Unreal MMOFPS mod, anyone?

[NoodleMeister]

Me and a friend were talking about MMOFPS, and him being a coder we hit on the idea of making our own. Since UT2004 is apparently easy to mod and has good enough graphics, this is our game of choice.

Ok, so we want to start this thing as soon as possible so I'm here looking for talented, hell I'll settle for competent, individuals or whatever willing to work on this thing. We'll need coders, animators, texture/model artists, mappers, sound guys and everything else I'm sure I've missed.

The game would be set around 2100-2300 sort of timescale and by massively multiplayer I mean 64 players max until we can get the bandwidth needed for the huge worlds that MMORPGs have.

What we're aiming for is a kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, were clans of players roam around blasting chunks out of each other for money and plunder. There would be shops for weapons/armour/items, and a persistent system that would let you log on to any server and pick up where you left off.

Thats all I've got for now, but if anyone wants in then just post some form of contact information below. I know a project like this would take a while, but it would be one hell of a mod when its finished.

 

[Kyllian]

I dunno if 64 player unreal is a good idea
I haven't found many servers that can handle 32 without some hiccups

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Sigh, no ever thinks about how difficult it is to make about making anything MMO.

First you've got to deal with server allocation. How are you going to do that? How are you going to afford to handle MMO proportions? 64 players IS NOT MMO at all.

Second is security. Any form of security takes up bandwidth. This your going to need to spend more effort in making sure that security is good and does not use much bandwidth. This is almost impossible within Unrealscript since your confined to what available native code you have. If you had access to native code then you probably wouldn't even be in here asking about all the job positions.

Think more about making the technical aspects of an MMO, rather than thinking about ... "I maek MMO!". This kind of topic has come up before, but people rarely think about the technical issues ... hardly at all.

And second... you post mentions pretty much all the positions available for a mod team. What do you and your friend actually do in this project? Design? Only? ...

 

[NoodleMeister]

I design, but I'll be doing things such as 2D art like the HUD and icons etc. He can code but needs to get his head round UnrealScript before we start. Besides, for something this big we'll need more than one of everything.

64 players might be a bit ambitious, but its the best-case scenario. MMO-capacity servers are out of the question for now, so we'll make do with a 32.

I'm trying to wrtite some form of design document, but its difficult having no template to go by. I have the sinking feeling that it'll just end up as a idea-dump for the next week or so.

 

[Fony]

I cna help you out with your design doc - PM me for my MSN/AIM

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

64 players isn't ambitious. MMO proportioned games are ambitious, even for a huge company like Sony, Blizzard etc (Look at the amount of money, time and effort they have spent on their MMO products). I'm not saying MMO is impossible, but what I am saying is that it doesn't appear that you've thought about the limitations of the Unreal Engine (in terms of what you can do with it, without a license) and issues that do arise when you are talking about a MMO type game.

 

[SoundFX]

Here is a design document template I looked at. It is pretty in-depth, but you could use it to start yours. I dont remember what site I found it on and I did not make this if that wasnt already implied.