Making a 2.5D MMORPG turn base game whit Monkey

General Discussion
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Hello there, I started a project whit a few people a couple a week ago and now i am seeking for the software and tool to make it. I got my basic skill in java programmation and i doing quite good but we are not a huge team and i don’t expect us to get more then 5 people so far, and mosley they are all part time people and some of them only have knowledge in limited field, like design or mapediting. We are motivate but still limited by a few variable.

This software (JMonkeyEngine) look quite good, but am not sure if it is the best for what i want. We are making a MMOrpg but not a fully 3D one, we want a turn based 2.5D game, meaning we want the character to be design in 3d, so it avoid the work of making them while they face in every direction but the environment could be 2D, like a huge painting or something like that. We want something looking a bit like dofus or wakfu.(for a visual Exemple)

So this come down to one question : Can jmonkeyEngine do that, fairly easely. Of course you can do anything you want if you go inside the code, deep deep deep but this is not what am asking. If this is not the good engine for this then very well, i’ll continue to seek.

Am already sure il use a object oriented database, i want to code in java and this is pretty much all i know so far about the tools. If you have any suggestion I will be happy to hear them and if you want to be part of the project, just contact me.
On a last note plz forgive my poor english, my native language is french

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I should change the title and make it : Making a 2.5D turn per turn mmorpg game whit mokey but i can’t modifie it so if anyone could, it would make this message more clear i think

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@SimonBedard said: I should change the title and make it : Making a 2.5D turn per turn mmorpg game whit mokey but i can't modifie it so if anyone could, it would make this message more clear i think
Hi Simon, First of if you want to edit your post just type /edit in the URL ... in this case it would be http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/forum/topic/making-a-2-5d-game-whit-mokey/edit .

Anyway … I am also a beginner with the jMonkey engine and the wiki really helped me a lot. The engine takes a while to get used to and you also have to read through lots of tutorials. You will probably get confused at some points but if that happens you can always rely on the help of this awesome community and maybe by looking into some open source projects and code.

So if you, or someone else in your team, has some knowledge in Java you’re ready to go.
I’m not a big expert on this but if you have someone who is talented in designing and modeling you shouldn’t have any problems at all. The engine has blender integrated but you can also import .obj models or whatever you want.

My suggestion:
Start with small projects to get used to the engine and then start your game.
It’s easier that way.

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Thanks a lot for the anwser, my title sure look better now x)

But my question is still somehow not answer. I am ready to invest my self, but i don’t want to pass 30 + hours in something to realise this is not what i need. All i want is someone to tell me if this engine is suited for that kind of task. I believe it is but after looking in some project they all seem to cubic and even if some where indeed multi player, none where the size of an mmo. I do believe the server part is not handle per the Engine, and its okay, but i want to make sure.

For the cubic part it could simply be because the designer was not good enough, but i want to make sure before i really get in. If anyone have any suggestion or advice on whether or not this is the right pick or not i want to know before we even start the production, so we don’t throw yourself in something that will fail because of technical reason. Never good for morale x)

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@SimonBedard said: Thanks a lot for the anwser, my title sure look better now x)

But my question is still somehow not answer. I am ready to invest my self, but i don’t want to pass 30 + hours in something to realise this is not what i need. All i want is someone to tell me if this engine is suited for that kind of task. I believe it is but after looking in some project they all seem to cubic and even if some where indeed multi player, none where the size of an mmo. I do believe the server part is not handle per the Engine, and its okay, but i want to make sure.

For the cubic part it could simply be because the designer was not good enough, but i want to make sure before i really get in. If anyone have any suggestion or advice on whether or not this is the right pick or not i want to know before we even start the production, so we don’t throw yourself in something that will fail because of technical reason. Never good for morale x)

What do you mean “cubic”? If you mean block worlds… they are popular. If you find an engine that does not have lots of block worlds written for it then it is probably incapable of doing block worlds.

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How does turn based work together with massively multiplayer?

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@pspeed said: What do you mean "cubic"? If you mean block worlds... they are popular. If you find an engine that does not have lots of block worlds written for it then it is probably incapable of doing block worlds.
Per cubic i mean you can see each and every line in the drawing, like in the old day when computer could not produce more curvy form. For what i seen, every game produce with this engine have this same flaw, and it's a huge one if you want to produce some quality content at the final stage of your game. I understand this do fit some need, in any game like minecraft for example or a space ship simulator but this is not what i need, and this is why i feel the need to ask before i go any deeper. If it was only from the concepter part than perfect, i can use this. But if its not and this come from the engine, then its useless for what i need :/
@abies said: How does _turn based_ work together with _massively multiplayer_?
Well every one take a turn one after the other, in the combat situation only. You can move freely in the world like in any rpg but the combat phase are manage per turn, like in a board game. Think about chess whit stats and lvl and only one chessman per player and max 12 of them on the field. If this is not clear enough (like am afraid it is), just go check dofus and wakfu, they are both good exemple even if those game have some major flaw.
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I am not getting the point of 2.5D… is that like 3D but turned off parallel projection?
If yes, you are making an actual full 3d game, the isometic look comes from the camera.

The visual result depends on two factors: 80% artist and 20% engine i would say.

But keep in mind that all those super good looking games today have TEAMS (note the multiple) working YEARS (again multiple) only on the assets. The actual programming team is usually a lot smaller then the art team.

//Add:

Why not giving it simply a try? After all you need the assets anyway if you go for a different engine. You could just try to load one of your assets with jme… should be dooable in very very little time

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Well the plan was to make the character in 3D modelisation, but make the environment felling and be like a 2D flat map, a bit like the picture i put in the first post. Look how the grass is looking good, and flat, but if you ever play that game you know you can’t turn the camera around, and this save a lot of work for the design team. But the character (that you can see in the center, with the toad thing on is head) will have to move around, and face every direction eventually, making im a 3D model. Same for every monster. I need a fixed point a view so we don’t have to make a map that you can look at from every angle, so we don’t have to design every angle, saving time in production and saving power on the MMO part.

I do understand that it can take a while to obtain good result on the graphic part, and i expect this project to take at least 3 year until we get something good enough for the market. Am just making sure 2 year in i won’t have a bad surprise and have to start with a new engine.

Ps : no worry, i will give it a try as soon i have some time, but I believe expert can tell me whether or not this is the right tool and if i’m wrong, maybe direct me to what i really need.

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Still sounds like an actual 3d game. The difference is that most of your world would be a textured quad.

Following that, the resulting detail depends on 3 factors.

  1. Texture size
  2. Display resolution
  3. Artist

In any case i would say that none of these factors can be influenced by any engine at all.

As always, my advice would be to use the same assets as you do for your mmo, but i would create a smaller game first. You would not loose much time because you can reuse the assets and maybe some code too. But you might get a overview of the tricks needed in game programming…

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@SimonBedard said: Per cubic i mean you can see each and every line in the drawing, like in the old day when computer could not produce more curvy form. For what i seen, every game produce with this engine have this same flaw, and it's a huge one if you want to produce some quality content at the final stage of your game. I understand this do fit some need, in any game like minecraft for example or a space ship simulator but this is not what i need, and this is why i feel the need to ask before i go any deeper. If it was only from the concepter part than perfect, i can use this. But if its not and this come from the engine, then its useless for what i need :/

I still don’t understand what you mean by ‘cubic’. Can you show an example?

Or maybe I can show you some examples and you can tell me what makes them cubic.

Here are some random screen shots from the most recent screenshots thread http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/forum/topic/july-2014-monthly-wip-screenshot-thread/







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I must admit those are some pretty picture, at least on some point.

But if we take for example the first picture you send in, and check the top junction between the wall and the column, something clearly do not fell right, as the angle fell… i don’t know, to direct? Also the column on the ground look weird, not exactly direct enouf nor fluid enough, making them look very weird to the eye. The drapery is, on the other hand, beautiful
Also on the thirty one, we see every triangle that are use for the creation of the item in the player hand. I think the term is fractal? Anyway, something don’t fell right for the eye. But on the other hand, the land do feel weird in that picture, while the picture right after make it look somehow more normal, more smooth.

But i think the best exemple of what am talking about is on the last picture, when you check the trees. The big one on the right make every rectangle very clear to the eye, and you can see every part of the modelisation. There is nothing there to hide it, and it do not fell like a tree, it feel like polygon with a sort of tree texture on it.

Understand i don’t want to insult anyone, and that am pretty new to this, but most of these graphic look like the one i have seen in my old game. They pretty much all remember me what i would call the second era of 3D, kinda like the nintendo 64 graphic. The best game i ever saw with the engine was this one

But even there, a lot don’t feel right, event the ship, that look kinda good, have some strange connection with is wing that simply don’t feel good.

On a side note i kinda ear this engine was build on lwjgl and that lwjgl could handle JOGL and that JOGL was used for wakfu. Just making sure this chain was making sense x)

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Again … I know now what you mean by cubic.
You mean the LOD on the objects. It is simply there because if you would render every polygon on the model your average computer would explode. This has nothing to do with the engine but with the hardware.
Like zzuegg said earlier, it all depends on the quality of the assets you put into the game. But if you want to make the game available to everyone and not just one person with a quantum computer, you will have to integrate a level of detail.

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@SimonBedard said: I must admit those are some pretty picture, at least on some point.

But if we take for example the first picture you send in, and check the top junction between the wall and the column, something clearly do not fell right, as the angle fell… i don’t know, to direct? Also the column on the ground look weird, not exactly direct enouf nor fluid enough, making them look very weird to the eye. The drapery is, on the other hand, is beautiful
Also on the thirty one, we see every triangle that are use for the creation of the item in the player hand. I think the term is fractal? Anyway, something don’t fell right for the eye. But on the other hand, the land do feel weird in that picture, while the picture right after make it look somehow more normal, more smooth.

But i think the best exemple of what am talking about is on the last picture, when you check the trees. The big one on the right make every rectangle very clear to the eye, and you can see every part of the modelisation. There is nothing there to hide it, and it do not fell like a tree, it feel like polygon with a sort of tree texture on it.

Understand i don’t want to insult anyone, and that am pretty new to this, but most of these graphic look like the one i have seen in my old game. They pretty much all remember me what i would call the second era of 3D, kinda like the nintendo 64 graphic. The best game i ever saw with the engine was this one

But even there, a lot don’t feel right, event the ship, that look kinda good, have some strange connection with is wing that simply don’t feel good.

On a side note i kinda ear this engine was build on lwjgl and that lwjgl could handle JOGL and that JOGL was used for wakfu. Just making sure this chain was making sense x)

I get you. EVERYTHING you are mentioning is not engine specific at all.

So no problem. It’s all in the art.

Welcome to 3D graphics.

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And by the way, “cubic” is not at all the term you want when you mean to say “I can see the triangles”.

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To be fair, you probably can’t create a BF4/Watchdogs clone (From visual point of view) with jme3.
At current state of the engine, you can outperform any dx9.x game.

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Well perfect! This is a marvelous news! Thanks you x)

I will soon start producing the first draw, and will post it in the forum when i have something potable.

Still, on a side note could you confirm or infirm the part about lwjgl and JOGL?

Ps: what term should I use for the cubic part?

PPs :

@zzuegg said: To be fair, you probably can't create a BF4/Watchdogs clone (From visual point of view) with jme3. At current state of the engine, you can outperform any dx9.x game.

So could i still make one with the drawing look like graphic? Like wakfu the link i sent earlier?

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No, i cant confirm.

JOGL and LWJGL are java bindings to native opengl.

They are basically the same. Jme3 uses LWJGL and i don’t know the status of the JOGL backend.

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@SimonBedard said: I must admit those are some pretty picture, at least on some point.

But if we take for example the first picture you send in, and check the top junction between the wall and the column, something clearly do not fell right, as the angle fell… i don’t know, to direct? Also the column on the ground look weird, not exactly direct enouf nor fluid enough, making them look very weird to the eye. The drapery is, on the other hand, is beautiful
Also on the thirty one, we see every triangle that are use for the creation of the item in the player hand. I think the term is fractal? Anyway, something don’t fell right for the eye. But on the other hand, the land do feel weird in that picture, while the picture right after make it look somehow more normal, more smooth.

But i think the best exemple of what am talking about is on the last picture, when you check the trees. The big one on the right make every rectangle very clear to the eye, and you can see every part of the modelisation. There is nothing there to hide it, and it do not fell like a tree, it feel like polygon with a sort of tree texture on it.

Understand i don’t want to insult anyone, and that am pretty new to this, but most of these graphic look like the one i have seen in my old game. They pretty much all remember me what i would call the second era of 3D, kinda like the nintendo 64 graphic. The best game i ever saw with the engine was this one

But even there, a lot don’t feel right, event the ship, that look kinda good, have some strange connection with is wing that simply don’t feel good.

On a side note i kinda ear this engine was build on lwjgl and that lwjgl could handle JOGL and that JOGL was used for wakfu. Just making sure this chain was making sense x)

I think what you are talking about in the first paragraph is called aliasing, and you can fix that by using anti aliasing, which the engine has built in. Everythijg else you talk about is really dependent on the artist, and nothing to do with the engine, such as the normals not being smooth in the item and the atmospheric scattering that I think is what is making that terrain not “feel” right to you. No game engine can automatically make your game pretty, you have to do that. It seems so far there hasnt been any jmonkey developers with a large budget for art and other assets, which other engine have had, so no jmonkey games currently look like new AAA games.

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@8Keep123 said: which other engine have had, so no jmonkey games currently look like new AAA games.

Well that kinda bring a question in my head : how hard can it be these day to do good looking animation? I mean whit all the tech available is it still realy hard to do a character modelisation? Even without major details, is the creation of a smooth and good looking avatar can realy be that hard? Am more on the programming section then the animation one anyway, so I never realy try to draw anything.on any of those 3D modelisation programme but i saw some crazy thing been done real fast in a lot of video using those software.

I mean this is the beauty of today programmation. Thing like this engine and other tools are there to simplify the job. They don’t do it for you, but they most of the time garantie you a minium of quality. And this is why i asked this whole question at the first place : somebody once told me that 50% of the job is simply the preparation, and when you think all the time some software can save you, i do believe there is something true in that.