Realm Crafter

Posted By: Kinji_2008

Realm Crafter - 02/02/08 12:38

Anyone else here try it? Whats your IMO
Posted By: broozar

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/02/08 13:00

yeah, i was wondering the same some days ago. it's too cheap to be really true, but convince me that i'm wrong.
realm crafter 1 games look mostly awful, fut that can be caused by the bad artists as the target audience is for even more beginners than 3dgs. i'm waiting for realm crafter 2 (rebranded "professional"), which offers shader support etc.
in general dark/blitz basic games and their engines did not overwhelm me referring to rendering speed (>fps creator), i wonder what it looks like with hunderds of players.

there is a free alternative which i didn't try out, too: multiverse.
Posted By: fastlane69

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/02/08 22:26

Realmcrafter:
-created by a bunch of unknowns using the Blitz engine.
-Anywhere from 50 - 100 USD for license
-Can only make a MMORPG
-Been in development for about 4-5 years and still not fully released.
-AFAIK flat file system for it's database


Multiverse:
-Created by the people that made Netscape and ausing a Java backend
-100% Free to use while you don't charge; percentage when you do charge
-Can make any MMO
-Has been in development for ?? and somewhat fully released
-MySQL database.

You decide.
Posted By: Damocles

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/02/08 22:40

The question is what makes a better game.

And if Realcrafter is easier to use for a hobby programmer,
it will result in a better game than a MMO that is so complex that the user gives up
after a month.

I also suggest to make a MMO based on Java and 3dgs, wich it in my opinion the
smartest approach to MMO using acknex.
Posted By: Kinji_2008

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/03/08 01:23

I have been using RC for a few months. The MP part of it is awesome.. the terrain editor is cool, mega terrains is very cool. The language is like cuffs though. You are limited. I am hoping the next "big" release will fix that.
Posted By: fastlane69

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/03/08 01:27

Quote:

The question is what makes a better game.





Well that is subjective of course (define "better"), but when it comes to support, stability, and price, I think the answer is obvious. As well, MV has about 50+ projects on-going with it's engine and they provide some front end on their site to "advertise" your game. I have no idea how many projects are using RC but that is exactly my point: you don't know from their webpage.

Quote:

And if Realcrafter is easier to use for a hobby programmer,
it will result in a better game than a MMO that is so complex that the user gives up
after a month.




Considering that RC seems to only provide asset support for it's game and limited scripting support, the people will give up on RC games in a second once they realize that it's exactly the same as every other game with the exception of how it looks. In effect, RC is a MOD community while MV (since it has full source code) is a DEV community.

With RC you are stuck doing what the RC people determine you do. Complex or not. With MV, you can make the world/game as light or complex as you want.

But your point is taken... the learning curve for MV is higher but the rewards are richer. If I was starting a MMP project today, I might cut my teeth on RC and quickly move to MV once I was ready to do it for real.
Posted By: Nexus_1944

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/03/08 01:36

the new RC2 PRO is now in privat beta. rewriten in c++ and the enginecore is irrlicht. no more blitz the new engine have dx9, normal,parallaxmapping,softshadow, client/server and a lot more features. release is (i hope) in next weeks



Posted By: Damocles

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/03/08 13:23

I considder Realcrafter to be a pure Hobby Architecture.

But if the person making a MMO Game is also just a "small" hobby programmer,
this might be excacly what he wants. - To simply create a working gameworld
to express some ideas. Its not that most of the Hobby developers really want a big
MMO Game. They eventually swith to other sollutions later.

What counts is the fun and experience to get a MMO Game running at all.

Taking a "serious" start to MMO, it ist probably not the right sollution.

With a "better game", I mean that a running! game made with a "Maker" is better than a not running game
made with a complex Architecture.
Posted By: Paul_L_Ming

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/03/08 17:36

Hiya.

I've had RC for about a year now. I originally bought it because they said that RC2 was "just around the corner". Now that I've been involved in the PRIVATE forums (yeah, you have to buy the program before you can get access to the forums), I think that the developers of RC live on another planet, because there is obviously some sort of time-distortion going on. In their eyes "Soon, probably next week sometime" is a real-world equivalent of "Soon, probably in about 6 months". So, as long as you understand that their estimated times to get something released or fixed can (and almost always does) vary by a factor of 20, you won't go totally nuts.

On the engine side...RC1 is, uh, "limited and finicky". It's like the program has 'small print' for everything. What I mean is that it's tools interfaces are "non-standard" with odd and sometimes outright baffling hot keys. Normal windows standards would have one left click to select something, and right click to move or 'activate' whatever is currently selected. In most RC tools, you have to do a few things before anything works; so, you would have to switch to some sub-menu (say, "Models") if you want to place some item (lets say a model of a wood box). Then you have to right-click to place it in your scene. To move it into position, you have to open another sub-menu to activate 'move', right-click on it and drag. To rotate it a bit you have to open a different sub-menu and pick 'rotate', then right click on your model and rotate it. To move it again? Back to the sub-menu, choose 'move', right click and move. This is only one example, but the whole program and it's tools seems to have been created by different people from different languages with only minimal consulting between them. In short, it is VERY inconsistent.

Capability wise, it's got promise, I'll give it that! To potential for RC to be a DAMN fine product is waaaaay up there...if they could just figure out a clear production path and stick to it. The program allows for a fair amount of change, but you really have to know your programming to make serious changes. The tools, as mentioned, have a sort of "high-school quality" to them; they mostly do what they are supposed to, but the interfaces are NOT based on window API's and whatnot. They tend to use bitmaps for menus, buttons, etc. The whole look and feel gives it a very "unprofessional" feel to it, unfortunately.

File system. Oh god, don't get me started. The short version: expect to do a LOT of copy/pasting from on windows folder to another, then importing into the game editor (in the correct place, of course, or it doesn't work). Forget about importing your 9 trees with 18 textures in one go. You have to do each individually (that would be 27 individual imports). Oh, did I forget to mention that each time you import from a folder, the next time you go to import a file you have to start from square one? Basically, you have to click through your computers file structure to find the next file you want to import. That can be a LOT of clicking. Of course, this assumes RC1 keeps your partitions straight; usually it doesn't. That is, if you have something on "F:/" drive, the next time you click on up to what is listed as F, it might actually be "D:/" or any other of your partitions. The path remembering and partition stuff is, IIRC, fixed in the RC2 beta version...but it's beta, so it has a lot of other bugs.

Anyway, the bottom line:

"RC is a promising program. If and when Solstar gets what they promised out the door and as bug-free as they can get it, it will be a program to be reckoned with. Alas, right now, it's only real use is for general screwing around and playing with. Don't even think of actually producing a fully working, bug-free, game that can be called a MMORPG. If you want to buy it, buy it for two things: playing around with and 'getting in on the ground floor' of a potentially awesome game creation tool."

EDIT: Oh! I almost forgot something HUGELY important! Documentation. There is none. Well, that's not true..."Good Documentation", there is none. The documentation reads like a parrot. In other words, if you go to find out how the "Import" button works (what you can import, how your files need to be, etc.) you'll find something like this "Import: This imports a file." Worse is when you get to something that is specific to how the game system runs. Basically, it doesn't tell you how things work or anything; it just says "This Button: This button, not the other one".

Double Oh!. In RC2, the documentation is all online; so if you loose internet connection, you're SOL. If they loose connection, you're SOL. If they update their web page or server, and the link(s) get screwed...so are you. This is, IMHO, A *horrible* 'documentation' set up. That said, IIRC, they did say they were working on new documentation of a more 'standard and useful kind' for the gold release of RC2 (now "RC Pro").
Posted By: broozar

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/03/08 18:13

thanks paul for your very detailled report, great you took the time to write that down here. it's all i wanted to know. so i will have a peek from time to time, see if it has improved and then in maybe 20 years... who knows
Posted By: Gumby22don

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/06/08 04:35

I agree with Paul - bought it a year ago when they said source code version was just around the corner. Importantly, you can now use source code for version 1 projects, but again, badly built, and you then need to work in blitz.

I had fun playing with it for a small competition last year, but the tools reaaaaally irked me with their bugs. I'll keep checking in on it over the years, but I'd work with 3dgs for anything you can afford the time to build your own system in.

Don
have a great day
Posted By: bomber

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/06/08 08:21

I bought Realmcrafter ages ago, one of the worst this about it is the editors don't have a windows interface, they don't suport my intel video card and that games made with it are huge it's hard to keep it under 400mb
Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/06/08 14:03

Quote:

In RC2, the documentation is all online; so if you loose internet connection, you're SOL. If they loose connection, you're SOL. If they update their web page or server, and the link(s) get screwed...so are you. This is, IMHO, A *horrible* 'documentation' set up.




Not if you get a downloadable version of the documentation too once every few big updates and get the most up to date and accurate version online. Off course, if it's only like "this button = this is this button, not that one" then it's useless anyways...

Cheers
Posted By: Paul_L_Ming

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/12/08 19:07

Hiya.


Quote:

Quote:

In RC2, the documentation is all online; so if you loose internet connection, you're SOL. If they loose connection, you're SOL. If they update their web page or server, and the link(s) get screwed...so are you. This is, IMHO, A *horrible* 'documentation' set up.




Not if you get a downloadable version of the documentation too once every few big updates and get the most up to date and accurate version online. Off course, if it's only like "this button = this is this button, not that one" then it's useless anyways...

Cheers




As far as I can tell...nope. I am talking about the RC2 right now; RC1 does have, uh, "documentation", but as I said, it's not well written at all. At most it has absolute bare-basic info...but none of the stuff someone who is creating an asset might need to know (like texture formats, model formats, bone limitations, sound formats you can use, etc.). All very generic in description. Kinda like "You can add your own models to the project by simply importing them". Sounds easy enough...but what formats? Can they have open faces? Can an object be made up of sub-objects? Do I just hit "import", or do I have to do other stuff? Etc...

Probably the single biggest update I'm looking forward to in RC2 is the documentation.
Posted By: Kinji_2008

Re: Realm Crafter - 02/22/08 01:44

With 3dgs you pay to upgrade. Smart move. RC2 is free for those using standard correct? I would assume this is why they are not in a hurry to get past beta.
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