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| Cayle |
 Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 3:52 pm |
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Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 79
Location: Germany
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Many of you here are thinking strictly in terms of Ryzom, the individual MMO. There is much more to this story, at least potentially. The world (as in RL) is very much ripe for an open and accessible platform for creating virtual worlds. There exist a number of halfway measures, each with their own disadvantages. Planeshift has GPL source code, but the design is not data driven, making it hard to create a non-Planeshift MMO. Given that the art assets of Planeshift are not open, Planeshift is not far off from building it on your own. Multiverse is accessible and has an active community. The barrier is still fairly high however, limiting it to professional teams. Lastly, there is the MMO Kit for Torque. Essentially, this is an open sourcing of the c++ and Python code from the MMO Minions of Mirth. The kit is open source, but it requires a commercial engine, Torque. Second Life has an OSS client, but the servers belong to Linden Labs.
If there were an open, mature and widely available platform for building virtual worlds, it would turn the world of virtual worlds upside down. Raph Koster senses it; hence Metaplace. A GPL’ing of Ryzom could also that catalyst; one not owned by anyone. In the optimistic case that Xavier is successful, that is only the first step. The second, just as large step, is taming NEL from being the “Ryzom Engine” to being something that a would be designer can use.
The last time around, after Ryzom went to Gameforge, some of the people from the VCA decided not to give up, but rather to continue on. That became Build-A-World. BaW had a fatal flaw however. It had no direction; no common purpose. It was intended to be a place where teams came together and scratched each others’ backs. I practice, my team, Project Angela, was the only team there. Most of the others were individuals. These individuals all had their own desires and agendas. This was nearly fatal to PA as we allowed ourselves to be drawn into a scope that we could not possibly fulfill. We have since retreated to concentrate on getting our engine agnostic Ruleset Modeling Language polished and getting an interpreter written for it.
I see a case where BaW could be revived and have an impact. That would not be as a general talk shop or a meeting place for teams working on different projects, but as its own team; sort of a Ryzom for everyone effort. I’m cautious about making commitments to quickly as the last round nearly killed us, but Project Angela could contribute an RML interpreter, which would go a long way toward helping. |
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The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds. |
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| jblanchard |
| Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:41 pm |
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Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 8
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I think it would be pretty cool to see just that. I'm sure that if the NeL engine could be made significantly flexible (not that it is not already) you'd really see a lot of new and interesting ideas for virtual worlds. We may see more MMORPGs pop up using this engine. If a license like AGPL / AGPLv3 were used, NeL would benefit from development by these other teams, and perhaps even some commercial contributions.
And while large teams are important, I do think it's important to enable smaller ones with great ideas to put something together. (Most will never achieve the popularity of Ryzom - but being able to use it, fiddle with it, and present / distribute it is exactly what Free software is about.) |
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| Xavier Antoviaque |
| Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:47 pm |
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Joined: 15 Nov 2006
Posts: 390
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+1
I'd like to see that happening. :) |
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Xavier. |
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| Beren |
| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 2:17 pm |
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Joined: 04 Oct 2007
Posts: 10
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| recentcoin |
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 4:17 pm |
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Joined: 15 Jan 2007
Posts: 55
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I want to see VCA purchase Ryzom but I can't realistically let myself get worked up over it because I don't give it good odds of success. I'm a big proponent of getting Xavier to raise the funds and retask BaW as an engine dev team. Use the funds to hire some devs from guru.com and add the necessary features, functionality, and the RML to Delta3D, Panda3d, OpenFrag, or Darkstar.
I think this is a much more viable option than hoping that the courts will hand over Ryzom to VCA based on some pledges, which in a court of law, might as well be Monopoly money. |
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TIA,
RecentCoin
Epoch The Game
www.magnaturris.com
Project Angela
www.rpg-gamerz.com |
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| recentcoin |
| Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 10:42 pm |
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Joined: 15 Jan 2007
Posts: 55
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| recentcoin |
| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 8:14 pm |
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Joined: 15 Jan 2007
Posts: 55
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recentcoin wrote: I think this is a much more viable option than hoping that the courts will hand over Ryzom to VCA based on some pledges, which in a court of law, might as well be Monopoly money.
Actually, I see from reading another thread that we don't even know if the engine is up for grabs or not. Something about waiting for a list from the liquidator to see which assets are being sold off. I'm guessing that this would mean that the liquidator can sell the engine privately and never have to put it on the list. I have no idea how this works in France. |
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TIA,
RecentCoin
Epoch The Game
www.magnaturris.com
Project Angela
www.rpg-gamerz.com |
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| Cayle |
| Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:35 pm |
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Joined: 20 Dec 2006
Posts: 79
Location: Germany
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If the liquidator is willing to part with it piecemail, we can't have everything and we had to choose, I'd rank the order of precedence as:
Art Assets
Engine + Tools
The Ryzom Lore IP, character database, servers, etc.
I suspect that the Ryzom players would be upset by this order, but Ryzom the game can't be saved long term if the other parts are not and the long term ideal of spawning a family of OSS virtual worlds is best served by art first, then working engine.
There are other engines, art is the single biggest barrier for OSS teams getting worlds up. |
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The Ruleset Modeling Language - A project for making it easier to design virtual worlds. |
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| recentcoin |
| Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 4:49 pm |
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Joined: 15 Jan 2007
Posts: 55
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| I'd have to second that by adding the music and sound efx to the "Art Assets" category. |
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TIA,
RecentCoin
Epoch The Game
www.magnaturris.com
Project Angela
www.rpg-gamerz.com |
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| dlatch |
| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 12:44 am |
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Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Posts: 1
Location: uk
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**waiting for the day i can play ryzom again**
character database thats a must have though imo unless u looking at making ryzom without its biggest asset ie: the players and community. |
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Ryzom ranger
the harvester
master machiner gunner |
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