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Revolutionary MMORPG needs Programmers

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 4:58 am
by zapdude
Hi everybody,

Now you've probably seen loads os post all saying stuff like 'fantasy rpg' and all that other kind of crap which saturates the online game market. I've played a few over the space of 2 years and I know what gthe right ingredients are and how to get the players hooked.
This RPG is set in the present and is different to a lot of other RPG worlds because this is set in the present and has a humongous world. There are also lots of ways to make money in this world and many ways to rise up through the ranks. Some features are:

* A HUGE world.
* Ability to construct weapons
* Revoloutionary Combat System
* Many Income outlets.
* A fully Interactive city.

I cannot say much at the moment although I have done 3 A3 sides of designing and have created about 40% of the structure at the moment.
What I am looking for is trustworthy, PHP programmers ( If my research is correct than I may also need somebody who knows SQL to try and make this game).
As this game will be very special compared to the other floods of mmorpg the developers will all earn a cut from the advertising and premium accounts even AFTER they've completed the project.
If your a talented PHP Programmer and want to hop aboard on a fun project or know others that would be very interested in a revolutionary project then please tell them to email me on:
:arrow: zapdude20@hotmail.com
or link them to this thread.
I will also be doing roughly 30-40% of the art and will be getting a few more to help with this project although if you can think you can also help in this field then don't hesitate to ask.
I look forward to working with all those interested. A passion for gaming would also be an advantage! :P

Thanks to this forum and it's members, I have also read a post by MoronicMonkey or something like that, and one of the admins mentioned some good open source mmorpg's which I will be looking at.
I would love to answer *ANY* questions you have so please note me or reply to this thread. I am currently learning about PHP and have made a small structural idea of how it will be coded(roughly). :?
Thanks for listening
reply,note or email me on zapdude20@hotmail.com for a chance on this exciting project.

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 8:02 am
by feyd
This be an open source project, yar? Thar be booty in mind?

Re: Revolutionary

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:05 am
by Roja
You've got a great start.

You have a clear vision, a decent amount of detail and structure, and have already accepted that you will need help to get from here to there.

Even better, you didn't include any unrealistic expectations about the number of users that will visit your site ("I'm building a game that will get 10 gazillion visitors!!!").
zapdude wrote:Thanks to this forum and it's members, I have also read a post by MoronicMonkey or something like that, and one of the admins mentioned some good open source mmorpg's which I will be looking at.
I'm an author of multiple opensource games, so my strong recommendation is to make this an opensource project. You will get more support, more testing, and more developers than you could ever get by simply offering a cut of the advertising.

Its very easy to get free hosting, free bug tracking, free publicity, and much more. In fact, just by having a project on sourceforge, a homepage gains a PR4 if its linked from it. Thats *serious* advertising boost.

By going opensource, you also gain access to a huge amount of code thats already written. Adodb, for database abstraction. Smarty, for templating. phpmailer, for mail handling that makes mail() look childish. Not to mention over 200,000 lines of code in various opensource online php games that has already been battle-tested.

Open-source for the win!

Excellent!

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:56 am
by zapdude
Thankyou very much! I tried to be prepared as much as possible and try and convince people. I understand there are a lot of people who want to make mmorpg's , I have seen their requests for people but all their ideas are the same!! It's either "fantasy" or "pimpin". And the second problem is they aren't willing to put any effort in.
I have put in some really good ideas and I didn't want them stolen which was why I tried not to reveal too much as it it top-secret.
I seriously thought that I would get a negative response on this forum. Although as much as I would like it to be open-source, I wouldn't want people to simply steal my ideas (which I have thought hard about) and then start creating lots of clones as this is the situation today.
I am currently learning PHP, and as I was learning it I began to realise that my dream game could come true. As I started thinking about variables and arrays. I will think very hard though over making it open-source try and convince me a bit more :D (nah!) It's just theft/cloning I'm a bit worried about.
I'm happy that you've authored loads of other games, but the designs are new and will add a whole new depth.
In answer to your comment "feyd" , their will be as the game gets more popular and premium accounts and advertising streams are available I will try and get the
best deal.I am looking for a few PHP programmers.
As we all have our different ways of doing things. But trust is no.1 in this project.
Please reply for further questions as I have so much more to say!

Re: Revolutionary MMORPG needs Programmers

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:04 am
by zapdude
zapdude wrote: I have also read a post by MoronicMonkey or something like that, and one of the admins mentioned some good open source mmorpg's which I will be looking at.
Your that admin! lol, I just realised right now because I remember your avatar :)
Oh by the way I realised that all I typed was 'Revolutionary' in the subject line so hopefully we might get a bit more views.
By the way. I've made tech trees (combinations of making pistols and assault rifles have recently been completed :twisted: . And a map for one country (Currently called 'Triton' [name's a bit dodgy?] ) With 8-12 cities+towns. With individual profiles and advantages.

Re: Excellent!

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:42 am
by Roja
zapdude wrote:Thankyou very much! I tried to be prepared as much as possible and try and convince people. I understand there are a lot of people who want to make mmorpg's , I have seen their requests for people but all their ideas are the same!!
You are letting your perception ("Most people posting have the same idea") determine your potential audience.
zapdude wrote:It's either "fantasy" or "pimpin". And the second problem is they aren't willing to put any effort in.
In both cases, thats a grand total of about 5 people that have posted, and only on these forums, and now you have also drawn a negative conclusion about what they are willing to do - in at least one case I know that to not be true.

Honestly, you are deeply mistaken about the world at large.

First and foremost, you are using a limited sample: 5 people posting here. The dev team for BNT was at one point over 20 members strong. LOGD has at least 30+ active authors writing mods. Don't even get me started on the various SE teams out there, most with more than 5 contributors.

That means that at the least, you should be comparing 5 people to the 60+ people currently coding in opensource, happily contributing, that have experience - many of which are happy to work on other projects, as well.
zapdude wrote:I have put in some really good ideas and I didn't want them stolen which was why I tried not to reveal too much as it it top-secret.
If you want to take your toys, and not share, thats your right. You can absolutely do so.

However, much like in childhood, people that share do better. You get more people willing to play with you, code with you, test with you, and more.

Not to mention, ideas are extremely easy to copy. You may have your ideas, but as soon as you implement them, I can see what it looks like, and I can do the same thing.

Thats the nature of software. If you look at it as a competition, you will most likely be very frustrated. If you look at it differently, you could be much happier. For example, you could strive to make a great game that players will enjoy playing. Notice there is nothing in there preventing someone else from making a copy. Nor should it. Why would you be upset that someone took a good idea and did something about it?!?

Your reaction should be the exact opposite: You should be flattered that your idea was *that good*.
zapdude wrote:I seriously thought that I would get a negative response on this forum. Although as much as I would like it to be open-source, I wouldn't want people to simply steal my ideas (which I have thought hard about) and then start creating lots of clones as this is the situation today.
Opensource isn't stealing.

But ignoring that, your ideas *will* be copied, whether you are closed source or open. Period. People are doing it with Kings of Chaos, and it will happen to every game out there. Some will be successful. Some won't. But the ideas will be used - you can't stop that from happening!

You only get to make *one* choice: Can I have the community work with me, or in competition against me?

I promise you that the first will almost always be a better choice.

But like I said before, if you want to take your toys and play by yourself, thats your choice.
zapdude wrote:I will think very hard though over making it open-source try and convince me a bit more :D (nah!) It's just theft/cloning I'm a bit worried about.
Cloning isn't theft. You are thinking about IDEAS as something you can control and own - you can't.

As soon as someone sees the idea, they can do the same thing. Its that simple.

So the question is, do you want to be the one or two guys trying to keep ahead of the opensource crowd, or would you rather be part of the community, dozens strong, with lots of contributors?

Not to mention, with the game running on dozens or even hundreds of sites, getting more players, more ideas, and more code to play with?
zapdude wrote:I'm happy that you've authored loads of other games, but the designs are new and will add a whole new depth.
Ever play rock-scissor-papers? Simple enough game.

If you add another element to it, it totally changes the game. Its a simple enough idea, but makes the game "new" and "adds a whole new depth".

How hard is it to do the same thing now that you've heard it? Simple, right?

Exactly. Same thing in programming.
zapdude wrote:But trust is no.1 in this project.
Trust in what sense? Keeping a secret? Once the game is out there, so are the ideas, and people will clone it. Why not get ahead of the curve, and gain other programmers helping?

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:55 am
by feyd
</pirate>

To be clear, I've written several video games, actual published ones. Not to mention the game engines I've worked on and writtten. That said, I can tell you right now, ideas are worth far less than the preverbial paper they are printed on. Ideas are always copied in some fashion, either as a derivative of some other idea or just straight. Now, I'm not trying to discourage you, just give you some perspective from a more seasoned game programmer here, so please don't get me wrong. Most people who think their ideas are revolutionary, most often aren't. The most innovative games do, however, come from very small companies or individuals very often. This is mostly due to a larger company needing to satisfy a publisher or audience that can dictate how things will work. Sure that does stop a lot of really neat ideas, but that's why companies often has several internal projects they work on when there's down time. People like to be creative.

Wow, that was a bit of a ramble... anyways, good luck on it.

Thanks!!

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:06 pm
by zapdude
Thanks guys! I've been thinking hard and I guess you are right about the ideas part. Even if it isn't open-source people will just create their own versions written in PHP.
And the depth part too, I had know idea it was the same in programming I thought some additional tools and skills would have to be implemented but I guess instead it means extra code.
Ok.
I'll make it open-source then. It will also be easier to recruit people too I guess and the mmorpg community which can sort of benefit from my (and the team-to-be's) game.
You guys still interested in joining? We can split the cuts from advertising and premium accounts and 'rewards' where people can claim one reward a day.
e.g
click on a advertisiers link.
Get 20 credits cash
Money from advertisement.
Now if roughly 200 players do this every day then that's roughly (if it's $0.05 per click)
That's $10 every day! Which means the server costs and upkeep will be sorted. If not then premium accounts and small ads can supplement. And every month we can share out the takings :P
Nice idea?

But anyways..
Do you guys want to join?

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:28 pm
by pilau
Sounds very promising. Good luck. I'd really like to join you, but I don't think I have enough r0xx0rz P8P 5k1||z to really help you.. I'd bet ya feyd would agree ;)

Re: Thanks!!

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:34 pm
by Roja
zapdude wrote:I'll make it open-source then. It will also be easier to recruit people too I guess and the mmorpg community which can sort of benefit from my (and the team-to-be's) game.
I can personally recommend gna.org for your project hosting. They've been reliable, fast, and feature-packed (I love SVN!). It is also of course, free.

Alternatively, sourceforge.net is a great resource if you want to get more developers - its more well-known.
zapdude wrote:You guys still interested in joining?
Build the project page, and they will come. :)
zapdude wrote:We can split the cuts from advertising and premium accounts and 'rewards' where people can claim one reward a day.
One thing you'll learn is that many programmers (especially the ones you want to attract) don't worry much about earning money from their hobby. They have a solid day job or consulting business, and work on games for fun.

I'm a good example. My day job is fantastic, and I earn a competitive salary, so after-hours programming is just for fun.
zapdude wrote:Now if roughly 200 players do this every day then that's roughly (if it's $0.05 per click)
Sorry, not even close.

First and most important, telling players they have to will result in you losing your advertisers. Its a requirement in virtually every PPC ad company contract.

Second, you won't get anywhere near that high a count of clicks from a webgame.

Finally, even if you do, there are costs from the ad company, costs to run the game (cant run a game on a project hosting account), and even if ALL of those are taken care of...
zapdude wrote:That's $10 every day!
Split between 20 programmers? Sorry, thats not an incentive. $0.50 a day doesn't buy a soda anymore.
zapdude wrote:And every month we can share out the takings :P
Nice idea?
Like I said before, you are focusing on the wrong things. Focus on making a great game that players will like. You don't have to bribe people to contribute if everyone is treated equally and the code is shared. People will come help just because they want the same thing: A great game that players will like.

If you make it about money, people will get jealous, want a bigger share, argue, and worse.

Leave money out of it. Focus on good code. The rest will come.

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:13 pm
by feyd
'ere 'ere me fine friend Roja. A grog ta ye!

Hmm

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:27 am
by zapdude
Nonono, They don't HAVE to click on them.
And I am concentrating on making a good game I'm just unsure about upkeep costs because I would like to run it, from it's own page and start it from a separate webpage on it's own. I was just thinking about streams of income for upkeeping the game and other costs on the game itself.
I'm constructing the edit page as we speak. I decided to use sourceforge because I like it quite a lot. And when I used to download stuff, It always linked me to this page.
The only problem is. If I do need extra programmers and some payment (like feyd)

Right

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 5:42 am
by zapdude
feyd wrote:A grog ta ye!
cm'on man thursdays is over your not ment to be a pirate anymore. Plus, do you expect payment then?

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:54 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Like Roja I'm also a hobbyist when it comes to PHP games. ;) Which is probably a fair reason for us committing to open source games as opposed to closed source since we don't rely on our work to earn us a living. Now there's nothing wrong with making some money where possible - I make a little (very little) from advertising on the development site which I will use when its worth withdrawing to pay some of the expenses of hosting.

Since it's something I do in free time I have few issues with paying to do it - ;) It's fun after all!

One of the things I've found in open source games is that publicity is rarely an issue. Like Roja said, the moment you get listed at Sourceforge or Freshmeat (GNA is nice since it supports subversion) you will be crawling with visitors. The other thing I've noticed is that (well, its unfortunate) any half decent game will get a very good listing - there aren't all that many good open source PHP games.

It's great to hear about the planning - it's something that makes such a project attractive to developers. At the moment I'm already involved in three PHP games so I don't have the time to commit. But if you open a project on SF you should get a few developers together.

You won't get many negative responses in these parts - they're a fair bunch these devnetwork members. ;)

As for making money - what are your actual aims in this regard? Profit, pay for hosting, etc. It is actually possible to make money on open source games. Now I can't give a lot of example - but LOGD springs to mind. The game is totally free to play, but in exchange for donations you can make some custom changes, get extra turns. It works well since the changes in combination with the game type mean no person can get an advantage over other players (other than possibly getting ranked faster).
Roja wrote:First and foremost, you are using a limited sample: 5 people posting here. The dev team for BNT was at one point over 20 members strong. LOGD has at least 30+ active authors writing mods. Don't even get me started on the various SE teams out there, most with more than 5 contributors.
The various SE teams...;) (Solar Empire is a game written in 1998 or so, released to public domain, with 1 open source fork - mine - and about 4 closed versions. Has experienced a revival of late.) The power of open source is letting anyone come and edit your code. May sound frightening but its not. I would suggest examining open source licenses. One weakness in PHP (using the GNU General Public License) is that anyone can take your code, edit it, and host it - but never give you that new code. That is - in some definitions - stealing. Unfortunately until GPL3 is ready, there are few solutions. At the moment I rely on the Affero GPL - but that is just a stopgap measure, but still worth considering.

Open source games will likely get more bug reports (or rather USEFUL bug reports) since the code can be read. It's a nice advantage to have.
feyd wrote:Most people who think their ideas are revolutionary, most often aren't.
Hmm...who's never examined the open source PHP game scene ;) j/k. It's quite true. Good ideas are extremely well received in OS php games however - at least judging from reponses to my own projects in that area. The vast majority of PHP games out there are closed tight as clams.
Like I said before, you are focusing on the wrong things. Focus on making a great game that players will like. You don't have to bribe people to contribute if everyone is treated equally and the code is shared. People will come help just because they want the same thing: A great game that players will like.
There's more than one way to skin a cat. ;) Like I said a donations or even referrals system may yield better long term results. Think of it in terms of any other product - for it to well, it needs to first of all capture a market. I really like the idea of targeting all those closed source games... OS games are more than capable once you take "profit" out of the equation for a while and get the game down first.

My best advice:

1. Get your plans organised (before ANYTHING else)
2. Build a website to support forums and news. Feedback is essential.
3. Grab someone experienced (I would volunteer just to act devil's advocate - not code, or at least not directly)
4. More planning - this time on the design of the game's code
5. More planning
6. More planning
7. Write a basic version - absolutely cut down to the minimum
8. Get feedback from your now respectable following (people will track projects even without code - just keep 'em informed)
9. More planning
10. Get a public release out

I left out a few steps - even more planning ;)

May sound absolutely stupid - but planning is a massive improvement over jumping into PHP head first. For starters it'll cut down time needed to code by a substantial amount - less mistakes, less reversals, less bugs.

Above all else be patient. Your project will not explode into a fully functioning game within days or weeks.

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 7:05 am
by LoganK
Allright, I just signed up on these forums for this project; usually I hang out over at PHP Builder and the Xnet Development Forums. In any case, zapdude - what is the plot or overall storyline/arc for the game? How will it be implemented; i.e., what/how will players "play" the game? How will this be hosted? Most importantly - why did you PM me on PHP Builder?

I'll have more questions as time goes on.