Up and Coming

questions about MMOs in Unreal

7 replies
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I'm hoping to get some insight as to what's possible for smaller developers when it comes to massive multiplayer experiences with the Rift. I'm working on a virtual music festival...

viewtopic.php?f=40&t=7922

Since posting that I've managed to put together a team of some of the best 3D artists on the planet, together I'm sure they can create a phenomenal experience (the festival will take place on a space station) but now I need to find developers. Optimizing their work for VR will be one challenge, but we have a bit of help on that front already, the bigger issue how to allow thousands of people to immerse themselves in this world at the same time, without too many limitations on interaction.

One suggestion in the other thread was Gmod. Which could possibly work, I'm told it's ideal for sandbox environments, however it hasn't been updated in a long time. To me the most desirable option seems to be Unreal, because we'll have at least dozens of collaborators, they all need to be able to work on the same project without massive licensing fees. And also we need an engine that can render detailed graphics in real-time.

The main question I have though is... how difficult is it to get an engine to allow for many users on the same map? And if we figure that out, are these MMO hosting services online adequate to run a large event, without a large team of professional game developers on our end?

I'm hoping that something like Janus/Altspace/Curio or whatever Facebook is cooking up might be able to host this sort of traffic, on an online VR network, but it's too early to get much info. Although maybe some people here can fill me in on their limitations, whether this is even possible at all without a massive budget.

Any help is great appreciated.

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C

cybereality

Inspiring

Unless you're a studio with 100's of employees and a budget in the millions, don't even think about building an MMO.

K

kdeluxeAuthor

Up and Coming

You're saying that creating a non-game space where a lot of people can meet is impossible? What number of people is the limit to what a smaller developer can handle?

C

cybereality

Inspiring

Well I am not saying a small team can not build a game, even an online one. Just when you hear the word MMO, people typically think of a World of Warcraft thing which is nowhere near possible with a small indie team in their mom's garage. However, if you limit the scope and keep the design simple, a small team (or even a single person) can probably make something great.

K

kdeluxeAuthor

Up and Coming

That's why I started this thread, in hopes that people can help educate me as to the limits of what's possible with a small team, doing a festival on a large map. I'm under the impression that Unreal, out of the box, doesn't allow for so many people in the same space. But that it can be made to work for thousands.

G

getnamo

Up and Coming

There are no real hard networking limitations in UE4. It currently defaults to 16 players max, but you can increase this and can very likely run close to 64+ connections stably on a single server depending on hardware. That said, networking without optimization is an exponentially growing problem; to solve these problems there are various tools including load balancing, clustering, zoning, instancing, range limiting/etc most of which are developed as custom architecture.

These are non-trivial problems in general, but the simplest solution is zoning where you world is sharded into areas which support up to about 100 players per zone (e.g. Everquest or other zoned MMO's approach).

For examples on how to achieve 1000+ simultaneous connections check out posts on eve online's architecture where they even dilate game time to keep the game in sync with oversubscribed bandwidth demand.

Current Project: Skycall

K

kdeluxeAuthor

Up and Coming

thanks for the link, will read it over. you mention breaking up a map into different areas. something like that may work, but this particular environment is a very large cylinder, a space station that rotates with green areas and communities inside that simulate gravity. what i need ideally though is for people to jet up into the center of the cylinder, which i hope is clouded in sections, and then keep moving up until they hit the other side of the station. i want a map where you can move around this giant hollow space as if it's one map, even if it isn't.

K

kdeluxeAuthor

Up and Coming

Apparently Curio, or the Virtual World Web, will be able to host thousands of interacting avatars in this sort of event, I'm told. It's by the people who made Utherverse, which I'd never tried myself...

http://virtualworldweb.com/alpha

They have various patents that make unlimited users possible, but "VR won't be viable for a large-scale concert event right away. Of course, by the time Oculus is shipping to consumers, we'll probably have it all worked out, but right now, VR is best when the user is seated and not walking around or even dancing very much." Also mentioned is that it'll be mid-January until they do support the Rift, instead of more traditional virtual environments.

So, this is promising! However one issue for me is that Curio uses Unity. Which isn't so great for the smaller developer as Unreal, however I'm also told that while they convert it to Unity we don't need to design in it. Although we do need people who design for MMO's specifically, they say.

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