Hi all, I waited a long time to post this, because I know solo MMO projects usually have a certian stigma about them! Especially as a first gamedev project. I am a long time lurker of Tig, and excited to be part of the community.
I have been working on this (currently unnamed) project for about 11 months on and off (nights and weekends). My strategy for this project has been to use technologies I am familiar with while leveraging pre-made stuff for the things I am bad at (3d modelling / animation). For these reasons I ended up writing my server from scratch in node.js and choosing Unity as my client.
I am a life-long fan of EverQuest, and always dreamed of making my own MMO heavily based on its design. After seeing some other indie MMOs (like the awesome Project Gorgon) I decided to take the plunge.
Here is some technical mumbo-jumbo that I am proud of:
Server Stuffs: written in node.js
- Server is authoritative and simulates the world. Makes cheating difficult. Going with the 'zoned' approach of one process per play area.
- Player input is sent to the server several times a second for processing.
- All entities (players, npcs, etc) are synced over UDP for fast & relevant updates
- I built a reliable messaging system on-top of UDP to handle all of the actual gameplay events (attack this, loot that, etc)
- Built a neat server-side pathfinding system that parses OBJ nav-mesh files so that NPCs know what the world looks like.
- Used mySQL for the relational bits (items, abilities, etc) and store a bunch of other things in redis
In addition my pipeline is pretty good. I can easily add new items, enemies, factions, abilities, weapons, etc. The client-side of things are pretty decent too after having to learn a *TON* about Unity.
As far as gameplay is concerned, right now I am trying to nail down all the basics that an MMO needs. I have spent WAY too long in node.js server-side hell, and I am just coming out of the darkness to do more fun things like world-building etc. I have some neat ideas on how to improve the genre that I am excited to share. I am hoping that I can get some feedback here, as I implement these systems.
The main challenge I see is content generation (duh!) as I have plans for a lot of races / cities / dungeons / quests etc. I am not 100% sure on how i'll solve this problem yet. I am still pretty motivated, so hopefully as my tools and methods improve each dungeon / city will be faster and faster.
Either that or this will launch in about 2025
Anyways, hope you enjoyed taking a look at my project. I will try to keep this thread up-to-date as my MMO dev adventure continues.
I also post as often as I can on twitter:
https://twitter.com/h1ddentreeAs most of you know, every follow, like or thread reply means a lot to an indie dev, so I hope you stop by!
- h1ddentree