Hi everyone, new to the forums and game development in general.

And I'm gonna start with the age old, “I want to develop an MMORPG!". I'm aware it's an incredible undertaking. No I'm not trying to build a AAA game that's on par with FF14 or WoW. I just want to learn as much as I can about server and client side development, I'm not even concerned with actually launching the game to the general public. Hell, if I can get it to the point of having a minimum viable product to alpha on some forums and Discords and possibly gather up funds/a team of devs to actually expand upon and polish the game, I'd be surprised. Again, I know that's a large bite to take as someone who has never coded or developed even a single player game. Runescape Classic was developed from total scratch by 3 brothers, then gained financial and development aid. That's the trajectory I'd like to take, if it even takes off at all. But I'd still like to learn regardless, as much as I can about every aspect of development as I can. Besides art, I'm a terrible artist. I might be able to do animation, but we'll see about that.

Which is why I'm here. No idea where to begin. I have Unity and Unreal Engine installed, I've been toying around on both for a few weeks. Starting to look into tutorials. I could go with a framework and throw store bought/free assets at it, but I don't feel like I'd be learning much from that besides how to buy a game in Lego form. I could try to develop my own framework, but at what point does it become a “to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe” kind of deal? Maybe go with a framework, and edit the framework itself as I go? It may help me to learn, from a reverse engineering standpoint.

Basically, I want to learn, but I also want to have a playable game ASAP for morale purposes and because I learn better by doing rather than watching a tutorial and following along.

I don't want my game to be crap that's thrown together by a mediocre dev, or to be a mediocre dev. But there's also so many facets and nuances, I don't know where to start. Or how to start.

Any advice is appreciated, besides “don't start with an MMO”. I know it's a bad idea, I'm hard headed. That's the kind of game I want to make. I'd rather spend an extra year or2 learning and failing to create an MMO than dump a single player game on some app store somewhere to make money off of.

Not a troll, I'm being serious.

DailyGaming said:
to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe

Ahh no, thats like you need to solder your own hardware before writing even a single line of code ?

You already have everything, the universe, all the atoms and gravity up to an oven (Visual Studio for example). All you need now is just a reciepe or an idea and some ingredients.

It is good to get into knowing things from scracth in my opinion, it helps transpiling that knowledge to other areas of game development but depends on how far you want to go and how quick you need your results.

You can start with SDL2 (C++) or OpenTK (C#) as well as RakNet (C++) or another client server library if you like using cake mix or just go for the bare metal and write everything from scratch as well

@Shaarigan thank you! This is the kind of reply I was looking for 8).

Making a game is an undertaking of passion. With zero experience, you will not be able to get it done quickly. With a team of just yourself, it will not be quick, either. You are looking at a learning experience which will take years in itself and a game developing experience which will also take years. If you are an expert programmer with a background in game technologies, you would be looking at a few years minimum. Good Luck.

DailyGaming said:
I know it's a bad idea

No you don't.

You just said you are completely new to game development. So,

You don't know how hard it is to make games.

You don't know how much harder it is to make multiplayer games compared to single player games.

And you don't know how much even harder it is to make an MMO compared to a multiplayer game.

And yet, you want to start "from the top", and you expect that nobody tells you that this is a bad idea. I don't think so ? There are reasons why this is a bad idea that you don't even know exist.

Let me give you a colorful analogy to put this into perspective: imagine you are into construction, and you say “hi, i want to go into construction. I am just starting, I never built a house, or even a bike shed, but I am willing to learn. The first thing I want to build is a skyscraper… on the Moon. I know it's a bad idea, don't tell me that, instead, give me tutorials on how to ship building materials to space.” Would you expect to get any response other than “this is insane, don't even think about starting like that”? ?

Now, don't get me wrong. If you want to to learn to make games, that's great. If you want to learn to make multiplayer games, that's also great. There is a lot of stuff available that you can use to skip the “have to learn everything from scratch” phase. It's just that beginners always underestimate how much of a jump in complexity there is between mulitplayer games and “massive multiplayer games”. They do that so much that it's a meme at this point, that's where the “troll post” comment came from.

I think the original WOW was like fifty to seventy million to make, think about it

Yeah, don't start with an MMO.

Put yourself through a year of training first. Break the MMO down into different bits any make mini games which just comprise of those bits. For example:

• Make a two-player multiplayer game with the simplest mechanics you can imagine (think pong simple, or just two players running around a map doing nothing)
• Make a character progression system. Use excel, or Twine, or C# in a terminal. The point is to focus on the trees, and where points go, and what they do.
• Make an inventory UI. Or a UI for your skill tree.
• Make a simple combat system. Two players with a sword or gun.
• Make a simple combat system against an AI. 1 player and 1 npc.
• Make a non interactive town.
• Make a quest system. Speak to character and go to a place on map. Show a quest complete UI.
• Make a map. Clicking on a town teleports you to the town's position. Make a loading screen on the transition.
• Make a game design document for a very simple single player game. Now go and make the game.

You may find that for each mini-game, you can invest months and months of effort to make it playable. You may also find that there are many ways to build it, and that it's not clear which way is best.

Use frameworks where you can. They will teach you how to learn. A framework might look simple but probably isn't - learning how to use it might take a long time (but will save you a long time too).