How do I get started with developing a custom MMO based on TMW's tech?

[Darkhog]

Hello, I always wanted to try my hand at 2D MMO, but there are very few MMO engines that would allow to make one in an easy manner. I could start from scratch, but developing my own tech stack would take ages. I've considered using Eclipse engine, but then I've learned it's written in VB6 (yuck!) and largely unmaintained.

Then I've remembered about this gem of an open source game.

So I have some questions.
How hard would it be to develop a brand new world using TMW's tech?
What's the license behind the TMW art assets, which I want to use as placeholders until I have something of my own?
What scripting language do I use server-side to make the game tick, or do I need to get my hands dirty with c/c++?
Where do I host the game once it's ready for public use? Having it on a localhost is fine for development, but I want to have server running 24/7.

[WildX]

There's two ways we are going about it here:

One way is to continue working on the complex existing infrastracture. There is already an improved engine but you do need to work with C++ as well as poorly documented modified code, but it's not impossible and games like Moubootaur Legends have managed to accomplish a lot doing this. The main project that aims to continue working in this direciton is nicknamed "TMW Evolved". I'm not aware of recent developments as the team has chosen to only communicate through IRC which I no longer use regularly. I suggest asking more about it on #themanaworld-dev on Libera Chat IRC.

The second way is to reimagine the whole thing on a more modern tool. Source of Mana is using Godot to build a game based on TMW without having to deal with any of the old impractical codebase. You can find more on our itch.io page or on this forum board under the Source of Mana dev section. I'm biased but using Godot is IMO the best way to build a new game using TMW assets. A lot of work is required though and I've met a lot of individuals wanting to make their own game. My advice is that one individual can't make a whole game. Source of Mana is open to contributions and joining an existing team with a similar goal could be a lot more productive than starting everything alone from scratch.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do. I'm glad you remembered The Mana World. It tends to leave an impression, which is why we're still chugging along after 20 years I suppose

[Darkhog]

Yeah, I don't want to have to write any netcode if I can help it. Would prefer to work off TMW Classic. Basically, only making the content and worrying about other stuff if/when it comes up. So probably would want to use tmwAthena or similar.

[Bjørn]

Given that the Evolved and rEvolt projects are not currently being worked on, I would also recommend to look at "TMW Classic" for now (we've gotten rid of the "Classic" name btw, but the documentation, especially https://wiki.themanaworld.org/wiki/Deve ... to_Develop, are not updated yet).

How hard would it be to develop a brand new world using TMW's tech?

I think this should be relatively easy. Even though I'm not aware of a quick configuration template to get a minimal server running, you could probably just take https://git.themanaworld.org/legacy/serverdata and start trimming from there.

Compiling, installing and running tmwAthena also isn't much of an issue, especially after the recent updates fixing support for Python 3 and the addition of CMake as alternative build system.

What's the license behind the TMW art assets, which I want to use as placeholders until I have something of my own?

They're released as GPLv2, though many of those assets also have alternative licenses granted by their authors, most commonly CC BY-SA 3.0. See the "licence.md" in the "clientdata" repository.

What scripting language do I use server-side to make the game tick, or do I need to get my hands dirty with c/c++?

tmwAthena has its own scripting language. The replacement server we've been writing (https://gitlab.com/manasource/manaserv) uses the Lua scripting language. Manaserv is used to run https://www.sourceoftales.org, and could be considered as well (it also relies on a wholly different client at the moment, though).

Where do I host the game once it's ready for public use? Having it on a localhost is fine for development, but I want to have server running 24/7.

You'd generally rent a VPS. A small server doesn't need much so you could probably find a suitable service for less than $10/month and you can scale it up with demand.