13 replies to this topic

[Kisuka]

Does anyone know the avg. Price for the BigWorld Engine?


If you think I can't buy it please tell me a good priced engine, able to support great graphics similar to WoW or better.

Thanks for your help.

[Ed Mack]

http://www.devmaster...ails.php?id=320
`Price under NDA'

http://www.bigworldt...ogy/faq.php#q20

Quote

I have no money, can I still license your technology?

* BigWorld Technology Suite is a robust and professional platform optimized for the commercial development and deployment of online games.

Is there an academic/educational version?

* Not at this time.

A lot of money. Unless you are a studio, I doubt this is what you are after. Try looking lower if the budget is smaller, perhaps to crystal space.

[Almos]

Latest OGRE is able to produce some real eye-candy. Like for instance THIS:

http://www.ogre3d.or...=view_album.php

If they're not professional level graphics, then I don't know what they are. And they're for free. CS has some nice rendering features, but I'm afraid it's still a step or two behind OGRE.

[Axel]

OGRE is very nice, but it's much more low-level than most graphic engines you can buy for money.

[Hissatsu]

I know you guys can't say how much bigworlds engine cost exactly but say a group of people have an overall budget of about 3-5 million usd and they want to create a mmorpg would bigworlds engine be a viable option? and if not what other engines would you pro's suggest for such a project?

Thanks in advance

[STLDude]

$3 -$5 million is not allot for MMO development, even buying allot of middle ware.
I'm not saying that it can not be done, but it will be very low budget. Keep in mind that there is no full solution to MMO engine, and whatever you choose you are going to change, refactor, customize allot (speaking from experience and we did evaluate about 10 or so MMO engines).

This is not endorsement by any means, but HeroEngine is not bad. Probably has the best pipeline tools of any MMO middle ware up there and I think they provide several levels of licensing.

[TMichael]

Crystal Space and Ogre are both wonderful, but he was asking specifically about MMO technology (PlaneShift was created through CS, but its networking code is game specific and would require quite a bit of dissection).

As STL said, there is no "out of the box" solution, but if you're willing to spend that kind of money, I think perhaps you might already know this. Besides Big World, there are some interesting MMO middleware technologies available.

In the category of FREE for development, we have:

http://www.multiverse.net/
https://elite.kaneva...jects/elitesrc/
http://www.projectdarkstar.com/
http://www.nevrax.or...ex.php?page=NeL

In the category of REALLY CHEAP for development, we have:

http://www.garagegam...logs/4280/13391

And if you feel the need to spend 6 digits on commercial MMO technology, other contenders include:

http://www.play.net/...otnet/platform/
http://www.emergent....services/server
http://www.perpetual.com/platform/

Unreal 2 and 3 are also possibilities, but I think their code was originally developed with less than 100 players at a time in mind. There are a few more I can't quite remember, but the links above should provide you with a decent sampling of what's out there.

Good luck,
Tim

[Hissatsu]

So do you think HeroEngine is better than Bigworlds? do you think its cheaper? How much does it cost and if possible could you explain what you mean by "several levels of licensing" I really don't know what that means. Thanks

[TMichael]

Regarding HeroEngine, I found this gem on the Gamedev.net forum:

Quote

In terms of HeroEngine... I'm an offsite developer for Simutronics. I work with it frequently. It is full featured, and quite robust. Yes, BioWare Austin, among several others, have licensed it. Yes, it's expensive... for them.

As far as I know, the gentleman who handles licensing is interested in working with people, and will scale based on the need and budget. As far as I know, having stood in the booth at 2 GDCs, there is no fixed pricing. It tends to be a negotiation deal, on a per-client basis. I guess what I'm saying is, don't discount it yet. The only way to know for sure is to give them a call or drop them a line.

If it's a serious project, you probably won't be let down. If you're just dabbling, though... probably see what you can find in the open source market, I guess. It is, by all accounts, a professional product, and not an indie development.

For anything more specific, you will have to contact them directly.

Good luck,
Tim

[Hissatsu]

Thanks a lot for your help man. =)


Also do you guys think people with our budget would be considered indie? I mean we don't even have a team yet, we just basically have ideas/money and the will to see this through.

[STLDude]

Hissatsu said:

So do you think HeroEngine is better than Bigworlds? do you think its cheaper? How much does it cost and if possible could you explain what you mean by "several levels of licensing" I really don't know what that means. Thanks

Again, this is not endorsement, but for our needs HeroBlade turned out be a better choice then BigWorld, especially their tool set was completely far ahead then anybody else (I'm not going to bring Unreal into this mix, since it is not full MMO engine). What that allows us is to have our artists and designers already create content while engineers are able to work under the hood and adjust/refactor anything needed. It is a little slow, since we have to make sure that we do not break pipeline, but the head start for artists and designers was well worth it.

For "several levels of licensing", I mean that for some large sum ($1+ millions) you get full source code to everything, or pay much less and get binaries and do your entire game in their scripting languages. There might be some thing in between, but you have to ask them.

As far as the indie label, I don't know, but 3-5 mill will not get you WOW like game. To approach that kind of production values and be able to get those numbers you are talking 50+ mill for budget.

[Hissatsu]

STLDude said:

Again, this is not endorsement, but for our needs HeroBlade turned out be a better choice then BigWorld, especially their tool set was completely far ahead then anybody else (I'm not going to bring Unreal into this mix, since it is not full MMO engine). What that allows us is to have our artists and designers already create content while engineers are able to work under the hood and adjust/refactor anything needed. It is a little slow, since we have to make sure that we do not break pipeline, but the head start for artists and designers was well worth it.

For "several levels of licensing", I mean that for some large sum ($1+ millions) you get full source code to everything, or pay much less and get binaries and do your entire game in their scripting languages. There might be some thing in between, but you have to ask them.

As far as the indie label, I don't know, but 3-5 mill will not get you WOW like game. To approach that kind of production values and be able to get those numbers you are talking 50+ mill for budget.

I see, I think we will end up going with HeroEngine then. Hopefully it works out for us. We are trying to do a Sci Fi/Fantasy mmorpg with limited space flight and planet travel. We don't even have any programmers or anything yet so hopefully we can find some who can really take advantage of this engine.

I sure hope all those korean mmo didn't require such a large budget, We're aiming more along those lines instead of something like WoW. I personally don't like WoW =)


Lots of great info really appreciate it

[STLDude]

One think I might add to it, is do not forget and dismiss any resources and money you will need when you go live. Since you already have budget of 3-5 mill, I would assume that you are looking at 10K's to 100K's subscribers. With that kind of subscription base, you will need large amount of hardware, and most likely rent space in "colo" and rough numbers might be 1-2 mill a year for maintenance and hardware (and that's on low scale). You will also need to maintain some kind of live team (artists, designers, programmers, customer service, gm's, etc).

I would also suggest to read "Eternal Lands" postmortem, it has allot of good insights.

[STLDude]

Hissatsu said:

I see, I think we will end up going with HeroEngine then. Hopefully it works out for us. ...snipped... We don't even have any programmers or anything yet so hopefully we can find some who can really take advantage of this engine.

I think this is a wrong approach for you to make this decision since you do not have any technical person aboard yet. This should be made in majority by your technical director, since he and his staff will need to make it work and is probably the most qualified.