Proposal: Support MMORPG Peragro Tempus

An archived topic, merged from 6 captures made between 8 January 2007 and 7 November 2007. ryzom.org · Forum index · All captures

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< Build A World General ~ Proposal: Support MMORPG Peragro Tempus

Should the VCA Support the free MMORPG "Peragro Tempus" ?

Yes

[ 5 ] 45%

[ 6 ] 54%

Total Votes : 11

Induane

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:56 pm

Joined: 03 Jan 2007 Posts: 8

Quote:

As a community, if we put all our effort into a single project it will succeed. Download and try to use these and report back your opinions.

I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment.

Greetings, I am Induane (Brant Watson of Kansas in real life) and I am an art and settings developer for the opensource MMORPG Peragro Tempus. Having followed this particular campaign quite closely I was both saddened that the campaign failed, but also enthusiastic about the possibility that the support might go to an opensource project. I immediately thought of the project I work for. This of course gives me an opinion that cannot be totally unbiased, and for that I am sorry. I did however choose to work for Peragro Tempus because I saw the value of the project and was very fond of the open development model. All code is licensed GPL and all art is licensed Creative Commons which means its very open., contrasting the project PlaneShift which though it features open source code, is generally restrictive about contributions, and has a restrictive art license. I applied for devship at PlaneShift twice and also created a community based modeling project where a group of PlaneShift players created some beautiful new areas for PlaneShift, but the project was not accepted due to the restrictive policy of contributions to PlaneShift.

I bring this up because while PlaneShift is further along in development I very much believe that Peragro Tempus is the correct place to apply the resources of this community. The development model is open, the project is headed by competent devs who understand the CrystalSpace engine its based on (they are also CS devs).

Please check out the website:

http://peragro.org

I'm in the process of updating the wiki on story line so if it feels incongruent that is my fault. In any case I would really strongly consider this project. Its been worth every minute of my time I've spent on it.

- - Brant Watson

_________________
- brant watson

CyaNox

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:22 pm

Joined: 05 Jan 2007 Posts: 1

Greetings folk,

I am one of the founders of Peragro Tempus and wanted to tell you that Peragro Tempus really is open in one of the broadest ways you can think of.

I am more or less managing the project aside from some other jobs around the project. This management has had its testings around what was the best method manage an open source project. Well I tried all kinds of things ... but the best method I found was to keep everything open. And I don't mean the source code or the art ... I mean how we work with each other, how things are decided, how new features get implemented, how ideas are received, etc. Everything is handled open hearted and open minded.

Its not just the code that is GPL or the art that is CCL ... its how we work and achieve our goals.

We have been at it for a long time now and most of the core know for sure they will not stop working on Peragro Tempus. Even when no support comes from this community ... we will continue. I do not say this as in "we can manage on our own" or as in "we don't need your support" no I mean it in the sense as this project is already here to stay.

There however is the constant need of content, support, and ofcourse communal input. Therefor it would be a honour for me to receive some support from this community even if it is just a little bit. Every help is welcome just as welcome as you will be to join the game when its completed.

I hope I was not all to vague here and hope to see you soon in our irc channel where most of the work "happens".

You can meet us on irc.freenode.net in the channel #peragro.

Till soon,

Mark Sanders.

sueastside

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:49 pm

Joined: 05 Jan 2007 Posts: 2

I'm sueastside, one of the founders of Peragro Tempus.
Very active and highly motivated, I'm an artist aswell as a coder, I learned to code specially for PT :)
I'm especially known for writing shaders for Crystal Space, currently in my repertoire are: fur, parallax, animated water with reflections, snow, wind, ambient occlusion and more.

A bit more detailed development information about our game:

3D Engine:

Crystal Space http://www.crystalspace3d.org/ is a multiplatform 3D SDK and works on linux, windows and MaxOS.
It has a very active community, which I'm part of and continues to grow.

Unlike other 3d engines out there, CS is a complete working base for a game, including such things as physics,
sound, virtual file system, scripting support, ...

GUI:

Crazzy Eddy GUI http://www.cegui.org.uk/
Neat feature rich graphical user interface, which allows easy creation of windows(XML) and components(Falagard).

B2CS:

All current art is created with blender and exported to Crystal Space(CS) formats using the awesome Blender2crystal
plugin for blender. http://b2cs.delcorp.org/index.php/Main_Page

Features a neat gui inside blender to set several CS options and buttons to immediatly lauch your created art inside CS engine to see how it would look in-game!
Created and maintained by Caedes, one of our developers :)

Crystal Space itself also features exporters for 3D Studio Max, Maya, ...

If there are any questions feel free to ask.

Signed Jelle Hellemans.

Cayle

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 10:00 am

Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 79 Location: Germany

Your project sounds interesting. The planeshift folks are clearly only interested in getting their world going. This is shortsighted I think. By helping create a ecosystem of worlds on the same/similar server platform, everyone who uses it benefits and those who contribute get further than if they went alone. That is my hope at least ;)

How open are you guys to helping get a reference server up? What would your team be willing to contribute and what would you expect in return?

How tied is your server design to your ruleset/world? Is it designed with an abstraction layer between the iron and the rules/world? I can envision 100 servers with the same art, but everyone will want their own rules.

Cheers,
Cayle

_________________
The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds.

valentin

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:32 pm

Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 23

Induane wrote:

As a community, if we put all our effort into a single project it will succeed. Download and try to use these and report back your opinions.

>I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment.

hello peragro tempus, nice to see another team coming in the talk.

and thats the main point, wether we agree for now on the rest or not we will all benefit from talking more deeply to each others.

up to this citation, i for one totally disagree. putting all our efforts on a single project will lead to a closed project at the end, because so much will have been done that nobody will agree to share for real. (aka planeshift syndrom, being a real syndrom or just my imagination but you see my point)

i think multiple teams should share a common foundation, allowing them some joint developpement and also allowing newcomers.

because i envision diversity, multiple worlds and multiple teams, not rarity management.

i see game teams comming here asking for individuals to join them, fair. what i'd prefer is teams speaking together about what they could do together.

there are lots of wannaby teams who have great ruleset idea but cannot pull off a working shard, wouldn't we be more powerfull by helping them to exist rather than by restraining them from ?

wow is 6 million of not so happy players (at leats past 6 month playing), existing gpl shards are 5000 players at max counting large. dont you think there is room for lots of nitches rulesets ?

what is the best chance for Your ruleset to attain near commercial quality; a few more individuals working in your project or a few more teams working on a common ground with you ?

valentin

sueastside

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:29 pm

Joined: 05 Jan 2007 Posts: 2

valentin wrote:

up to this citation, i for one totally disagree. putting all our efforts on a single project will lead to a closed project at the end, because so much will have been done that nobody will agree to share for real. (aka planeshift syndrom, being a real syndrom or just my imagination but you see my point)

I'm a strong believer in free open source software, both free as in freedom and as in without charge, just like the other PT founders.
Commiting anything to the project would mean you agree with the licences, there for you agree to share. And no way we'll ever changes those licences.

valentin wrote:

i think multiple teams should share a common foundation, allowing them some joint developpement and also allowing newcomers.

because i envision diversity, multiple worlds and multiple teams, not rarity management.

i see game teams comming here asking for individuals to join them, fair. what i'd prefer is teams speaking together about what they could do together.

The common foundation is already there, its the engine, libraries and tools we use to develop.
Because of our growing and our support, new features are constantly added and bugs fixed. Heck most of us are even developers in those other projects.
And that foundation is not just for MMORPGs, any game can be made with them, so infact we're working togheter
with a load of teams.

valentin wrote:

there are lots of wannaby teams who have great ruleset idea but cannot pull off a working shard, wouldn't we be more powerfull by helping them to exist rather than by restraining them from ?

Nothing stops people from using PT as a whole and apply modifications and run their own world.
Infact PT is being developed with just that in mind. We try to be as data-driven as possible,
have easy interchangable art, allow scripting, etc ...

I'm not going to lie here, we don't have the time or resources to help 'all' the newbies coming along.
And that is one of the reasons we posted here, to attract a community with some more
experienced people in it or motivated enough to look into it theirselfs and learn,
that can do it! Writing tutorials, custom editors, templates for GUIs and art, scripts, ...
Anything to help those lesser experienced people with great ideas on their way.

I too started with zero experience or knowledge, just had this crazy idea of making a game.
And i browsed the internet for information, learned to model, texture and code.
Now I'm here looking for people as crazy as me :)

Induane

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 5:06 pm

Joined: 03 Jan 2007 Posts: 8

Quote:

I tend to disagree as well. Helping finish a single project will propel the opensource mmorpg to the next level. Once you've got one in a completed stage that has been designed in a manner that makes it easy to use as a platform for other mmorpg's then the community will build countless persistant worlds around it. But first you need a feature complete client/server, and a feature complete world to show off its abilities. While I like PlaneShift, the difficulty in contributing to its art makes it for me at least, a worse choice. Art is a time consuming portion of MMORPG development, and with Peragro Tempus you get the ability to contribute in a more free manner, which in my opinion is a huge advantage. With the open licensing ensuring that this game will be free and open for all, to me it just seems more logical a place to contribute.

It took me a while to find a home, but at peragro I definately have and am grateful for the opportunities they have given me.

_________________
- brant watson

Vengeance

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2007 9:33 pm

Joined: 05 Jan 2007 Posts: 7

Well I have no problem with Peragro either, if you want to try to use their engine. I know most of their team and they are very good on the gfx side of the engine, at least. They are years behind PlaneShift though, in terms of functionality and features. It is really comparing apples and oranges to even debate between them.

One thing that is probably confusing the entire world about the PlaneShift project though, is that we call our game "PlaneShift", and we call the underlying engine also "PlaneShift". Induane said that he tried to donate a level to PS-the-game and was denied, but that is only because we have an entire plan and map for our virtual world and his thing (no matter how good it was) probably didn't fit into that plan. We don't take random maps, objects, textures or anything else because we want everything to have a certain style and fit into the bigger plan of the game.

OTOH, what we are discussing here on this forum is using PS-the-engine (possibly) to create a whole different game with any art style and any new plan people wish to do. In this case, the PS team has no approval or even no ability to stop someone from producing and donating whatever art or content they wish for that game, using our GPL engine.

In contrast to our close-minded approach on our own game, we would LOVE to have a separate group make a separate game with PS-the-engine as we have indicated in the other thread.

Thanks,

valentin

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 12:22 am

Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 23

would the peragro team be interested in helping the birth of a gpl/cc shard using planeshift tools if there was help from the planeshift team and at least one other serious team like project angela ?

a "theme park" world seems to me a good idea because each "attraction" is a very small subset of a world but nonetheless a complete work that can be build by a small team using the other "attractions" to learn how to.

as the world does not have to be fully functionnal to be coherent (attractions may begin with only their non functionnal 3d model for instance) it could be brought live quite quickly, at least more quickly than any full game, and probably in a mater of a few months.

as a theme park, 3d coherency throughout the world is not needed, a sci-fi attraction can be next to a 'drive a car' attraction or a 'sword duel' attraction, thus allowing to incorporate about any 3d art we can get and about any rules we can.

nonetheless it would as a cosy entry point attract lots of programmers and 3d artists to continue in more complete projects as planeshift, angela, peragro, and others.

and by being a showcase more than anything else it would not phagocyte existing projects in any way.

valentin

Induane

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:26 pm

Joined: 03 Jan 2007 Posts: 8

Quote:

They are years behind PlaneShift though, in terms of functionality and features. It is really comparing apples and oranges to even debate between them.

True in some ways. Its simply a newer start. PT does have some features though that PS still doesn't have, such as working doors, and ridable mounts.

Quote:

OTOH, what we are discussing here on this forum is using PS-the-engine (possibly) to create a whole different game with any art style and any new plan people wish to do. In this case, the PS team has no approval or even no ability to stop someone from producing and donating whatever art or content they wish for that game, using our GPL engine.

The PS engine has some very advanced features and is quite far along in development. There are still alot of things hardcoded into the system that would make making a truely unique game a bit more difficult.

Quote:

I like the idea of a theme park mmorpg. Its pretty interesting, but its just not what PT is about. We're pretty relaxed about contribution but what you are talking about is starting an entirely new project all together which is fine. We were simply looking for aid on our current project though, not to abandon ours and start a new one.

In my opinion it would be easier and faster to support an already established opensource mmorpg such as PT since it lessens the ammount of work necessary. Things are already well established at PT making it a viable mmorpg to help prosper.

_________________
- brant watson

Cayle

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:34 pm

Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 79 Location: Germany

Induane wrote:

In my opinion it would be easier and faster to support an already established opensource mmorpg such as PT since it lessens the ammount of work necessary. Things are already well established at PT making it a viable mmorpg to help prosper.

Am I to assume that translates as not interested? Nobody was asking for you to abandon your project. What was asked is if you would be willing to consult others and give insight into your engine.

_________________
The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds.

Induane

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:34 pm

Joined: 03 Jan 2007 Posts: 8

Quote:

Am I to assume that translates as not interested? Nobody was asking for you to abandon your project. What was asked is if you would be willing to consult others and give insight into your engine.

It translates more to I don't think that aligns with our goals as a team, but I don't speak for the team - I'm a relatively new member - maybe a month in or so.

Anyways I was just confused by the theme park suggestion as I initially started the thread to see if there was any interest in supporing PT here. Threads change context frequently and sometimes at work I tend to skim a bit since I often only have a few minutes here and there to read and post. Making an MMORPG is a huge undertaking and I think diving our attention between helping one MMORPG project and building ours would be a difficult thing. As for acting as consultants, etc, many of us spend lots of time in #crystalspace-arts in freenode, helping people or asking each other about art. #peragro would be a great place to go for help regarding the client/server that PT is using. Everyone there is pleasant and helpful so the resource for getting help regarding our engine is already there. The PlaneShift people would be better suited as mentors for a non-planeshift project as they are more familiar with their own system...
Obvious statement of course :D

_________________
- brant watson

daraknor

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 3:50 am

Joined: 13 Jan 2007 Posts: 25

I too am interested in building a game or part of a game. My primary interest is AI, to make 'truly alive' NPC with goals, motivations, memories, etc.

I am considering contributing my work to Planeshift, but I would prefer an open environment. Also, I was considering building a game based on the Planeshift Engine as well. Since they can probably support 500-1000 people simultaneously on a moderate sized machine, I don't think this will be too hard.

I was hoping to code the AI all in Python, with most of the information stored in DB.

What is the next step for the community? how can I contribute?

Cayle

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:07 am

Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 79 Location: Germany

daraknor wrote:

What is the next step for the community? how can I contribute?

valentin will be hosting an IRC meeting next week (mentioned here: http://www.ryzom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=215 ).

Can you make it?

_________________
The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds.

daraknor

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:38 am

Joined: 13 Jan 2007 Posts: 25

That is noon my time wed. I can make it.

I would like to write the AI functions in Python + DB and depend very heavily on the DB for the NPC behavior. I will try to put together a reference doc for what i have in mind.

Basically NPC would have citizen lives similar to the unreleased Oblivion AI, plus a series of goals, methods to achieve goals, needs, knowledge tables, bayesian reasoning, and abstracted learning to mention a few key features. NPC might have kids that represent a blending or an antithesis of the parents paradigms.

I'm aiming for a full Artificial Life implementation eventually, so NPC populations are "bred" and not crafted.

Cayle

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:51 am

Joined: 20 Dec 2006 Posts: 56 Location: Germany

I'd be interested in seeing such a reference doc. I'll be presenting an overview of the changes that PA plans to make to the Planeshift architecture as well as the challenges that need to be overcome.

We hope turn it into a more ruleset agnostic platform. There is also a big emphasis in making life easier for the world designer (to build his ruleset as he pleases and make his world as deep or challow as he needs) and AI creators.

Now I have to go put together our reference doc.

_________________
Project Angela - Team Lead