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Hi, I'm a n00b(1) and this is my intro post, and a buncha questions.

Intro
=====
Now that I have a professional 3D artist, my skeleton-core team for making my MMOG is complete. The next step is to create a demo. Not a playable demo, but a small, pure-eyecandy pitch so that I can try to get the license to make a Discworld MMOG. Because I think I stand a chance(3), however remote.

Assets for the demo will be small: four buildings, four characters, a small amount of scenery and particle effects. Darn good modelling, skinning, animation and shaders will be required to "sell" the demo.

All this is doable in DBP: mostly it's basic WASD camera movement, object placement and animation, then about a year's work. And I would like to do the demo in DBP. I know DB, it's great for RAD, and with the new stuff in DBP it should at least be good enough for this demo/pitch.

It's the future, though, that worries me. What if I get the license but no funding? Then we'll be making the real game on an Indie budget in DBP, Torque, RealmCrafter or whatever.

And given enough years, yes, we can do that. But it's the multiplayer networking that is really giving me the willies, enough that I intend this initial sales-pitch demo so be 1-player.

Questions for the Future
========================
1) I saw a comment in another thread "CR's work is truly amazing. Server side, Client side. It's worth what he is selling it for." <- who is this "CR", what is he selling and where can I get me some of that?

2) Xenoscythe writes: "I was working on an MMORPG for almost two years now and have failed." <- scalability serverside was apparently the main issue: 256 players max for instance. Is this also true for Dark GDK? If so I'll go with a scratchbuilt Linux server, but that's devtime I could seriously do with avoiding.

3) Roxas writes: "Winsock can support 3000+, Multisync can support (Unlimited perhaps?), DBP only 256 but who even uses its network commands they are slow and only good for turnbased network games.." <- Is this the case? Should I avoid the DBP network commands? OpenMMORPG's use of the clipboard gave me the willies, glad they've moved away from that.

4)Anyone played with Dark Physics? Would it be any good for an MMO? I do understand that good realistic physics is near-impossible for an MMO. Doesn't mean I don't want it. But I need a system for marking objects as "active", ranking them by importance related to nearness to player and other aspects, dynamically ramping the effects of things like viscosity and friction for low-importance items when the number of moving items is getting too high, and sending out position updates for high-importance items more frequently.

5) What about their other plugins? Are any of them relevant to an MMO? DarkAI allegedly only has three factions: player, foe, neutral. Seems a little too limited for an MMO where each player is effectively their own faction. But DarkShader and EnhancedAnims look good for the demo and clientside.

Footnotes
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(1: Slighty noobish. I've been programming since I got my first spectrum in 1986, working as a programmer since I graduated in 1996, working for others in the Indie MMOG business since about 2001, have written from scratch my own Indie MOG(2), and have been researching options and building a team for developing my own MMO for the last 12 months. And yes, I've searched the forums "MMO" and "MMORPG", and read the pinned topics here. I'm not entirely new to DB as I used DB a few years back, and spent some time helping newbies on the forums. But the time when there were DB forum topics like "Thank god for DewiMorgan" are long gone, the forum software's changed, and so, yes, I'm a n00b again myself. Join my in my n00bidity. Group hug!)

(2: A 2-player boardgame, many-player chat, so only one M. Barely more complex than a PopCap.)

(3: Well, I do run the largest online Discworld community and the only licensed online Discworld game. So he knows we have a business history together, a reputation. Even so, Pratchett gets pitches like this all the time: merely getting to see him is a challenge even for us, and actually getting an MMO licence...? Slim chance, but worth trying.)

I suggest try making a simpler game, like pong or breakout, before you embark on an MMO.

CR is CattleRustler, one of the mods.

Dark Physics - I'm using it for peripheral effects. I am not prepared to let it interfere with mainline gameplay just yet, but for explosions, movable scenery, collapsable items, it's all good.

If it inspires you, Tony Davies, lead level designer for Crysis, uses DBP to experiment with new ideas and demonstrate concepts.

Good luck!

inspired me all right.

Thanks for the well-wishing and humour (or was that just an auto-answer, Veron?

I agree that gameplay-affecting physics would be hard, unless there is already a plugin module for MMO physics available. Got nothing against hard tasks, but on something this big, doing something the hard way when the easy way is available is just stupid. So, I'll leave the physics to precalculated stuff and the cosmetics, then.

So, for the initial demo, I'm looking at something extremely "pretty" but singleplayer. A 1-zone walk-around, no real combat, magic, or inventory: just simple collision and lots of pretties. Most of the demo dev time will be taken up with art asset creation, and that's where I'm focusing my recruitment effort at the moment.

Sound assets are also really important, and I've nobody for that at the moment. Bleh. Still, that should come fairly late. Might end up doing them myself, but would rather hand it to a pro sound fx guy.

DBP seems the way to go for this, rather than RC: the difference between DX7 and DX9 is too clearly apparent. Allegedly RC2 will have DX9 support, but it's been "coming soon" for at least a year now, and I don't want to develop in RC1 then find RC2's still vapourware in a year's time.

[Edit: Ooh, I see that there is other humour I missed too, at least as far as I can tell: "It's worth what he is selling it for" appears to have been tongue in cheek. So far as I can find, all CR's stuff is free, at his site http://home.nyc.rr.com/madtek/DBP/dbp.htm - or am I missing something?]

Heh, I must say it is a fairly common phrase for me to say.

Why does everyone put an S in my name!?

Dewi,
Sorry to tell you, but using DBPro's built in multiplayer is even worse for an MMORPG. I use the multiplayer DLL called Tempest for DBPro. I failed using tempest as well.

In conclusion, you can not create an MMORPG with the server in DBPro. You must have the server programmed in C++. The Client can stay DBPro, though.

Xeno[^sS]cythe: it's because we're idiots and can't type. Or maybe that's just me

Clientside, I guess I didn't expect to use DB: although OpenMMORPG looks interesting, I won't be able to use anything they've done since I want to release all my stuff to the public domain, and GPL is not PD-compatible.

I did much the same with Thudgame: serverside is PHP, clientside's a Java 1.1 applet (public domain, again, which really restricted what libs I could use: ended up writing most of it from scratch). I coulda gone Java both sides, but I just plain dislike Java.

With the size of an MMO, I may be completely retarded to try to only use PD-compatible components. So I might end up going GPL just to get access to nicer libs. But I do so loathe to place my work in any kind of copyright It feels like selling my children into bondage for 70-odd years.