Creating our own game?

So far it's going pretty good, but in the future, there will be a lot of problems. For example, that starting menu you saw in the video uses CryEngine's port of Autodesk Scaleform, which is a $10,000 license. In order to avoid that, I would need to design the UI natively without relying on Scaleform's rich interface. That includes embedding native flash without any Scaleform optimization.

CryTek will consume 20% of all financial profits associated with the game, be it from selling the game or even donations to its cause. This is okay since they let us use their game engine anyway (that avoids re-inventing the wheel).

Getting the game onto Xbox or PS3 will need to be done by another game studio, as the license to publish games to consoles costs around a ridiculous $250,000.

The CryEngine's network system must be completely rewritten. Currently, it will support up to 64 players with some gamedll modifications, but if we decide to make this an MMO, we would need to rewrite part of the engine's server code. We do not get internal access to engine's source code, and requesting internal access to the networking portion of the engine will cost us $100,000. What do we do instead? Well, completely rewrite the multiplayer portion of the engine by ourselves (still better than writing an entire game engine from scratch). That's going to be a killer considering the complexity of the latency algorithm itself-- not to mention its execution.

Then lastly we need to license re-use of base assets, which costs $60,000. To avoid that, we either create our own models (not happening), or we talk to CryTek about special licensing. Apparently they assume equal rights over the game then, and that may or may not be beneficial.

All this combined with the fact that this is not a mod (we have no "base" game to mod off of, we write everything with c++), that makes this project exponentially harder than modding a game like l4d2 or arma II.

With all these odds stacked against us, do you still think we can pull off an epic game? I think so, and I have my hopes up. There are no guarantees though. We're dealing with huge multimillion dollar companies and engines here.

 

I could help with the mapping side, just give me a few days to check it out.

 

I could see about helping with some of the programming.

 

LOL, you guys are crazy....and thats why i love MG .....

 

i can help with website + db + idea's and in the future the developing

 

I downloaded the SDK, just got to get my head around how to use the map editor now. It's sort of like the Farcry 2 editor where you can drop your player straight into the level, but a lot more advanced.

 

A mod doesn't give the the full-blown flexibility like starting a game from scratch would I initially started this game using the Source Engine, but I realized the graphics sucked. If you know of any good open source game engines, let me know.

By the way, CrazyRabbit, Far Cry used the older CryEngine. This is the latest version of the engine (CE3), so it's a lot more complex.

 

Hehe, we get 80% of the income, they get 20%. C4's water doesn't look realistic at all... I mean, I can make the same thing by tessellating a plane with a water texture on it in 20 minutes and applying a light shader to it.

 

That is very true... I use an i7-2630QM 4GB RAM with nVidia Geforce 525M, and I get around 22 - 29 FPS at best. Thankfully, DirectX 11 has advanced lag compensation algorithms, so you hardly notice any lag (as you saw in my video that I recorded with Fraps).

Well, we can always revert back to my Source Engine build of Plague. I would have to update a lot of the SDK to current standards, including adding parallax occlusion and cone step map shaders, and then find an algorithm that can handle lots of vegetation. That is way too much work... I looked at Frostbite Engine as well, and they have similar licensing.

Another thing we can do is completely release the game for free (non-profit). Then, once the game gets popular, we can hit up a deal with CryTek that works out for both of us

 

I was talking about the Farcry 2 Map Editor, it used Cryengine 2 and was user friendly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qE4ko0DfaU.
A little too friendly and simple, but it was quick and easy to get maps out there for when people got bored. I managed 3 maps in just 1 week.

This editor on the other hand, much more complex.

I don't know whats wrong with a mod in L4D2. We have the mappers (myself and roflz) and can easily source some modellers from the l4dmaps website.

 

Anyone know what Epic charges for Unreal Engine?

 

Very similar to CryTek, but we can't use the UDK. They provide no backend C++ access (unless you want to play $110,000), and we definitely need C++ for a game like this. Nor can I imagine myself using that horrid pawn and SM c++ to make this game... If anything, I would go all out with the HL2 core engine files, but it's way too old for my needs.

@davzee: Could you make a nice after effects 5 second intro for MG and export it to wmv for me? If it lets you export to webm, that'd be excellent, otherwise I'll just convert it. Thanks!

 

Mods don't give us the flexibility we need. This is going to be a totally new standalone game-- not another shitty mod like DayZ. The DayZ hive system isn't advanced enough to manage character persistence across modded and unmodded servers and account for changes. Although it's a very fun mod, it's very poorly done, and they offer no support to the very people who keep their mod alive (the server admins). In order for any game/mod to live past its life expectancy, it needs to support modding. Consider PR. Points Reloaded has mod support. Any one of you can use its shared library to mod the RPG system to give it more features.

If we were to use the engine behind L4D2 (Source Engine) to create a totally new standalone game, that would work, but we would be severely limiting ourselves on the graphics side. If we were to use Frostbite Engine, we can forget about any commercial opportunities. Other 3rd party rendering engines like Ogre and Irrlicht are nice, but they are bare.

CryEngine looks like the way to go for this one You guys vote on it-- if you want me to switch engines, I will.