Virtual Citizenship Association - ryzom.org forum archive

An archived topic, merged from 6 captures made between 16 February 2007 and 13 December 2007. ryzom.org · Forum index · All captures

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< VCA General - English ~ Virtual Citizenship Association

Xavier Antoviaque

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 3:56 am

Joined: 15 Nov 2006 Posts: 396

To follow up on the poll started yesterday, and still running, I've started making the new website, as it would be confusing to still use the ryzom.org website if we can't convince Gameforge to release Ryzom as Free Software. Hopefully it will help us to better define our new goal.

Here is the first draft:
http://www.virtualcitizenship.org/

Let me know what you think, feel free to provide suggestions or patches. ;p

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Xavier.

doctormo

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 6:30 am

Joined: 16 Dec 2006 Posts: 22

Xavier, could you remove my pledge? I think you should remove all other pledges from your new site because the terms of the pledge have changed and it's only fair to send an email out explaining that we lost and what your new project is.

I personally disagree, I think my next step will be looking at creating a new MMORP&SG based on available open source code, tools and creative resources and using all the expertises that free ryzom have managed to gather into one place. If it's millions of pounds investment to build such a thing then we're going to need quite a few people to build if for free.

I know you say it's not possible, but I've seen the number of programmers who cluster around wine making world of warcraft work with it, the number of plugin programmers. we have a lot of supporters for a free MMORPG and this was our best chance, we lost it so now it's time to do what open source programmers do best: do it ourselves.

Thanys

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 6:44 am

Joined: 29 Nov 2006 Posts: 73 Location: Paris, France

doctormo wrote:

*agrees*

Agone

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 7:44 am

Joined: 29 Nov 2006 Posts: 183 Location: près de Lyon

doctormo wrote:

same thing for me please

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--Agone--

KIAaze

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 8:19 am

Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Posts: 70

I also agree with doctormo.
Not only on the pledge removement and information e-mail (even more important), but also on the creating a new MMORPG aspect.

I don't care if we improve an already existing open-source MMORPG or make one ourselves, but I think it's better than just collecting money in the hopes that we can eventually someday buy an already existing MMORPG.

The only question is what kind of MMORPG to make?
A Ryzom-like one, or something completely different?

louppatient

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 8:23 am

Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 22

It's only a draft !

IMHO, the mail and pledge removement _are_ necessary, but we should discuss of what we'll do before

And that's better to discuss it based on a draft than on nothing ...

KIAaze

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 8:36 am

Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Posts: 70

Well, in that case...
I like the "power to the players" idea. :)

But I don't like the vulture-like aspect (i.e. waiting for a game company to go banrupt and buy their game or buy a MMORPG from some small unknown company by offering them more money than they could ever hope to make).
It's a bit like Microsoft buying up companies (only on a smaller scale ^^).

I mean buying Ryzom to save it made sense.
But why collect money to buy a game some day in the future if you can do it yourself now?

Jezabel

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:10 am

Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 151

The pledges has to been removed.
They were made for saving Ryzom, it's no more the case.

sciboy

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:29 am

Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 5

I'd propose to remove the whole "already-made MMORPG" specification out.

vernes

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:30 am

Joined: 13 Dec 2006 Posts: 11

Xavier Antoviaque wrote:

Here is the first draft:
http://www.virtualcitizenship.org/

I agree with the others, you really need to remove the pledges.
Specially now that you've added the paypall link. people will get the wrong idea.

Kaetemi

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:11 am

Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 32 Location: Lembeek, Belgium

looks ok to me

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Cayle

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:16 am

Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 79 Location: Germany

I agree that the "ready made MMO" could be a bit vulture like. What is the overall goal? Is it a community development platform where technical assets, art and whatnot are shared, allowing a plethora of community worlds? Or is it a single central shard?

The ready made clause is consistent with the latter. I'd jump at supporting the former, but I'm iffy on the latter.

Xavier Antoviaque

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:47 am

Joined: 15 Nov 2006 Posts: 396

louppatient wrote:

It's only a draft !

IMHO, the mail and pledge removement _are_ necessary, but we should discuss of what we'll do before

And that's better to discuss it based on a draft than on nothing ...

Yup; the basic idea is to send an email to all pledgers, asking if they wish to confirm or remove their pledge.

_________________
Xavier.

Xavier Antoviaque

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:51 am

Joined: 15 Nov 2006 Posts: 396

KIAaze wrote:

But I don't like the vulture-like aspect (i.e. waiting for a game company to go banrupt and buy their game or buy a MMORPG from some small unknown company by offering them more money than they could ever hope to make).

Well, if you don't think it's a good idea, what do you propose instead? I agree the best would be to develop our own MMORPG from scratch instead. But I just don't see this happening here.

_________________
Xavier.

Cayle

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 1:00 pm

Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 79 Location: Germany

If the interest and momentum can be maintained, it may be possible to carry on. The question is how to attract people who can contribute? Art assets seems to be a common sticking point. Is this the reason for the “buy an existing MMO” sentiment? If so, I think enough art assets could be bought (as long as the creators know they are releasing their creations as “free for non-commercial use”) to bootstrap a project and attract artists. I’m not sure this is needed or if it even helps. The downside to purchasing an MMO is that elements such as gameplay, server architecture, etc, may be hardcoded and not easily modifiable. Any art assets and content that come with it would only be viable within the genre of that world. It would only be viable as a single world and not as an open mmo platform that people can build from.

Might I propose a model similar to that of modding communities of commercial games? Other mod communities for other commercial games are similar, but I know one well. I’ve been a member of the Neverwinter Nights “community” for many years and they have a very good model and a vibrant community. There are many people who create mods, many teams who build and create their own virtual worlds and many artists who give away their work under the understanding that it won’t be used for someone else’s commercial gain. They all work on their own little worlds and they also work together. This produces things like the Community Expansion Pack. If you search the neverwinter vault, there is no shortage of people willing to share their work with the community at large.

And this is with a closed source engine that content creators often have to reverse engineer to work with. An open platform should fare even better.

Possible existing platforms:

CrystalSpace/Planeshift - Planeshift is built on CrystalSpace. CS has some really nice editing features. Its world is in an xml file and can be edited that way. It supports imports from most 3D tools and can support level imports from Valve's level editor. I don't know if it works with other BSP editors, such as the open source Qauke Army Knife.

Delta 3D - It is a game engine developed by the US Navy and includes practically a who's who of open source physics, audio and rendering components: OpenSceneGraph, Open Dynamics Engine, Cal3D, and OpenAL. I don't know how OpenSceneGraph compares to OGRE in rendering speed, but if you look at its screenshots page, is is simply amazing in quality. The dtAudio component of Delta 3D even supports the doppler effect!

Lower down the list as they are components rather than full platforms...

Ogre - Is the gold standard open source 3D rendering engine. It is not a game engine per se, but only a 3D engine.

Blender - It has a game engine, though I don't know much about it. I do know that it uses OGRE for rendering.

Gilmar

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 5:25 pm

Joined: 13 Dec 2006 Posts: 3

KIAaze wrote:

If we took the MMORPG away from it's players, then yes we would be 'vultures'.
If we invite them to join us(they do know the game best), then we're more like a physician resuscitating a dying patient.
Think of it that way!

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Gilmar(Aristople)

sciboy

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 6:10 pm

Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 5

Actually blender is capable of using OGRE, but by default it uses it's own OpenGL rendering engine.
Another question is why does the engine have to be 3d? There are plenty of visual engaging 2d techniques to use provided the engine is flexible enough to allow the level designer a choice of perspective and effects changing from room to room, content creation would also be more accessible to anyone who doesn't do low-poly 3d models as a hobby or profession.

3D is probably the ideal way to go, but if you want to develop from scratch 2d would provide the playground needed for you to maintain a community of world developers while the code is under way, i'm sorry to say that your audience happens to be gamers and their attention span isn't exactly reliable when it comes to long term plans.

If you go the 2D route and provide a suitable platform, I will personally guarantee the art and animated assets for your prototype game with my own time.

ralahinn1

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 5:44 am

Joined: 23 Dec 2006 Posts: 1

Xavier Antoviaque wrote:

louppatient wrote:

It's only a draft !

IMHO, the mail and pledge removement _are_ necessary, but we should discuss of what we'll do before

And that's better to discuss it based on a draft than on nothing ...

Yup; the basic idea is to send an email to all pledgers, asking if they wish to confirm or remove their pledge.

When you have the page ordered as you plan to do, I'd like to link it to my site and in my signature someplaces like I did with this one 8) I'm hoping the project works out because I think it's a good one. All I can do is offer "moral support" right now(lol, I don't want to bore you with a long story).

mildred

Posted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 3:30 pm

Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 52 Location: France

As already said, the official Blender do not use Ogre ... Or I missed something in the Blender devloppemnt.

And maybe it may be interresting to separate the Planeshift source code that use (as far as i know) only Crystal Space, and the Crystal Entity Layer (CEL) that is easier to use since it add the concept of entities.

I'll try to explain a little what I know about CEL (also because it take mo long to understand it). So basicly, in the world, there are entities. Entities represents whatever you want in the game.
Then, you can associate what is called property classes to entities, it will add some default behaviour to the entity. For example the pcmesh property class will render the entity in the 3D window according to some mesh given. There is also pcproperty that is only used to store data.
You can also add some behaviour to the entity. A behaviour is basicly a C++ object that implements iCelBehaviour interface. And it is commonly some XML our Python script (yes, XML is used as a scripting language) ... and my project is to let people code their behaviours using lua. The idea is that property classes send some messages to the behaviour layer.

Also, about 2D game, why not ? 2D games can be as beautiful as 3D games but personally, I prefer 3D because you can feel part of the world (and I feel roleplay is then easier). with 2D, it is more difficult. i'd rather prefer text only games.
But, 2D games can be really beautiful. For example the game Wheel of Time : Light and Shadow ... but it hasn't changed for a very looong time. But apparently (I just looked at it it is going to change :)

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xmpp:[email protected]

nils

Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 12:19 pm

Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Posts: 34 Location: Frankfurt, Germany

I agree that all "save ryzom" pledges must be removed from the new project.

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http://nils.jeppe.de

piglop

Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 7:37 am

Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Posts: 2

There's another free game engine : The Nebula Device orginaly made by Radon Labs. Some commercial games have been created with it.

I think we should start a new game. We could call for donations to pay a small team of game developpers (with programmers, artists, etc). They'd release an alpha version of the game that could help us to gather more donations. All developpments would be free and transparent, so we'd get contributions from people interested in the project.

OlmS

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:32 pm

Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 9

Nebula is Window$ only ....

The point is that we are at a point when or this "community" (or group of people gathered by one event) or another will do it but we clearely see the time has come for such a free OpenSource MMO ....

there is not a week that pass without we see yet another thread on blenderartist forum like "can blender game engine do a MMO ?" .... !!

these are most newbee questions but the fact is that a lot of people can do gfx and code but can't afford to pay the standard fees for WOW for ex. .... and lots of people also just want to "experiment" different worlds instead of just staying in the same style world environment... it's where 2nd life is also successfull by being able to pay art and assets from talented independents studios ......

ryzom has gone ... farewell... long live the next big thing !

Luis Anton

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:49 pm

Joined: 14 Dec 2006 Posts: 1

OpenGL renderer has added to latest revision of Nebula2

Sorry for my bad english.