Hello All , New To All Of This What Should I Be Doing ?

[GuardianAnGeL2009 0]

hello guys i got this crazy idea of making an online MMORPG gameif someone got enough time to explain to meWhat i should be doing ? What i should be learning ? how should i even start all of this ?As i was reading some posts i need years and years of learning , k i wanna start learning from now , so anyone wanna tell what i should start doing first ?I got Alot Of Experinces in Online Gaming but not desgining :Pgot some brillant ideas for an online game Thnx for giving me ur time to check my post .

[TheFury 0]

hello guys i got this crazy idea of making an online MMORPG gameif someone got enough time to explain to me
What i should be doing ? What i should be learning ? how should i even start all of this ?

As i was reading some posts i need years and years of learning , k i wanna start learning from now , so anyone wanna tell what i should start doing first ?

I got Alot Of Experinces in Online Gaming but not desgining
got some brillant ideas for an online game

Thnx for giving me ur time to check my post .

I know your not going to like my response, but honestly forget it if your thinking of making a 3d online game. It takes teams of highly skilled people in fields such as programming, modeling, sound production and story writing a couple of YEARS to create even a basic game, let alone something as polished as WOW or Guild Wars. At a guess it takes a team of 60, 3 to 4 years to put together a top quality offering.

That said, if you still think that you have a great idea, then the first step is to spend a few months in a word processor and write yourself a design document. A design document is the all important thing. Even if you never cut 1 line of code, you can submit it to all the big production houses for review and if they think that it is something great they might even buy it from you.

However, every man and his dog has a great idea for a game, probably 5 or 10 and all of them are nothing special at all. Mostly they are the rehashing of the same ideas and plot with goblins instead of dwarfs or light sabers instead of broad swords. To be successful you have to have something that has not been done, that is not a twist on an existing game, that is well... original and if it is truly original or ground breaking then one of the big production houses will pick up on it eventually.

So what goes into a design document. Well everything, a full outline of the plot, the characters and the games background story, creatures that might be encountered, the type of skill system, advancement system, quest plots, concept art that shows off characters and monsters and game scenes, a map of the game world and well the list goes on and on.

So, what options are there for you, at this point you have no skills, if design is what your interested in, then a word processor is all you will ever need as well as a over active imagination, some photoshop and 3d design apps skills will come in handy as well. If your really serious about making a game, and i can tell you from experience that it is not easy, my first game was in construction for 18 moths and was live online for 5 years before i closed it down, my current project has been in construction for a little over 6 months and will not be realy to play for another 2 years at least, what i would recommend is to start with creating a design document and also look for another project to contribute to, there are a lot of open source and indie games out there in production that could use an extra pair of hands to bring to completion certain tasks. The game i develop The Oriental Dojo is such a game, i could list 30 or 40 others in short succession that could use some help in bringing along their games.

There is a lot to be said about contributing to an existing project, you will make friends, make connections with people who can teach you skills that you might need or are interested in, and learn about the software development process. Ultimately if your really serious then this is the rout you should take, find a project that interests you and find out about what you need to do to be able to help out. Also get a spell checker, as most games developers even us indie ones like to see people use correct spelling, there is nothing more unprofessional then seeing a typo in a dialog in a game.

If your not really serious and just want to tinker, then there are a number of existing game engines that cater for the novice that require little or no skills at all to make a functional if not cookie cutter type of game. Eclipse Engine, Ogre, Realm Crafter, Multiverse, Smaug and Circle Mud are some examples of such engines, in side scroller, 3d and text types of games.

I hope that this has been helpful, if you would like to know more or have any questions then by all means ask them, i will see what i can do to help.

[GuardianAnGeL2009 0]

alright , i have read ur reply and i really liked it :rolleyes:but.. i aint giving up that easily :Piam willing to take courses in Languages and stuff like that , whatever it takes to make the game , i got 4 other people with me on this and they wanna do the same , we r willing to do whatever it takesso what should we do , what languages should we learn ?we got ideas which can't be done with any normal 3d engine so we were thinking of building our own 3d engine , i know it will take years , and we r willing to spend that much time what should we think of for a start ?

[TheFury 0]

what should we think of for a start ?

Same place i told you to start before, a design document. Without it you cannot even begin to work out what tools to use for the job, without knowing what tools your going to use you cannot even begin to work out what programming languages you need to learn.

As for learning to program in general, you can pretty much pick any language and start to learn to program, the basics of programming and algorithm design are the same no matter what language is used. Concepts like variables and constants, looping and control structures, pointers and memory handling are in just about every programming language, if you learn the concepts you can apply it to any language, if you learn how to program in general terms, changing from programming language to programming language is much like changing from English to French, each has nouns and verbs and sentences but has a slightly different structure and syntax.
Edited December 19, 2008 by The_Fury (see edit history)

[Lordrach 0]

ambitious !you have to accomplish many steps to make your dream come true !1- learn how to program, algorithmic, mathematic, computer architecture, ...2- learn software engineering, modeling, analysis, ...3- make a good team of skilled people (designer, scenarists, artists, ...)4- work hard and be up to the challenge.5- (hope you will be lucky )

[sakmac 0]

i read this post and thought, is this guy serious and then i saw that you were. Well, if you actually want to go ahead with it you should first go and look for some game engines that you can use to make your admittedly fanciful ideas into a reality I remember a reallygood software called realmcraft that comescwith a demo game. It is a relatively expensive software butbit is great but realistically you can't expect to get into the mainstream without a well paid team of experienced developers. However just get a tastercby playing around with the demo game and customise a few of the charactersbut you shouldn't undertake it as a serious project.