Torque and maximum world size/land area.

#1 Not without a major re-write of things like the networking. See www.actionrpg.com.

#2 Torque isn't a massively multiplayer engine out of the box. Theres two projects that I know of that are trying to make it one... but I don't think either project is near completion.

With the addition of some code resources you could make it do a huge map like WW2 online. I'm not sure how graceful it would be... like if it tried to keep all of the 1/2 scale western europe map in memory at once, or if it would only load a small area at a time.

Making torque do what you seem to want is no simple task, but it can be done in the hands of a skilled programmer.

#3 Has anyone tried to use Torque with other mmog products like Butterfly, Zona, or others? I've begun to look into ActionRPG, but they don't seem to be releasing the code yet, or seem to be finished.

How hard is it to rip the network side of Torque out and replace it with your own? Is Torque that modular. It would be great if I could write my own backend and plug into Torque through an api to drive the client.

I'm still in the design and exploration phase of this, so I have lots of questions about what can do what and which products are best for what. Thanks for the answers though, this is a great community.

#4 Without funding you'll probably never hear back from companies like Zone or Butterfly. I know you can download a trial version of Terraplay (www.terraplay.com).

To replace the networking I think requires a lot of work. Joshua Ritter (of ActionRPG fame) is probably person to chat with about this. Also check out Adellion (www.adellion.com); they're using Torque to make an MMORPG.

#5 Torque's networking and simulation code are married pretty closely (as they ought to be)... so you'll have some work ahead of you, if you want to rip it out completely. You'd probably be better off making like ActionRPG and others, and letting Torque clients connect to Torque servers, then having the Torque servers connect to your MMORPG infrastructure.

#6 A ghetto way of jury-rigging a MMORPG like system, is to use a zone system with a database back end and server hopping. There is a resource for connecting clients to other servers via a special polygon in the mission. ActionRPG is the best option available, and Josh says it should only be a matter of months before a working version is released. There are other torque projects and MMO back ends out there, Gorpe, Butterfly.net...

#7 ActionRPG has Simulation Servers, which run Zones. There is a Region Server that is in control of the gameplay for some number of connected Simulation Servers (zones)... I have stress tested with 20 on a single machine without breaking a sweat. Mileage will vary depending on the amount of twitch a game has...

Region servers are cool in that gameplay structures for all connected zones are in the same process... making it trivial for stuff in one simulation/zone to affect another... ie. completing a quest in one zone spawns a bad guy in another... or changes the physics... etc...

Torque makes an excellent simulation server, though, as this is handled by an abstract interface... there is potential for interfacing to any "3d networked game engine" ... so if you wanted to do something with the Nebula Device or the GPL'd QuakeII engine you certainly could...

ActionRPG is in heavy production. The initial source release will be in 2003, and playable/editable by non-programmers.

Vibes,
-Josh

#8 yes, producing massivly good things.

EDIT- btw josh ive got a ton of open art media ready to roll.

#9 Wow, thanks for the great replies. I'll be following the progress of actionRPG. In the mean time I have a lot of proof of concept work to do.

One thing thats sold me on torque has been it's great community. Thanks agin.