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Anyone ever try any of these three engines. I totally forgot about them till the other day when i got pissed at unity and started looking at some of my old links for 3d engines. They all have MMO support. Just wondering what you guys think of them?

I know nothing about World Forge, and little about Plane Shift (except a few members have checked it out and I never saw them sticking with it). However, through my time in this community and one other indie MMO dev site, I have known several people who tackled Ryzom. It basically has 2 problems. First, it is extremely difficult to use. Documentation, at least in the last couple of years, has been spare to almost none. On top of that, it was never made for public use. It is a very hard-core, professional engine where ease-of-use didn't just take a back seat to the production of Ryzom; it was sat waaaay in the back of a super stretch limo lol. That is just the way AAA engines are typically made. They have in-office code conventions and whiteboards and UML files filled to the brim with the design documentation that helps you understand how it works, and last I heard, you get none of that with the open source release, basically meaning you are stumbling blind through a mine field. You must have excellent C++ game programming skills if you hope to make any successful source code edits, you have to have an intimate understanding of network programming, and you must be willing to spend tons of time fiddling with the server just to get the default download package to actually connect (a very skilled coder a year back spent a couple of weeks just trying to make it connect).

Second, it was released under a very poor open source license for a software package such as this. I support open source software initiatives, but the license it was released under requires you to make all code edits to both the client and server available to anyone who requests them if you want to actually run a server. That is not wise, because you are giving the most valuable hacking and exploiting tool available (the server source) to people who could potentially bring your game to its knees. I would imagine it would take about 2 hours for some one to request it once they find out your game is Ryzom and find that license. You just can't hope to both run a successful, safe MMORPG while being under a requirement to give all of the server source code. The developers of Ryzom kept much of their own personal code locked up tightly that keep their own game safe, but they do not allow you to do the same. I guess sometimes you do get what you pay for, so I can't really complain

Yea i haven't really read the lisence for Ryzom. I guess I should before i attempt to even compile it lol. I did some more digging fof world forge. They use purtageuse (yes i killed that word) database which i don't know any host that supports it other than Linux hosts and I'm running a windows vps ^_^. Plane Shift seems decent. I' just got all the sources ready and now I'm going to compile them to see what its like. Then go from there.

Wow. So was the ryzom code release simply for gaining publicity?

I guess they released art assets as well, didn't they?

They did. Only problem I see is the lack of decent editors. I've been able to find some decent tutorials on how to add things into the game but it seems like a itch with a capital b in front of it to learn and use.

I have used all three. Stay away. the tech is old and are very difficult to use.

The people behind World Forged moved on to the unsuccessful Visual3d.net

Ohh dear. After looking at the World Forge website, it looks like the only 2 server projects under current development are one that "foregoes connected player count" in favor of "complex NPC interaction" and the other is a media server for streaming assets. So really, neither is an MMO server. The first is an experimental server, and the second is an auxiliary server that would just back-up a real game server. So basically it sounds like they don't have any viable game server in steady development.

hallsofvallhalla wrote:I have used all three. Stay away. the tech is old and are very difficult to use.

The people behind World Forged moved on to the unsuccessful Visual3d.net

Damn and here i wanted to use something other than Unity 3d to help cut back on coding. Oh well back to unity i guess.

crzyone9584 wrote:

hallsofvallhalla wrote:I have used all three. Stay away. the tech is old and are very difficult to use.

The people behind World Forged moved on to the unsuccessful Visual3d.net

Damn and here i wanted to use something other than Unity 3d to help cut back on coding. Oh well back to unity i guess.

You could check out Big World Tech Indie. You still have to do a lot of coding, but it is set up for MMOs, which I would assume would put you ahead of the game compared to making an MMO in Unity, where you would have to make all of the MMO functionality from scratch.

I'm trying to stay away from Bigworld Indie and Hero cloud due to its a fan based game and i cant afford bigworld indie.... This is why I'm checking out a lot of no name engines. If anything I can keep the fighting style and some of the gameplay and just change the name of the game and have a completely re-done 3d design so i dont impeade on the IP.

Other than Hero Cloud and Big World Indie what do you guys suggest other than unity?