I have talked before about just getting started in programing, so I am finding every thing to be a little difficult to learn at the moment.

What does every one else find to be the most difficult thing to program? I work best with the thought that there is not a single thing that is difficult to work out but rather that all the code that I write up will turn on me and try to lead a matrix style revolution on my computer...

So honestly how much hair should I expect to lose while doing this?

The General concept is a fantasy-science fiction large world MMO with multiple factions.

So I get it right that you are an inexperienced programmer (or just started learning it) and want to create an mmorpg?
 

Well, the good thing is, no matter how much of it you will manage to complete, you will train your brain a bit and learn some programming. The bad thing is: programming an mmorpg by yourself is about impossible. The time required just to make the graphics is something that would take you, as a single person, decades. So if I'd be you, I'd just keep that as an interesting hobby that doesn't need to yield results.

But the most difficult stuff to create? I guess creating your own 3D-graphics engine from scratch is quite a feat.

Good luck no matter what.

Yes you are correct in thinking that I am just starting the process of learning programing. I have a small amount of experience from the old days of Q-Basic. However I honestly do not think that any of it applies and I really do not recall much anyways.

I understand that there really is no way of programing and entire MMO by my self, at least before I reach 110 years old. I am what some people call an over achiever and want to be involved in every aspect of the game's creation.

So what I am pondering is not how long it would take to create the game but rather what has proven to be the most challenging aspect of a game from the view point of other programmers.

 To me the hardest part was getting everything to work together. To combine all the different bits and pieces into something that actually works.

Bugs and error and debugging just throws me off as well.

Also, as mentioned before, creating your own engine is by far the hardest to program (for me). 

Best of luck with your endeavors and I hope you accomplish what you were hoping. Patience is a great virtue here :) Getting straight into it is the best way to learn - even if your game fails (which I honestly hope it doesn't) you'll still have gained a lot and learnt a lot.

Out of curiosity, what language are you using?

One of the hardest things to code, for me, are GUI's not because they're hard but because "they're never done".   Also they're one of those things that just don't carry over from language to language since everyone decides to do them differently to some extent or another.

the hardest thing to code.............realistic female armor apparently :P

Just recommendation: try to start engine of the game. Interface can be implemented in the future. Just make some kind of MUD or web based RPG. It will save you tons of work. Also if you do not have at least 2-3 years experience first try to write some simple game like jump and run, puzzle or something like that. After it try some simple shooter.

MMO is just one of the most difficult game to code. Its like to start build space ship when you start play with Lego.

Why bother writing your own engine when there are open source engines that are most likely far better than anything you will produce on your own? The art of programming is learning not to reinvent the wheel all the time.

Use an engine such as Ogre 3D and concentrate on making your game not reinventing something that has been done hundreds if not thousands of times before by teams of developers with specific experience in that realm.

It takes years to develop a decent engine on your own. Don't waste your time on it.

Using a pre-made 3D engine is definitely advisable, yes. Then you have to take the 3D engine and turn it into an actual GAME engine... Meaning it needs to be able to animate characters and keep track of objects. Then there's the server, which needs o be able to keep track of all of the game objects through a database.

Originally posted by arieschild

What does every one else find to be the most difficult thing to program?

Discerning a player's actual intent for a path. Code simply cannot reasonably determine intent.

It is interging, the concept of useing a pre-built engine over using one built from scratch. I will start a new thread on this topic, but while it has been stated to be a wast of time and effort to creat an engine, I would think that it would be more difficult to program an engine than to programe effects or animations.

Originally posted by arieschild

It is interging, the concept of useing a pre-built engine over using one built from scratch. I will start a new thread on this topic, but while it has been stated to be a wast of time and effort to creat an engine, I would think that it would be more difficult to program an engine than to programe effects or animations.

 

Well im no programmer but as far as im aware animations are a whole diffrent department :) more artistic than programming (well im sure theres programing in there but for the main) so it would depend on how artistic you are a person who codes for a big game can properbly not make the charcter graphics used in that programme :)

Originally posted by scruffo

Originally posted by arieschild

It is interging, the concept of useing a pre-built engine over using one built from scratch. I will start a new thread on this topic, but while it has been stated to be a wast of time and effort to creat an engine, I would think that it would be more difficult to program an engine than to programe effects or animations.

 

 

Well im no programmer but as far as im aware animations are a whole diffrent department :) more artistic than programming (well im sure theres programing in there but for the main) so it would depend on how artistic you are a person who codes for a big game can properbly not make the charcter graphics used in that programme :)

Good point, Allow me to clearify. Making shure that the correct keystorkes effect the correct animation. Meaning you have to make shure that the right keystokes produce the correct effect, and then makeing shure that it all has the right visual effect.

I might be way off on this, and please correct me if I am.

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Originally posted by arieschild

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Originally posted by scruffo

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Originally posted by arieschild

It is interging, the concept of useing a pre-built engine over using one built from scratch. I will start a new thread on this topic, but while it has been stated to be a wast of time and effort to creat an engine, I would think that it would be more difficult to program an engine than to programe effects or animations.
 

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Well im no programmer but as far as im aware animations are a whole diffrent department :) more artistic than programming (well im sure theres programing in there but for the main) so it would depend on how artistic you are a person who codes for a big game can properbly not make the charcter graphics used in that programme :)

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Good point, Allow me to clearify. Making shure that the correct keystorkes effect the correct animation. Meaning you have to make shure that the right keystokes produce the correct effect, and then makeing shure that it all has the right visual effect.
I might be way off on this, and please correct me if I am.

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That kind of things is extremely simple programming. The hard stuff is things like artificial intelligence, physics engines, distributed systems for massively multiplayer game servers etc etc.

Most MMORPGs have dirt-simple Artificial Intelligence. Also, physics is basically non-existent in most MMORPGs (terrain and walls are usually the only physics)

The hardest part is distributing load between servers, and making sure the servers are secure and efficient and as lag-free as possible.

And animations. Actually creating a system to render different player animations is difficult.

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Originally posted by phazmatis
Most MMORPGs have dirt-simple Artificial Intelligence. Also, physics is basically non-existent in most MMORPGs (terrain and walls are usually the only physics)
 
The hardest part is distributing load between servers, and making sure the servers are secure and efficient and as lag-free as possible.
And animations. Actually creating a system to render different player animations is difficult.

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I read it as a general programming question, not just one based on MMORPGs and therefore I answered accordingly.

I agree though, the server is most certainly the hardest part of creating an MMO and also the largest task depending on if you use a third party game engine or not.

Well, I'm not really a programmer, but the hardest part in MMO creation for my position (writer) is developing the quests so that they all come to a goal and all interact together in harmony, all while checking for errors in spelling every 700 drafts

The hardest thing to code is a bootloader.

As for the hardest thing to code for an MMO, I don't know, most of the low level stuff can be avoided by using good libraries, the hardest parts are definatly on the server-side though. The client-side isn't realy any different from any other game you'd make.

Originally posted by maji

So I get it right that you are an inexperienced programmer (or just started learning it) and want to create an mmorpg?
 

Well, the good thing is, no matter how much of it you will manage to complete, you will train your brain a bit and learn some programming. The bad thing is: programming an mmorpg by yourself is about impossible. The time required just to make the graphics is something that would take you, as a single person, decades. So if I'd be you, I'd just keep that as an interesting hobby that doesn't need to yield results.

But the most difficult stuff to create? I guess creating your own 3D-graphics engine from scratch is quite a feat.

Good luck no matter what.

Consider you already have a powerful interface with the drivers & graphics devices using OpenGl and DirectX. I don't believe the most difficult thing to write is a graphics engine, nor do I believe that is a question that can be answered. Writing kernels or drivers might be much easier for one to do(being a software engineer), but it may be more difficult for them contrasted to a game programmer to write a game.

Secondly, when you're writing a game, it's ridiculous to try and write your own physics and\or graphics engine. It would take years, even with a team of a couple people. Writing a game engine using existing Physics, Graphics, and networking engines alone is very possible(provided you eventually recruit people to handle areas you can't quite manage alone).  Writing an MMORPG engine would be a difficult thing to do alone, but a not impossible(Just don't expect a WoW).

As a suggestion, make your engine extremely OOP. Try to avoid creating classes which depend on libraries heavily. This will make it easy to switch from one physics\graphics engine to another.

Nizumzen: Why bother writing your own Game Engines? Consider you're applying for a job involving a programming position. In your portfolio you can present them with a game engine(which is probably what they're looking for). Secondly, Ogre3D is a graphics engine, not a game engine. Ogre does not save the day and write the engine for you, nor does it allow you to concentrate on writing the game. There's still a lot of work to with the rendering engine before you can actually write the game.
 

arieschild: Normally a game will have a class such as cGamePlayer(this is simplified FYI) that inherits another class(say cGameAnimationObject) that inherits another(cGameObject), which again would inherit from cPhysicsObject, etc.. the cGameAnimationObject will handle all animations, while cGamePlayer will handle which animations to play after being told to travel to which points. Key-strokes only control calls to cGamePlayer, which cGamePlayer manages which animations to play, which direction to face, where to move, etc..

Barrikor: If you think writing a bootloader is hard, wait until you have to start writing kernels, drivers, physical(and virtual) memory managers, and a filesystem. I stopped my O.S on the file system to start working on a game engine me and a couple of friends are working on, I plan to return to the project though. Personally, I found my bootloader was fairly simple, just a couple of interrupts and I had my kernel loaded.

The last engine I wrote had about 75% more lines of code on the client contrasted to the server. Ofcourse security and optimization is a big deal, but after reading a couple of books on the topic, it isn't too difficult. Consider there are tons of libraries out there to interface with database servers quite easily. And the TCP\IP protocol is simple enough, you don't really need a networking engine. For optimal performance I still use networking engines though.

 The hardest thing? Depends on how knowledgable I am in the field I'm working with. 

Originally posted by jeremywilms

Originally posted by maji

So I get it right that you are an inexperienced programmer (or just started learning it) and want to create an mmorpg?
 

Well, the good thing is, no matter how much of it you will manage to complete, you will train your brain a bit and learn some programming. The bad thing is: programming an mmorpg by yourself is about impossible. The time required just to make the graphics is something that would take you, as a single person, decades. So if I'd be you, I'd just keep that as an interesting hobby that doesn't need to yield results.

But the most difficult stuff to create? I guess creating your own 3D-graphics engine from scratch is quite a feat.

Good luck no matter what.

 

Secondly, when you're writing a game, it's ridiculous to try and write your own physics and\or graphics engine. It would take years, even with a team of a couple people. Writing a game engine using existing Physics, Graphics, and networking engines alone is very possible(provided you eventually recruit people to handle areas you can't quite manage alone).  Writing an MMORPG engine would be a difficult thing to do alone, but a not impossible(Just don't expect a WoW).

I don't completely agree with this. Basic engines aren't difficult to write at all, in fact my friends and I recently created a solar system simulation based on real physics, and we finished it in 2 hours. Granted we're computer scientists, but an engine is only as difficult as you want it to be. Will a single person be able to create a UT3 type game engine? No way. But he could definitely make a very basic engine without much effort. 

All in all however, it all comes down to how experienced you are in a field and how interested you are. Something can seem very hard for you but trivial to others, and in a field like programming, well there are endless amounts of tasks for which to program. 

I'd say content is the biggest and most time consuming part of any MMO. On a programming stand point, I believe resource management and rendering character models in many different arrays of clothing and equipment would be pretty tough. At least if you want to keep a decent frame rate with many players on-screen.

Originally posted by nightbird305

Originally posted by jeremywilms

Originally posted by maji

So I get it right that you are an inexperienced programmer (or just started learning it) and want to create an mmorpg?
 

Well, the good thing is, no matter how much of it you will manage to complete, you will train your brain a bit and learn some programming. The bad thing is: programming an mmorpg by yourself is about impossible. The time required just to make the graphics is something that would take you, as a single person, decades. So if I'd be you, I'd just keep that as an interesting hobby that doesn't need to yield results.

But the most difficult stuff to create? I guess creating your own 3D-graphics engine from scratch is quite a feat.

Good luck no matter what.

 

Secondly, when you're writing a game, it's ridiculous to try and write your own physics and\or graphics engine. It would take years, even with a team of a couple people. Writing a game engine using existing Physics, Graphics, and networking engines alone is very possible(provided you eventually recruit people to handle areas you can't quite manage alone).  Writing an MMORPG engine would be a difficult thing to do alone, but a not impossible(Just don't expect a WoW).

I don't completely agree with this. Basic engines aren't difficult to write at all, in fact my friends and I recently created a solar system simulation based on real physics, and we finished it in 2 hours. Granted we're computer scientists, but an engine is only as difficult as you want it to be. Will a single person be able to create a UT3 type game engine? No way. But he could definitely make a very basic engine without much effort. 

All in all however, it all comes down to how experienced you are in a field and how interested you are. Something can seem very hard for you but trivial to others, and in a field like programming, well there are endless amounts of tasks for which to program. 

The problem is, a solar system simulation is very simplistic. Spheroids orbiting around, maybe a camera attached to a static ship model. Comparatively, even the simplest of MMORPG engines - say, everquest 1 - are very complicated. You've got vast outdoor environments that need to be loaded piece by piece, you've got player models which must be animated, you've got to have some kind of scripting language support for quests and events and whatnot, you've got to have a client-server network setup,.. There's a LOT involved.

The only thing people can do to remove any difficulty is to go with 2D graphics, which allows you to focus on network/quests/etc.

Originally posted by nightbird305

Originally posted by jeremywilms

Originally posted by maji

So I get it right that you are an inexperienced programmer (or just started learning it) and want to create an mmorpg?
 

Well, the good thing is, no matter how much of it you will manage to complete, you will train your brain a bit and learn some programming. The bad thing is: programming an mmorpg by yourself is about impossible. The time required just to make the graphics is something that would take you, as a single person, decades. So if I'd be you, I'd just keep that as an interesting hobby that doesn't need to yield results.

But the most difficult stuff to create? I guess creating your own 3D-graphics engine from scratch is quite a feat.

Good luck no matter what.

 

Secondly, when you're writing a game, it's ridiculous to try and write your own physics and\or graphics engine. It would take years, even with a team of a couple people. Writing a game engine using existing Physics, Graphics, and networking engines alone is very possible(provided you eventually recruit people to handle areas you can't quite manage alone).  Writing an MMORPG engine would be a difficult thing to do alone, but a not impossible(Just don't expect a WoW).

I don't completely agree with this. Basic engines aren't difficult to write at all, in fact my friends and I recently created a solar system simulation based on real physics, and we finished it in 2 hours. Granted we're computer scientists, but an engine is only as difficult as you want it to be. Will a single person be able to create a UT3 type game engine? No way. But he could definitely make a very basic engine without much effort. 

All in all however, it all comes down to how experienced you are in a field and how interested you are. Something can seem very hard for you but trivial to others, and in a field like programming, well there are endless amounts of tasks for which to program. 

The problem is, a solar system simulation is very simplistic. Spheroids orbiting around, maybe a camera attached to a static ship model. Comparatively, even the simplest of MMORPG engines - say, everquest 1 - are very complicated. You've got vast outdoor environments that need to be loaded piece by piece, you've got player models which must be animated, you've got to have some kind of scripting language support for quests and events and whatnot, you've got to have a client-server network setup,.. There's a LOT involved.

The only thing people can do to remove any difficulty is to go with 2D graphics, which allows you to focus on network/quests/etc.

Originally posted by nightbird305

 The hardest thing? Depends on how knowledgable I am in the field I'm working with. 

This.

I'll code you databases and server-client interactions all day. C++, Matlab, Minitab, DarkBasic all day!

Ask me to create a 3d model of a twig? Good luck. You could give me all the right programs (Maya, 3dMax, PhotoSuite) and it would still end up looking like a straight line from MS paint.

Just get your hands dirty and your feet wet. Sample as much as you can from the varied components of game production. There are plenty of free or nearly-free top-of-the-line programming suites and engines you can get your mits on, but if you want anything 'nice' as far as graphics go, you're going to be shelling out 4 digits at a minimum for any of the licenses.