Well, as the title say(This is intended, for a workflow). I was wondering, can you create a single game, make everything work as intended. And then convert it into a Multiplayer game, then make that game type work as intended. And lastly convert the Multiplayer into a full blown MMORPG?
Almost anything can be done with sufficient amounts of work – but see below!
If you know you’re going to build a MMORPG, then you’ll spend much less time overall if you build it as an MMORPG to begin with. Similarly, if you know you’re going to build an online game, you’ll spend much less time overall if you built it as an online game to begin with.
So, why “almost anything?” Well, there are a bunch of things that can be done in single player, that simply cannot be done, or do not scale well enough, to work in online, or in MMORPG. Random examples, to give you a flavor:
- Having NPCs pathfind in a crowded city might work well enough in a single-player game, where you only need to load the NPCs into memory that are near the player, but might totally fail in an MMORPG where players are everywhere all at once.
- Timing dependent physical interactions may work great when there’s no latency, but won’t work at all when there’s 50 milliseconds between you and the server, and then as much more to some other player who also need to see what you’re doing.
That being said – if you have to ask these questions, and your next question is “can I build an MMORPG if I start there right away” then the answer is also no. You need someone with enough experience to help guide you right on choices about art, gameplay, design, and technology, to work in an environment like that. It’s possible that you could learn it all yourself by scouring the world for books, talks, and presentations about all the various aspects, but history shows that this is the very, very rare developer who actually ends up spending all that time and succeeding on their first try. I think there might be … one? in the world?
That being said, do I think you should try building a single player game first? yes! This is a great way to learn about building games in general, and learn about the kind of characters and worlds and gameplay you want to build in particular. Build GreatRPG One: The Beginning as a single player experience.
Should you then try to build an online game as the second game? Absolutely! You can even copy art, and levels, and various mechanics, into the next game, although you will likely need to adjust it for online needs. View the first version as a prototype for the next one.
Finally, once you shipped a successful online game, could you go on and try to make it MMO? Yes, you’d have a much greater chance at that point. Chances are, though, that with 10,000 players in a world, you’re going to have to make different technical decisions than with 10 players in a world. Understanding about latency and replication and what that does for gameplay is helpful learning from the online game side, but you’re going to have to re-do almost as much to go to MMO from regular online, as you did to go to online from single player. You can’t even re-use most of your environment art or gameplay, because level design and story/quest progression that works in small settings, don’t generally work in MMO settings. For example: What happens if there’s only one popular marketplace, and all 10,000 players want to be in that location all at once?
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Hey there Jwatte, And thanks for the In-deep information.