All of these are serious issues that need to be considered and any one of them could result in us not getting the engine. What I'm interested in is this. What do we do if it does fail again. If that happens, can we PLEASE consider running a pledge drive to improve an existing OSS engine?

Either you have a legal licence, or you don't.

That is part of the original NeL code that is already OSS

I know that, but considering that "This file is part of NEVRAX Ryzom.", I'd assume that they simply copy pasted that from ry code, which would then lead me to believe that they macro that text on all their code. xD

Come on....anyone have a contingency plan besides me???

we could use snowballs to make a game called "The Saga of Snowballs". It's about a giant living snowball, which is being consumed by the evil fire. ^^

Come on....anyone have a contingency plan besides me???

Sure, we could use snowballs to make a game called "The Saga of Snowballs". It's about a giant living snowball, which is being consumed by the evil fire. ^^

Remember, we have called back the whole community yet. From word of mouth, many Ryzom players have come back to the boards, but except for those who kept an eye on the forums in the last few months, many of the FLOSS supporters and devs who could be interested in a plan B aren't even aware there is a plan A.

If we ever get to this stage, you should try upping this thread then; or, even better, if somebody takes charge of leading the plan B, we could even advertise it at the same time as we advertise the plan A.

Everyone throws snowballs at me for being "gloomy" or whatever

One of the pervasive problems in the "open-source movement" is something we fondly refer to as "NIH Syndrome." Not Invented Here. There's no reason for someone to go out, if this fails again, and start yet another BaW project. BaW has been done and is tired. At least it sounds like PA came out of that.

Encourage people to continue that effort, encourage people to join other MMO coding efforts out there such as my project (Werewolf) or WorldForge. Heaven forbid that someone clean up Planeshift and make it not such an ugly obfuscation of monolith classes and produce some Free media. Hell, if you don't feel up to working on a game but want to help NeL has a lot of ambitious initiatives that require time and talent.

There's no reason to start yet another project doomed to fail. It would be better to consolidate volunteers into existing projects and further them. Or better yet simply stick around and help the VCA achieve its goals.

First off, PA predates BaW by more than a year. We nearly sank ourselves trying to keep BaW afloat. When we realized what a resource drain it was, we quickly distanced ourselves. We're not a large team and we just don't have that kind of man power.

I'm not prodding Xavier to do that. I'm prodding Xavier to raise money and hire coders to write stuff that will be OSS.

I don't see where a project with a sufficient bankroll will fail. There are at least 4 good candidates that already have active OSS dev teams working on them. A few paid coders should be able to bring anyone of them in line in a year or less. We're talking about approximately $120,000 to $160,000 US dollars - in other words about 1/2 of what "Free Ryzom" will cost.

However, there is still one thing missing: someone to lead the development. This should be someone skilled and experienced enough to make a plan, have a clear roadmap, and be able to know what he could do of that money. Until we have found someone to do that, I think there isn't much else to do.

Linden Lab and their SL is indeed an interesting project, but it's not much of a game like the kids like me got to know them these days. It is a virtual world alright, or a huge virtual sandbox if you like. It does present the user with quite some powerful tools. But simply due to the complexity of SL it would take quite some resources and manpower to keep it running as is, not to mention develop it further. Linden Lab has per today over 200 employees worldwide. Not saying that we shouldn't have ambitions, or that we can't sustain a huge opensource community. But we should stay aware of how much water we are taking over our heads. :)

Also, I think building tools to make a universe with 200K€ is already quite a challenge if you want to be able to give the donators some insurance that it will really be done - building a complete MMORPG with its content, data and art for 200K€ in such conditions is simply impossible.

Just to make something clear: this wouldn't be the universe or the MMORPG itself, only the tool to build some. A free software grid like SL would be a good place for teams to start building their own world - the goal isn't to replicate Second Life.

Also, I think building tools to make a universe with 200K€ is already quite a challenge if you want to be able to give the donators some insurance that it will really be done - building a complete MMORPG with its content, data and art for 200K€ in such conditions is simply impossible.

My main point here: build the tools before building the universe, and for that contribute to what is already out there.

My 5 cents.

For what it's worth, I beat this dead horse an awful lot the last time around. Nevrax had a package called MMORPG Skeleton that would be essentially this. Please look at that link, it is the bottom package. I know there are certain challenges (the liquidators) but if money becomes an object opening this package to the community would revolutionize open-source MMOs or would be a fantastic first step.

This is still plan A. It is universally agreed upon that aquiring Ryzom and it's assets is the best solution. Not only will we be able to open these tools up to the community, but like most people here, myself included, will get to see the continuity of Ryzom as a commercial mmorpg. This is what the majority here are working towards.

If we can't get Ryzom at all. It remains to been if we can, since it *still* hasn't come up on the list from the liquidator and the 3 week deadline is passed.

If the liquidator sell ryzom to another company, we'll not be able to buy the mmorpg skeleton because it's sub part of ryzom.

Instead of going back to into the void and sitting on our hands, I'd rather see us do something useful by redirecting that energy into doing something that will still net us an engine, just by another path. So far, no one wants to be grown up about this and talk about what to do if the warm, sunny wonderful day never gets here. It's just too much fun to pretend that everything is all peachy-keen and going to happen just like we want it.

It’s not that nobody is willing to take the reins. It’s that the people who would be willing to take the reins are not willing to do so unconditionally. In the Plan A, A’ or if VCA’s Plan B project is OpenNel based, I’m happy to follow sfb’s lead. If it is not, I doubt that he’d be willing, in which case I could do it.

RecentCoin, can you take it more lightly please? Nobody said everything is "all peachy-keen and going to happen just like we want it" from what I've seen. We all know plan A can fail and that there is a need for plan B.

But we would need someone qualified to make the necessary work here, and so far there is nobody doing it. That is the issue, not the fact that people are optimistic.

What’s needed is a hard nosed evaluation of goals.

* Who is the target user?
* Simplicity or power?
* What is the goal? (Turnkey virtual world kit, or framework only)
* What resources do we conceivably have? (I.e. how much can the scope encompass?)
* What tools does it require? World editors? Non-3dsmax exporters? Etc.

What are the traits of all of the possible engines/servers with respect to these questions?

The fact of the matter is that someone is going to have to make a call as to what BaW really is and right now, Xavier, I think that's you. What ever BaW is - it needs a good solid plan in place in case the bid for Ryzom fails. Anything else and the community will simply disperse again. It also needs to be a plan that's well publicized to the community A.S.A.F.P. so that they know what's going and that loosing Ryzom doesn't mean the end of VCA - like it did last time.

As for having someone take charge of it, Xavier is in the best place to recruit someone to do that. I'd suggest looking at the NEL devs to see what they can do or seeing if someone else is interested.

For about the 47th time, I'm not trying to get Xavier to lead it. I'm trying to get him to PICK a leader for it.

(...)

I've been after Xavier to tap someone for this for ages and he knows it :P He should be a figure head and a fund raiser. The technical stuff can be handed off to someone appropriate and he knows that too :P It still hasn't stopped him from dancing around the issue and trying to hand it off to Cayle.

It’s not that nobody is willing to take the reins. It’s that the people who would be willing to take the reins are not willing to do so unconditionally. In the Plan A, A’ or if VCA’s Plan B project is OpenNel based, I’m happy to follow sfb’s lead. If it is not, I doubt that he’d be willing, in which case I could do it.

Simply deciding direction based on a beauty contest, or based on who pushes the hardest won’t work. What’s needed is a hard nosed evaluation of goals.

What are the traits of all of the possible engines/servers with respect to these questions?

Your previous list and this question are very long, very indepth and potentially very heated conversation points and won't be adequately answered here. So I hope you only listed them as an example of the kind of tough questions that will have to be answered - rather than expecting an answer here. :D

The bad thing is that I currently don't have a job. It means that the plan B has to be funded and I need money to live. I don't want to get rich with this project, just enough to live and eat.