Clackdor's Blog

You might not want to tackle both the programming and art if you're doing a multiplayer RPG alone.

Trust me, each alone will give you enough headaches.

 

Try finding an artist on the Blender forum if you have a good design document going.

Thanks for reading Lazlo.

 

I am definitely not above asking for help. In fact, I never anticipated this to be a one-man-only job. However, I do intend to dabble into everything a little bit myself just to get the experience. Also, i would feel it necessary to have "something" other than talk to convince people that I'm serious. I can barely convince myself that I'm serious yet.

 

So, if I can take a stock character from Dexsoft, create a level with the editor and free/cheap resources, and throw together a primitive alpha all on my own, I can present that to a number of interested parties who may be willing to partially fund (hahaha, I just thought I would throw that in there) and participate in the development.

I would say don't waste your time on finding an artist just yet. An artist isn't going to want to team up with someone who doesn't know anything about game development. That's not a slam on you, it's just the reality of people just starting out. You most likely wouldn't want the artist that would go with a new programmer anyway. Teams is a different dynamic that is a different skill than making a game. That's more about management and rarely works out.

 

1) Buy models from Dexsoft. They are nice and cheap with animations.

 

2) Buy UU3D. This is used to convert models from other formats to LE's format of GMF. It's a very handy tool and is cheap also.

 

3) Scarp your idea of online play at this point. You are totally green to game development and you will not want to introduce online gameplay right now. Make a singleplayer RPG first so you can learn all the tricks and ideas of how a game works. Then an only then start in on online play. This comes with it's own amazingly complex issues that starting in on it right away will almost for sure cause you to give up. You may not think that now, and even people who are in the middle of doing that still might think that, but even a singleplayer game takes a long time to make and after months of hardly getting much progress you'll most likely give up.

 

4) You want to try and avoid yourself from giving up! If you start working out and set your goal of losing 10lbs a week, after 2 weeks your chances of giving up on working out is about 99% because you wouldn't even have come close to losing 20 lbs. You would probably have lost 3 lbs if you're lucky. The point of the story is set realistic goals that you can reach both short and long term. The reality is for an indie person just starting out and wanting to make an online RPG, you are looking at probably 5+ years and that's even if you ever finish anything at all. This is a hard concept for new people to understand because it feels so out of reach and they feel so confident in their skills that they just refuse to believe it. Many people here and at other game engines have been doing this for 5+, 10+ years and have little to nothing to show for it in terms of completed, polished games.

 

 

People like me, love people like you because we want to tell you to do things the "right" way and learn from our mistakes. Make a pac-man clone or tetris first. You'd be amazed at how complex even that really is and how valuable it really is. At my point in the game I know the basics and some advances so it's amazingly difficult to focus myself on making a pac-man type game because all the elements are somewhat basic to me now, but I've spent way more time getting to that point on working on to large of projects so it wasn't efficient use of my time.

 

So my person last advise in which you can take it or leave it is:

 

Make a smaller more manageable game first! If you can finish and polish a game on par with pac-man, then you will already be ahead of most everyone here (me included) and on other game dev sites. That's the reality. It's a hard one to swallow for most (me included), and I'm sure I'll get replies hating on my post, but it's truth.

I'm reading that, and yeah, it hurts. I get you. It's hard. If it were easy everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.

 

You gave that advice once before in the forums and I really want to take it to heart. I really want to do things that build on each other:

 

Make text game -> Make a 2D game -> Make a 3D game

Make a GUI game -> Add GUI to 3D game.

Make Chat system -> Make simple network game -> Add multiplayer to 3D game

 

However, your pac-man statement struck me. You know what would make a really cool game? 3D Medieval Pac-Man with swords, scenery, etc. I can take the 3D world that I have in progress, populate it with sprites of coins (the pellets) and sprites of swords (power pellets) and crawlers (the Pinkys!) . Collect all the coins, smash crawlers with 1 hit of your sword that you only have for a few minutes. Boom, 3D Medieval Pac-Man where Pac-Man is a hot chick with red hair and purple skin wearing some awesome armor.

I just have to agree with Rick, at least concerning point 1 to 4.

Dunno if i hate him for the last part, because i assume he is almost right there.

That sounds like a great first game idea! It even sounds like something that could be extended later to incorporate other aspects that will help with your RPG.

 

I don't think I mentioned getting 3D World Studio but it's worth it too I think in order to make levels like in half-life or basic buildings or whatever like in most RTS games. It's easy for non artist to use and gets results fast, which is why I recommend it.

Find the joy in minimalism.

Make a RPG that has the absolute minimum content, but make it functional and playable.

After that, it will be easy to bloat it with more content

Hacking together something playable isn't hard, but making a complete and polished game is nearly impossible (even the "pros" can't seem do this right most of the time). So I wouldn't start on any game just yet, .. Familiarize yourself with the engine first, load up the default spinning cube example in c, then modify and add to it. Go over the tutorials Josh made, write as much of short and simple spinning cube type programs as you can.

 

Then when you feel confident enough with the engine, you can attempt throwing together a very simplistic game, doesn't matter what kind, it can be totally silly and pointless, the main thing is that you learn something from doing it, so make sure there are some unknowns for you to tackle,.. and once you tackle them you don't have to finish the game, just repeat the process and start another. (time spent polishing it, is time better spent watching some blender tutorials).

 

You need to get yourself up to speed to gamedev, then you need to get good if you wan't to make a real multi-player rpg, And writing (and rewriting) lots off small programs or games is just like doing push-ups in a gym, each day you can do one more, and when you reach a fitness level where you can do infinite push-ups you know you can attempt an MMOPRG

Hmm... I wonder if I misrepresented what my goal was by calling it a multiplayer RPG. It is NOT going to be an MMO. I recognize that very few companies get that right. And me, by myself, starting from scratch, has no chance.

 

The game I want to make is the scenarios, warfronts, whatever they are called in your favorite MMO. I think it would be doable in a couple of years. No major AI. No huge worlds, or anything else that involves the word "massively". Load up 20 guys, let them fight it out in some creative levels, keep score, fight the next group.

 

I agree with the statement about the polish. Who would play a game where you only have 1 character choice, the only skill is a sword swing, and the GUI looks like Windows 3.1? I guess we'll tackle that as they come up.

 

There's lots of work to do here, and breaking it down into attainable milestones is something that is definitely necessary. And getting advice like I'm getting is one of the primary reasons I'm writing down my thoughts in blog form.

I understood that you aren't making anything MMO, the 'attempt an MMORPG' was more of a joke.. sorry for my badly put together reply - i'm not a native english speaker.

 

Anyway I see that you're on the right track with your thinking, so all I can say more now is good luck with your project and hopes that you don't give up quickly!

Good luck Clackdor, it's a long and arduous learning curve but an ultimately enjoyable experience. If you follow Rick's and others advice combined with your own intent to learn enough about all key aspects of game design (a good choice in my opinion) then you will be well on your way to eventually having the skills and knowledge to develop simple games yourself and manage a team to develop bigger ideas.