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| Cayle |
 Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 11:18 am |
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Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 79
Location: Germany
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I was leading a small community PW effort prior to discovering ryzom.org. It was both a world effort (as in build a single, smallish world) and a framework for rules/physics that others could use. We are pleased with our design efforts so far and consider them very innovative. I’ve partially opened up the forums for perusal if anyone is interested in what we have done so far (design work).
In mid-late December, I saw the Ryzom.org story on slashdot. It initially exited me. Here was a group who wanted to do the same thing we did; produce a community PW or a framework to do so. At the time, I had not yet heard of WorldForge. I’ve discussed this project with my teammates and whether/to-what-degree we should participate. The opinions range between considering a larger community effort to be critical to what we wanted to achieve and that our support of it could help us bring it about to being “gollum like”. The general consensus is that we should help. After all, a large community with a combined effort can accomplish more than a small one. Now I see fragmentation and forking into multiple groups before anything is even accomplished.
Fragmentation at this stage will kill any effort. There needs to be a critical mass of enthusiastic members if any effort is to succeed. Branching simply reduces the pool of participants in each branch and makes achieving that critical mass less likely. What is the intention of the people here? I know many people here were already working on their own projects before coming together. There is a natural impulse to use this arena as a recruiting tool and this seems to be happening; both openly and less blatantly. This is counter productive in the long run. Its better to come together and help each other out. This helps us all build our own dreams in the end. Can people come to agreement to work on a single effort? I’d like Project Angela to be a contributor to a larger effort. If there can’t be such an effort, then we’ll just have to continue, as we have been these past months. I’ve told my teammates to take a wait and see attitude before we commit ourselves to putting our work into another effort. This is a self-defense action. It saves us from loosing our own momentum and getting lost if this effort crashes. |
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The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds. |
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| Zero_effect |
| Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 3:12 pm |
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Joined: 25 Dec 2006
Posts: 4
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| If we have similar ideas and requirements about the game which we want to create then we could establish a project together, otherwise it is impossible. There are so much opposite views about what type of game should be created that I doubt that it si possible to bring them together, for example a social game (Second life clone, maybe), universal MMO framework(but there is the question how much universal it should be) or a standart MMOG (there could be a lot of conflicts about the gameplay in this area also). So I don't think that we could establish a working community here at this moment if we don't change to some degree the way we think. |
Last edited by Zero_effect on Sun Dec 31, 2006 10:36 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| KrYoS |
| Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:35 pm |
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006
Posts: 50
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| Unfortunately, there will always be the radicals who think their way is the best and create separatist movements. That is not something that can be helped. The purpose was to get Ryzom and make it free so people could build upon that with their ideas and their wants. So pretty much, what would be looked upon, would be creating a framework to easily create what it is that was wanted to begin with. A good looking MMORPG that is freely available to manipulate in a manner in which the end user can have their own world all to themselves to do with as they wish. |
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| Cayle |
| Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:35 pm |
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Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 79
Location: Germany
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That would mean a platform that seperated the formalization of the rules from the technical part. The rules/lore would be data. Some MUD codebases do it this way IIRC.
This is a safe approach because otherwise you have the unpleasant disagreements about permadeath, levels vs. skills and avatar progression vs. player progression that can never be resolved to everyones' liking. |
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The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds. |
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| KrYoS |
| Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:47 pm |
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006
Posts: 50
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| Yeah, that pretty much sums it up Cayle. |
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| sdahan |
| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 4:42 pm |
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Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Posts: 68
Location: Tsukuba, Japon
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Fragmentation? It is a joke? Let forgot about the Aurora B project mistake for a moment. (I consider they were just a little bit too much excited and did not really think about what they were doing).
We all come from various areas and we have nothing in common. Each of us have his own dreams. We all have our own idea and it is necessary that each of us brag about what he want to do. Yes, this is necessary. This is the only way we have to start to know each other, to get an idea of the skill of each one and to be able to design something solid.
Yes, I encourage everybody to be vocal at the beginning. Then and only then, we will be able to form a team and start to do something. I do not hide that I will probably leave the project if it goes too far from what I want to do. But I do not think that it is going to append very soon. I learning to much things right now from the forum, thanks to Cayle and Ham in particular, and I want to continue. Where some people see fragmentation, I see discussions about ideas. As you can see, my post is full of me, me and me. This is because until now, I have only few ideas of the You. When I talk about social game, do you know what I mean? Probably not because until now I did not explain my vision of social game. I already start to understand few of you, but that is all. For me, the majority is still a total mystery for me and at a result, I cannot take their opinions/wishes into account. This is the reason behind why I start some threads like "which kind of game" or "defining objectives".
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Taking about something else, I think that the rule of separation (http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html#id2877777) is a good design, even for a game. Do you agree to launch a vote that ask if we start by designing a platform that separate the rules formalization and the technical part? |
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Sylvain Dahan |
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| Han |
| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 6:07 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2006
Posts: 34
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This year I celebrate 30 years as a programmer. I started when I was 10 with a friend. we wrote a single player D&D style program that fit into 2kb, it had 10 areas and you could play a game of pool and bet.. I think the currency was a glass of milk, we were smart but we were still kids... what can I say :)
We ran out of RAM
lol
Anyhow, code and data ... they occupy the same space, they are never seperate but always seperate and yet sometimes code is data and visa versa. It's all up to the processor and if it'll handle what you feed it and give you something that you expect to see happen. I can go all UML on you, or XML and show seperation - but it's all in my head. registers, space, swaping and illusions of what you think you see. My views on data have been somewhat contriversial at times.. but it's ok - I know I'm right ;)
If you want to break the rules you need to know all the rules. - Steve Vai (yes the guitarist)
we could do something in the box, I'd like to see us do something outside the box.
Look at "out of this world" the game.. It did a 180 to everything happening at the time in gaming and is a milestone.
Lets take a look at what everyone IS doing and NOT do that... some of the time. A good example would be "Ultima Underworld: the stygian abyss" another game that was in the same vien as other RPG's of the time but stepped away from the Doom engine and became the precursor to games like Everquest.
goto abandonware.com and take a look at a long line of games lost to time - all doing the same thing in a sea of the same stuff... lost forever.
I'd like to point out we are making a game with no apparent shelf life. SO we have to plan for the future by making every part modular and swapable. there should be layers to abstract everything. this way the game can swap - engine gfx, physics, sound, gui's, even raw data. To pull a term from networking we need the games parts to "hotswap"
Hannon |
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| barometer |
| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 6:15 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 31
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Yes, everyone has ideas and hopes in this case. I won't comment anything one
the C / C++ development section, since my knowledge is limited on this
subject.
But I think we should form committees , divided into following sections:
Game engine & client:
Game design
3D / 2D design
Music & sound
In this way we can start to consecrate at he issues we have tho work trough. And
put up some guide lines where this project is heading. |
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| KrYoS |
| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 6:55 pm |
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006
Posts: 50
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Yes, breaking up into comittees so to speak of the different areas is more or less how a true dev team would be working, but you'd still need someone pulling all those together in one location and giving some sort of direction for it all.
And modularity of every aspect is about the only way one can go. You never know if a new and better 3d engine will come around, so building to a specific design can in turn create a block of what can be made truly capable of the system. For the most part I understand most about programming, as I have done my fair share of it, I'm just extremely rusty on it as I haven't done any programming in several years, but I can still debug quite nicely.
In the end, we need to come up with a course, and diversity and different points of view are a necessity. You cannot have innovation without conflicts within the group itself. The conflicts don't necessarily need to be large, but without a confrontation of someone standing up and presenting a different way to do something, the innovation that we want is stifled. |
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| vernes |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 10:47 am |
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Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 11
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Scenario:
We dump our best idea's in this community.
We decide on which idea's to use for the project.
After a couple of month we hear from a big game publisher that we must seize and desist our project as-is.
Cause you see, it seems alot of companies' attention were drawn by the ryzom.org project.
And now they read on these public that soon 'game ideas' will be posted. Original, inovative game idea's.
Stories, technical designs, stuff that aren't even labelled yet.
See what I mean? |
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| valentin |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:12 pm |
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Joined: 07 Dec 2006
Posts: 23
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fragmentation about what game we envision does not mean fragmentation about how to pull it up.
the lore/recipies is the easy part in making a mmo, at least the part that is doable by a small team in a comparatively short timeframe.
the hard part, technical, (server, client, some graphics, ai) is common to all our fragmented visions.
a gpl mmo should by design be compatible with most of those worlds, so they can share a common technical base to mutualise it's programming and design.
a way to reconciliate those fragmented visions would be the idea of planets and univers, each of those worlds based on a common gpl ground would be seen as a planet, all of the planets forming a univers, the univers is a joint developpement and the planets may communicate between each others in-game because of this common ground.
valentin |
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| Cayle |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:06 pm |
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Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 79
Location: Germany
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Exactly!
People reflexively think of an MMO in terms of the obvious surface stuff; the rules, settings, etc. As valentin said, that is the easy part. There are a lot of unsexy things that go into a virtual world. Off the top of my head:
- Client Authentication and communication – What information is passed to the client and when? How is it packaged to minimize lag?
- Object management – What does the object model used look like? How are endocontainers and exocontainers handled? What is the object component hierarchy? Is it flat (as in a sword is a sword)? Is it hierarchal (as in a sword is a compound object made up of three components; blade, pommel, handle and hilt)?
- Player communication frameworks
- Blah, blah
A lot of this stuff has been solved by the WorldForge, Neverax or Delta teams already. It may be that there is enough to start building on and what is really needed is a sharing of technical expertise and mutual support. In the NWN persistent world community, every group does its own little thing, but people freely share ideas, code and help. It may be that the best hope of a common vision might be to coalesce around a particular existing engine (NeL, Planeshift, WorldForge, Delta3D) and share ideas, tips, code etc. Or even not even agreeing on a common platform, but still coming together to support each other.
…sort of like mmorpgmaker only not RealmCrafter oriented and the neverwinter collective, only not NWN oriented. |
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The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds. |
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| barometer |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:31 pm |
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Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 31
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He he yes, those company's can hire some of us as idea spawner's instead of
stealing our ides :)
Quote: And now they read on these public that soon 'game ideas' will be posted. Original, inovative game idea's.
Stories, technical designs, stuff that aren't even labelled yet. |
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| vernes |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:55 pm |
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Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 11
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barometer wrote: He he yes, those company's can hire some of us as idea spawner's instead of
stealing our ides :)
Quote: And now they read on these public that soon 'game ideas' will be posted. Original, inovative game idea's.
Stories, technical designs, stuff that aren't even labelled yet.
You're right, it's not like they would steal the idea's from publicly accessable forums for free.
That would be silly. |
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| Cayle |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:39 pm |
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Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 79
Location: Germany
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These companies have more ideas than they can shake a stick at. I really doubt they are interested in stealing any of ours. The problem here is getting a herd of cats to have any common vision as everyone is interested in their own ideas. Their problem is quite different; which among the zillion ideas they have are marketable?
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/idea.htm |
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The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds. |
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| Han |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:40 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2006
Posts: 34
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Anything can and will be copied, there is no way around that. copyrights are circumvented by changing 7 attributes of a product. It can look "like" another product or act similarly as long as you have at least 7 differences.
You see, being open source we know we can produce more and with better quality than any company in the world... why? because we are bigger than any company. Numbers matter.
So if this does get going then we will see a "product" that not only is a good idea but a product that evolves over time with as many new ideas as can be put in. Only it will be free, a learning tool and hopefully enjoyable. It may not be what someone is looking for in a game though. There is always something different to play.
Hannon |
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| KrYoS |
| Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 7:23 pm |
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006
Posts: 50
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I'd have to agree their about that Cayle. Them deciding what is marketable is their biggest problem.
But about the whole truth about what fragmentation is. I agree on what was said there. And a lot of people with ideas aren't really big programmers so they don't know to think of the true aspects regarded while creating an MMO or any game similar in style to that, so I can see where their faults lie and do not blame them really for it.
As for the worlds and such, yes everyone has their own ideas of what they would like to see, which is actually in a way a good thing. A lot of that can actually be melded together and work, while some cannot. And creating a framework that can easily be editted for anyone's vision is what should really be the primary focus I think. |
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