Solipsis - a Decentralized Open-Source MMORPG

Anonymous Reader writes "Calling it an MMORPG is a bit of a misnomer because at this point there aren't any players, much less hit points, monsters, or flaming swords. Solipsis is an open-source project that aims to create a decentralized multi-user virtual world. It's still very much in its infancy, and as such the visuals are a bit lacking, but the aim is to create an endlessly scalable user-contributed world and it seems it's a nice platform to play with."

Comments

Glorified Decentralized Chat

[bhive01]

This program is no more than a glorified decentralized chat proggy. Anybody figured out where to find people yet? The Hive

most MMOs

[HTL2001]

most MMOs forbid client modification... this makes it easy!

and since its decentralized, server modification also. unless they store user data securly on a central server, cheating is gonna be BAD.

Re:most MMOs

[Elwood P Dowd]

unless they store user data securly on a central server, cheating is gonna be BAD.

No, cheating is going to be redefined. While they're a billion miles from Metaverse-like, Neal Stephenson already worked this out pretty well. While you're walking along the street, the computers that run the street place limits on the appearance of your avatar. The sunbeams shooting out of your hairdo do not extend across everything else on the street.

When you get into a fight on one server (in a bar, for example :), they can track your stats. If several servers agree that they trust each other, then they could share stats. Everyone knows there's no cheating in the Black Sun.

If you're worried that the <Lord Pants; Level 60> floating above your head won't mean anything because anyone will be able to do that... then yeah, you're exactly right. Some servers will follow conventions and some won't and that's fine. Hang out in the areas where you like the rules.

Nice... but unfortunately.

[AzraelKans]

Unfortunately this is nothing "new" a good bunch of indie developers have tried to keep down the costs of creating a indie mmorpg by not having a central server (include myself to that list), and keeping it peer to peer instead.

However so far is a lot more of theory (and some mixed bag tech demos) than actual results. Lets face it, if a super MMORPG (like WOW) is having trouble to keep a lag free (more or less) environment by using centralized state of the art equipment and systems with lots of bandwidth to spare. What chances does a run of the mill client in a home PC have? (which is usually connected to a bandwidth sucker proxy which is connected to a bunch of dumb users with a lot of spyware installed) a: none. The lag would be completely unbareable is hardly noticeable for web surfing but for a system sending an update of several dozens of users each 2-3 seconds is a killer.

In the future we are going to see more systems like "guild wars" in which areas are instantiated for a limited number of users (including user based servers I think) instead of one server farm trying to handle all the users all the time. Now thats an idea that actually works! (although it takes the "massive" mostly out of the equation.) and it should be interesting for small developers.