Slashdot Mirror
Myth III Gets Fan-Improved Levelbuilding Tools
BladesP9 writes "A group of Myth fanatics have made good on their pledge to create a cross platform tool for the Myth III RTS game engine. FlyingFlip Studios has completed its first stage in the creation of a tool for the Mac/PC game Myth III. The tool, named Ballistic, is based on the old Vengeance code which was released to the public by the game's original publisher back in 2003. The update is native to Macintosh OS X, yet works well on Classic Mac OS, and there's also a version for Windows - many will remember the Myth III game shipped with a very basic tool that was Windows only. This same group is making updates to the Myth III game as well and plan an update to be released shortly."
They still make those?
It's great to see that the creators and publishers of the Myth games will allow fan improvements to their code-base. This was also seen a while back with this Slashdot article about a fan-created Myth II patch.
Has anyone else considered how some games take a life of their own, with the fans supporting them long after the game company has come and gone? Look at Thief and Thief 2, or any game from Looking Glass -- there is a rabid fan following patching, extending, and otherwise supporting the games better than the publisher.
:)
The Myth series definitely deserves this support, I might add. I was never much of a fan of limited unit strategy games -- I felt that the designer deciding what units I had was too limiting -- until I played Myth. I fell in love then.
Myth III represents the absolute worst of game development. The team was forced to release the game early, then the entire team was fired. *shakes head* It is stuff like that which makes you wish marketing and executives never got involved with game development.
Despite this -- it is ironic how many games are fan supported yet the number of open source, high quality games remains dismally low. (I said low, not non existent.)
My reality check bounced.
We're talking profanity in the forums like you wouldn't believe, petty sniping, inhibiting progress to stroke their egos...
Bungie had open-sourced their Myth II metaserver code after the demise of they Myth II bungie.net server. Blades set up his own metaserver, and then added mandatory encrypted networking to the Myth II program as an update along with shiny new features as bait. As soon as people upgraded, only his metaserver would work with Myth, so the competing one (which was not run by egotistical bastards, I might add) had to close.
In other words, he intentionally changed Myth II so it couldn't work with the server source that Bungie itself released. All to give his own server an advantage. Why? Well, he didn't make money from the server. I think he just wanted a bunch of prisoners to exert power over.
Eventually, Clem's and Blades' malfeasance got so bad that the publisher yanked their right to tinker with the code and gave it to another group of programmers, who have done excellent work and remained responsive and dedicated ever since.
I hope Blades and Clem do better work now and focus less on ruling the community with an iron fist, but I have my doubts. They are like a plague on the Myth community -- every time you think they're gone for good, they make another power grab. Clem has been around for 7 or 8 years now. They are the reason I stopped playing.
According to their website, they already have plans to make Myth III incompatible with versions not under their control. They're going to rebrand the game "Legions of Destiny" or something and prevent it from interfacing with tools or servers they don't own.
Sigh.
unfortunately this FF stuff is brought to you by the same guys who sent a Cease and Desist letter to the only other myth II server (www.mariusnet.com). The same guys who have done a really great job in splitting the community with petty sniping and squabling. They got the plug pulled on the www.projectmagma.net servers by sending a letter to the service provider stating they were in copyright violation.
Why did mods mark that as flamebait? He cites real events that honestly happened. I'm yet another Myth community member who stopped playing because of Clem and Blades' shenanigans. The events he talks about HAPPENED; I was THERE. It sucked.
This is called 'informative,' not flamebait.
If anyone has a metamod to one of the flamebait mods, I hope you mark 'unfair'...
It seems that although the original code for the tool released by MumboJumbo was Open Source, FlyingFlip specifically state in their FAQ that they are not going to open the source to their changes to the code, which is quite unfortunate.
I have seen enough fighting and division of the Myth community and would like it to stop. Yes Project Magma had planned for Myth 3 development (you can read about the current status of Project Magma Myth 3 development here. Although some Project Magma members are still very upset about what has happened in the past, they are moving on and continuing to listen to and meet the needs and the requests of those who like to play and modify the entire Myth series as they have in the past. Good luck to Flying Flip in all of their projects.