Graphics Quality for a Indie MMO...

[James Proctor]

What Sort of Graphics Quality do you guys think a Indie MMO Should strive for?

Here are some screenshots from My MMO Engine based on the Multiverse Code (This is just the base code for multiverse at this time however I have many features I intend on adding to make it my own including an updated rendering engine like the Latest Axiom or latest MOgre).

As is though do you think these Graphics would be ok for a Indie MMO?

[jacmoe]

Looks OK.

Gameplay!

It''s all about gameplay!

Do not forget that.

That's the main problem these days: so few games concentrate on great gameplay.

[aspiringprogrammer]

An MMO as a small Indie project is quite the undertaking...

I'd hate to discourage you, but I hope you know that the market for these things is already Saturated to all hell, you'll need something really out of the ordinary to attract players...

Especially when AAA MMO's like D&D Online, LoTR Online, Age of Conan and others have switched to a Free-to-play/Freemium/Micro-transactions operation.


In any case, I salute you and wish you the best.

[James Proctor]

An MMO as a small Indie project is quite the undertaking...

I'd hate to discourage you, but I hope you know that the market for these things is already Saturated to all hell, you'll need something really out of the ordinary to attract players...

Especially when AAA MMO's like D&D Online, LoTR Online, Age of Conan and others have switched to a Free-to-play/Freemium/Micro-transactions operation.


In any case, I salute you and wish you the best.

lol If you do a search for my posts on this forum you will see I've been at this for a while... There isn't to much that can discourage me at this point since I've been so much time and energy into seeing my dream come true... Just to give you an idea on how long I've been at this I started when I was 19 or 20... I'm now 27. I've tested just about every free 3D engine I could get my hands on. Learned to some extent 4 or 5 different Programming Languages (C++, C#, Python, Java, and Most recently HSL (Hero Script Language)). Plus I learned HTML, JavaScript, PHP, CSS which has now lead me to starting a Web Development Business which I hope to use to fund the MMO in my free time. So yeah needless to say I'm NOT about to give up any time soon... Each project that didn't get me to my desired end result just helped me to learn more about MMO Design...

[PhilipLB]

IMHO it's far more important to have some great artists than a great engine. They define the actual look and style and make it actually visually pleasing. How are you setup here? Because, my feeling says, that 90% of the projects fail due to missing cool assets.

[James Proctor]

IMHO it's far more important to have some great artists than a great engine. They define the actual look and style and make it actually visually pleasing. How are you setup here? Because, my feeling says, that 90% of the projects fail due to missing cool assets.

Yeah that's one of the reasons. Some of the teams I also tried to grow to quickly and ended up with a 15 to 20 person team that I then had to spend most of my time trying to manage instead of doing any programming. Trying to manage the team and not being able to do what I love would burn me out pretty quickly and then it would only take a fairly small argument to put me over my breaking point. For me the best working environment for me is one where there are a core group of all of the department heads managing the entire team. That way I can have a say in what happens on the team but it's not up to me to entirely manage the team which would still leave me plenty of time to do the programming.

The last official team I had there were 20 to 25 of us on the team. Our Design Department Lead was a former employee of Sony with contacts at SOE. We also had a great group of concept artists, a Great PR person, a small core group of programmers, We basically had at least 1 person to fill every spot we needed.

That team fell apart because the design team wanted to take the game design into areas I didn't want it to go and felt my compromises were hindering their creativity... As a Born Again Christian there were certain areas that go against my beliefs that I don't want any game I am working on to go into. I was willing to compromise and allow magic but I said that I didn't want there to be any Worshiping of gods or anything like that. Well that wasn't good enough for them so I left the team. The Design lead then a few months later got a job offer at another Company and had to leave and so the team just slowly fell apart from there.

Before falling apart we had a game design document consisting of over 100 pages, we had a ton of concept art, quest ideas, towns, npcs, ect all written down. It's my goal to go over everything we had and use what we can from it and then put together another smaller team. Establish a small core of leads that can manage the team and then get others to fill in the teams.

[chaosavy]

Looks fine to me.


For comparison here's an indie MO - though I guess not massive.


http://aberoth.com/


I played it a bit and enjoyed (not kidding, its quirky, interesting fun).

[Klaim]

I don't agree that you should focus only on gameplay. You also have to make sure the game as a very specific feel, both in graphics and sound. Even MineCraft does. So strive for IDENTITY.

In particular, use really simple way to have graphics, but that works nicely AND that give a special touch to the game. Avoid common realistic look.

Love is a good example of indie mmo game that have a very specific graphic touch that is mainly created with hard constraints, chosen only to avoid complexity: http://www.quelsolaar.com/

http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/screens/ ... _done4.jpg

http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/screens/ ... _done1.jpg

http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/screens/ ... _done6.jpg

http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/screens/ ... _done5.jpg

Other screenshots: http://www.quelsolaar.com/love/screen_shots.html


Identity, with game mechanics and flow, is one of the most important thing you have to focus on for your game.

[duststorm]

I also agree with klaim that you should try to give a distinctive feel or style to the game.
While it's certainly not bad, at the moment it has the visual look of about 90% of all indy MMORPGs out there. Being pretty plain repeating textures and only global illumination to light the scene.

If you don't intend to risk a radical turn in artisic look, maybe try including things like dynamic lights, shadows, maybe even FSAA if your users can run it. A play with light and shadows will already give you a lot more atmosphere than the plain ambient lighting. And with the power of computers these days it shouldn't be too much of a performance hit.
Another idea you could try, also without having to redo a lot of artwork, is to experiment with post process shaders to give a totally different look to your visuals. For example like the screens klaim showed. A cell shading approach is also an option if lack detail in your textures.

[James Proctor]

The Models and World currently are just the default assets that come with Multiverse. They aren't what will be used in any MMO I make. I was just wondering what people thought of the quality of Graphics Multiverse is currently capable of before any Rendering Engine Upgrade is done...

[EricB]

Indie MMO?

If you have zero titles under you belt then you should strive between zork and zork2 quality graphics. Remember to keep it mono fonted


As others have said, it's a saturated market. You're going to have to sell something other than awesome graphics. In the gameplay niche it doesn't matter what the graphics look like. (*cough* minecrap *cough*)

[lonewolff]

I'd have to agree with a couple of things here.

As Jacmoe said - really concentrate on your gameplay. If you manage to get a lot of players you could lose them pretty quickly if the gameplay is ordinary, no matter how pretty the graphics are.

I personally believe that graphics are not everything. But, you are more likely to get people to try your program if it is visually appealling. At the moment your graphics are ok. But, they do look very 'common' for todays dime-a-dozen MMO.

If it were me (and if I had the ability to do so) I would do something very stylized. Like it or hate it people will instantly recognize you game and, I believe, you would definately attract more people.

At the present state, if it were on a cover CD on a mag (for example), I probably wouldn't be too enticed to give it a try (sorry to say it ).

Not trying to dishearten you at all, quite the oppsosite. You have achieved a fantastic thing. I am yet not even close to doing anything as good.

I would get the gameplay to a solid point (if it isn't allready) and then really bring out some graphics to make it stand apart and have an awesome atmosphere. This could even be as simple as more moody lighting. Think of sunsets, blizzards, rainforests. That sort of lighting.

Keep up the good work!

[James Proctor]

Well I can't go to much into what the game will be about but here are the details I can share:

First of all like I said before these current models are JUST for testing. They aren't the models that will be used in the game.

The game is a Open World, Sandbox, Pvp based MMO. It's setting is in a Steampunk world. The World is just coming out of it's Fantasy Age and is emerging into an age of prosperity as a technological revolution is taking place.

Here is a glimpse at the Games back story:

Story Summary
ACT 1
The world is part of a multiverse*. Ours is but one of many possible universes; the others exist in other planes of space.

However, there is a substance that acts as a facilitator between dimensions and makes seemingly supernatural things possible (by pulling loose the threads that hold them together), which we are temporarily calling 'Creation Fuel'.

One hundred years ago, while toying with a new technology called radio, a small group known now as the 'Ancients' received some sort of interstitial static, which they took to be something trying to communicate. They became obsessed with the idea that something was trying to contact them, and devoted their lives to developing the technology that would allow them to contact it back.

They went into seclusion, into an area of known geo-entropic activity and built a research facility, which they loftily named the Ivory Tower.

Thinking to be the first to discover new life, they toiled to create a machine that could redirect the geothermal energy and produce a channel, through which their extraterrestrial communicant could travel. They had no idea that the events set in motion would lead to the birth of Magic.

For fifty years their work amounted to frustration. And then one day, they witnessed an anomaly amongst the stars - what some would later describe as a sky-born shadow skimming beneath a wave - and knew that something imperceptible had changed. The energy field was magnified, pulsing as if magnetized to the anomaly - and they knew it was time. They attuned themselves to this misunderstood force, and once again activated their machine.

But what happened peeled back the very walls of reality. Something magnificent and horrible breached.

It peeked through the fabric of space like a crowning whale, bursting with unimaginable energy as it ripped the hole wider. There followed a spectacular aurora accompanying a terrible moan - as if the entire universe was screaming.

They'd unknowingly ripped a hole between two universes and summoned an ancient, cosmic Organism. It shuddered and trembled, then finally burst free and descended like a blight on the Ivory Tower.

On the night of the accidental summoning, those from the mainland who were still awake swore that the firmament opened up, and that the moon had been blotted out by an enormous, meteoric sphere, where it had seemed to hesitate for just a moment... before shooting down beyond the horizon.

Then it was gone, the only thing to suggest it had ever been there faint wisps of pink and gold tracing the constellations - and the vague sensation that something was fundamentally wrong. When they would ask each other in the morning, no one would have any idea what it was they'd witnessed.

* Based on the argument that if you adhere to string theory, the universe exists in multiple states until it is fixed in place by an observer.

ACT 2
During the years following the Event, more and more people began to discover that the subtle change in the atmosphere was the source of something wondrous: they began to discover Magic.

There now lay a mammoth crater atop the mountain where the Ivory Tower had been, writhing and peristaltic, as if the very rock was alive. Here, at the Epicenter of the Event, the Organism had bored into the mountain and tunnelled outward, spreading itself like a massive fungus and changing the landscape.

The Organism crept like a web of blood vessels beneath the skin of the world, and as it did, the land was slowly deformed by its presence. Pockets of the mysterious geothermic energy bubbled up and became known as the Miasma.

Soon explorers from the Alliance faction discovered a crystal Ore with phenomenal properties, buried in these Miasma hotspots. After some research it was further discovered that this substance could be refined into surgical implants - and that Ore implants could boost physical and mental prowess beyond the human body's natural limitations.

What they didn't know was that the Ore was actually crystallized organic matter that bonds to its host; segmentations of a massive parasite.

Few of the Ancients had managed to escape the Organism's impact on the Ivory Tower. Those who did appeared, seemingly from nowhere, bearing a warning against the use of Magic. They'd realized that manipulation of the Miasma could destabilize reality - and that the implications of such a thing might carry catastrophic consequences - but they also believed that they'd unleashed something terrible, and in their guilt needed another reason to ensure that their message was heeded.

They slipped in among the Alliance and advocated for the illegalization of Magic, legitimizing it by arguing that it was a dire threat to the Alliance's control of the region. The Alliance rallied behind their message and they were elected to the UN.

During their term, they founded a program to begin injecting their intellectual elite in order to accelerate technological advancement. A secretive internal Caucus was born, and their ascent up the political hierarchy continued.

Shortly thereafter, the ban on Magic went into law. Those who were disinclined to stop usage were forced into exile and became refugees. Those who were political enemies of the ruling class were scapegoated as Magic users, and were driven into brotherhood with the aforementioned Rebels. They fled to the borderlands and re-congealed as a roughly hewn society.

The major factions were now set: the technological elite in their reclusive city; the working class Proletariat in their steam-powered trade cities; and the primal, outlying Rebels.

ACT 3
Bizarre, supernatural things are starting to occur where the Miasma drifts to the surface: ripples in the atmosphere; failures of equipment; twisting of chance.

The Rebels discover The Itch, a result of long term exposure to Creation Fuel, and their leadership starts to digress. Like famine victims they start to lurch closer to civilization, hoping to reclaim a place in the world.

Meanwhile, under the cryptic direction of the Caucus, Alliance technology blossoms. Things are invented of which no one had previously dreamed. The blueprints to these machines become great commodities; an international tech market bursts forth, and an illicit proxy providing sanctioned technology to the Proletariat soon follows.

As technology and knowledge trickle down from the elite, some of those in the dregs begin to speculate on the nature of this newfound power - and decide to venture out and see for themselves.

The Proletariat begin to discover power on their own, and just in time, as the Rebels are being sighted again for the first time since their ostracization - and something just isn't quite right with the UN.

The Caucus is becoming increasingly clandestine. They experiment with unheard-of technologies as their brains are slowly overcome and manipulated by the parasite with which they've entered a pact.

The Ancients who founded them start to devolve into something strange. Believing their salvation lies in finding answers at the source of the Event, they pull strings to get Alliance military to explore the Epicenter.

If they can navigate the extremely hostile mountain pass, and penetrate the crater's deepest caves, they might find answers. But so far, no one has made it there and back alive.

Here there is an invisible vortex of Creation Fuel, distending from the rift in space. Beneath it, in the underground caverns, the original Ancients have been absorbed by the Organism and turned into something else entirely. Through analyzing them It has learned all it needs to know about humanity.

The truth is that the Ore the Alliance has been implanting is virtually the same as the Magic they've outlawed. It contains elements of the building blocks of life and creation, but when used or 'burned', is essentially pulling threads from the tapestry of universes.

When the original Ancients triggered the Event, the tangent universe was sucked through the breach and inverted such that it became a sentient mass that is the composite of all things from the other universe: the Organism.

Glossary
Alliance - The faction in power
Ancients - The small group of scientists who originally summoned the Organism
Caucus - The secretive internal Alliance group responsible for the technological revolution
Creation Fuel - The incomprehensive substance that is leaking through the space rift
Epicenter - The original location of the Ivory Tower, and ground-zero for the Organism
Event - The summoning of the Organism
Ivory Tower - The research facility of the Ancients, which was destroyed in the Event
Magic - The supernatural phenomena achievable through use of Creation Fuel
Miasma - The term for what people assume is geothermal gas but is actually Creation Fuel
Organism - The cosmic entity that was summoned through the space rift
Rebels ­- The outcast few who refused to stop using Magic
The Itch - Symptoms experienced after long exposure to Creation Fuel
UN - The central panel of representatives from outlying factions within the Alliance

[kneeride]

http://aberoth.com/
I played it a bit and enjoyed (not kidding, its quirky, interesting fun).

Yep, that's a cool game - I played it for an hour but had to stop so I can do something more productive .