they attacked him because he asked, got an answer and asked again like no one answered him. That bugs me too

#38 Right now tgea is buggy IMHO (i.e. atlas maps, terragening), but both have seamless. Some of the advantages of tgea are processor/gpu heavy which many people really wouldn't meet the requirements of an mmorpg that has those higher end graphics. Tge is a lot cleaner right now, but jumping up to tgea from developing on tge isn't a huge stretch.

Basically build in tge then into tgea as the mods and code get more optimized, many of the mods that run on the tgea are available for tge as well (enhanced lighting, shaders and water blocks). Constructor is going to be a major milestone IMO too! Can't friggen wait.....

#39 For Jaren, J Sears, and those who mentioned a FAQ, it's moving along nicely:

Working Consolidated FAQ

I'm also working with another GG community member on compiling all new tutorials, how-tos, and more. These will feature both updated docs, and GASP, video tutorials =).

We hope to provide more in depth answers to questions such as "Can Torque do _____?", than the following:

Quote:
You have the source, so yes you can do whatever with Torque. Do you have skills?

Not long ago I was also in the same mindset of answering in a robotic manner and losing patience. It's understandable why so many people want to make an MMO based game, but have no idea where to start. It can be an ambitious product, it's just a matter of forming a team and giving yourself the proper role.

Good luck Jaren.

#40 Other reasons for choosing TGE over TGEA are that it runs well on lower spec hardware and is multi-platform out of the box. Which makes your game available to a larger audience.