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“This game is too easy,” “This class sucks,” “Have these
guys even ever
played an MMOG before?” These are some of the comments we’re all quite
used to seeing, or even posting on official forums for various MMOGs.
Sometimes we’d like to just get in there and make the bloody game
ourselves to make sure it’s done right. And while that may be just a
fantasy for most, in the case of Branden Snowberger, he did just that.
Branden has built an entire MMO Game himself. That game is
JuxtaWorlds—an MMOG built by one man that takes place in several worlds
including fantasy and science fiction.

Getting to Know JuxtaWorlds

“It’s an MMO,” explains Branden. “Originally I came up with the idea
years ago when I was playing multiple MMOs and I figured why not just
combine them all and have them in one game. So I came up with the idea
where the player appears on a deserted island and on the island there
are portals leading to different themes: fantasy themes, sci-fi themes.
Eventually I would like to have other themes like Pirate worlds and
stuff like that.”



How big of a game world can a project like this be? Not all that
different from some other games launched by much larger teams. “The
game currently consists of 18 zones,” Branden tells us. “There are two
other zones, but those are set up as dungeon zones. There are multiple
dungeons in there. The way I’ve had to design the game I’ve had to have
certain dungeons share the same zones in order to conserve server
space. Physically, I have 22 zones that I run, so it’s quite big.”



Players take control of one of three classes. “Originally I wanted it
to be purely skill-based,” Branden brings to mind, “but I settled on 3
classes. They all have access to the same skills, but each class has
its own perk, like one is better at magic or intelligence  type
activities; the other one is better at strength; and the last one is
better at speed. There are also a few hidden attributes for each class
too. There are some that aren’t exactly known or easily discovered...
They’re always present, you just don’t notice them unless you stop to
do the math and actually look.”

Making a Game - A Do-it-Yourself Kit

The idea for the game started taking shape around 2004 and development
began in 2008. Just how much commitment did this mean for Branden?



“[I worked on it] part-time for a year and then at the beginning of
last year was when I decided to go full time and just do it. 8-16 hours
a day, 7-days a week for the last year.” That’s a busy schedule for any
of us, but it worked and the game is now live.



Even with such a packed schedule Branden knew he wasn’t going to be
able to create everything from scratch by himself.

“I used a framework that was already available and semi-bug free, but
not completely bug free,” he expands.  “I still had a lot along
the way that I had to fix and I added other resources to it. I’m not a
programmer so coming up with things like collision or better shaders
are not my specialty. I used whatever resources I could find and
plugged them into the engine, fixed what bugs I could, and worked
around others I found.



“Art asset-wise it was a combination. What I couldn’t make myself I had
to purchase. And I used various art packs, contracted a few things out,
and implemented them myself. The scripting was done by me, world
building done by me, a lot of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) work
was done by me.  And that’s not my specialty either.”



After the development one also needs to consider the hardware that will
power the game. A MMOG cannot rely solely on the client’s system specs.



“To run each zone requires an idle state with no players about 100 MB
of RAM. It uses very little processor. This game is very RAM intensive
on the server, so I’ve got to have beefy server RAM. I’m currently
running two processors at 2.4 GHz. and 4GB of RAM on the server. And
right now it uses about 50% of it in an idle state, so when population
kicks up, that’s when things go crazy.



“Once I have the sci-fi world in, I’ll have to throw in a second server
and cluster it because there’s no way to run that many zones on one
server. As it is now when I go to compile a new client build the server
is pretty bogged down so I might be adding a second server pretty soon.



“It’s all local. For one, it’s cheaper, and two, I don’t have to worry
about something getting damaged in shipping transit or anything across
network.  I can just go to the data center, copy the data over,
and I’m done.”



MMOGs need redundancy. No one wants to lose their character. Branden’s
thought of this too.



“I manually backup the database. When it does fail I’m usually paying
attention, so I can usually fix it fairly quickly, but I manually
backup the files every two days. There is an automated system that
backs the database up every hour. I back those files up every two days,
just in case the hard drive goes out. I kind of have a redundancy for
the redundancy.”



Redundancy, server clusters, databases, GUI building… what kind of
education did he need to put it all together?



“I taught myself,” Branden elucidates. “What I didn’t know I went out
and learned while trying to juggle a full-time job and school. It was
difficult but I found that I could learn everything I needed to know
without paying the extra 30-40k for school. It wasn’t too difficult,
but I’ve got a lot more to learn though.”

Where's the Bling?

Building a game yourself may be more of a challenge than most of us
would be willing or able to face. Even once the game itself is ready to
play there’s the question of finding your way into the market.



“The biggest obstacle so far has been the marketing,” Branden confirms.
“I spent so much time working on the game that I never spent any actual
time talking to other people about it until it was time to sell the
game. And now it’s time to start talking to people. The game’s been out
for two months.”



And though the challenge of marketing a game may be a great one,
there’s also an overhead to consider. A project like this doesn’t come
cheap.



“It was a fairly large overhead because I’m licensing the game for
commercial use and so every app that I buy costs money. Some of the
resources I implemented also cost money.  There are some resources
out there that are free for commercial use, so it’s not all difficult,
but the situation I’m in now, I know other people have also bought the
art assets I am using, so we might end up with a bunch of games that
look alike.”



There is a silver lining for some who may be thinking of building their
own game, though.



“A person that wants to do a game for non-commercial use has quite a
few assets available for them,” Branden tells us. “There are art assets
and there are programming resources. If a person wants to do a game but
not charge anything for it and make it available for non-commercial use
there’s stuff out there. If you’re doing it for commercial use, it
costs money. It has cost me quite a bit already. More than I had
anticipated.”



Making enough money from the game to justify the costs could be a major
reason for hesitation for some. In Branden’s case though, it’s starting
to look positive.



“It’s not at a point where I can start paying myself to do it, but it’s
paying for itself. I’m making enough to keep the game going and keep
buying assets for it, but to actually pay myself would be very
expensive. I’m not comfortable paying myself until I can ensure the
bandwidth for the server is set for a year or two. I want to ensure
that the players have a server to play on.”

The Now and the Future

In an effort to meet the challenge of getting the name out Branden has
made a playable demo of the game available at www.brandngames.com.



“I had to settle for an offline demo that’s patchable to the live game
once they purchase it,” Branden explains. “I was limited as to what I
could accomplish due to database and programming issues. So I figured
at least an offline demo would give players an idea of what the game is
all about. Once they make the one-time purchase, they can play the game
either online or offline as much as they want whenever they want with
no subscription fee.”



It doesn’t stop there. The future of the game is looking healthy from a
development standpoint.



“I’m just going to keep going. Keep developing it. Currently, as it is
now it doesn’t cost too much to maintain, so I can keep developing at
this point. The only thing I’m currently working on now is upgrading
the rendering engine. It’s using an ancient programmer’s secret; it’s
using very old code from Torque. It’s really, really old going back
probably to the early days when the MX-400 was a good video card before
shaders were a big thing, so it’s using really old rendering methods.
So on beefy machines it shows its age, so I am currently trying to
upgrade the rendering so that it can use all these fancy shaders and
have good frame rates and all that stuff. So the next big thing is
getting that tweaked.”

Departing Words of Wisdom

The experience has been worthwhile for Branden. Challenging at times,
his dedication to the project has made it succeed. He leaves us with
some words for those who are up for the challenge.



“Go for it. Just don’t give up,” he encourages. “Don’t spend a year on
it and then at the end go, ‘Oh, I want to do something else.’ If you’re
going to do it, commit to it. Don’t give up because there’s going to be
plenty of people that criticize you, tear you down, just keep going
because at the end of it you’re going to look back and go, ‘Wow, that
was fun; that was cool; I learned a lot; it was worth it.’ Win or lose,
I’ve done something I wouldn’t have considered years ago. It’s a good
feeling to sit there and look at my work and go, ‘Wow, I actually did
this.’



And stay positive. Always stay positive. Once doubt starts creeping
into your mind kick it out and think of something positive. That’s one
of the things I had to train myself to do is stay positive all the
time.”