Newcomer, old dreams

[Nihilant]

Hell o everyone, got introduced to this forum/site by Verahta, pursuing the same dream as he: to build a mmo game

Basicly, my profession is nowhere near programing, unless it's on some godforsaken philosophical level (structures, languages etc.) However, I'm working in flash/actionscript3 for about 6 months so far, made some games with it, having loads of fun. Recently started learning about flash/php/sql integration, and slooooooowly working on the details/engine of the supposedly great mmo (aren't we all, eh? ) Some 10+ years of making amateurish board games too. Might come in handy.

Thus, I'm here to learn learn and learn (and learn some more) and share the experience and offer help if needed.

[from Verahta's introduction thread] (...)Not to downplay on any of the artists we have here, because we have some skilled people, but if programmers are sausage and artists are non-sausage, we are definitely the definition of a sausage-fest over here lol.

I'm also non-sausage Pretty skilled in Photoshop and quite handy with, well, hands... drawing and designing etc. as well as music composing/playing/arranging (exactly why I turned to flash instead of some other work frames).

Well, that's about me, will be seeing you around

[SpiritWebb]

Welcome, glad to have you...

[62896dude]

Welcome!

[Jackolantern]

Welcome! Good to have another artist as well Pixel art and 2D animation are huge things for most 2D games. Photoshop is quite capable of solid pixel art, and it will serve you well if you work on art assets on a game!

Have you taken a look at the Flash MMO engines already out there? If you want to make an MMO in Flash, an engine is definitely the place to start, even if you have to make tons of adjustments and custom scripts. You could check out OpenSpace and Smart Fox Server, both of which have limited (but not limited time) free versions so you can develop with it and see if it is what you are wanting before you buy licenses. I think it is max 20x connections and a very limited world space, but it is more than enough to see what you think about it!

[Nihilant]

Hi Jackolantern, thanks for the links/suggestion, will check them asap and browse a bit.

[Liquid Shock Games]

I definitely like SmartFoxServer for the socket server. works on just about any OS (some flavors of Linux have a few bugs) and has a nice admin panel. You can use Action script 2.0, 3.0, Unity, .net, Java, and just about all the phone OS's. It comes with a built in web server and database or you can use Apache and MySQL (I had a few problems with Apache and it not liking to play nice but I just switched to their build in web server which is based on Jetty and MySQL database server which they recommend over their built in H2). The pro version will allow up to 20 concurrent connections for free and the 2X version will allow for up to 100. Depending on what you plan to use it for the pro may be better because for an unlimited license it is cheaper but in the beginning you only get 20 concurrent connections.

They both have a great admin panel that allow you to monitor the server as well as monitor users logged in, control your zones and rooms, view the logs for everything (from chat to what the user has done and how they have interacted with other users and the world), and manage your user bans right from the admin panel. You can also set your server config file from there which is pretty straight forward and has a ton of configurations available.

It is also scalable and will automatically handle clustering if you ever need to add more servers.

The best part is it has tons of plugins that will allow you to run just about any API so you can write your game with any engine or language that they support which is quite a few.

I have used it with both Action script and Unity and love it.

[Xaleph]

Welcome to the forums!

[Chris]

Hi, welcome!

[hallsofvallhalla]

say welcome enough Chris! My god what did you do run a script!

[Chris]

Nah, just felt that everyone needed a nice warm welcome.