Possible or Impossible?

#1 You have a huge task that is, in my opinion, far beyond the 10 month deadline.

1. RPG stat system. If you have a well-worked out system and prototype it well, you should be fine. Balance in terms of missions, objectives, and player longevity and experience will be extremely hellish and most likely grindish in a MMORPGRTSFPSish game.

2. Weapon modification system. You will need to code it, but if you mod system is rather simple (distance, etc) it will be much easier than if it is more complex (say like Extermination for the PS2).

3. Terrain deformation is available by resource. You will have to tweak it to specifics for your game.

4. You will either have to model each deformation (good idea for real-time networking, though longer art-wise) or implement your own physics-based ragdoll system (client-side only).

5. There are resources to multiple vehicle mountpoints, I believe. I have not used any of them. But I know that others have done this...and I think they released how to.

6. You will need to seriously reconfigure the mission system in TGE or use TGEA's ATLAS 2 terrain for paged terrain/missions (and with paged missions, you will be doing some serious adapting as well; get your C++ programmers up to chops).

7. You will have to do some tweaking to get space and flying vehicles working seemlessly. Quite a bit of work, actually.

8. I would recommend damage points rather than point collision damage control. It is more intuitive to the player since they do not have to go into extreme micromanagement mode and forget actually playing the game because they need to bandage seventeen points on their arm. Plus it works better over a network.

9. This is as easy or as hard as you make it. There is absolutely no way to determine it in any engine no matter how much you pay. It is entirely dependent on the design.

#2 Having personally attempted this myself with a team of 11 over 2 years, all I can say is quite up front: never in 10 months, period. A professional studio has never accomplished what you are discussing with millions of dollars and hundreds of people.


I'm not trying to shoot you down, but I am trying to let you know that you have just about described exactly my project before I became an employee, even if in a different genre.

#3 You should be able to get close if you sacrifice the terrain loading smoothly form one to another, but you can go to a high enough terrain size for a 10 month project i would say, and it'll load smoothly, I dont know how you could make enough art to fill a map any bigger than that any faster, but if you can... read my (and everyone elses) posts here www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=2293 and you may get some ideas.

Pretty much the rest of what you described coudl be started out with various resources people have submitted here and then modify them to your own desires

Good Luck!

#4 Well, I said Ambitious for a reason.

I know what I will try to do and what can't be done. Luckily we've already thought of a way to get things working. We'll just have to see how it starts to turn out the more it gets done.