Lets go down the issues
** Thanks to all the users who told me to respond to this message **
Classes are no problems. Classes are no more then skills, and arrays being defined against tables that due certain tasks. Link this to the correct model and wala a class is formed. It is not that hard. Many people can tell you here how flexible A4 is. Something that I do believe is a true asset in a RPG environment.
We started he Unknown on 3.x and changed over to 4.x for multi-player purposes. We are currently using our own development code but we have been told by the time A5 comes out our code will not be needed. We been n close contact with JCl, and are starting to actually see some of our coding idea’s come up in A4. The first one is file instruction.
Right now even with our special module, we can have up to 1500 people connect to one game server. We have tried more and we have a noticeable lag. We are working on isolating the lag problem, and we are re-defining our packets. We have also have done it with world servers, where zones are on different servers simulating 1000’s of people online. A4 handled it.
Now to be honest it was not all 100% easy. But support was never an issue, no matter how crazy the question was or how stupid it might have been JCl always gave us an answer. There has bene times when I have email him 10-15 times a day, I know he probably deleted some of them <hhehehe> but for the most part he has answered it.
It is not going to be easy to code it with the existing version of A4, but with the changes that are starting to be implemented and are coming I do feel it is 1000 times easier now then it was when we first started. We have gone back and implemented array’s now saving us 1000’s of line of code and actually speeding up the process. We are now removing save and load features for shops inventory with the new file instruction that is on the way and so on. Overall I can say it can be done. But it does take time.
I cannot tell you it going to take you 6 months if you buy A4 to produce a RPG world. And to be honest none of the other companies can tell you 6 months and you can go. It depends on the experience of the people you have working with you and the knowledge of the system.
But before you go jump for that 250,000 bill, you might want to look at a few things:
- Customer commitment
On this forum you will never see us say it is a stupid question or not worth answering. We help even the most novice user.
- Price
Price does not always mean better. Even with the best engine in the world, if you lack the talent to program it and do something with it mise well be a toaster oven
- Expandable
You better look at the features, A4 continues to expand it features month after month with updates. Features keep coming, and features can be added if need by JCl and the Crew
Now about RPG worlds, if you think you can produce one in 6 month’s good luck. Even AC, EQ, Middle Earth, HQ took at least 2 years to develop and extensive testing. Maybe an alpha test in 6 months but in a small scale way could be possible beta your going to need one hell of a crew or some coding designed into the engine or an engine that has it already done.
Right now, we have nearly 35 classes in the Unknown, 135 skills, over 300+ different model monsters, over 1500 other models with animation frames ranging from 100-3500 frames. We use 3ds max, to create our models, and use 3ds max to export our levels, with custom tools. We have nearly 5700 textures, and nearly 534,789 lines of WDL coding. We also have 16 visual C+ libraries to help us multi-player. So overall A4 will do it, but it takes the time to do it.
Hardware is key to how many people will fit on a server but you need to take another look. Size of packet also. I can lag the best server in the world with 10 people if my packet is large. Keep the packet small server specs high you will have no problems.
Oh and I have to agree with Srotcho the A4 users now have it made. I will tell you what I have told many of them now. Buy A4 now, get your levels done get your code down, get those NPC a moving because once A5 comes all you need to do is input your multi-player code and be done. So even though it very hard with A4 now, and we are doing alpha test with A4 code, we know when A5 comes the Unknown will be done as a huge multi-player game. A5 is slated for December or January release. The Unknown is not slated for public testing until then, more to see if we can eliminate our libraries and to insured when we do release that everyone knows Conitec’s WDL language was used.
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Lead Developer
Unknown Quest for the Golden Dragon
[This message has been edited by Kevin Ross (edited 24 August 2000).]
