Murzim Offline

Development of an online game and life - PART I

06/29/2007 (read 584x times)

Here I come back with one more blog post!

 This time I will trouble your minds with the procedure that is needed in order to develop one online game. I will be mostly general and describing, since analyzation won't help you or me as I believe that neither would have interest for an endless article (like my last one ? :P).

 So, I am a young developer. I started developing this thief game some months ago. IT wasn't because I had much free time; In contrary, my free time was minimum and it tends to grow shorter and shorter as days pass and this is not because of the time that my game takes.

 So, I started developing this game for the fun of it, added the prospect of making it either my hobby or my job in the future; you never know how an online game will turn out in the end. If you get lots of people playing it, then you might be pushed to make it commercial, even if your initial planning was different. So I chose to keep my choices open, so that the future won't be able to suprise me.

 In my case, it was the first time developing a game. So I had to plan and do everything from scratch, without having any experience. The first problem I came upon was the choice of server; I needed an economic but reliable server, capable of hosting my game without delays, one thing that would made me the most annoyed of all. In the end, I decided to create the game in a way that the need of the resources would be minimal. This way I could get an economic server for start that would be also reliable. For future ? Well, for future I thought that if the game goes so well, I may invest on a higher speed server, but now, I am sitting still there with no thought of leaving.

   Second important thing is to determine the nature of the game. This is something that I already had created in my mind though, and some scratch papers as well. I have to say that this part had to do much with the choice of server. Generally, real time games tend to be a lot more demanding in terms of server needs.

 So once you get these two things you start coding and creating! You then name your game.. BETA and you start getting people to TEST it! But wait.. ? People I said ? And where these people come from ? That's right, this is the next big issue one has to ressolve. Myself I got the first people from some google advertising and promotion sites, like this one.

   Initially, I thought that one of the greatest problems that I would have to face in an online game would be the support towards the users; I was greatly supprised. At least for my regular 300 player game this is not an issue. Support needed is minimum and its always happy to help other people find their way in your game. In fact, although a many-year online gamer of web browser games, I was and am suprised by the playerbase of my game; They are very passive and show great understanding. Some at times errupt in the way 'Come on, give us this update' But some other pops in and says 'Calm down dude, this game is still in beta, be patience'. This is something good I must say.. understanding.. that is.

 Well, my space here grows short... I have a bad habit it seems to create big posts! /me modifies the topic to.. PART I

I will continue it in some days.. with the hope to keep you hooked :) 

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