Lets say that a forum member(me) is making a mmo as a hobby after work.....

l2avism

Lets say that a forum member(me) is making a mmo as a hobby after work. I'm really just a programmer nerdy type of guy so I'm basically buying all of the assets with the money that would normally be spent on beer. (You maxxed out your credit card on what?!? pixelated trees and polygonal dragons?! wtf!) Anyways, I want to know when I should share this frankenstein monster with the rest of you. Possibly I could share early on and get more feedback, make more adjustments and have a game that is the product of community involvement. However, if I share early on I'll set alot of negative first impressions because the graphics will suck and the assets are all bought from common websites and not custom made. Also its easier to get some sort of kickstarter going so I could raise enough money to quit my dayjob and actually hire artists to make things (those guys charge you like $80 an hour) when I have an early presence since everyone knows what they are funding and is confident that its not some scam. ps: Details about the actual game will come later. The lore has taken a back seat to getting the code running. Basically its set in the far future. Humans have been driven to near extinction after an asteroid collides with their homeworld (not earth) in a failed attempt to mine it for platinum. Dragons somehow enter the scene and by using advanced human technology that had been discarded by the actual humans (because they were too busy trying to survive and became anti-intellectual) to control the humans and form empires of their own to support their lust for all things shiny. (spoiler alert: magic = old human technology like a mage uses a laser device to burn things from afar etc) Its almost like a giant NWO conspiracy but with dragons instead of banking cartels. The game will play almost like a strange RTS + sandbox MMO lovechild.

l2avism

For some reason the poll description feild does not preserve whitespacing! gagh

Talonsin

Do you really think shooting for an MMO is your best option as a "hobby"?  I have recently gotten into indie development myself and would love to make an MMO but I realize just how much work that is and that most early game makers quit due to biting off more than they can chew.  I would recommend doing some small solo games first to get some early success and bring in a bit of money while getting your feet wet.  Through that process you will learn so much and you might meet some other cool dudes who can do the things you suck at like graphics and then together you have the makings for an awesome MMO team.

Good luck in which ever way you choose.

Daranar

DMKano said:

Unless content can be added in a weekly/bi-weekly manner, IMO pre-alpha shouldn't be open to public. 

Nothing kills a project faster than incomplete state without fast development - the players have zero tolerance for that.

This.  And if we have learned one thing through Kickstarter.   Crappy Demo's or even polished world exploration, do not convince players it's not a scam.

laxie

It is crucial to come across as a hobby, not a product.

I think there are quite a few people who are happy to help you test your hobby project. You will even get nice feedback on here at times. I personally wouldn't mind giving feedback, or giving pointers on how to achieve certain things.

If you however come across as a product, it will backfire rapidly. Unless of course you feel like your thing is a competetive product. There are tons of sub-par games releasing on a regular basis. Even if you have all the cool design there is, it will not convince me to pay 20$ to test an unpolished thing. (And that says a lot, as I buy all sorts of crap online.)

Anthur

I voted "leave it to the pros". But what I actually mean is "leave it to teams". Developing an MMO is a huge task which imo noone can do alone unless it would be a very very simplistic MMO.

My personal recommendation to you is to first create an maybe even simplistic project plan with all planned tasks, the needed effort/resources and their availability like your free time. You will probably get a project end date which is very far in a very very very distant future.

But even if you say that you could handle such a development project alone it will still fail the first time it gets into contact with publicity. Noone can handle all the needed tasks alone then anyway...

YashaX

I think you should format your OP and put in paragraphs so it is easier to read.

For testing the game, if you are just doing it as a hobby and mainly by yourself it would probably be good if you could rope some people into helping you test it from early stages, either from forums like this one or friends/guildmates. 

Wizardry

l2avism said:

For some reason the poll description feild does not preserve whitespacing! gagh

idk what you mean  by white spacing but yes the forum is bad,they just went for a cost saving change not a better forum.
Spacing needs the <   p   > after each area you want a space.No space before or after the p.

Wizardry

YashaX said:

I think you should format your OP and put in paragraphs so it is easier to read.

For testing the game, if you are just doing it as a hobby and mainly by yourself it would probably be good if you could rope some people into helping you test it from early stages, either from forums like this one or friends/guildmates. 

This happens to even writers for this site,you have to enter the html to form the spaces.Shows how little they care because when i saw the writers doing the same it said they didn't even tell their own writers how to get around the problem,so kind of a very lazy effort here.

YashaX

Wizardry said:

YashaX said:

I think you should format your OP and put in paragraphs so it is easier to read.

For testing the game, if you are just doing it as a hobby and mainly by yourself it would probably be good if you could rope some people into helping you test it from early stages, either from forums like this one or friends/guildmates. 

This happens to even writers for this site,you have to enter the html to form the spaces.Shows how little they care because when i saw the writers doing the same it said they didn't even tell their own writers how to get around the problem,so kind of a very lazy effort here.

I think if the OP navigates to the forums section, then opens his post from the forums section and clicks edit he/she will be able to format normally without putting in tags.

l2avism

This project is basically me just throwing together all of the unfinished things I've been doing as a hobby since like 1999.
I've had bits and peices done here and there.
As of right now I'm still working on the client code, getting it to act right with multithreaded code.
The graphics will be last probably, currently rendering with opengl 1.5ish. The goal of course is to support OpenGL 2, 3, and 4 and then D3D 9, 10, 11. I'll have to do alot of refactoring of the rendering code to make D3D12 and Vulkan work so that's on the back-burner indefinitely. I've already written a working client-server with a simple game world a long time ago so I'm just going to adapt that to this. All of the 3D assets are/will be purchased from places like 3DRT, Turbosquid, CreativeMarket, etc.

l2avism

YashaX said:

Wizardry said:

YashaX said:

I think you should format your OP and put in paragraphs so it is easier to read.

For testing the game, if you are just doing it as a hobby and mainly by yourself it would probably be good if you could rope some people into helping you test it from early stages, either from forums like this one or friends/guildmates. 

This happens to even writers for this site,you have to enter the html to form the spaces.Shows how little they care because when i saw the writers doing the same it said they didn't even tell their own writers how to get around the problem,so kind of a very lazy effort here.

I think if the OP navigates to the forums section, then opens his post from the forums section and clicks edit he/she will be able to format normally without putting in tags.

Nah, there is no edit button on polls.

Jemcrystal

It's lonely typing code with nothing but a white fluffy cat, who keeps sticking his damn ass in my face, for company.  Or stepping on my keypad.  Or rubbing his face against every part of the monitor.  As a warning.  Because if he doesn't get his face scratched so help me he'll bite the cords he will do it he will !

But I would rather endure that then forum trolls or worse, some child telling me I've gone about it all wrong when they're still learning how to sit still on the bus to school.  Do what you want but developers really need their OWN FORUMS away from the dangerous critics which really want to keep you as their own pet pocket creator.  Gawd, don't let them Skype you.  And don't "adopt" a cat until after the project is over. 

Okay if they are helpful go ahead and let them Skype.  Unlike me most people need friends.  Good luck.

Kilrain

Comments like "Are you sure you want to make an mmo as a hobby ... " and " leave it to the teams .. " are really obnoxious and quite frankly, pointless. No matter how far a person gets in their quest to create whatever they want, they will learn something that can be used later on. If they keep pushing through the learning (this is assuming the person asking the question doesn't already know their stuff) they can still have a nice finished product when they're done.

People do things to learn, and learn by doing things. By "leaving it to the teams" the OP will miss out on a great learning experience. Even if the lesson learned was that he/she didn't want to mess with networking or databases, it's still a lesson learned.

Antiquated

Where and how do you plan to sell it? Have you ever been to a trade show where MMORPGs were being "shopped around" for producers? Or do you plan on building your own server farm, where's the money coming from?

Yes, of course, you can save all of that for later consideration. But do attend one of the trade shows and check out how many people are shopping around MMORPGs at any given time. And how many (more or less) fully fleshed games fail to catch venture capital.

This is, by the way, basically a description of how the Hero Engine came to be. A lot of work sunk into engine and developer tools for an MMO (Heros Journey) that never saw the light of day. Cancelled, finally, at about the 90% mark. Simu shopped the game around for several years and couldn't land a producer. And Simu wasn't a large enough company, financially, to get the job done alone.

It still has a mmorpg.com page: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/174

Deivos

Most people are not out to help you make a game, they are out to play a game.

As such, community feedback is pretty warbly on when it is and isn't useful, as the earlier you let people play and the less complete your features are, the more negatively they'll react regardless of the understanding that the game is in such early stages.

In general, you're not going to get good feedback on a lot of game features until they are already in at least a semi-working state and users are then making the judgement on the mechanics of a game as a more holistic experience than an actual individual examination of it's mechanics.

Antiquated

Jemcrystal said:

developers really need their OWN FORUMS

Exists.

SpottyGekko

Welcome to the world of Creative Arts !

Struggling musicians probably still far outnumber struggling game designer/developers, but the barriers to entry in game development are considerably higher.

The success rate is probably similar though, as is the competition from others.

If you have a day job, keep it until it's crystal clear that your "hobby" can replace that income.

Antiquated

SpottyGekko said:

If you have a day job, keep it until it's crystal clear that your "hobby" can replace that income.

And the same advice they give chefs contemplating restaurants:
For god's sake: do not sink your own money into it. Don't borrow from mom, don't take out a second mortgage.

Nitth

l2avism said:

The lore has taken a back seat to getting the code running. 

As it should be.

I know alot of friends that have grand ideas for "creating" games but they always talk about the building process in such a high level abstract way that you know almost immediately that they have severely underestimated what it would take to implement that system.

Before even writing code, design for a good generic-agnostic game architecture that promotes code re-usability and productivity  (do you really need to write double the code for a fire breathing dragon and frost breathing dragon that have 90% of the same functionality? do i even need a dragon type? what if i want a frost-fire dragon post release??)

----

As for the question, What purpose does it serve to let people in before the game is finished?
if your looking for "feedback" and they tell you to go a completely different direction doesnt the whole thing become redundant because your working on a project that's not what you originally wanted for a bunch of faceless internet people that are not paying you?

but hey, what do i know im just a guy on the internet

Kevan_f

The most important thing you could do to a indie mmo..is making it DIFFERENT.
make it a no level, no grind game.
pure sociality and coop (or pvp in a separate instance/ etc).
And,, ofc, make it sandbox.

it allows you to make the same users play what they want, you just give them the instruments to do it...and not just private mods, but a full online account with different realms/hubs accessibile.
like a minecraft-y mmo.

Cleffy

I would go as early as possible. If you are doing it alone, you need motivation. Even releasing a shitty product that no one likes is motivating. It's not like you are a big publisher. You can release it to the public again and again with no real PR hit.
As a programmer you should know, things programmed don't always work out as you envisioned. Getting input early on for basics like combat and core mechanics is essential in making a good game. Also buying assets isn't that huge an issue as long as you make sure they match and keep them in the same pixel density. Developers re-use/buy assets. So its not as uncommon as you may think.
Remember Mount and Blade. The content in there is pretty limited. The selling point is the engine and the combat. It was still a good game because its core mechanics were enjoyable.

waynejr2

IMO, don't make a mmoRPG as your first game.  Look at Blizzard and what they did.  The had a little game like Lost Vikings (For the retentive people: Silicon & Synapse).  Later they made Warcraft 3 with campaign mode which would be a great way to move forward.  Note: What you are doing is learning while growing a base of fans.  Finally, if all goes well you make that mmoRPG you wanted.

If you want to do a labor of love, you might try a graphical mud.  You won't get a ton of people playing but you will learn things.