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The Sims Online & "Open Source" Gaming Models
One of my old friends sent me a recent story from Business2 that talks about online gaming, combined with The Sims Online and community involvement in a game. It's not a very substantive piece, but a good discussion starter.
Interesting article but think participating in a online game is a world apart from participating in a massive open source project. I might consider wasting an hour online playing a game after work but after programming for 8 hours I don't fancy going home to start programming again (well not all the time).
Why in this day does everything online have to be compared to something else online regardless of the differences?
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Hey! the ultimate on-line sims. Totally free (well apart from taxes). 6 billion installed user base - it's called real-life.
It's open source too (just read a physics book)
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
This can be the great new marketing engine for 21th century. You saw the McDonalds affair at SIMS online.
Cheaters can delay the success of this scheme, but I think it will find it's way sooner or later. Everquest platinum may be virtual, but there are auctions at e-bay that move real dollars.
This is maybe a bit offtopic, but this reminds me of something I read here at slashdot: some people justify the bans micro$oft put on modded-Xbox users because modding your Xbox can allow you cheating on-line. Maybe an interesting topic: completely closed devices to make it impossible to cheat online - maybe next big justification for closed software-hardware (and bundling).
The article basically says: Open Source Development projects and Online Game Mods both foster community - perhaps we can make one more like the other. Who knows what might happen! Tim Berners-Lee certainly doesn't!
I say: Sourceforge has done 100 times more for Open Source Development than Sims Online ever will. Making incremental improvements and getting something out there is going to be more effective than Blue Sky dreaming.
Great games
"Someone somewhere must be dreaming of a massively multiplayer redo of Tetris"
lol... personally i'm waiting with baited breath for the next development, TETRIS - The Movie!! starring: a load of bricks i found in the back yard, some of which were inexplicably T- and L-shaped ;)
Did it? Really?
Oh, I guess that lizard thingie laying on my desktop is just an explorer glitch then.
I think that the author of course doesn't give a damn about quality, but quantity. This is exactly the same debate as 'quake 1 sucks, no one plays it.'
I think that is enough of an insult to my intelligence to put me off this project. I use Mozilla because I am using Linux but several of my Winders using friends have switched without me pushing them. It IS better even though I accept that IE has greater userbase. A couple of my friends took it up just so they can stop pop ups but a few others just felt insecure with IE.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I can't see this getting kudos from slashdot readers. It starts off by saying that Mozilla is a failed project and that the thousands of developers who worked on it should take their cues from the content developers for the sims and the communities building up in the sims online. Yah. Technology reporting at it's best, this.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock
I switched from Netscape to IE quite a few years ago (not because it was already installed, but because Netscape started to suck). Now I've switched (back) to Mozilla, because I'm one of those power-users who loves to customize and use all the new whiz-bang features. But the average user doesn't even KNOW there's a "preferences" area - all they care about is that their favorite sites look good and work properly. Unfortunately, I find myself occasionally having to revert back to IE to view a site because some DHTML-this or ActiveX-that doesn't work properly (sure, we can blame the web-site developer, but the average guy will happily blame his browser first).
I think it's a good thing if a business publication sneers at Mozilla and encourages suits to stay with IE. Let the business community swim in its own filth of popups and banner ads.
Quote from the article:
> Open source is an enormously successful method of
> software development, but so far it seems to work best
> on projects in which a relatively small, extremely motivated,
> often far-flung team can piggyback on the work done by others
> and develop more tools for the next set of programmers.
The author's impression of OSS development is skewed, I don't think he ever was involved in an OSS project himself.
Firstly, it has always been the rule that the core of an application is built by a rather small group of people. Every application core has a limited number of files/components with lots of interdependencies---there can only be a limited number of people who work at those at the same time. Building software is not like building a house where hundreds of people can lay down individual bricks as long as there is some master plan that tells them where to put them. It's more like erecting a big circus tent: of the people in the center, who pull up the actual tent (as opposed to those who set up additional stuff like trailers and cages), everyone has to know what the others are doing at the moment to prevent the thing from falling on their heads. Projects with a rather small, highly motivated team don't just work better, these are the only ones who work at all.
Secondly, I object to giving people the idea that successful OSS projects are "piggybacking" on other software. It's simly a fact of life that the times in which every program was written from scratch in Assembler are over. As software becomes more complex, more complex methods of building it have to be employed. You have to use sets of tools from various sources, re-use components, build upon the work of others, instead of re-inventing the wheel every time. Just because this is more visible in OSS projects, which display credits for the foundation they use instead of paying licence fees, that doesn't mean it's different from proprietary software.
Well, actually there is one difference: OSS projects that are also free software support the modern approach to software engineering much better. You can use them in your own work, which can in turn be modified, improved and used in other projects. Proprietary software developers, on the other hand, hide their work from each other and force each other to do exactly the same tasks over and over because everyone fears that giving away stuff for free wouldn't pay off in the end. Which is absurd in a way; imagine having to develop yet another stupid GUI widget that looks and behaves exactly like that from the competition, with the only difference that the development is payed by company B this time instead of company A.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
This "article" is so "well" written and obviously the "writer" is so well informed.
But seriously, this article is so poor that it is almost a joke and should be taken lightly.. no need to get worked up
You can build software like a house. It's just that the master plan is never good enough.
/*Master plan by oliverthered*/ ......
/*oliverthered2*/ /*oliverthered2*/
Say I produce a master plan for a few classes.
class masterplan public: {
public:
& plans(int planid);
& plans( planname);
protected:
etc....
}
A developer should be able to work on that plan without 'assistance'
Say I decide to write
plan& plans(int planid);
well I know there needs to be a private collection some plans so i implement
protected:
vector vplans;
public:
plan& plans(int planid) excepts elementnotfound{
try{
return vplans[planid];
}catch(...){
throw (new elementnotfound("Plans",planid);
}
};
And update the master plan
class masterplan public: plan{
private
vector vplans;
public:
plan& plans(int planid);
plan& plans(string planname);
protected:
etc....
}
Someone else comes along to implement plans(string planname)
they notice that oliverthered2 may not have done the best implementation of plans(int) so they contact oliverthered(who wrote the masterplan) and oliverthered2(who done some implementation)
etc.......
If OSS implmeneted that kind of design/implemtation practice then you could write software with everyone laying down a brick at a time.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I was beta testing TSO for a few weeks, and in my opinion, it's not going to take off.
Visualize this: playing a computer game... in which one's avatar is... sleeping. For twenty minutes straight, because your stupid "energy" bar is low. Meanwhile, you are forced to chat with other players to keep your connection alive because they boot you after fifteen minutes of idleness.
I know that sounds ridiculous to any reasonably sane individual, but that's exactly what playing EverQuest is like, and it's doing quite well. Gameplay in any MMORPG consists of doing some boring and repetetive taks (i.e. killing monsters , making arrows, or selling hamburgers) until your character gets tired (or low on hp), at which point you have to lay down for a while, and wait. People tend to be satisfied chatting or, trying to sell stuff, or getting a group together while they do this, in EQ.
You also have to remember that The Sims is mostly played by non-technical women. These are people that are likely to hang out in a chatroom, anyways, so that's not idle time to them; it's fun.
Even if the damn game does inexplicably manage to sell and retain players, it doesn't offer anything new at all to the genre.
Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps a better way to look at it is that it will have a profound effect on the chat room industry, and the game industry is an innocent victem caught in the cross-fire.
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Here is the current state of the global browser market:
0 0. html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2123095,
IE 6 is growing, but mostly at the expense of previous versions. Netscape 7.0 is growing a bit, and Mozilla 1.0 commands 0.8 percent after four months of life.
The numbers above probably do not reflect AOL for OS X being based on Gecko (Mozilla's engine), or the use of Mozilla's younger siblings, Chimera and Phoenix. Nor does it give numbers for system specific browsers on Mac and Linux.
Mozilla, for its youth is doing great! Just look at that huge IE share as a bunch of people who don't know yet that there are better browsers out there.
Posted with Chimera.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000