At 9:11 AM -0800 12/8/05, Gerald Bailey wrote:
I was thinking of using RB as my development tool to design a new
MMORPG because:
a) I wanted to release the game on multiple platforms at the same time
b) I'm thinking the game could be created faster
c) A few other people seem to think it would do the job for me.
These are all true, at least to some extent. However, making a large
game (like most MMORPGs) is a *huge* job, and not even REALbasic can
make it a small one. Things like optimizing your code and level
designs for the sort of performance seen in commercial games takes
hundreds (or thousands) of man-hours, regardless of what you're
writing the code in. I'm only saying this to make sure you have
realistic expectations, and can plan accordingly.
You ask "Do you want to make something the level of WOW?" My answer
is a definite YES!
I can't seem to find any hard figures for this particular game,
however most commercial games of this scale cost between 10 and 20
million dollars to develop (and take several years). Be prepared for
that sort of investment, or else scale back your ambitions to
something that DOES fit within your budget.
Can you not switch to full screen mode in RB?
Sure you can.
Does RB always need an MDI Window?
No.
I thought that I might be able to use some sort of 3D Engine to make the
game's graphics look great and run fast?
Sure, with a lot of work. There's a built-in 3D engine, though it
currently renders with OpenGL, which doesn't always have hardware
drivers installed on Windows machines; when the right drivers are
installed, though, it works pretty well. And with a small fraction
of your $10M budget, you could hire somebody (I nominate Frank
Condello!) to write a Direc3D renderer for Quesa, and then with the
same models and code base, have your game run under D3D on Windows
and OpenGL on Mac and Linux.
There are also a number of direct-to-OpenGL plugins and code modules
for REALbasic floating about, though of course those pretty well lock
you into OpenGL on all platforms. But they generally offer more
low-level control, which can sometimes get you more performance --
but does NOT save you from having to do the things all
high-performance games do, like culling your scenes and taking
various shortcuts.
Best,
- Joe
--
Joe Strout REAL Software, Inc.
Vote for REALbasic (twice!) in the LinuxWorld Reader's Choice Awards:
http://linux.sys-con.com/general/readerschoice.htm
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
|