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We are a small group of developers and we want to create a Future-like MMO which will combine City building, RTS, Economic and Political type of games.

We are unsure if we should develop a DirectX9 engine from scratch or use tools like XNA, DXstudio.(we have experience creating a simple FPS-like engine using DirectX)

Another question is if engines like UnrealEngine/ UDK, Unity are really an option for a complex game like ours(most games developed with these engines are FP/3rdP Shooters)?

Any idea for where to start with the engine will be helpful.

tshepang
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Calin Mihalache
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  • I guess most of the modern big engines can be used for much more than FPS (or variants). I know of one isometric RPG that will be developed using Unity for example. One bit "pro" point for some engines is that they are cross-platform, so using e.g. Unity you get OSX and Linux basically for free. – Some programmer dude Oct 16 '12 at 08:11
  • What does "future-like" mean in this context? A sci-fi setting? Or that it will be years ahead of the competition? Or something else? – jalf Oct 16 '12 at 08:16
  • But for the record, MMOs have been made in Unity (Battlestar Galactica Online comes to mind), and the Unreal engine was used for Mass Effect, so I'd say both are usable for "complex games". – jalf Oct 16 '12 at 08:19
  • I meant sci-fi setting. We also believe that the game will be little similar to other games and will not be somehow included in a typical genre. – Calin Mihalache Oct 16 '12 at 08:25

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You allways endup with engine that prefectly fits your needs if you build it your self. but this takes time and is costy.

On the other hand picking a engine like UDK/CryEngine, you will save some time but probably need to give time to be able to do exactly what you want.

If i would suggest a start is to nail down every technical aspect of the game. For example, things like this : Graphics, Content handling/pipeline, SocialSupport(Facebook, Twitter), Target platform, How to solve most of your programming problems (How to use the economy system, building systems etc)

And when all that is done, just try this out in a easy alpha in all the engines you would like to test. (including writing a own, but with limited stuff to just make it prototype) from there, pick what feelt best and hope that it will work out, :)

hope that helps some!

Tordin
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