coldDeath

Jayme has a very valid point. I did mention in a previous post that you'd have to pay for a load of servers to cope with the number of people. You'd also have to pay a lot of admins, programmers to fix bugs, tech support dudes, etc.

__________________

SoundSystem

Yes, I have taken all this into account and this has been added into my business plan. My initial start up expenses should be quite high, but we should meet break even point after a few months of opening according to extensive market research.
Obviously the cost will be high to keep everything maintained, but from the revenue generated per user session, we should be able to start making profit after two years. (Again, according to market research)

Ooble

Just out of interest, how are you planning on generating revenue?

__________________
Me :: You :: Them

titaniumdecoy

Although I'm not sure exactly what a Massive Multiplayer Online Chatting Community entails, from what I've seen of Habbo Hotel (you mentioned it in one of your posts) it looks like you are trying to create an online community that functions somewhat like a forum. If you decide that the community will be browser-based, why not use a popular language like PHP? There are many, many people who know PHP and you will always be able to find people who know the language.

As you are looking to make the community "fresh and innovative," I would consider looking into AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML). It can do some very neat stuff such as load new data on a page without it being reloaded--perfect for a chat application. As coldDeath and Ooble suggested, Flash is also a very good idea, at least for some parts of the site.

Ooble

Habbo Hotel has you as a character within the world, complete with clothes and a hairstyle, and an isometric top-down view where you can wander into a number of different rooms within the "hotel" and talk to anyone. It would be best done in something like Java or Flash if it were to be embedded in a browser.

In case you were wondering, my sister was addicted a couple years back.

__________________
Me :: You :: Them

Mocker

flash is easy to work with php and other languages so its not like you are restricted to actionscript if you use flash. You could even do the page base in php with flash for the room display only. I can't at all see why you would insist on Lingo. I've been doing some work on an interactive forum kinda like gaiaonline.com and I'd have to say flash+php would probably get you what you need. I havent checked out hasbro it sounds more interactive but still the same idea there would just be more work with the flash part

__________________
#programmingforums relay - http://thegupstudio.com/cgi-bin/pforelay.cgi
freelance scripts - http://ryanguthrie.com/index.html

SoundSystem

If I can get the same results programming it in Lingo as in any other language I would be more than happy to use it...

DaWei

If you could get the same results programming in Lingo as in any other language, the want-ads would be filled with advertisements for Lingo programmers. Think about it.

__________________
Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

SoundSystem

Good point, but what I mean is, If I can get the basic game done in these languages, like I could in lingo, I would use them...But I do not know anyone who can code a project like this in anything but lingo.
Plus, would £2000 - £6000 be a good quote for three people to totally program this game?

Edit: I think I like the look of Macromedia Shockwave to program with, if you can detect the noobness coming through please ingore it, Like I said, programming is not (yet) my strong point.

MBirchmeier

Doing the math I'd say no...

I'm a beginning developer, and lets just say you had someone of my experinece. On average I charget between L15-L20 hr (if my currency conversion is right). For the sake of argument lets just say itls L15.

That means you'd expect this to be done with about 400 man hours (10 man weeks).

Chances are that's barely enough time to put a project of this expected magnitude though a decent design process, and code it. Not to mention the amount of testing you'd have to do to simulate hundreds if not thousands of users with proper code coverage and load testing and balancing, testing huge increases of memory at once, etc.

Lets just say for the moment you go with someone cheaper (outscourced for instance). Even at 5L/hr that leaves you 30 man weeks, which is probablly enough time to design it right, and get it coded (with very minimal functionality, very light graphics, but decent robustness) , but you'd be severly lacking in the testing department.

Not to mention that none of this would probablly be properly documented for changes/revisions.

-MBirchmeier
(But what do I know... I'm just a lonely coder :o )