Slashdot Mirror

Hi Actally an OSS MMORPG project is already ongoing. The Planeshift project started end of 2000/ early 2001 and development is still going strong. If you want to help them go take a look at their recruitment page For example, a the moment they are looking for 2D and 3D artists as well as Background/setting team members. It's been a while since I haven't tested their game (more than a year) so I won't comment on it, but the best thing is to head over there and try it yourself ;) Be aware thought that it is an ongoing project, so don't go there looking for a finished game :)

Another segment of the game market, MMORPG isn't going Linux any time soon either unfortunately. And MMORPGs definitely represent a good chunk of gamers. Those companies that develop these types of games have enough trouble fixing bugs on the fly, let alone porting their game to another platform.

Although, on a side note, Planeshift (MMORPG) looks promising for all platforms.

PlaneShift is a pretty nice open source MMORPG, it's still in development and I don't really know about the current userbase though. Check http://www.planeshift.it

Eternal-Lands is also looking good and should be farily playable http://www.eternal-lands.com
I don't really know about the current userbase but I'm about to try it again :)

Also there is Arkanae https://arkanae.dev.java.net/- I don't really know anything about that one though.
Then you have WorldForge which I really haven't had any luck with, and I don't really think it is in a playable state anyway (http://www.worldforge.org).
In addition to those you have http://www.genecys.org/ - don't really know much about that one either.
So theres a few going on :)

Two out of three ain't bad. (Open-source, MMORPG) Doesn't use this Torque thing, but it looks impressive.

You might be interested in PlaneShift. It's an open source and free-to-play MMORPG. I have been interested in it, both as a player and to help out, but have not done either at this point. Laziness mostly. Anyway, YMMV, but looks like you can download it for Windows or Linux and start playing quick enough.

> Click link
You enter the Web-site. You are seeing various links.
> Read description
You gain 1 experience about RPGs. Your motivation rises.
> Click Screen Shots
You are seeing several links for different clients for different platforms.
You gain 1 experience in linux gaming. Your motivation rises.
> Click GTK Client
You are hit by 16 colours and several pixels. You are dead.

Support for nearly all platform: Windows (XP, 2000, ME, 98), Linux, Macintosh
And their game feature list, point one:

A Role Playing Game!
(Their exclamation mark)

I will not mention that it is published under the GPL. Damn, I failed.
I wonder, if I managed to destroy a promising game by publishing this information on this site.
Maybe I can stop it, by mentioning that it is pre-alpha.

I remember when I used to play on an unofficial Ultima Online shard

Origin: before continuing please note

• I aknowledge that it breaches your TOS contract
• That shard anyway closed and disbanded and I am not informed what their admins are doing now
• I am not advocating with this article to play on unofficial servers (rather: che contrary, play on official ones dudes, or play free games like muds or free mmorpgs)

Back to us...
I can remember playing on this unofficial UO shard. There the Admins tought the following things:

1. They were the admins and they were going to decide what was the best for the Shard, including:
   • Sudden Gameplay Changes (many of which undocumented or really far far far from the original UO experience)
   • Insane rules about guilds (like this one: "your guild space is sacred and no one can enter into it, HOWEVER, if someone manages to enters in it via a gate and mark the territory, you have to pay them a ransom"... that doesn't make any sense at all)
   • Some GMs really liked to unnerve you asking to stick to roleplay mode (they jailed a group of four girls who entered in one of their houses with their horses and stayed there for some time, just to avoid the horses to be killed by a group of PKs) and the minute later other GMs summon strange beasts inside guilds for entertainment (a red/black flametrowing Oclock which also liked to make jokes), or makes NPC bankers say funny out of character things to people around (yeah so much for the "RPG Mode ON" in the Message of the Day... my a$$).
2. A really childish management of the forums (replying to a professional pk and troll, which was 13 years old at the time, with the :rolleyes: smiley at every single post... and the admin/moderator doing replying with those spammy :rolleyes: was 24...)
3. The ban of the two most clever admins and making a third one to suspend herself temporarily because she was tied to the other two and did not want to impede the management... and all of them were people who really liked to work on the shard and who really did their questing job well (the third of them is a girl who was even neglecting other hobbies, and other friends for that damn server... but she was the one that answered all the Pages, all the damn subscription requests and mails, no Origin... she went to live to Venezuela with her boyfriend some months ago and I haven't heard from her since). All of this why? The comeback of the original founder of one of the two shards that have merged into the one I played.

What is my point with this rant?
I arrive to it in a minute.

Before that experience I loathed Ultima Online since it was sucking my friends in and I found myself alone... but when I started playing it on Christmas, I managed to understand why they liked it, and I began mining, hacking, chopping stuff for hours like them because I wanted my PC become stronger, and I wished to do quests with them.

I also found a very good game guild, I also found "my role" in there and my "part". Everyone else liked my PC and we exchanged our stuff, I repaired stuff for them and they gave me ingots... so I became part of that world.

Unfortunately the Game masters were too much involved in making the game a "continuous experimentation in serverside scripting", a "living lab of game design failures and unfixed bugs", and a "political chess game".

They managed to ruin an otherwise good experience.
Why?
Poor communication, poor understanding, and a really scarce level of humilty.
This is what happens with nowadays companies.
Why, for example, my "railroad transportation authority" has to put loud, clearchannel/disco music at the train stations (yes, in Italy we have Clearchannel radio stations... I am not surprised by it). Does it enhace the service or is it only eye candy?
Is it

I dont know why projects such as PlaneShift dont receive more publicity.

Perhaps it is just that the people who complain about the cost of these games aren't coders (well, that'd be a surprise wouldn't it...)

...its gonna be Planeshift.

And if I like it I'm gonna pay back by helping out in developement and setting up a planeshift server.
I'll even be able to help build my own impression of a fantasy world.

Just like with them *real* pen'n'paper RPGs.

How long do you think an exploit like this would live in an OSS MMORPG? Right.

This whole money thing is why i support Planeshift !

What about Planeshift? It's a MMORPG in a fantasy setting and uses the CrystalSpace 3D engine.

for all your windows gaming needs under linux

the Linux Game Tome

everquest-killer for linux

build your own Battlefield 1942! using Crystal Space 3d on sourceforge

and of course Parsec - There Is No Safe Distance*TM*

I don't know either but planeshift is looking quite good these days.

If you want to try out a full featured game engine library, you should give Crystal Space a test drive. It's really nice and there are currently some games being developed with it, including the very cool Planeshift project.

PlaneShift

Check out the screenshots. :-)
And it's FREE, too. ;-)

Let's hope it turns out to be as fun to play as it looks, and that it becomes well-known enough. :-/

Uhhhh. What is "PERL"?

where did you try to look?
this currently gives the most important sites within the first result set (by the way: why does mysql.com score so high?). i'd like to propose using lower case unless you know better.

removing X (yes X!) from any given dist (which uses it) is relatively easy [i do so on old hardware == small budget and for the pro look *g*], removing perl (if it is in default install) is a lot more of a problem. coding in perl is fast (and dirty), the amount of modules is amazing.

Apache: granted, this one should not be in any desktop default. it seems quite common (for dists) to use it to display html docs on a webserver rather than out of the the filesystem. this might be acceptable use with a lightweight alternative (e.g. boa) but apache mem footprint is to large for my taste.

mysql: this is a true database (not Excel or Access). it may not be (an) oracle, but it already contains a lot of heavy (at least for me) math, as such i find it interesting. sql (meaning the language) is quite easy to understand and use (perl is a good one for this, as it is so easy on strings). MS is thinking about moving the entire(?) filesystem into a database, and some projects (here a rpg) are already using it, more a sure to follow. though i prefer postgres.

php: diversity has it's prize (megs=harddisk=money), but one could (probably) not install anything depending on php.
if you do use a http server and mysql, php is needed to support phpmyadmin (and you probably do want this one).

about x11: the thread says it all: either there is a hardware problem, or you are talking about something other than x. it may include some quite old source, but so does windows (and mac-os is gone). creating a graphical windows system (with support available for hardware built before me up till the latest 3d hardware cards) is quite some project, though indeed there is an alternative ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/Software/Obs olete/Mini-X/, but most probably not what you want.

I'm still waiting for the day Planeshift, a free, open source MMORPG, is gonna be released...

If you want a nice linux game check out Plane Shift. It's a MMORPGH done using crystal space. Very cool too. Finally something to challenge evercrack.

Whats that sound? Thats the sound of every >18 year old rushing to out to cancel their accounts to avoid all 12 year old "suxorsmedonkee" players about to get an account.

They will, in one quick swoop change EQ from a MMORPG to a MMO???.

Oh well, im waiting for PlaneShift or the (really far out it seems) WorldForge -- though it seems the latter is FAR to ambitious to produce any playable MMORPG anytime soon.