In conjunction with the GAME DEVELOPMENT ISN'T EASY! thread, the following is an interview I did with Radu Privantu (known as Raduprv on Gdnet), creator of Eternal Lands, a very successful indie-MMORPG. Radu was kind enough to take the time to do this interview, so massive thanks to him. Q. How did you get started in programming? A. By the time I was 12 or 13, I had my first personal computer, which happened to be a Spectrum ZX48 compatible computer. It had an integrated Basic interpreter, and Z80 ASM was possible with a small but effective assembler. After playing a lot of games, I decided, like any 13 years old kid, that I want to make my own games. So I started to learn Basic, and got a few Basic books. Then I learned some Z80 ASM, at the age of 14, but didn't do much with it. When I got my first PC I was 15, and I started learning X86 ASM. At that time I didn't really make anything game like, but, instead, I focused on researching computer viruses, and how they work. My first assembler for PC was debug.exe (which is quite frustrating ), then Tasm. Years later I learned PHP, and, eventually, C. Q. What was your first game project? A. My first game project was some sort of "kill the zombies and bad guys" hack and slash game. I was 13 at that time, and I didn't have any programming skills needed to make such a game, but at least I wrote down the concept, and some maps :) The first real game I actually worked at was when I turned 19, for a Romanian game company. I worked there for about 7 month, but eventually quit, for some personal reasons. Last time I checked, the game was almost ready, but wasn't shipped. I heard they were looking for some publishers. I would like to mention that none of my code is in that game, they changed the engine a few times after I left. Q. What experience did you have once you stared EL? A. I knew C pretty well (but not much as I do now, of course), then I also knew some OpenGL (about 1/3 of what I know now, which isn't much at all), and had some experience with networking and such from an earlier failed attempt to make an MMORPG in assembly, and a successful attempt to make a very minimal web server in assembly. But due to my previous projects I knew which mistakes to avoid, and my programming skill was considerably better than before. Q. What problem did you underestimate most when starting EL? A. That's an easy question: Getting people to play the game :) I was assuming that once the game is in early pre-alpha, when all you can do is walk around, people will crowd the game. Which didn't exactly happen :) Q. What do you think helped get you past this problem? Was it something you actively did on your part, or did it just sort itself out. A. It was both, actually. What we did was to continuously improve the game, so that other players will like it. Then we started to advertise a little. Usually, the more players you have in the game, the more players will come. It's some sort of psychological effect, you don't want to play an MMORPG that is empty :) If you come and see no one, or just very few players, then you might think the game sucks. However, if you see a few hundred players on, you think that there must be something about this game if so many people are playing it. Q. Take us through a typical day when EL was in its infancy A. Wake up, take a look to see if everything is fine (ie. the server didn't crash), take a look at how many players are in the game, curse because there were usually under 5 players on, start implementing new things, do some brainstorming, fix bugs, stuff like that. At that time, however, I had enough time to program, and I wasn't bothered by people forgetting their passwords, mods fighting each other, users complaining they were mistreated by mods, users complaining they were scammed/hacked, and so on. Q. What was the biggest challenge that you faced when making EL? A. Keep working while everything seemed to point out that we'll fail. Everything else went relatively smoothly, it was like a higher power was helping us and gave us whatever we needed, when we needed it most. Q. How hard was it to find people to work on EL with you when it was still very small? A. As I said above, the Universe (or God, whatever you want to call it) seemed to smile on us, so we didn't really have a problem with getting help, even after we just started. For example, the head of the map makers joined us about 1 or 2 months after we started. In December, 10 months after we started, we got 2 programmers that joined our team, once the client was released as Open Source. Since then, other programmers joined in the fun. Q. Obviously they knew that EL had a legitimate chance of being completed. What do you think it was that showed them that the project was for real? A. They knew that the project was for real because we did have enough programming done to allow movement on maps, and we also had some art done. The first person that joined (our map maker) made some sort of leap of faith, he wasn't sure whether or not the project will succeed. The others that joined later on first actually played the game (the game was playable at that time) so they could see that our population is slowly increasing. But even now, that we have a record of 446 players online at the same time, is hard to find really good team members. While there are many programmers out there, the most good programmers are already in some team or another. Plus, there are only certain skills we are interested in, for example advanced OpenGL knowledge. The only way to further improve the game, client side, is to add various eye candies other games have and we don't, plus various optimisations to the engine, to make it faster on slower computers. Q. Do you have any tips for those starting up there own games? A. I have a tip for those starting their own MMORPG: Unless you are really experienced, and have an artist, you should start writing a MUD server first. Mud servers require considerably less work than an MMORPG, and no art at all (well, except maybe for some ASCII art). Only after you finish this MUD server think about starting making an MMORPG. And if you are not a programmer, don't even think of starting working at an MMORPG until you at least STUDY some programming books and become familiar with a programming language, such as C/C++. This is because otherwise no one will take you seriously (there are, after all, many people with great ideas; the hard thing is implementing them). -------- Interview by Nigel 'Boolean' Mcconnochie. Thanks again to Radu Privantu for participating. You can check out his website at Eternal Lands [Edited by - boolean on February 19, 2005 5:35:41 AM]

OK. Here is your chance people!

Raduprv has very generously dedicated some of his time to this interview and now you lucky people have the chance to ask some questions of your own. There are a few points that you HAVE to abide by;

1) Ask interesting questions based on mmorpg development. NO questions already asked and NO questions that can be answered HERE!.

2) General indie team questions may be allowed and Radu may answer them if he can, just remember that this is mostly about his mmorpg development experience so he will take preference to those questions.

3) Comments to Radu about his work and this interview are ok. Just make sure you don't engage in any discussion that will throw this thread off topic.

4) Be polite. Remember, Radu is experienced in this field and knows much more about this kind of development than most people, including most professional developers who haven't tackled the issue.

5) DO NOT, and I repeat DO NOT show disrespect in any form. This includes being impatient with waiting for an answer, flaming in any way, or generally being an asshole. IF anyone dares to break this rule, I will personally come down with everything at my disposal. Radu and boolean have taken time and effort to help here, I will not tolerate disrespect to either of them.


I hope you guys take the time to use this valuable resource at your disposal! If you guys do read/reply to this thread and it provides genuine inspiration or answer to something you've always wanted to know, then I urge you to direct your thanks to both Raduprv and boolean.


Marc.

Great interview.

Hello There,

Very nice, inspireing interview and a great GAME !
I hope i'm not over asking anything, nor i mean to be disrespectful in any way.

* I'd like to know how many players/ registered accounts does the game have?
How fast is the intrest growing, as game is being developed and new features added?

* Many people here are like that " lets make an MMORPG, get rich". You
mentioned that the low intrest in people was unexpected when you published the alpha. It's also free.
So what is rewarind in such a project ? experience, any money from donations or intrest from publishers ?

* How big are the expences ( servers..) ?


Sincerely,
Yuri

Quote: Original post by df2wolfVery nice, inspireing interview and a great GAME !

Thanks :)

Quote:
* I'd like to know how many players/ registered accounts does the game have?
How fast is the intrest growing, as game is being developed and new features added?

The number of players has nothing to do with the number of accounts. A lot of people have more than one character, and others register names, play for a few minutes/hours/days, then won't play again. But I would guestimate that we have over 50K registered accounts, and maybe 5K active players (active as in playing at least 1/week).
As for the grouth, well, since the beginning of the year the record of players online increased from about 375 to 446. So i would say we are growing pretty fast :)

Quote:
* Many people here are like that " lets make an MMORPG, get rich". You
mentioned that the low intrest in people was unexpected when you published the alpha. It's also free.
So what is rewarind in such a project ? experience, any money from donations or intrest from publishers ?

The alpha version was two years ago. At that point we didn't offer much, so we didn't have many players at all. Now, on the other hand, we make some money from donations and various services such as name changes, color changes, selling ingame items, and, most recent, selling special races for money. The total income so far does NOT justify the time spent making the game, we would have got much more by working at McDonalds :) But, hopefully, this will change in the future.

Quote:
* How big are the expences ( servers..) ?

Both the webserver and the gameserver are free, we have some deals with the companies that offer them to us. The game server is offered in exchange for a localized French license of the game, and the webserver is offered for some minor advertising (a link on our website).
However, the biggest expense is not monetary, but in terms of time, effort, and stress.

Thanks to both of you (Radu and Boolean) for creating and participating in this thread, it's yet another excellent resource for those wanting to start an MMORPG project.


Where there or are there any particular resources (be it books, online articles, etc) on MMORPG development that you used and would recommend others starting an MMORPG project to look into?

Once the game was up and running, how much time needed to be put into maintenance/bug-fixing etc, and how did this impact the addition of new features to the game?

You mentioned that your client was released as open source. What were the benefits of this decision, and were there any down sides to it? Would you recommend this course of action to others in a similar situation, and if so, is there a particular licence you would recommend?

In one of your postmortem articles, you mention going through several different systems for 'training' new players in how the game works before settling on a method that worked for you. What would be the most important things you picked up from this, and do you have any advice on training the players?


Again, thankyou for your time. [smile]

Oh, and one further question, sorry -

You mention that one of the major hurdles was getting players, and that part of the solution to this involved advertising. What kind of advertising did you make use of, and what sort of information about your game was included?

Quote: Original post by Kazgoroth
Oh, and one further question, sorry -

You mention that one of the major hurdles was getting players, and that part of the solution to this involved advertising. What kind of advertising did you make use of, and what sort of information about your game was included?

Did anyone catch this guys 3 post article I saw on the net. I thought it answered the advertising question pretty well..

My argument for the poor guy is where is 4, the promised new project he is working on.

MikHaven

Quote: Original post by MikHaven

Quote: Original post by Kazgoroth
Oh, and one further question, sorry -

You mention that one of the major hurdles was getting players, and that part of the solution to this involved advertising. What kind of advertising did you make use of, and what sort of information about your game was included?

Did anyone catch this guys 3 post article I saw on the net. I thought it answered the advertising question pretty well..

My argument for the poor guy is where is 4, the promised new project he is working on.

MikHaven

I've read them, but I'd be interested in any further information on the topic.

Quote:
Where there or are there any particular resources (be it books, online articles, etc) on MMORPG development that you used and would recommend others starting an MMORPG project to look into?

I didn't ready any book or article on this, but what I did read was various documentation and examples for the libraries I used (OpenGL, SDL and SDL_net).

Quote:
Once the game was up and running, how much time needed to be put into maintenance/bug-fixing etc, and how did this impact the addition of new features to the game?

Except for the first month after we started, when there were plenty of bugs to be fixed, we didn't spend that much time fixing bugs. The maintenance was very low, the game didn't require any special actions to run smoothly. So, with few exceptions, most of the programming time was dedicated to add new features.

Quote:
You mentioned that your client was released as open source. What were the benefits of this decision, and were there any down sides to it? Would you recommend this course of action to others in a similar situation, and if so, is there a particular licence you would recommend?

The benefits are that:
1. More people will help you fix bugs, add new features, and find better ways to do some things.
2. People usually feel better about open source games (they can analyze the code themselves to make sure there is no malware included).
The dissatvantages are:
1. People will be able to include all kind of macroing functions in your client.
2. You can't assign an unique ID to each computer, to elimiate things such as multiply (playing multiple characters at the same time).
3. You can't encrypt the data to prevent people from messing around and make all kind of tools you don't want them to have.

And yes, not only that I do recommend others to do the same, but my new project, Barren Moon is also Open Source (client side).
As for the license, whatever suits you best. Some people like GPL, others like more liberal licenses, and others like custom built licenses.

Quote:
In one of your postmortem articles, you mention going through several different systems for 'training' new players in how the game works before settling on a method that worked for you. What would be the most important things you picked up from this, and do you have any advice on training the players?

Ideally, the training system should be easy to understand, fun, and long enough to show the players a lot of the game subtelties.
Unfortunately, making it fun and long is very hard, a lot of people do not like long tutorials, they feel like discovering things on their own, then they give up because the game is too complicated. One way would be to make the tutorials as part of a series of small quests, and offer a small reward (such as items) at the end of each quest.

Quote:
You mention that one of the major hurdles was getting players, and that part of the solution to this involved advertising. What kind of advertising did you make use of, and what sort of information about your game was included?

We used only web advertising, both paid, in form of banners, and not paid, in form of interviews with gaming sites and submiting the game to various game related portals, such as mpogd.com, mmorpg.com, etc.
The banner advertising was done on mpogd.com and the banner indicated that Eternal Lands is a free, fun MMORPG where you can do quests, fight, make items, and make friends.

Quote:
My argument for the poor guy is where is 4, the promised new project he is working on.

MikHaven

Part 4 should be published soon, I have already submited it to devmaster.net
Unfortunately, it isn't about the new project, I decided to put that in the 5th part, along to what happened after I left EL, how we shared some code between Barren Moon and EL, how I came back to EL doing various non programming stuff, etc.