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Full GPL Game Company - Nevrax
Loic Dachary writes "Nevrax is quietly building a 100% GPL'ed game client and server that contains a framework, a 3D engine, an AI engine and a Network engine aimed at running massively multi-user entertainment in a 3D environment over the Internet. Since this is a company based in Paris I follow their progress with great enthusiasm, although I'm not a game developer myself. Their business model makes a lot of sense: they won't sell CDs, they will sell access to the massively multiplayer server. What I also like is that they don't plan to release the client under GPL and the server under a non-free license. They release both under the GPL. The proprietary part will be the data files for the world (graphics, maps etc) but that was to be expected. They released a demo game for people to play with so that external contributors won't have to build a whole game of their own before testing their first patch."
Fairness is not the ultimate objective. Fun is. Giving everybody the same cheats makes for a lousy game, no matter how "fair".
In a well-designed client/server game, a "smartened up" client with a human controlling it should, in general, be able to defeat a "smartened up" client that is running on autopilot. [...] If not, then your game suffers from a defect -- it doesn't require human-level intelligence to win.
You haven't solved any problems here, you've simply narrowed the scope of what you consider "legitimate" games to some arcane variant of Core Wars, where you're no longer playing a game directly, but rather trying to program and drive the smartest robot. This could be fun, but surely there's more to life than this one kind of game!
I wonder if the only solution to the cheating problem is simply to start establishing the trustworthiness of individuals, and allowing only them to have access to the game. I don't know if we can ever solve an ethics problem with technology.
Most definitely. Game designers learned this a while back, and have been pretty good about designing client-server games this way.
It's not that simple. The trouble with making the server "god" is that it dramatically increases the amount of data that you have to send over the network. If you can't trust the client to do or infer anything for itself, you have to send it a complete state refresh with every update. This effectively makes real-time internet games impossible.
More accurately, it will become impossible to prevent client side cheating. However, it was always impossible to prevent client side cheating, the best you could do is make it very hard to do. All it takes is one skilled hacker to develop the cheat and release it to the world. Ultimately, if it's possible to cheat and the sort of people who like to cheat like your game, they will cheat.
Every game developer should strive to reducing cheating. To reduce cheating based on hacking the client, you simply move information off the client and onto the server. However, this makes writing the game harder. In some cases, it's not really possible to move everying important off of the client. In these cases you simply have to rely on security through obscurity to make it hard to cheat, and shuffle things around between releases so any given cheat doesn't stay valid for too long.
Developing such a product completely open source means you can't rely on this. But this doesn't mean you can't develop a fun game. There are at least four solutions that will work for many different types of games.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
You mean Phantasy Star Online?
Buy the game, play for free until your body gives out from exhaustion...
Of course, then you need a Dreamcast.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
The people running the for-pay servers can hire professional game designers and artists, who can make the game much more interesting and fun. The people who run for-free servers will probably have either too little time or too little talent to come up with a good game. If they had the time and talent, they'd become professional game designers and get paid for it.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
YES! Far less intrusive, in my opinion, than banner ads (heck, if it were done correctly, it'd probably add to the "flavor" of the setting). (Are you listening/reading, advertisers?)
They do this in movies all the time ("Product Placement"). Remember the infamous E.T. and Reese's Pieces?
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"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Well, you've been scored funny, but I'll assume that you're serious on a couple of points:
:)
6. Open Source Clients mean user built-in macros. If you're not a coder, you don't level as fast as the geek next cube who is
Them with more time than skill will balance out those with more skill than time. That's the way any task works, even menial labor. Being creative increases your productivity. Here, as an added bonus, you can sell your work (the macros, I mean) in the game.
4. Anti-cheat security often means 'Security through Obscurity'...
This is true in games where timing is critical, like Quake3:TA. There, the client must perform precise calculations based on available data to determine whether that last shot hit another player, for instance. It would be impractical for the server to do this, since network latency would seriously affect your accuracy. However, in a MMORPG, timing is not critical, and all of the important work is done on the server. The client is only responsible for requesting actions and rendering the graphics. If the rendering is just slightly off from the actual state of things on the server, it's not such a big deal.
1. Damn penguins pit for 9999 HP a peice
See above
Online RPGs (MUDs) have already had many years to address the scripting problem. The best solution (IMHO) is to just set a very simple social policy: botters are NPCs, and killing them carries no social stigma.
If you meet someone in the game, and in your attempt to interact with them, they fail the Turing Test (as any botter will), then you draw your sword and kill 'em. Or use 'em as a green_fire_bolt practice dummy.
As for other types of cheating, this has been discussed many times. The game just needs to be designed from the beginning so that the server only disclose minimal intel to the client. There will still be "reflex" cheats, but intelligence beats reflexes all the time. Otherwise, a cheetah would be typing this instead of a slow hairless ape.
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And that's fine. But when you feel like doing that, you don't need your game to be multiplayer. The whole idea of a multiplayer game is that it's for when you want to interact with other people.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Almost every game that I bought in the last 5 years, has been something that I found out by word-of-mouth/word-of-net. I've bought Loki games for Linux, which are only available through online shops, and Ambrosia games for the Mac, which can also only be bought online. (At least, as far as I know, these are only available online.) And also a few Amiga games, where I found a demo on Aminet, played it, and then placed an order. In the case of conventionally published games (Amiga and Loki stuff), I have to wait a week for the box to arrive in the mail, instead of downloading it and playing it immediately.
In all these cases, marketing and publishing did not help them at all. If anything, conventional publishing hurts Loki, as I would probably buy more of their stuff if I could have instant gratification. Perhaps I am not typical game shopper, but nevertheless, if there are enough people like me, then there's a viable market.
Part of creating this market is to try it, so that gamers begin to change their habits for how they found out about and purchase games. Perhaps a large portion of the game market is through retail, but this is not set in stone, and it can be changed. Maybe in a few years, people will laugh at the idea of buying games at brick'n'mortar stores, because those games will all be "old" ones that came out two weeks ago.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
is a big problem here. I think it's been mentioned before that open source client-server games rely on a certain trust model which can be exploited rather trivially (for a coder of moderate skill) to make your client advantaged over the rest of the pack. Something tells me that this game will not be fun to play, bacause the less C proficient kids will get housed.
On the other hand, maybe this is a good thing... encourage kids to know how to program, and well at that. Market it as "A MMORPG which tests not only your patience (like, oh, i dunno, EQ) but your coding skill! Modify yourself and school your friends like the wusses they are!"
My 2 cents.
-krb-
The really challenging part will be addressing the cheating problem. It is almost mandatory that the server hold all the authoritative data / sim and the client is as 'dumb' as possible. It will also take some social engineering (some method of banning cheaters). I realize many of you think a (nearly) cheat proof open source game is impossible, but I still think it will be fun to attempt it anyway. Heck, it seems like everyone else is jumping on the 'massively multiplayer persistant universe role playing game' bandwagon... so I might as well also. :)
P.S. Check out GridSlammer at: www.gridslammer.org
I'll be releasing a new 0.6 version in a few days. It will include Linux and Win32 targets, and a bunch of improvements to the API.
The Bolachek Journals
Actually, I am already working on it. The model I have is multiple 'worldlets' running on different servers. You can travel between worlds (servers) by going through a portal. Think of it like web pages/servers... but the links go both directions.
The size of the world you can run is of course determined by the power of your server and the bandwidth of your Internet connection. Size in this context really means the number of simultaneous players that can visit your realm.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
Original:
In a well-designed client/server game, a "smartened up" client with a human controlling it should, in general, be able to defeat a "smartened up" client that is running on autopilot. [...] If not, then your game suffers from a defect -- it doesn't require human-level intelligence to win.
Reply to original:
You haven't solved any problems here, you've simply narrowed the scope of what you consider "legitimate" games to some arcane variant of Core Wars, where you're no longer playing a game directly, but rather trying to program and drive the smartest robot. This could be fun, but surely there's more to life than this one kind of game!
Rebuttal to reply:
Design a client that improves your skill at "Go". Or at a Role-Playing game which requires Role-playing (as opposed to roll-playing i.e. hack and slash).
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
The thing that will make the for pay servers work is bandwidth. A game is no good unless it's fast and responsive, and for a multi-player game with a central server architecture to be responsive, the central server has to have lots of bandwidth. The maps may be free, the graphics may be free, but the bandwidth for surely isn't free. And if you set up a server in your University dorm room, by the time you've got a decent number of players on the University is going to come knocking on your door to take it down again.
Sure I expect there will be free servers, and I'm sure some people will enjoy playing on them. But the performance will be intermittent and patchy. Without some income, the server operators aren't going to be able to afford the sort of bandwidth that gives consistently good performance.
In short, there's room for both free and for-pay servers in this market.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Hmm - If they're planning to run a system with a large number of users it doesn't give you much confidence when their site gets slashdotted so quickly...
Check out worldforge for a very similar sounding project that's been underway for some time. They've made alot of progress but there's a long way to go. Great to see another one.
While its not Open Source, people might also like to look at Neverwinter Nights which is a 3D multi-player client/server architecture roleplay game due out sometime this year (based on AD&D 3rd Editon rules). They are promising multi-platform support, including Linux, and the movies showing the current version of the game, and scenario toolkit look very impressive. As someone that ran an LP MUD all through his undergraduate days (a few years ago now it must be admitted) this looks like something that could finally give you the same sort of atmosphere, but with decent graphics.
Al.--
The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
So make the rules infinitely flexible -- it'll be video Calvinball!
The fact of the matter is, if advancement can be scripted and run by a computer, chances are it'll only be fun for a computer anyway. In that environment, more power to the scripters.
Make advancement actually require the ownership and use of a brain. There's a lot you could do to differentiate yourself from a boring hack-and-slash whose only redeeming feature is that you can interact with lots of other people online. Do that and you'd eliminate a good chunk of cheating. You can contain the rest to reasonable levels with good protocol design and server sanity checking.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You are perfectly correct. There was an excellent article on /. talking about just that. You can find the article here. You seem concerned that this phenomenon will increase if everyone has the source code for both the client and the server. The concept of security through obscurity doesn't work. This situation applies IMHO.
Take a look at IRC. Everyone has access to the specifications. That means that anyone can write a client and a server. Only certain people actually run active servers, but nothing can stop me from writing a client that will take advantage of some poorly written server. In theory, I would then be able to get a * next to my nick (server operator), an @ (channel operator) and who knows what. The trick is that there is a community. Everyone has access to the source => anyone can submit a patch that will prevent me from running my exploit.
This situation applies to all Free client-server models. Apache, Bind, etc. As a system admin, I consider security breakins as you, as a gamer, consider online cheating. The fact of the matter is, I have a huge open source community of developers next to me (I mean an email away) to help me. I can read - modify - distribute patches and do whatever the hell I want with the source.
If someone is caught cheating (and it's not very hard to know who is cheating), someone can patch the server. Since it will bne released under GPL, this someone has to distribute the modifications. Isn't it nice? I think it is.
Trust me, you are better off playing on that type of environment. At least, you know exactly what you are connecting to.
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
Having your computer play for you still has to be programmed by you, which you could do by sitting at the computer.
Cheating is, say, subverting the channel to create objects, or crashing other players' connections.
Now, think of the cool systems you could have if you were able to program the AI of a monster or pet.
I realize I'm probably going to get slapped down for this, but hear me out first.
I don't think that a GPL'd online game is a good thing. GPL'd code is far easier to reverse engineer than binaries are. By posting the code to a game, people can see the protocols in use, the packets that would be passed back and forth, etc. Cheating would be far easier with an open-source game, especially if the characters are stored client-side. Even if they're not, spoofed packets can be sent to the server to alter the course of play. Look at what happened to Quake, for example.
While I appreciate open-source software, I don't think that it's a good idea to release the code to online games.
Most people I talk to in "real life" still use modems.
I don't think I missed the point at all. He doesn't like unfinished games or massive online ones.
But his question was stupid because there are valid reasons why people are making more online games than before.
And his attitude was uncalled for because he doesn't have to play the game if he doesn't want to so why is he getting his panties in a knot?
Perhaps a different way to phrase the question is why is it that people didn't play massive multiplayer 3d games until fairly recently? The answer to that is obvious. People are only now getting DSL lines and decent graphics cards.
On the other hand, I don't know why you're complaining... It's not as if anyone is going to make you play it if you don't want to.
I'm writing a bot for an online game that I play.
It's not a big deal. It doesn't hurt anyone.
The tricky part is creating a bot that can protect its self from other players. I have another character that has fun taking advantage of bots. With just the tiniest bit of creativity you can make the bots step into death traps. Run out of movement. Drop items. I wouldn't do this but it's fairly easy to make someone lose all their equipment if they are just in bot mode. There's all kinds of stuff you can do.
Not many people are going to write bots. If they do it doesn't hurt anyone. And if it annoys players then they can generally figure out ways to take care of the problem themselves.
With an open source gaming platform, people who aspire to write video games fora living can see what a modern game looks like from the inside, as opposed to getting the source 2 years out of date, like we got with descent 1 and 2, doom, etc. Hopefully this will be put to good use.
I am !amused.
I might also add that many very popular mods are also freely available.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Netrek had a similar problem with this untill they integreted RSA into the clients. basically if you wanted to play on one the servers with it enabled you had to play with one of the pre-compiled binaries with RSA built in(called blessed clients). if the server didn't force RSA authentication, then you could compile and play with your own clients and use cheats (these were called borg clients).
It didn't take long before almost all non-practice servers were using this RSA authentication.
they would only be required to release the source if they release a binary.
Most cracks contain executable code. (And yes, they are cracks, as they exploit vulnerabilities in the server. They don't give you root, but they do give you extra game privileges.) Distributing your crack is considered "releasing a binary" under the GNU GPL; source code must be either included with the binary patch, right next to it on the downloads page, or available on CD-R by mail to satisfy Section 3 of the License.
Cracks you write yourself for yourself, on the other hand...
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
move as much as you can server side, send the client only information he should display anyway
The only perfect solution to this is generating all visuals on the game server, and sending them to the player's X11 server. And it's dog slow with current long-haul network technology.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Obviously the client-server architecture needs to be carefully constructed with the assumption that the client is always compromised
What if the rules of the game are such that reflexes rule (think the Quake series)? How would you reject aiming proxies and the like?
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, a reasonable person could claim that yes, chess is deterministic. You always start from the same position, the rules are comparatively simple, and there are no random elements at all. If that's not deterministic, I don't know what is. And in any case, it's not as though programing a chess computer that can take on a good human player is exactly trivial, either. When you start throwing in rules that are significantly more complex than chess- like just about any decent war game- and designing an AI that can beat a competent human opponent becomes much more difficult. When you start adding in the possibility of social interactions ("Hey, there's a killer bot. Lets gang up on it so it doesn't wipe up out one at a time") and it may prove very difficult to make a really capable bot.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
here will be (in theory) hundreds of coders, artists, and designers working on the free server
Okay, now I can't nessicarily disagree with you about designers and coders being attracted to the idea of a GLP'd game, but in all honestly, exactly how many artists actually have an interest in these things? Looking at the graphic quality of 99% of the games I have avaliable here under KDE, I'd say not very many at all.
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Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
But we are forgetting the golden rule of the GPL. There will be (in theory) hundreds of coders, artists, and designers working on the free server, which should make it a better game than the pay-servers.
Want an example? How about Linux vs. Windows?
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Check out the skins and spraypaints for games like counter-strike, tribes, and Q3 (the amateur ones). Sure you may not attract hundreds of good artists, but you're sure to get a few really good ones.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This is just like pay-per-play muds.
There will be tons of people that will grab the code and create a free-service server, and everyone will hoard to that instead of the pay servers. Why play the pay servers when the free ones are just as good??
I don't see GPL'ed games working in the business world for this very reason. I know a lot of people will disagree... trust me, I don't like it either, but that's the way it works.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I have to be skeptical of this business model, as its VERY difficult to create a successful video game without publisher assistance, and good marketing. The best they can hope for is word of mouth amongst game players, but its still difficult to pull off. That and their competition is games like Everquest and Neverwinter Nights, etc.. games which have large budgets
I'd be interested to know how they plan on funding this GPL'd game without publisher assistance, and if they did get a publisher, they would definately want it taken off the GPL license. GPL is a good thing, but to make a successful good game, and I truley believe that thats where softwear is heading, unfortunaletly, publishers (suits) still think of giving away software source code as an extremely bad thing.
-Nathan d'Obrenan http://www.firetoads.com
The risk of prosecution will not deter very many people.
The only solution is to implement a mechanism for verifying the integrity of each and every client at connection. They will probably have to release "approved binaries" periodically and have a crypto checksum to verify that the client has not been "illegally" modified. I'm certainly not an expert in these matters, but I can imagine this being one of the most difficult aspects of the project.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
The world is then populated by 'inanimate' players - competing for the 'game resources' very ruthlessly (they are doing nothing *except* this). They would run around the game world, appearing to be 'piloted' until you tried to interact - only to be disappointed. You would eventually stop interacting.
This encourages 'PowerPlayers' or 'StatWhores' who only seek to accumulate in game 'wealth'. I am sometimes guilty of this myself - every RPGer lusts for new loot, but what of 'game play' to enrich the experience for all?
I would think that this concept of 'always on' game characters would be very intersting - if you could program them to pursue some goal and compete against other peoples creations... it would be a fun game. In a MMORPG it may not be all that terrific if it became too common.
Nevrax: Gee, we've never thought about that. I think we're going to close down and cry now.
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Uh, no Mr. Zealot, by my way of thinking there are a lot of half-wit people who think that anything containing the acronym GPL is by definition superior. By my way of thinking, anybody who believes that one single license is the right solution to every problem imaginable is an idiot. By my way of thinking, many advocates of the GPL as a business model are doomed to miserable failure because their way of thinking often lacks common sense.
On the other hand, easy scriptability is a game defect. If a game can be "mastered" by writing a script, then the game is uninteresting -- deterministic -- a solved problem, and playing the game is going to get boring after a while.
Like chess, right? Basically, home computer "scripts" play chess better than most people, and the best computers play better than any person. Is chess boring?
Computer opponents in 3D action games play better than people as well. Play Unreal Tournament with the bots cranked all the way up, and you'll die very quickly.
Computers can beat us at the fast-twitch, and they can beat us at the methodical thought-process games. There's a little bit of wiggle room in the creative puzzle-type game, but that's not really the way the massively online games work.
It's a shame, since I like a good hack-n-slash mindless game sometimes. I like going out again and again killing monsters and looking for new weapons.
2) Designing the interface between the client and server so that the server implements the "laws of nature", and the client implements the "human intelligence."
Most definitely. Game designers learned this a while back, and have been pretty good about designing client-server games this way.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Of course, sites running hacked servers would probably be caught rather quickly, and just a few reputable free sites might be enough to put the official one under.
Is writing character build-up scripts really cheating? When I used to MUD, I would alias commonly-used battle commands to simpler, 1- or 2-character commands. This gave me an advantage over people who played via raw telnet. Was I therefore cheating? Obviously the client-server architecture needs to be carefully constructed with the assumption that the client is always compromised... but you should already be doing that, even with closed-source clients!
So as I see it, either the game will be fundamentally broken because of bad architecture, or the GPLedness of the client won't matter. If server exploits become a problem, then that's good news for the company running the official unhacked server... but as an example, MUDs have plenty of opportunity for server exploits, but people keep playing those. "Bad" servers quickly become unpopular and die.
People will start to complain about massive multi-player games, crying, "people cheat" and "it's no fun." Apparently, they feel this is a reason to abandon the game altogether
When I was a runt, running around with the other kids in the neighborhood, we played hide-and-seek. It's a fun game when everyone plays well together. Everyone enjoyed the game and we would play for hours, the more people the better. In the rare event that someone continually cheated... we just didn't play with them.
When someone starts a project like this, it is for a complete love of the game. I recognize that when I play and it makes the experience even better. You can't blame the game for cheating... you have to find the people who are genuinely interested in enjoying the game for what it's supposed to be... even if it means playing in someone else's yard.
Hmm...I don't necessarily think that you're going to have a flood of Everquests rolling off the line just because the whole deal is GPL'd. I mean, the Genesis3D engine's been available for everyone to use for quite a while, and there hasn't been exactly a flood of quality 3D shooters coming out of it. I think that if you've got tools, talent, and time to spare, you're more likely to get a job at Verant than designing a virtual Nirvana.
Well, one of the purposes of releasing code under the GPL is to promote programming literacy.
:-)
If you release the client code under the GPL, you are inviting people to modify the client code. If people using modified clients "ruins" the game, then the basic premise of the entire project is in question, isn't it?
Plus, which would earn you more bragging rights -- using a super-duper client to kick ass, or releasing the source code to it?
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Worldforge has Acorn at 0.3. It's no more "completed" than any Free Software project is "completed", but it works.
Here's a link to get you started: http://www.worldforge.org/website/rules/acorn/
Also, Nevrax is commercial, so they have a better base of programmer time than most non-commercial efforts.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
No Kidding. I am a daily reader of both linuxgames.com and happypenguin.org and everytime I see another engine released I just groan.
Oh boy, here we go again.
If only we could get just half as many people working on games as engines.
And for christ sakes people, enough with the tetris, bomberman, breakout and sokoban clones.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Many people in this discussion have thought that making the client and server open source is opening the door to cheating, and equally many have replied that any server worth its salt should be enforcing the rules of the world a bit better. Some have even said that Open Sourceing Quake 1 has killed it (which I can't argue with since I don't know the state of the Q1 community).
However, making an RPG open source and making a first person shooter open source mean totally different things in terms of security. An FPS game is designed with most of the rules on the client side; this is not an oversight on the part of the designers, but rather a sacrifice made to make the game playable. When the server is enforcing most of the rules, you get excellent cheat protection, true, but you sacrifice not only CPU overhead on the server side, but you get massive bandwidth issues on the client side. One of the largest problems an FPS developer faces is how to balance the need to stop cheaters against the need to keep bandwidth usage low. Open sourcing such a client, then, does make it much easier to exploit, since the rules are implemented in the client.
RPG games, however, don't really suffer from this, since delays are acceptable (though irritating) and don't destroy gameplay. Here, it is obviously a good idea to make the server do all the work of enforcing the rules, since the benefit is so great and the harm is minimal. An open source RPG client is a fine idea, because the client can't actually break the rules (since it doesn't do the enforcing). As long as the people at Nevrax keep this in mind, I don't see any reason this wouldn't work.
"And real life has warts and smelly feet" -- Paul Jaquays, id Software
One of the biggest problems with massively multiplayer games is the cheaters - those who write scripts and such that build up their characters while they sleep. This is a real problem now, and game companies have to keep constant vigil against those that would ruin the game with their exploits.
Now, if both the client and the server are GPL'ed it will be that much harder to crack down on the cheaters. The biggest hurdle these folks have right now is that they can't access the code directly and must play a constant game of cat 'n mouse with simple scripting tools.
If these people had direct access to source code and could custom-compile their own clients then it would become virtually impossible to prevent wide-spread cheating and exploits. Having an open standard will ruin the game for everybody, and thus nobody will bother playing after the rampant abuse becomes apparent..
...and you've got Nervrax
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Verant might as well not sell CD's because of the constant patching. Over a cable modem, it took almost 40 minutes worth of downloading to download all the patched game files from Verant *after* I spent 20 minutes copying the entire contents of the 650 mb CD to HD.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Appart from the fact that people will just run free servers like they do now for Ultima Online, wouldn't it make more sense to charge for those graphics that are costing you a fortune to create? Sure, keep the source open, you get all those great benefits and don't have to assign developers to fixing bugs, but you've paid for the graphics and the sounds and the like to be created, doesn't it make sense to charge people for this? If not, put that under a GNU license too!
How we know is more important than what we know.
...the open source game Xconq. That one really huge map of the world is way, way impressive.
("Way impressive" is a technical term they learnt me in college...)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I've heard a lot of comments that a GPL's game system will be prone to cheats.
....er ...I mean monsters you kill. Rather a good virtual environment will be about the interactivity between players and their environment. Thus reducing the impulse to cheat, because you truly would be cheating yourself of the experience.
This is true, up to a point, but soon after cheats are discovered then patches will be put to work to stop them. That is the GPL way
The real challenge will be to make a virtual world which isn't about how long you play or how many scripts
What causes 'cheating' and other 'anti-social behavior' in current MMP games is a series of fundamental design flaws, deeply ingrained into the culture of the game developer community, exacerbated by a misguided belief that human society is as amenable to technological manipulation as AI code. It has nothing to do with exposing the client.
The flaws:
- Anonymity without authentication and persistence of identity (I'm not just talking from the developer/server security perspective, which is all that gets attention in the industry; I'm talking about the importance of those three features for healthy interaction among and between human members of an online community)
- Malthusian, (faux-)closed-system game mechanics, where the optimal strategy (and often explicit purpose) is to gain personal power by killing others and stealing their stuff, and where there is no device to recognize nor quantify the synergetic creation of community value;
- Abstract, symbolic, stat-based (read: easy to quantify and shove in a database table) substitutions for the breadth and depth of human experience. Stats are an anchronistic legacy ill-suited for a networked environment. Online Game developers are still trapped in man-vs-machine dynamics. In an online world, populated with real people, 'reputation' can (and should) be more than a database entry, 'skill' more than a roll of the die, and 'power' more than an abstract product of macros and having no actual life.
Frankly, my peers in the industry all sincerely believe that they can literally *engineer* better societies into being, that all it takes is tighter code to solve anger and greed and hate and venality (and that, on the other hand, they can write subroutines for trust and honor and humor and epiphany). They expend tremendous energy in a wasteful search for responsive AI and fool-proof rules, while squandering the resource of the collective eons of human experience embodied in their player community.
The more they fail and the more disfunctional their player communities, the more code they write, database tables they build, and rules, limitations and barriers they erect to players' freedom and self-expression and self-government. "Never trust the client" is a mantra that invisibly and inevitably expands in the mind of developers into "never trust the player". The name of the development game has morphed from 'serving the players' into surviving them.
That is one of the reasons that, despite the incredible immersive power of these technologies, they reach but a tiny portion of their potential audience.
If you build worlds where the political, economic and social fabric is woven by a human network, where the developers are to players as experienced directors are to powerful actors, rather than parents are to wayward children, where the lessons learned from functional RL societies are adapted to the circumstances of online community, where people enjoy anonymity and the freedom to live their fictions, but are still accountable and held responsible for their interactions in a community, and where the collective efforts of participants builds new wealth, rather than necessitating squabling over finite resources;
If you build world where, in other words, the ethos of the network prevails over the ethos of the oilwell;
Well, then, an open source engine is a source of delight and inspiration, rather than a subject of fear and loathing.
As someone working hard to build such worlds, I certainly wish them success.
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
Thought is free. - Shakespeare [The Tempest]
So far I have yet to see a single game come out of the open source 3d engine projects... and of course they're all "massively multiplayer"
Beyond FreeCiv, what other projects have been completed?
We can at least have some hope they will do a good job in the organization of it. Young coders may be fine at the actually writing of a line of code, but a lot of the younger programmers seem to not have the level of organization needed to keep the code maintainable.
As far as all you people who say "security through obscurity is required to prevent cheating", I say that's just because the games weren't thought out properly and designed for it. I know that Blacknova has had a few problems with cheating in the past, but access to the source code wasn't needed. There were simply bugs in the program that could be exploited. Access to the code has only helped them, so that they can have assistance in figuring out how to plug the holes.
And sure people who know how to program well can alter their clients to make them more efficient, but people already do that (I recall external macroing to be very effective in UO). What needs to happen is that the server is secure and actually enforces the rules of the world. To often coders have put a lot of the rule checking in the client. That may let you run the server on less powerful machines, but sooner or later someone is going to figure out how to cheat and then you'll have to start checking it anyway. (eg: quake 2 proxys like speedbot) Better to start out doing the correct checks than just hope nobody will ever figure it out.
This is SO educational! -- Kintaro Oe
Instead of being a wimp and "saving" your character at the Dragon Inn, you would set parameters on his behavior while you are not in control. You might specify what activities he is to pursue while on "autopilot." You might specify how nice or naughty he is to be to other characters. The list is limited only by the imaginations of the server implementors. Choose your offline behavior wisely, and your character prospers...choose foolishly, and find him a ghost when you return!
Alternatively, clients with always-on internet connections could choose to script or program their autopilot behavior client side. Of course, there is the danger of a poorly coded script causing the character to run about the countryside shouting "Natalie Portman eats hot grits!!!" But such unfortunate incidents could be handled by game administrators.
Building up a character while you sleep is not necessarily a bad thing. It merely shifts the value from sitting in front of your terminal for 23 hours a day to choosing your character's activities wisely, both while playing him and while he is on his own.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
This might be a mistake. There are people who would prefer to buy the game, even a simple jewel-case with a paper insert and no box, because of the convenience of having a hard backup or not having to download the whole offline. And there are others who would gladly buy the game, if it was good enough, even after downloading it, just to show support.
They may as well offer the option, even if it's only over the Web instead of in retail stores. Why turn down more money?
6. Open Source Clients mean user built-in macros. If you're not a coder, you don't level as fast as the geek next cube who is.
5. Damnit! 'RMS_Troll' gets all the experience *and* loot!
4. Anti-cheat security often means 'Security through Obscurity', since game designers have to do things like encrypt game values in memory to keep them from being altered.
3. What's the 'Karma_Whore' guild, and why do they keep modding my exp points down?
2. Microsoft just steals the code and introduces 'ActiveMMORPG' components for Internet Explorer
1. Damn penguins pit for 9999 HP a peice
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