Starting Out
Orkl	Hi, A friend and I are learning VB and are hoping to create a MMORPG using our knowledge. I think we need some help with this, can anybody give me some help? Tips, Hints, Tutorials, anything that can help us in our way :D Thanks, -Orkl
Eric Coleman	If you're just learning VB, then creating a MMORPG is not going to be easy. My advice to you is to try something smaller and then work your way up. For example, try to create an online tic-tac-toe game. Its a lot harder than you think, and it will give you invaluable experience. You also really need to need to be an expert at VB before you start trying to program a game. If you start your game and then later ask someone "what is a function/sub" or "what is a class" or something equally newbie, then people will laugh at you and not take you seriously. Of course, there is a LOT more to creating a game than just knowing what a function or class is, which is why people would laugh at you. You also need to think realistically about creating a game, which is were a starter game would help you to find out what your abilities really are. If you think tic-tac-toe is too simple, then try checkers or chess. If you can complete such a simple game, only then should you try something larger. You'll also have some type of idea of how long it would take you to do other things that are more complex. If it takes you 3 months to complete an online tic-tac-toe game, then a MMORPG is a lot more complicted and will take a longer time to create. Also, if you find that you can't complete an online tic-tac-toe or online checkers game, then you won't be able to create a MMORPG either. If tic-tac-toe or checkers seems boring, then trust me, programming a MMORPG will get boring at some point, simply because of the sheer size of such a game. Goodluck
Amrazek	Learn all of the basic VB commands at first -- you're going to need every single one of them. And don't just know what they are... Know how to use them. You're going to do a lot of improvisation when constructing a game, and not knowing the basic commands like the back of your hand is like diving into an empty swimming pool. Once you have accomplished the above, which, by the way, is much more difficult than it sounds, you'll need to learn basic game logic and the API, and probably much of DirectX. Once you can make an image appear on the screen and move to a desired position, then you're ready to go into basic games -- Tic-tac-toe, pac-man, etc. There's a whole different set of techniques for both of those games, but I've already described several months of work, assuming you're dedicated enough to keep working, so I'll wait until you've gotten that far. One other thing you should keep in mind -- most decent VB games will take a year or more, and not make a penny for it, so you should write games for purely the fun of it, and if you happen to make money at it, great! -Amrazek
Orkl	Thanks for the advice, I'm serious about getting into games programming and I amo not as naive as to think that in 2 weeks I will make the next quake... I know that making a decent game will take months and months. But I am hoping to put together a small team of people, to help me develop some stuff. When I do make games, they will be all open source, for people to maybe learn from what I have written, or maybe them to teach me how to do something better (I will hopefully set up a website for this purpose). I have found an excellent tutorial on making VB games by Mark Butler. His tutorial is focused on the making of an RPG (which is what I want to make anyway). I'll keep you guys updated on what stuff I'm working on, and yes, there will be many questions :D