5 replies to this topic

[iostream]

Hey guys, i am looking for helps in developing a 2D mobile mmorpg, can anyone suggest me a mobile mmorpg to start with?

my mobile mmorpg is a virtual city where every users gather and do whatever they want, they can chat, play games and etc.

thanks!

[Ed Mack]

I don't think that mobiles currently have good enough networking or resources for you to make a real mmorpg. Look at what id software did on the mobile.

[airikita]

Mobile isn't that flexible for this yet, since the internet isn't as resourceful on a cellphone as on a computer.

MMORPG's are usually on cpu's for two reasons: the age group on the computers, and how many people really spend money on the internet for cellphones.

Mobiles are not that great, lots of crap games have been made on them, but I've came across 3 impressive games that are better off sold.

However, if you want to make games for mobile, you'd have to contact a cellphone company to sell game chips for their type of phone since that's the only way to get a game on mobile.

[Laughing_Jack]

First of all, before you look to make a game for a mobile handset you need to look at the resources you will have at hand for your given target audience. If you're talking about developing for top of the line SonyEricsson or Nokia handsets you will have a significantly larger resource set (CPU and art resources) than if you start considering handsets that are more than a year or two old. You might say that you'll just use the top end handsets, but there are FAR more of the lower end handsets out there than top end so your userbase on a high-spec game might be quite limited. If you're going to be aiming at a very large audience at all, you'll have to keep the lower-end handsets in mind.

Secondly, if you're talking about any sort of multiplayer on a mobile phone you're either looking at bluetooth multiplayer or some sort of turn-based multiplayer over a 3G or better network. While 3G is much faster than previous technologies, it is still MUCH slower than what you would need for anything approaching real-time multiplayer interaction. Also, 3G is still not a hugely supported technology by all the wireless providers, so you'll be limited there as well.

And finally, if you're looking to make any money out of any game you will almost HAVE to work with the mobile carriers to get your game on their deck at this time. While there are some companies that make money selling off-portal all of the big money makers in the EU and USA have to work with the mobile carriers to get their games sold. In fact, you are almost looking to sell games more to the carriers than to end-users. There are however more distribution paths for free games out there if you're just a hobbiest , mostly because your game installs will be via bluetooth or data cable rather than over-the-air.

All that being said, I haven't heard of any particular MMORPG engines out there that you could mod to make one of your own, if that was your question. If your question was what language we would suggest you use, you have a couple of options, but the most predominent are J2ME and Brew. While Brew is a faster language, since it doesn't rely on a Virtual Machine to interpret commands, it isn't quite as widely used as J2ME, especially in Europe.

Finally, one last thing I would like to suggest is that when you make a game for a mobile phone you MUST take into account that you will have very limited input possibilites for your game. Even high-end handsets that allow multiple simultaneous keypresses can still only realistically give you 2 presses at a time. A keypad that you fit on something the size of a mobile phone is just very difficult to get quick input out of. This is something that you would absolutely have to remember when designing your game.

Best of luck in your endeavors!

[mikeful]

I have tested Tibia ME and I think it works pretty well. It only works on Nokia S60 platfrom.

http://www.tibiame.c...me/?language=en

[Skavenger]

Don't forget data charges to actually play "on-line". Personally I wouldn't want to pay a set fee per month to the provider and additional money to the operator especially considering how much they charge per MB.