ORK + Makinom + UNET = MMORPG

Zhenit

Hello guys, I am very inclined to buy ORK and Makinom, but first I would like to know:

Does Makinom have full UNET support?
Using Makinom's UNET capability is it possible to turn an ORK-developed game into an MMORPG?

wtyson

@Zhenit Its probably possible. But i would not recommend doing 3 huge frameworks at the same time for a multiplayer game not with unity. the overhead would be to much. Now lets say you where to take just ork and unet or just makinom and unet then the over head wouldnt be so much. But as some one who is a game developer for a living and knows both unet, old unity networking and photon. i would not mix ork, makinom and unet together. if u go with just ork you will need to write work around scripts in order to do quite a few things with out needing to touch ork code. other wise u will have to adjust orks code. if u go with makinom u dont need to adjust any code and can do it all from with in makinom. Things u need to know about networking.

1: careful with how many things you have animating at the same time. if not using a dedicated server. 2: make your own culling system. the built in one for unity sucks. 3: use lod's 4: use bytes for every thing that u can. (including bools, vectors and so on) this is crucial to so that you dont over load the network while sending information. 5: keep as much as you can off update.Use delegate's when ever u can. this will help keep things off update an only do things on change. 6: always test on different systems builds. run the game on the lowest preforming computer u can get ur hands on . (suggest laptops for this. due to the mobile cards running lower end gpu's or lowend phones based on what platform you are shooting for )

all in all just remember unity is not very well optimized. which means u have to do alot of leg work to get things running smoothly. use the built in profiler while debugging sometimes lag is caused by graphics more then code. try to keep tris counts on models as low as possible with out losing to much quality. suggest around 20k to 30k for npcs 10 to 20k for buildings and such and up to 50k for the main characters for unity.. this is due to unity not being optimized at all. the graphics engine needs alot more work...

thats all i can think of atm so for now good luck online games are a pain in the ass but if u work at it u can make some thing good. also remember with networking u will always need to know a bit of c# in order to do certain things.

gamingislove

@Zhenit Sorry for not yet answering your email :) I don't think this would be possible, at least not without creating a huge overhead to synchronize all stats of a combatant from ORK over Makinom (you'd have to constantly store/load them using variables). It would be easier with just using ORK and writing custom code to do the job.

Also, I'm not sure if UNet is even up for an MMO task yet.

Zhenit

Thanks for the friendly comments, my idea is an MMO mobile, low poly. I would use Makinom only in the UNET part to facilitate the code, but I can leave out. In the Store has the uMMO system, promises UNET integration only by plugins and a dedicated server. Somebody knows? Would the use of this system be as problematic as Makinom?

@gamingislove No need to apologize, I think it is very busy, so I decided to post the question here. I just have to thank for this fantastic system. ORK is wonderful!

I have some more doubts: Would using Photon be better than UNET? How would you do to save the information of clients in a database? (I do not refer here to the use of the database, this I know)

dlevel

After my research on this, UE4 is better for MMORPGs.... Give it a try it's free.

wtyson

@Zhenit photon is no good its mainly for co-op play or single instance areas's unless you good at loading and unloading levels. but the work arounds with photon are rough some times. and the support sucks. Unet can handle a mmo. but like @dlevel said ue4 is better for a mmo environment. since the networking part is done very well. issue you will have with this is that you will need to know c++ to do some things(also learning unity c# will help you big time in learning blueprint ). But that goes for all engines u will need to know their base language in order to do much of anything. cryengine is also good for mmo's and used quite often for it. but u need to know either c# or c++ to do anything good with it. they have a node type system as well but its not really optimized well.

Zhenit

@dlevel @wtyson

Yes, I agree that UE4 is better in Unity in many, many ways, but what Unity has the strongest is not the engine, it's the community, the Asset Store has everything, and I'm not just talking about 3D models. For example, my project is an MMO based in Geo-Location, in the Asset Store I found the Go Map, perfect for my intention. I did a search for "GPS" in the CRY Marketplace and the UE, and it does not return anything, I did some questions about it in the official forums of both and the indication was the same, "There is no outline of this." I'm not afraid to code, but I'm only on my project, what I can use to help me I'll use. We are even here in a forum that exists for an Asset Unity, ORK only exists for Unity, as well as much of everything in the Asset Store. So I'll stay here and do what I can with the tools and knowledge I have. I also count on your help.

Very grateful to all, their indications are being very important and relevant to my decisions.

I would like to know who has more knowledge of the ORK code, how do they think of a way to save the information from save game in database. I'm still using the demo version to familiarize myself with the tool and then purchase it. Also I should buy Makinom independently of using it in this project, I found the workflow should be better than PlayMaker and GameFlow.

gamingislove

ORK's save game is just an XML formatted string saved into a file - so it's pretty easy to change the code and save it into a database instead. The class responsible for this is the SaveGameHandler.

Zhenit

Wow! I was happiest now!

Zhenit

Well, I finished a good part of the tutorial game, ORK's ability impressed me a lot, but I realized how much work I have to make the modifications I want. So I started Makinom tutorials and I need your opinion:

Is it possible to create a MMORPG with Makinom and its UNET functionality?
Can I use third-party assets such as Inventory Pro, NGUI, Dialogue System, ..., along with Makinom?
How to use databases with Makinom?

@gamingislove Could you create a multiplayer game tutorial that has good complexity?

Thank you friends.

dlevel

Dialogue System has a nice built in integration with ORK already, Inventory Pro doesn't have that yet.

Keldryn

I'd say that Inventory Pro is fundamentally incompatible with ORK, unless you want to ignore ORK's inventory system entirely.

The only way that I can see the two working together is if you maintain two separate item databases and add a custom script to each Inv Pro item that associates it with an Item in the ORK database.

Keeping the parallel databases in sync would be a nightmare.

The time and effort it would take to build such an integration would be better spent creating a custom UI on top of ORK's inventory system. That's the primary advantage Inv Pro has over ORK's item system anyway.

dlevel

I have to agree with @Keldryn here, we all looking for that good looking inventory UI when we are speaking about Inventory "system", because the System is all the items handling etc. which is great in ORK.

As fas for Dialogue System integration works, you just need to put some LUA scripts inside the dialogues when you want to have itemadd or remove, or check deeds etc. and you have your items removed/added on your inventory easily.

Zhenit

@dlevel @Keldryn

Thanks for the explanations, but about getting a whole MMORPG using Makinom and its UNET capability? Does this same Inventary PRO issue also apply to Makinom? How to use database with Makinom?

dlevel

Never used Makinom, but i don't think it has the same inventory system as ORK. Also about the whole MMORPG thing, as i said before and after my personal research on the mater, and speaking with some studios they dropped Unity due to the network calls needed which were too high for unity.

So i cannot speak from personal experience just from my research.

Keldryn

Dialogue System does include a Makinom integration, I believe.

I don't believe that Makinom has any sort of inventory system built-in, so you'd have to roll your own or integrate with a third party system like Inv Pro. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to build some custom schematic nodes for Inv Pro by looking at its included Playmaker actions for guidance.

I can't really speak much regarding using any of these assets for an MMORPG. I don't enjoy playing them, so I haven't spent much time seeing how one might build one. However, it is still my opinion that an MMORPG is simply out of reach for the vast majority of indie developers. The scope is just too large for a small team to handle.

Zerano's RPG Kit (on the Asset Store) might be a better fit for doing an MMORPG; it's set up for co-op multiplayer so you'd still need to do a lot of work, but it's a starting point that is likely closer to what you want to achieve. It doesn't get updated anywhere near as often as does ORK, nor does the author appear to provide anywhere near the same level of support as GiL.

I would be very hesitant to take on a major dependency on an asset that has such an inconsistent level of support, but the option is out there.