When coding a multiplayer game do you write the game first and then adapt?

[vteven]

Hello,
say I was to write a multiplayer only game (I guess mmorpg if it ever got to that stage) would I write all of the game code first and have it running locally or would I write it from the ground up to include a server component?

Reason being is that I don't have a lot of networking experience (I have a couple of years programming experience under my belt though). I would like to begin coding but I don't know whether to be reading up on networking before I even begin or whether to just start coding my game and worry about the networking later.

Cheers for the help guys

[eXpl0it3r]

I have never done this myself, but I'd say that you first need to understand the basics of networking, because without it, you'll more likely fail to write the game in a way that it will easily work over the net.
However most of the game mechanics etc. can be developed "offline" and doing so might help you separate game logic from networking and thus keeping your code a bit more maintainable.

Also I suggest to not really aim for MMORPG and more think of it as a normal multiplayer online game. Keep in mind that you can only really have a "Massivly"MO when you actually got the masses to play it.

[fallahn]

I'm working on a multiplayer game right now, and based on other people's experiences I'm developing it with multiplayer in mind from the outset. When playing locally a server instance is spawned on the machine and the client connects via localhost - this is in fact how games like quake and half-life also work. From there it's much easier to scale up, both by having the server coded seperately so that it can be built more easily in to a stand-alone executable, as well as already having the groundwork laid to connect multiple clients.