Mirroring the post at XD.
Darron told me about this game months ago. I downloaded it, managed to get a login (I don’t read/speak French, although I dig the accent), and got on.
At that point, I almost went for a career change. Seriously, I have been trying to create games of that quality for the past 6 years, and I was just blown away at what these gents did in Flash. I always knew it could be done… just never did it to prove it.
Anyway, after playing for about an hour, it’s just like any MMORPG should be, which is great because it means you don’t need phat C++ & OpenGL skills to help satiate that market.
I played a few games that were similar to that long ago. I think they were Java based – and they were all out of Japan. They didn’t look quite that nice though.
On a side note, check your e-mail! (jesterxl@jessewarden.com)
you and me both man.
We could code it, just need to find the time and the art skillz.
-erik
Thanks for the link. I love the artwork. I’m not a big fan of MMORPGs but I like tactical RPGs so I’ll give it a try.
I played Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates earlier this year. It is java based and looks pretty good. It is a MMOPG (massively multiplayer online puzzle game)
which is great because it means you don’t need phat C++ & OpenGL skills to help satiate that market.
Not to flame, but as someone who knows Flash and is learning sockets programming, I can tell you that Flash doesn’t play a huge role in making a game like this. I would guess all of the game logic is programmed in a language like C++ or Java. The Flash part of the game doesn’t do much in comparison except send user input to the server and display the graphics– still easier than OpenGL or DirectDraw though.
So, if you would like to make something like this (I am playing around with a graphical chat room myself), your first step should be to pick up a book on network programming, either with Winsock/Berkely sockets (messy and archaic) or Java (close to AS2.0, preferred IMO).
Very nice game.
I wont say thank you for presenting the link though since you made me waste loads of time ;)
It’s of course hard to guess what solution they are using on the server side, but for sure the previous poster is right that very little of the programming is actually done in Flash.
But I have played around with for example ElectroServer, which is a socket server using AS syntax that should make an AS developer feel at home.
And Java is close enough to AS to make it possible for a flash developer with a bit of skill and patience to manage to get something similar to this together.
So i do get the same feeling as jesse when looking at this game that it is something I as a Flash developer could manage.
I woudn’t have a clue where to start to make the client app with C++ though.
I don’t know much about this stuff but I can tell that the graphics aren’t just being sent to the client from a server. If you download the game as a zip file (for extracting and running on any os with flash) you’ll see there are thousands of swf files that can be viewed. There are couple files in a modules folder that probably contain the client logic.
I doubt there is much logic on the client side really.
To make a solid mulitiuser app to work well you have to minimize client-side logic.
The app should really reside on the server.
With dofus I noticed that when my crappy ADSL hangs I can’t do anything. The whole game just hangs and I can’t move or even select a weapon because any action I take will have to be processed on the server before it results in an update in the client.
I didn’t quantify the amount of client logic so I don’t know exactly what you are arguing about.
Dofus is now a free flash-based MMORPG but it lacks the lifetime features of your character. For instance if you would like to venture out of the two lands Incarnum and Astrub you have to pay a monthly subscription. Now i see that as a limited free MMORPG because your characters can only go to two towns and when you reach lev 16-19 you are no longer permitted to go to Incarnum so your left with 1 town that you can venture through because you get a big RED SIGN saying ‘learn more about subscriber advantages’ Once you leave astrub you can’t fight monsters, talk to NPC’s or even interact with other players outside of this town. I had fun playing but if im only permitted to 1 town now then this game lost my business.