I've noticed jME is one of the best engines I have ever used - and is free. Why do I see no finished games? No big commercial MMORPG's in jME? Or even free MMORPG's? Is there something wrong with the engine? Is it just too new? This seems like the perfect API to do… anything with. Do people underestimate jME? If so, why doesn't someone put together something proving them wrong? It makes no sense that such a good, fast API is not used more commonly.
Well, full fledged MMORPGs are large scale projects, which demand tremendous resources.
Much as I love jME, I think it would be questionable as to whether you would use it if you had the resources to bring a MMORPG to fruition.
Games in general, I do think that a lack of completed games is a significant weakness. Having something to look at is always important. But also having more people who have actually solved all of the problems of creating and deploying a game (of at least one type) would be good for the community. This is a problem with most none commercial engines however, not just jME. In my experience, games tend to fall in to one of two categories - either ambitious but unfinished (usually nowhere near), or finished but extremely simple (or, it has to be said, bad).
There are however some very honourable exceptions.
I think that some new work will begin to appear, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a full featured MMO (would love to be proved wrong!).
Ok. I'll work on proving you wrong. That does actually seem to be the case though. I hate it, too. I give up too easily, or my games just die off. I have done so many too that ended so close(including MMORPG's!). I decided that I should have help, and I have managed to build up a team I am the leader of. My goal in life is to prove you, no everyone, wrong, that anyone can create an MMORPG with enough ambition. It is not easy. 
Why do I see no finished games? No big commercial MMORPG's in jME? Or even free MMORPG's? Is there something wrong with the engine?
hhexen will be finished
when it's done.
;D
What is hexen?
Fyrestone is fully playable if you like the following features:
- Walking around in an endless, featureless world
- Chatting with yourself
So HA!
Lol. Thanks guys, this should help my motivation.
Its probably because most great games take large teams of "folks who know their stuff", and more importantly, have time.
And who knows? Maybe you see some real commercial games out there using JME because it's just not stated as "oh we made this with JME". I'm sure there are some out there, though those with financing probably would not be using an open source engine.
And as for MMOs…meh they're overrated. But if you want to develop one without killing yourself, you might want to check other projects out there, like Multiverse. You don't have the freedom you'd get with JME, but you also don't have the burden to develop all the subsystems that make a MMO work.
Anyways, I've started on a small game project myself, so you may see some of that in months to come. Plus, it looks like I'll be using JME for academic purposes in the next year…so I'm definitely pushing for JME at my university
I think MMO's are the greatest games to make:
- You get to see people loving your games, you can play with them
- Largest Profit: Buying the discs + Membership
- "Always in Beta": Your game is really never done. You can always update with new areas of land, quests, items, creatures, models, etc. because it is played online.
- Instant fixes for bugs: If you find a horrible bug you missed somehow, you don't have to worry about contacting your disc company to shut off the old copies or sending new copies to customers or anything -- you don't lose any money from these kinds of mistakes. You simply patch your game.
- They are FUN!
Besides, IMO, if you're a good programmer who is already familiar with 3D programming (you've made one game already) or even if you're not familiar with 3D programming but you're a GREAT programmer, you can easily create the framework for an MMORPG with 1 year's worth of work (no breaks, working on it every day). The real problem is the content. Filling an MMORPG with 5 different models and 3 different icons is very lame. The only reason you need a large team is for the content.
Trussell said:
I think MMO's are the greatest games to make:
- You get to see people loving your games, you can play with them
- Largest Profit: Buying the discs + Membership
- "Always in Beta": Your game is really never done. You can always update with new areas of land, quests, items, creatures, models, etc. because it is played online.
- Instant fixes for bugs: If you find a horrible bug you missed somehow, you don't have to worry about contacting your disc company to shut off the old copies or sending new copies to customers or anything -- you don't lose any money from these kinds of mistakes. You simply patch your game.
- They are FUN!
Who says only MMO's have rights to digital distribution? :P
The profit can be questionable, as is the "always in beta" - you can count the number of AAA MMO's out there that were polished. A lot seem to launch half complete or horribly buggy, and may remain so a long time after their release.
I'm really criticizing the current state of MMO's out there, including the ones that took hundreds of developers and tens of millions of dollars to make. Quests are repetitive, a lot of them re-use the same old stale gameplay (ie levels), and many rely solely on linear gameplay - when a MMO should be totally different from a singleplayer game (that is, really take advantage of its persistence and massive-quality). So, you tend to players finishing content far faster than what it took developers to create that content
A big personal beef I have with them is the genre many take...you see countless fantasy based MMOs. Some like fantasy, but I'm a sci-fi guy myself.
I think that one reason why a lot of MMO's fall in the above criticisms is because many are developed via tried and true formulas, especially since they take so much effort and money to develop. And I personally think, if you try and put in the same type of content in traditional RPGs (the linear, storyline content type), the persistence and multiplayer aspect actually hinders the MMO field, as it's pretty difficult to create content that performs like an RPG but is accessible and can be completed by everyone. Unless of course, if you instance your gameworld...
...but whats the point of a "massive" gameworld, if players are tightly confined to narrow and solitary boundaries? I'm not against instanced content (they can help very much in storylines, like in LOTRO), but I think a MMO should be more than just a game, and really be a virtual world - ie a sandbox type environment. But you can't have it all player driven either (something SWG did early on its life), so MMO's are big about balance.
And thats why they're difficult beasts, its what makes them interesting too...and making a persistent world is a very cool idea, but I don't think its the best idea unless if you have some games under your belt either (you know what im talking about, all the new folks coming in to some engine board and saying "hi Im gonna make a MMO! how do I start?"), or basically as you say...really experienced.
So, there's a lot of criticism to be made, but I think it's mostly at the current state of MMOs, rather than the genre as a whole.
Oh...and one more thing that goes a bit with my own experience, mainly on Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) (I was a "commando correspondent" for about two years, though I'm not sure how many of you played SWG, let alone visited their forums), a big problem with lots of "instant fixes for bugs" is that developers leave a bug for months, heck even years (in SWG's case), until its finally a priority to fix. And many times by then, the bug, depending on what it is, could be taken as not a bug, but a feature.
Then...you have to contend with a whole other beast...the community :P
Anyways, wow! long off topic post :D
Jedimace1 said:
I've noticed jME is one of the best engines I have ever used - and is free. Why do I see no finished games? No big commercial MMORPG's in jME? Or even free MMORPG's? Is there something wrong with the engine? Is it just too new? This seems like the perfect API to do... anything with. Do people underestimate jME? If so, why doesn't someone put together something proving them wrong? It makes no sense that such a good, fast API is not used more commonly.
I would say it's because most experienced game programmers are still, unfortunately, using C/C++ and staying away from Java. The Java/jME community is full of talented and good programmers, but most still being pretty nooby with graphics and gaming.
They’ll find their way soon–Java is the #1 programming language in the world, leading C by 5 points and C++ by 10 points (on a scale of 100, see source here.)
jME is a relatively new engine, as opposed to stuff like directx, which was what older state-of-the-art 3d games usually ran on (on windows anyway). An average sized MMORPG takes 2-3 years to make with a full team of paid developers (at least 10 coders and many more graphic artists) working 40 hours a week. jME has only a couple big groups of people making complete high-quality games. I was impressed with Spirits when I first got into jme. The spirits engine looks complete from the demos. Once you're done making a game engine, you just add crap like levels and characters to make it "big."
There are a couple functional games that look pretty interesting. Bang! Howdy!, Spirits, that bike one (was it Extreme Motocross Challenge?) are coming along.
Project Wonderland, which is a pretty big application, is planning (or is already set in stone?, i'm not sure) to use jME in their next realease (0.5).
http://blogs.sun.com/wonderland/entry/new_media_consortium_summer_conference
http://blogs.sun.com/wonderland/entry/what_s_up_with_wonderland
Well, the one thing I have learned from the GP community, the language does not effect the speed of the program enough to matter. People repetitively say that, and I haven't found a reason they are wrong. Also Trussel, those are my thoughts exactly. People say that MMORPGs need a large team working 40 hours a week. I work 50 hours a week and can do it faster. People say MMORPG's are hard, but they can't be. I have gotten very far trying to make an MMORPG myself with just coding. That was in 2d, but I had every offline aspect done in two weeks single handed. Give me one month and a community like this, and I can give you an MMORPG.
Mr.Coder, I am here now. Programming for 3 years.
There is not one game out there, using the jME, i would say. At least no game, that i would want to play.
We, as the jME community, can't blame anybody for that, but ourselves.
We have everything that is needed to create a great game.
- We have a lot of talented developers
- We have a rather mature engine
- We have some tools and libraries needed
Why is there no game out there, that people want to play?
Because existing game projects lack the resources to finish their games, and that's why they will fail some day! If you start another game project, i'll promise you, you will also fail.
And so many of the existing projects are so similar. Why don't they get along and work together.
When we have 10 projects with 2 team members, why not take them and create 1 project with 20 team members? 10 projects are likely to fail, but 1 project with so many talented team members is unlikely to fail.
All those projects are doing the same things over and over again, without much success.
I see them writing game engines on top of the jME for their project. Then they are creating tools for their project.
What do we have after that: We have 10 unfinished game engines, 10 unfinished tools.
If we would join forces, we would have rather mature engines and tools and a working game project, that could also help improving the base engine and the tools.
Why not create a game project, where we all join. This game should use all the features offered by the engine and libraries found here.
Who wants to join?
Nicely said! I'm in!
What type of game? Maybe an MMORPG, that seems like something a community can implement. A First Person Shooter would be a good one too, but that does require alot of speed. I have been in game design long enough that I have done graphics, level editing, and pretty much every aspect of a game. I have been working on 2d graphics and music lately. I can build websites too, so I can work on creating a website. Should we set up a project on a seperate topic? Also, big community project like this are amazing for a game engine. Most good open source game engines got alot of features from creating a game. They let you know what your game engine needs and what doesn't work. I could start implementing an MMORPG tonigh, can have a simple third person movement in a level tonight. I havebeen doing RPGs for yeats, so I could implement inventory, equip, trading, and every aspect. I have spent two years just figuring out aspectsof RPGs. An FPS would be easier, but I don't know if we could implement all the features, like ThirdPersonController and ChaseCamera. Also, implementing JGN and jME-Physics 2 should be a priority, since those were sorta built for jME. We should use jME 2 too, because it is important to be able to update the newest version and stuff. What do you think? I covered alot of topics here.