Comments on: MMO Development Lesson #10

By: Naomi Boyd

Naomi Boyd — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:25:26 +0000

This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything - and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”

By: Gninja

Gninja — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:18:52 +0000

Yeah I see your point Jason. Well if the graphics upgrades are purely cosmetic could the graphics upgrades only be applied if you bought the expansion much like it was done with the Luclin expansion? Only problem I see with that would be when adding armor sets etc in you would have to make sure it fit all different character models old and the like.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:44:45 +0000

One problem games always have to contend with as time goes on is if they want to honor the rule of “dance with the date you came with”.

City of Heroes ran fine on my PC… when City of Villains came out, they wanted to upgrade the engine for CoV, but needed to apply it to CoH as well… I didn’t buy CoV at the time, but I stopped being able to play CoH. I cancelled right then and only came back recently after buying a new PC. They lost me as a customer for the time in between.

By: Gninja

Gninja — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:17:49 +0000

How about the idea approached something like this…

Create and design a game for what the standard (high end) gaming rig is now. Create a steady timeline/story for a few expansions over about 2-3 years then instead of upping the engine or adding more expansion plan for a sequal to the game with total revamp of game to update graphics / playability improvements. Much like the FF series. The story progresses but so do the graphics etc. But with the sequals have each player that maxed levels/skills or what ever system you had in place in the previous game able to roll thier character over into the new game with added benefits thus making it feel like natural progression.

Does that makes sense?

By: laethyn

laethyn — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 03:17:40 +0000

Why not design on what the best is now

The best for whom, though? Based on the system specs of the programmer? The modeler/artist? The end user?

I think there is a very high danger in building your engine (and this is doubly so for an MMO engine!) around the idea that you’ll be upgrading the core graphics pipeline/rendering system as time goes on. The planning going into this (what happens to those who don’t upgrade? What happens to those who meet sys. req. upon release, but first patch kills their ability to play? What happens if there is a missed bug (never happens, of course ))? You just shut out every player who has been patched) type of event would just be maddening. It can be done, of course, but does the end justify the journey?

Upgrading the visuals is one thing (if you structure your rendering system right to begin with), but when you start upgrading your rendering system during the middle of your games life cycle, I think you just may be asking for unneeded headaches.

But then again, I too may be talking out of MY rear.

By: Ryan Shwayder

Ryan Shwayder — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:42:46 +0000

It’s absolutely a good idea to plan ahead an know that you will be upgrading the visuals as time goes on if:

1) Your game is intended to go on for more than a few years without any type of replacement (unlike Guild Wars, for example).
2) Your game does not have timeless graphics (unlike World of Warcraft, for example).

A game like Vanguard should plan to upgrade visuals as time goes on if those two rules are followed.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:18:19 +0000

EQ is a decent example… except that the Luclin models were so ugly!

By: Gninja

Gninja — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 23:41:49 +0000

Why not design on what the best is now but in that design process add in the ability to upgrade the game engine with newer graphics engines/technologies. Look at EQ1 when it came out it was pretty cool for the time it came out as time went on people wanted it to look better so they kind of upped the engine and made the luclin models. which made it look a little better… why not plan for that and let the game grow as technology grows?

Of course I could just be talking out my rear :p

By: Adele

Adele — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:02:07 +0000

I agree I think designing for what is the best now if your game isn’t going to be out for a few years would be the best idea as it will probably be the low in when the game does release, but with technology always changing it does seem like it is sort of like roulette.

By: Paladyne

Paladyne — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:05:47 +0000

I’m more partial to the graphics they [Blizzard] built into the Outlands than the original stuff… much less cartoony — although cartoony is fun. If a developer would come out with an MMO which had graphics along the lines of what we’ll hopefully see in the FPS/RPG Project Offset (if it ever hits the shelves) or the Crysis engine, I would be completely enthralled.
I’m also a big fan of scalable FX — it’s too bad that you couldn’t actually base the game dynamics themselves on the capabilities of something like the physics add-in card (forgot the name of it), rather than just cooler FX (e.g. realistic knock-back is only cool if it applies to every player).

Planning for expansion isn’t just a client-side issue, either. There’s all of the tasty provider infrastructure to consider. [Go go gadget grid?] It’s important to come up with a capital investment plan taking into account server growth vs. client growth, distributed content delivery (if applicable), obsolete servers, etc . — everyone in the biz & several of those who aren’t could probably tell you this if asked outright, but thinking about “scalability” is more than a 45 minute meeting one afternoon. It’s almost a project in itself (and very much appropos in this topic of “planning ahead for technology” I think).
How many examples can we think of where “a potential misjudgment and, at worst, completely ignorant and erroneous” decision (either in client specs, or in infrastructure) resulted in a lackluster rollout or “failed” product/company?