2. Making a Web-Based MMO in Your Attic With Shockwave

3. 3D browser based fantasy MMO created in Shockwave Very small, independent cottage industry developer no funding started as a hobby attracts over a million unique monthly visitors revenue generated from banner ads independent of large portals or publishers MaidMarian.com and SherwoodDungeon.com represents about 60% of traffic Other multiplayer games: Tank Ball, Club Marian, Moon Base (One community with multiple experiences) Introduction

4. casual / social fantasy MMO traditional hack-n-slash PVE with influences from Rogue no classes / no level cap infinitely deep dungeon six themed islands quests and merchants crafting system that uses runes and scrolls no emphasis on competition between players XP levels don’t affect PVP pets and horses that purchased for real money (*new feature released this week) Sherwood Dungeon

7. Shockwave Penetration June 2008 59.2% in mature markets U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany and Japan 34.2% in emerging markets China, S.Korea, Russia, India and Taiwan Flash's forgotten older bastard step-brother Flash doesn't do 3D (3D add on’s for Flash still fall short) Shockwave penetration rate higher than most other 3D browser technologies (like Unity) Java’s 3D technology also getting good in recent years worth considering Shockwave

8. Shockwave 3D Mac (Intel) and Windows (Vista / XP) DirectX7, DirectX9 and OpenGL Lingo or JavaScript syntax for scripting Solid first generation T&L 3D engine No pixel / vertex shaders No “next-gen” rendering features Exporters available from Maya / 3DS Max / Lightwave etc. I use Maya 7.0 Excellent lossy compression scheme for: Meshes Skinned meshes with bones Textures with embedded alpha Animation Very small resulting file sizes

9. Shockwave 3D – cont. Dynamic Lighting Directional, Ambient, Spot, Point lights CBV Lighting (baked lighting) is not supported by exporters but is accessible from code Textures variety of RGB formats (8888, 4444, 5551, etc.) text, video, flash, vector, bitmaps can be converted into textures at run-time Director’s Imaging Lingo very fast and useful for 3D blur, bevel, glow, drop shadow, HSV, perlin noise added to Director 11

10. Shockwave 3D – cont. Shaders specular, emissive, shininess, diffuse, ambient attributes Up to 8 layers of texture (Blend, multiply, subtract, replace) useDiffuseWithTexture very useful in Sherwood Model resources (meshes) weighted skin with bones or static meshes Sherwood Avatars: 3500 polys (tris) 4 Skin weights, 26 bones, ~1000 anim frames create your own model resources with lingo ( Height mapping / CBV lighting ) Groups and Models (easy instancing)

11. Shockwave 3D – cont. Automatic LOD Modifier (Level of Detail) Progressive Mesh reduces polygon count of a model based on distance from the 3D camera Great for performance Mesh Deform Modifier Allows you to alter an existing model resource’s geometry at runtime. (Vertex and normal information) Ray Casting Works well, but you need to optimize Don’t cast straight down - vector(.001,-.999,.001) If using Ageia PhysX Xtra, use it’s raycaster instead potentially 5-10 times faster

12. Shockwave 3D – cont. Vector Math Stuff normalize, pointAt, dotProduct, angleBetween, crossProduct, distanceTo, getWorldTransform, etc. Cameras All the usual stuff plus: Overlays (HUD User interface elements) worldSpaceToSpriteSpace Animation Bones player Animation Blending Play lists and animation queue Undocumented features Director / Shockwave has many member().fileSaveMode=#saveAll Useful for art builds and optimization routines

13. Physics Xtra Ageia PhysX replaces Havok Xtra for Director 11 Xtras install automatically but not part of initial install. Physics, MMOs and Latency – very tricky combination I faked it with Tank Ball, but with compromises Rigid bodies / Collision detection static concave, convex hull, box, sphere Terrains Constraints Springs Linear Joint or Constraint Angular Joint or Constraint 6 DOF joints RayCasting

14. Multi User Solutions MUS Xtra (Client side Multiuser Xtra) Binary protocol developed for the SMUS Supports Blowfish-like packet encryption Supports Peer-to-Peer connections SMUS (Shockwave Multiuser Server) discontinued with Director MX 2004, but still used Server side scripting and database functionality 2000 simultaneous players – but can be slow Hacker vulnerable for larger games Smart Fox Server Uses embedded Flash movie Most popular solution lately - Worth a serious look MMMUS (Maid Marian Multiuser Server – our solution) in-house proprietary solution SMUS-like, but written in C# (. net) SQL Server 2005 / Microsoft Membership libs Hacker resistant (packet validation, anti-flood)

15. Sherwood Tech Stuff How does one person make enough content for an MMO? How do you keep it small enough to run in the browser? Our approach? Procedural Content or Forced seed randomized content Use the random seed like a database index for: Dungeon digger / Maze generator Randomized height map / Island generator Quest generator / Item generator, etc. Same approach as Rogue-type games used in the 80s Faster than loading or streaming virtually instant retrieval of a zone or area Sherwood Dungeon Shockwave client only 2.7mb less than 2 floppy disks

16. Tech Stuff cont. Procedural / Randomized Content cont. Forces you into a different workflow Updates to generators ripple through all content (As a former Technical Art Director, I love this.) Allow you to stay ahead of users Best when smartly layered with designed content (I’m not so good at this yet) A-Star path finding data generated at the same time Grey Scale Textures 90% of Sherwood textures are gray scale / BW with color applied at runtime Allows for constant reuse

17. Business Model We’re fiercely independent ( too independent ?) No work for hire, No licensing IP is retained - No publisher or outside funding But we’re nice about it and will talk to anyone Not really into that “angry independent” thing. Banner ads Under game ads perform at 4% click through Reasonably good CPMs Various ad networks No in house sales Any site welcome to embed Sherwood with IFRAME As long as they show our ads 100s of smaller game sites collectively represent a viral distribution network Linking site can monetize other space on the page New! Launching Pets and Mounts in Sherwood this month. Sold on an RMT model ($5 a pet for one years use) This is a BIG change for us ! (baby steps first)

19. Sherwood History Started as a hobby in 2000 (Sherwood launched 2003) Inspired by Dungeons & Dreamers Richard Garriot and other solo game developers No master feature list or minimum scope Only knew what the next feature was vague idea of what I wanted Players knew from day one that this was an experiment kept coming back just to see what I added traffic grew organically First guild appeared in 2003 (Black Death) No guild features in the game – emerged organically Sherwood full of guilds, clans, orders Many guild sites, trick and tips, fan sites Players complained when swords starting doing damage more about "Play or Pretend fighting“

20. Questions? Gene@MMORPG.ca MaidMarian.com SherwoodDungeon.com