Hello,

I recently joined the forum and it looks quite good / interesting. I've been working on a project for nearly 2 years now and thought I'd post the details. It is of course an MMORPG concept, although it will not be fantasy based, however it is intended that it will provide a rich and diverse game experience for play for a few months to a couple of years.

If you are interested here is a link to the website http://www.dawn-world.com, and I've linked to some of my favourite screen shots (at the moment) below. I'd be interested in any positive feedback anyone has to offer

Tech specs are: PC / VB.net / Truevision3D 6.5 Graphics Engine/ 8km * 8km landscape / 1600 far field billboard large Trees / 3200 near field Bushes / 2500 grass billboards / building approx 300 - 500 polys / actors / NPC 1800 polys / Galleon 3200 polys, currently Stencil shadows (planned projected shader shadows for better performance) and bump mapped assets have been tested for future inclusion.

FPS: 225- 110 on Pentium Dual Core 2GHz / 1Gb Ram / nVidia 8500GT 512 MB Ram / XP @ 1400*900*32 full screen (1st number bottom left is the fps on the images)

Look forward to hearing back.

Seems pretty cool. What are you using to make the game?

Wow, quite impressive that .NET is pumping out those specs. It looks cool, but it does look quite like a fantasy-themed game, although you said it is not. Keep in mind that my definition of "fantasy" does not mean "Tolkien clone", but rather, I define it as more of a fictional time period. If a game has no technology (or only rudimentary, such as in WoW), and has kind of a medieval feel to it, I usually consider it fantasy. Can you give some more background on the theme?

very nice

Hi,

platesmasher
I'm using VB net and the Truevision 3D Graphics Engine. Basically VB Net 'Wraps' around the TV3D Engine, and TV3D calls DirectX. TV3D handles the GPU congif / calls and takes out a lot of the 3D work load out of the equation. It handles stuff like terrain loading / texturing, model loading & positioning, animations, applying shaders to meshes, physics, and shadowing (not so easy if you want soft shadows). You initialise it and call the functions and control behaviour in your code. It's ideal for me as it takes the workload out of writing an animation function for example, but still allows petty much full flexibility in DX calls. you do have to know quite a bit about how DX works and programming to get advanced graphics / function out of it (due to lack of documentation), but the function calls are self explanatory and there is a lot of info on the forums. ther is also an increasing selection of tutorial and samples that you can get some good results from.

jackolantern
Thanks indeed, it's really the TV3D graphics engine which should take the credit for the fps, although you do have to optimise and structure the vb net code / models and textures to keep the fps up. It does mean though that there is plenty of room for improvements like bloom / sun rays and the capacity for many players all in one place on the map without the fps taking a major dive.

I like your analysis, I never thought of it that way, and in fact you might be closer to the mark. My definition of fantasy has come from seeing games such as World of Warcraft or Oblivion where there is a specific element that could not exist in actual life, such as mythical beasts, slaying something and powering up only on the victory, magical potions / spells or the throwing of fireballs (although we have worked out a way this is feasible in real life and may include it!). I see your point though and in that case it would fit into the fantasy genre. I guess I have an aversion to extreme fantasy

The theme evolved from a few concepts, I originally thought of making a game where you could experiment and live out an alternative but realistically achievable life, and take this experience into the real world. I soon realised this concept had been covered to some degree in a then emerging game. I still wanted a game which would be player driven and reflected some important aspects of life, but was enjoyable to play, so MMORPG was the way to go. I also wanted the game to grow as time went on, so starting it in a pre-industrial era seemed right. For diversity and interest I thought the game should be open ended, as non restrictive as possible and definitely not linear, hence the variety of styles it can be played in. You could even work your way up the ranks and become world (as in map) ruler if you wanted the power (responsibility). I always like the look of Age of Empires when it came out, hence the look and feel of the game, times of old and honour (and they don't make nostalgia like they used to!). (Please let me know if this and the info on the web site doesn't fully convey the theme properly).

Also to add some extra interest and realism, the map is of a real place / country and there are 5 more real place maps planned once the game is up and running.

wow vb.net and tv3d, very nice man.

Thanks, always appreciated.

I have to say wise / good move with your choice to move to web browser with Forsaken Sanctum. I can certainly agree with you about developing a 3D game with just a couple of people, it can be a nightmare. It's definitely better to preserve the concept /game play of a good idea than continue to try to get blood out of a 3D stone and loose time and enthusiasm on the process. It was particularly difficult for me to abandon my 3D engine and move to 3rd party one, but the game concept was more important. I wish you all the best in the dev of your project and look forward to seeing the results in time

hey wow thanks. Its slowly moving on back and forth, I am trying 3d again but the 2d project is still very active.


I had read into VB.Net and TV3d a while back and was very interested. I was scared though of performance. How is the performance? It obviously looks great but just curious how the rest went.

No problem, I meant to add that perhaps when the browser game has enough of a following, you might have the resources to make it 3D (an income and plenty of time )

Well, for TV3D, I can say the performance remains the best I've seen so far. I originally went for TV3D as after some tests it kept a very high frame rate with multiple animated characters. You can duplicate actor entities and modify the attributes to modify the textures or animation frame sequences for example. The developers original concept was to make the most highly optimised graphics engine for general availability, and I think they're holding true to this.

In my project I'm not using any post processing currently (HDR / shadow softening) but this is all controlled by shaders and you could control the impact on the fps in the shader code. Also my landscape resolution is low as the map doesn't call for drastic height changes, but TV3D also has terrain LOD handling. I actually ported my terrain code into TV3D and tested for multiple animations in 1 day, and when i saw the fps I was convinced.

As a programmer I find it easy to use, but this may be down to my engine writing experience. As I'm making a full blown game, there were a couple of difficult stages, but this was resolved with some research and patience. The support forum won't be what some expect, it's really for bug reports, which are actively addressed. Other help is down to the community, but if you search the samples / wiki / forum, you will find the answer. The main thing to bear in mind is that TV3D is a graphics / 3D engine, not a game engine, although it does have and keyboard/mouse module for ease of use. You have to program the game loop, event handling and any required scene / world management yourself. So it's not point and click in that sense, but a lot of the donkey work is taken out of the game development process, leaving you pretty much full flexibility. I would say the best way to look at it is, it's a highly optimised graphics engine made by 3D programmers for 3D / game programmers. If you have a good grasp of 3D concepts / game structure and good programming skills, you can achieve very good results.

Thanks for the run down on TV3D. I have looked at it several times and even tried it once. I am glad to see a MMO coming from it.

Please keep us posted on updates and the more screens the better When you get to the point I would love to be a tester.

Impressive stuff

Thanks for all the interest and encouragement so far. I'll post details of the alpha test when ready for anyone who is interested

We are always interested in alphas!

Hi Guys,

I thought I'd update this thread with the latest news. A lot has happened with the game recently, Progress was delayed due to some contract work which grew from 2 months to 8 months worth, hence the unfortunate delay. However the 1st alpha is up and running and I'd appreciate your feedback. I've posted in the 'Players wanted forum' and here's a link, so I don't spam

cheers and I hope everyone is well.