Posting it here, regardless of the redundancy, as people can just read the same thing if they so desire in MM's blog comments...
http://mm.soldat.pl/?p=40(after reading it all, and I suggest you do too):
Wow, the irony of it all.
When I and my friend first considered game designing, what you’ve spelled out in the beginning is exactly what we thought. It’s been about 4 years and we’re still no where near where we thought we would be by now. “Oh yea, we’ll have a working Beta out by June” - gimme a break! It’s been 3 and 1/2 years since then.
I’ve been modding/designing maps for a very long time, and at one point, even tried to make a Metroid take-off using a program called Gamemaker 6 (unregistered version), and I messed with that thing off and on for at least a year. I’ve been tootling with Starcraft maps for many-a-year… all of my inspirations for designing new game environments in which to play in started before I even had the opportunity to do so: while playing the game “Army Men: World War”…
I always thought about new ways to play a map.. or what new mini game-mode I could make inside of the already provided game-modes. “How many different ways could a battle be fought.” What the problem was with that game was there were only 3-4 good “skirmish” maps out of the ~16 offered. There were good things in each map.. and I thought that “only if I could just combine these unique qualities, I could create a fun level.” Of course I was only.. 10 then? I turned geek young.
Well it all boils down to now. Since then, I’ve taught myself intermediate 3D modeling with Blender, made a million maps in Worms Armageddon, Starcraft, Warcraft 2, and now Soldat… each getting more mature and better with age. Long short of it is, it takes a lot of time.
Still haven’t made my MMORPG though… but just you wait, it’s going to be 10x better than
Wurm Online when it’s developed!
