Standard 3D MUD/MMORPG Client

[krum]

I played with OGRE a while back, but it's been a long time since I visited these forums so I apologize if this has already been hashed out.

At any given time, there are dozens of MMORPGs in development. Most of them will never even be playable, much less finished. While playing DAoC tonight, I got to wondering: why isn't there a standard, generic 3D MUD client for the Open Source community? That would allow developers to concentrate on developing the back-end and designing the game itself. (And heck, there could even be a generic MUD server... but that's a whole other topic.)

It seems to me that OGRE would be the ideal project on which to base such a client. Unlike some others I've played with (Torque...), OGRE isn't too tightly integrated with one particular renderer or game engine.

Basically, what I'm suggesting is developing a standardized protocol by which a generic OGRE client could be instructed to use a particular pluggable scene manager, load models, and render effects and widgets. It seems like almost all the pieces are already in place. There just needs to be some kind of protocol to tie them together, and a reference implementation of the client.

[Noiprox]

Worldforge.

[Mawen]

And more specifically:
http://www.worldforge.org/dev/eng/clients/dime/

[stodge]

OGRE isn't too tightly integrated with one particular renderer or game engine.

That's because OGRE IS a rendering engine. I don't understand your logic here.

Worldforge has been in development since time memorium and everyone has their own ideas about how a client should be developed and designed, so you will always see individual projects. Don't forget that writing an MMPOG client is NOT easy and is 5 trillion times harder than most people think. So they start, fiddle a while and then give up. If nothing, it's a good way to walk. However, there is some truth in the addage "learn to stand up before you run a marathon".

[:wumpus:]

While you're on it, why restrict to MMorPG games, you could also go for the more general path and create a 'generic distributed scenegraph client'

[ahmedali]

I got idea of ogre port of planeshift, which is currently using crystal space.

[krum]

That's because OGRE IS a rendering engine. I don't understand your logic here.

Erm... I mean scene manager.

. . . everyone has their own ideas about how a client should be developed and designed, so you will always see individual projects. Don't forget that writing an MMPOG client is NOT easy and is 5 trillion times harder than most people think.

Those are exactly the problems I was hoping to address. I wasn't aware of the Worldforge project. The Dime client's project goals are similar to my idea, but they haven't posted any news for over eight months. Sear is their most mature client, but it's butt-ugly 'cause it doesn't use OGRE.

[Aglanor]

Hi there, I'm current Dime maintainer.

Well, Dime is not dead at all, though at this moment I'm the only developer left and thus improvements come at snail pace. This might change in the near future, and if people interested in an Ogre MMORPG client would like to help it'd be very welcomed also.

Some needed clarifications on Worldforge:

- though we've been around for ages, it's for a reason. Ours is no easy task, but it works now. Dime is behind schedule, right, but Cyphesis server and Sear client are already functional. They were shown at LinuxTag this year with praises from the visitors.

- Sear is a very nice client, it looks really good, as you can see here . It has an nice terrain engine, sky, etc.

Dime and Sear just have two different philosopies. Sear's author (Simon Goodall) wanted to create his own client from scratch, which allows him for more flexibilty, for intance in using cal3d and many custom tweaks. We Dime authors were aiming for lib reusage instead, but under the hood the two are more similar than it would seem, and we usually borrow code and ideas from Sear when adding functionality, so the development of the two are not unrelated.

Aglanor