Developers Corner

Coding the renderer is at most 5% of the work that has to be done.

But if you want to start with it first, I would suggest to read much about rendering algorithms. Especially academic papers are a good source for algorithms and they provide very often also demo-code or a demo-application with source code - mostly for OpenGL, because it is not limited to the Windows OS.

Ragosch

A multiplayer internet game like Battlefield uses an architecture where the clients connect to the server to "see" each other, but the server doesn't really do much other than host the connection (and check for cheats, flooding, disconnects, etc).

In a MMORPG it's all different - the server basically runs the entire game - event handling (like keyboard/click movement), physics, collision detection, pathfinding, game rules and so on. All the client does is move graphics around as instructed by the server, play sounds on queue and deliver log/chat messages.

I would suggest that you FORGET about rendering algorithms, terrain mappers, 3D programming, sound engines, and all the cool looking stuff and look at the network code, pathfinding code, and game rules. You need to be able to handle connections of some sort from some kind of client - in the design and prototype stage it's actually not that important to have a sophisticated 3D engine. Use Macromedia Director if you can - it has a socket connector, 3d engine and all the events you need to try out your ideas. After you've got something workable, switch client side engines to something you actually would use - switching shouldn't significantly alter what the server side has to do.

A MMORPG is all about the network connection and server side engine - once you get those in place your client side presentation code will come together much easier.

Reccomended reading (the usual suspects):

-Massively Multiplayer Game Development (ISBN 1-58450-243-6)
-Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 (ISBN 1-58450-390-4)
-Designing Virtual Worlds (ISBN 0-131-1816-7)

and one I found handy for getting a handle on the whole client-server architecture (though for a different style of game):

MUD game programming (ISBN 1-59200-090-8)

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Originally posted by frumbert

A MMORPG is all about the network connection and server side engine - once you get those in place your client side presentation code will come together much easier.

Reccomended reading (the usual suspects):

-Massively Multiplayer Game Development (ISBN 1-58450-243-6)
-Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 (ISBN 1-58450-390-4)
-Designing Virtual Worlds (ISBN 0-131-1816-7)

and one I found handy for getting a handle on the whole client-server architecture (though for a different style of game):

MUD game programming (ISBN 1-59200-090-8)

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Actually a very good suggestion, frumbert.

MUDs are not that different from MMORPGs from a server's point of view; instead of textual descriptions of scenes (output) and textual input (user commands) using Telnet communication the input/output of an MMORPG is in a proprietary format instead. Instead of having your world organized into "rooms" your world is organized and handled in a more or less different way, but you can use most of the principles of MUD server programming also in an MMO.

As far as internet connection and server-side programming is concerned, why not use Java?-

Networking is quite easy in java and a platform-independent multi-threaded MMO-server will perform much better on new hardware than the old single-threaded ones. If you will want to use java also on client-side is a question of taste - nothing is really speaking against using it (besides the problem to actually hide your code). A combination of java and JOGL is not significantly slower and you have the advantages of platform-independent and easy client deployment (using Java Web Start technology) and it's platform-independent usage.

Ragosch