NetGore

Who said vbGORE's max was 40? I don't think anyone has even got that many on at once.

vbGORE has the ability to distribute maps to individual processes, so you could theoretically run a dedicated server for each map if you really wanted. NetGore doesn't have this ability, and I have no intention on adding it until it is actually needed (as with many other performance changes for NetGore).

1. No. But I'd still recommend NetGore over vbGORE for many other reasons, namely that vbGORE's networking isn't very good, its a pretty poorly designed engine, and its not anywhere near as powerful and flexible as NetGore.

2/3. Can't really say. But I can say the differences between the two:

vbGORE is much more simple than NetGore. vbGORE also has a huge advantage of being tile-based. NetGore is far better designed, and scales significantly better. I've been able to create hundreds of NPCs on a map at once in a pretty enclosed area, and pretty much all the processing goes to the AI.

NetGore is also built much better for transparent improvements in the future. With vbGORE, you had to mess around in the core engine code. With NetGore, you shouldn't ever really need to.

For both, it really depends on how those players are spread out in the world, and what they are doing. Handling 100+ users in a single map would be brutal on the server for either engine, but 100+ users with an average of no more than 10 per map wouldn't be too bad.

What you should care more about is that NetGore is being actively developed, is far better designed, is much easier to work with, and is much more powerful. In reality, since NetGore isn't tested nearly as much, it is probably not much faster than vbGORE, if not slower (even though it really is like comparing apples and oranges since they both work very differently). But it should always be "fast enough". With vbGORE, I spent a lot of time optimizing for no particular reason, and the result was an engine that could get needlessly high frame rates but had incredibly messy code. With NetGore, I just optimize when an issue arises.

As an example, just recently, there was some mention that the server was stalling a bit due to database queries. The next update then had some of the server-side objects redesigned a little, and the queries were rewritten to be run in non-blocking mode whenever possible. Most all of this was transparent to the higher levels of the engine, so existing projects just had to update their code and "magically" get a huge performance boost. And if I need to improve the performance of database querying again, I already have a plan to implement asynchronous queries. Something like this would never happen in vbGORE since there was very little abstraction and it pretty much required you to change the code inside the engine itself (there wasn't even a distinction between "game" and "engine" in vbGORE).

In short: Unless you're really far along on a vbGORE project, there is no reason to not use NetGore. Its better in every way. Both vbGORE and NetGore can support a respectable amount of players, and in reality, they both support more players than most anyone will achieve. But if you hit the wall in vbGORE, you're pretty much on your own. If you hit the wall in NetGore, you just have to tell me where the bottleneck is an I'll fix it.

Alrighty then, thanks for the quick and very well detailed reply . I'm switching to Netgore...! I'm not quite sure if I should post this here or if I should just open up a new topic but : Is NetGore easier to use if you decide to create a side-scroller game? Like, is there less bugs and stuff like that. Or are both top-down and side-scroller pretty much the same?

It's pretty simple to use either. But I'd imagine side scroller would be a bit better since the engine was originally written as a sidescroller.

I personally don't write a whole lot for the top-down, but most all stuff in the engine doesn't care whether its top-down or sidescroller. Top-down in NetGore is basically sidescroller without gravity, the ability to move up/down instead of jump, and the ability to face up/down. Basically all there is to it. There ideally shouldn't be bugs in either, and both are pretty well tested.

If there are topdown bugs you can be sure we'll find them in SVO and whine about it to Spodi

As far as the code goes, 99% of the code is shared between the two. There's only a few bits here and there that differ for topdown, and you just change the buildmode for them. The topdown doesn't really have any bugs the sidescroller doesn't, because they work in nearly exactly the same way.

Plus you have the SVO guys testing the topdown stuff So there's really not to much to worry about. It's not any easier to dev for sidescroller than it is to topdown, so go with whichever one you prefer!

The only thing is a pain with netgore IMO, is merging the constant SVN update But that's really not too bad if you can spare a bit of time here and there for it - Just make sure to do it fairly often, it's not fun having to merge 400 updates because you were too lazy to do it for ages *cough* me *cough*

Yeah that's why I've been hesitant using the SVN release. I don't want to merge tons of updates. D:

Well, it's the only way if you've already got a bit of custom code.

Merging shouldn't be too bad since most of the code I change is in places that you wouldn't be changing yourself, so you can just flat-out replace the whole file. It'll also get easier over time, especially since most of what remains in NetGore (as far as code goes) is performance, features, and improving the editor.

Alright, that clears that up ....I'm Switching to Netgore for sure now! . I'll try to get used to it and btw, thanks for all the replies. I shall keep you updated if I ever find a bug.