http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk The creation of an online MMORPG Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:08:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en That's my goal: having an entire town filled with virtual citizens, all living semi-autonomous lives and all able to interact with the 'real' players in the game.So, this requires a great deal of speed to manage, and I've been working on something which should help ease the load. This method ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/10/25/a-million-villagers/ The first game I wrote online - at least the first major game - was Universal Wars. I actually spent a great deal of time writing and then rewriting the game multiple times over. Often starting from scratch each time, it was never 'quite right'. Each time it would take ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/08/05/speed-issues-scale-etc/ I thought I'd write a little about my take on AS3 and Flash 9 for games. Flash 9 and AS3 bring a lot of speed enhancements, which is obviously very much needed for games - especially the newer games and even 3D games, which are starting to appear more and more ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/07/27/flash-and-actionscript-3-for-games/ A few things have been settled upon; namely, a name (!), the domain name, and a few game-specifics. The server will be the C++ server I wrote, and the front-end is Flash Player 9 using Actionscript 3 with Flex 2.0. That's what this Blog will continue to focus on, so ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/07/27/officially-an-as3flex2c-mmorpg-development-blog/ Although the game is very much in the infant stage, I would like to begin getting alpha testers as the only way to properly see how well this game'll work is to have proper people testing - testing with bots is not nearly as effective. Testers OS is not important - ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/07/20/alpha-testers-required-soon/ So - ActionScript 3 does not support UDP. That's interesting, and annoying as hell. I had hoped it would to take off some of the load and overhead of using TCP so I could do more real-time 'stuff' with AS3, but apparently that won't be the case. Getting 3 - ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/07/18/moving-onwards/ I've now decided (!! Wow !!) on a technology I will move forwards with. ActionScript 3, with Flash 9 and using Flex 2.0 as the compiler. The compiler is the free Flex compiler, and I'm using a trial version of Flash CS3, although that's until it runs out - after then ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/07/15/onwards-as3-flex-flash-and-all/ Well - lots (again) has changed since my last post. What started off as a temporary break in work to assess where we are, what we were going to continue to do - and of course where we were going to continue to do - has highlighted a few things that ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/05/22/what-this-site-is-for-and-where-its-going/ Well, I used DirectX and managed to achieve more than I expected - a beautiful, rotating planet, and a moving ship (a 2D sprite). DirectX is powerful, I'll grant that. Extremely powerful! But, some things they've made more tedious than necessary, and as I was writing my engine, wrapping up all the ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/04/26/it-wouldnt-be-mark-if-not-for-a-change-of-heart/ Hey, Well it's been a good few weeks since I've last posted so I thought I'd make an update for those who are still reading! :-) Firstly - since the last post, I've moved house - my girlfriend and I are temporarily living with my parents whilst we find ourselves some new ... http://www.marksuniverse.co.uk/2007/04/21/a-few-weeks-on-and-whats-been-happening/