NetGore

Only really active orpg communities are Eclipse (For more reasons then the engine.) and Genesis2D.

I've tried dozens in about a fortnight's time. Made a working demo/game with Eclipse-Stable. Of course, those engines pale in comparison to the power of NetGore.

I was a heavy Mirage Realms developer. Before that I used MS 3.0.3 and MS4 for everything. Now that MR is not being supported anymore, and I'm going to be learning C# soon, I figured that a transition to NetGore was the logical decision to make.

From what I understand, the Eclipse series of engines is based off of the Mirage engine. They seem bloated and lack consistent polymorphism. What's the scoop with Mirage? I thought there was supposed to be a Mirage Prelude released soon.

Activity still punctuates the silence.

The Eclipse forums enjoy daily discussion, whether in the form of WIP threads, alpha and beta announcements, question and answer sessions, or (many) inane off-topic posts. Eclipse Origins has proven to be the spin-off of choice.

XtremeWorlds version 1.0.4 is being worked on by smchronos. Owner of said engine, Bradyok, caused hell to freeze over by allowing another to view and edit his closed source code. Pre-release builds are available for previewing and testing.

Donors have been treated to an early release of Genesis2D version 3.0 for testing purposes. Expect a public download in a few weeks. Several new projects have popped up in recent months and an advertising campaign will begin once a certain domain name is secured.

Progress has slowed on the Malachite engine, but may pick up steam now that the developer, Monoxide, is done relocating. Development on the fourth beta is ongoing.

Inactive would best describe the Asphodel community. Although GIAKEN would like to transform Asphodel Games into a company that provides game development services. Surviving the Seasons and the Asphodel6 engine are on track to receive updates and, in the case of the MORPG, a release date.

Wall of text aside, my weapon of choice will most likely be XtremeWorlds. Anyone know what happened to Mirage Realms?

I hope you mean, other than NetGore my weapon of choice will most likely be XtremeWorlds. As far as weapons go, it's like having a Claymore take on a wet noodle.

The only experience I have running an engine is with the now-defunct PlayerWorlds. I figure if XtremeWorlds is considered by some to be the successor to PW, than most functions would be similar. The setup guide for NetGore seems daunting.

Is no engine plug and play?

Well if it is going to be plug-and-play, it'll either:
1. Have to not rely on any external libraries (which is a very, very bad sign)
2. Come bundled with everything already (which would be an excessively huge download, require repacking every time any external library updates, and be excessively huge for people who already have some of the components)
3. Stream everything it needs (huge PITA to develop, and usually not completely reliable)

I don't see how NetGore is too tough. All it really requires is MySQL and Visual Studio or Visual C# 2010. The InstallationValidator even imports the database dump for you.

Edit: I should clarify: I don't see how the installation of NetGore is too tough. NetGore itself is a whole different beast.

I've been messing around with NetGore for days now and I'm slowly catching on to its mechanics and its actually becoming more and more simple to use.

I had the same feeling about a week ago when I first looked at it. I figured if I was going to spend time learning those engines I might as well spend the time to learn NetGore. Those others are a good stepping stone, however.

I answered my own question. Yay me!

The Visual Basic 6 version of Mirage Realms is no longer supported. All hail the Java version.

http://www.mirage-realms.com/

The game itself can be found at its new home.

http://mr.orpgarmory.com/

Why does it seem people are always pushing out spin-offs of the Mirage engine instead of just working together? Similarly, there has been a lot of attempts to recreate Mirage in a different language (I've seen VB.NET, C++, and a few Javas). Is the incredibly highly outdated style of Mirage really that appealing to some?

Since it's essentially a game maker and not an engine, it's appealing to a lot of young and silly folks who think they can make an mmo in a few days/weeks.

Is the java version runable as an applet like Runescape? Cuz THAT's more interesting to use.

It's probably appealing to people who have only used Mirage. There really aren't that many mmorpg engines on the level of Mirage, whether you think it's crap or not. (I personally never messed with the source, I friggen hate VB6)

There's no doubt that early versions of mirage source had the leanest and cleanest code base of any engine out there. It's well designed and easy to understand.

As for creating new branches, that would have a lot to do with lack of source control and management, and the age of the developers. I mean when I was 13 I always thought I could do much better, and didn't want to deal with teenage bureaucracy, and often you don't get credit for anything when you push code. Also its hard to manage when you haven't worked in software before, its hard to get the process to work efficiently because you are making stuff up to fill in gaps of knowledge.

http://www.mirage-realms.com/

probably similar reasons as to why the "lux" project hasn't got any recruitment, or apparent source control or anything just one guy :S not sure he realises how much time and effort that will take. Particularly as Java is OO and Vb6 is, well, not.

Unless he's going to meticulously convert the vb6 source to java, in a kind of OO way - which would be annoying especially as a lone developer (and take forever) - then it will be hugely different.