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Classic MMOG Raised From the Dead by Past Players
Chromain writes "Back in 1996, the Seattle-based company Starwave created one of the first graphical MMOGs: Castle Infinity. Though it was well received by all who tried it, it quickly sank under bad marketing, extended downtime, and sloppy leadership. Now, nearly 8 years since disappearing off the map, the game has been (quite literally) rescued from a dumpster by a group of past players. It's available for free at their new website."
Wow. How can they expect to host an MMORPG when the site is slashdotted in a few minutes?
Posting to slashdot is a poor way to avoid outages that killed it the first time.... /. before first post
No, *very* young is under 20. *Young* is 20-45. That way I have 10+ years to be young.
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Obsolete video technology does not make a game crappy.
The vast majority of today's games suck, it's just that most people haven't realized it 'cause they're shiny and new.
-Jenn
A majority of yesterdays games sucked as well. Its just that people tend to remember the good ones. I suspect that the same will be true of current games.
No, your standards have merely risen. Honestly, try comparing one of the old games and shut off nostalgia or "well, for its time..." logic and compare those old games to a good modern one (no point in comparing them to utter crap). You will usually find major improvvements that you'll find make the game much more playable. For RTSes stuff like queues, multiselection and even unit behaviour, for RPGs comprehendable interfaces and stats, etc. Many games have a better save and "respawn" logic nowadays, often you're not thrown back to the start of the dungeon if you die somewhere in it. Controls have become more precise, visibility has improved, puzzles are less erratric, dialogue is more expressive, levels less repetitive (unless you're comparing to Halo) and often gameplay more varied (what passed for fourty hours of entertainment back then would count as stupid grind or repetition nowadays).
Oh, and games have become longer on average. most games simply relied on the fact that you had to start over when you lost your last life.
Most old games would never hold up to modern expectations, even if graphics and such were not a factor. They often relied on novelty to get the player. Crap such as Space Invaders or Tempest is held in high regard.
And don't get me started on the games that weren't considered good even back then, the cheap dev costs allowed for a whole lot more of those to be thrown at the market. What passes for bad these days can often still be enjoyed though it won't be on par with the greatest titles.
Though, of course, you said the "vast majority" sucks which would just be a rephrasing of Sturgeon's Law and applied even back then. The "vast majority" can be disregarded because noone likes, buys or plays those games.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Hey now, Tempest rocks. So do any number of other early games, although I'm not much of a Space Invaders fan.
The main games played in my MAME collection are Tempest and Joust. They are simple, precise, and fun.
I know agism is lame, but I'm impressed with teenagers ( no offense) who manage to do more with their life than I've done to the present point. I've got 10 years on you, and I'm starting to feel like a geezer who hasn't amounted to much. It has to do with guys like you involved in projects like this ;)
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
No, your standards have merely risen. Honestly, try comparing one of the old games and shut off nostalgia or "well, for its time..." logic and compare those old games to a good modern one (no point in comparing them to utter crap). You will usually find major improvvements that you'll find make the game much more playable. For RTSes stuff like queues, multiselection and even unit behaviour, for RPGs comprehendable interfaces and stats, etc. Many games have a better save and "respawn" logic nowadays, often you're not thrown back to the start of the dungeon if you die somewhere in it. Controls have become more precise, visibility has improved, puzzles are less erratric, dialogue is more expressive, levels less repetitive (unless you're comparing to Halo) and often gameplay more varied (what passed for fourty hours of entertainment back then would count as stupid grind or repetition nowadays).
Don't be so quick with generalizations, my dad and I used to play the original Starflight (four colors, when was the last time a game fully used the available color pallet?) in the eighties. I played and it's sequel it off and on since. The graphics get the job done, even today (although I have the upgraded EGA version 16 colors and it still uses them all). If you aren't familiar with Starflight, Starcon II was very similar in overall goals and some mechanics (though the fictional settings are rather different). The big differences are that in Starflight; you only have one ship (though you can still upgrade it through bought or found technologies), you can select and train crew members, and lastly exploration and diplomacy are more important than combat to winning the game (though there can be quite a bit of ship to ship combat).
Oh, and games have become longer on average. most games simply relied on the fact that you had to start over when you lost your last life.
Maybe with arcade type games. However, it has taken almost twenty years for the games to get as long as Starflight was. And the story was more than just long, it was rather engaging too.
Though, of course, you said the "vast majority" sucks which would just be a rephrasing of Sturgeon's Law and applied even back then. The "vast majority" can be disregarded because noone likes, buys or plays those games.
Sturgeon's Law is called a law because there is validity in it. 90% of everything is crap, but the other 10% is what will be remembered for long after it was made. There are few older games that stand the test of time, but some do. Those are the reasons people make programs like DosBox and the like
But then that's the difference between finding a previously published book in the trash and finding the original unpublished manuscript, or to take it back to the topic at hand, having a discarded copy of the software and having a discarded copy of its source code.
It would come down to good faith. A reasonable person would see throwing away the source code, runtime environment, and hardware as divesting oneself of the rights to the property as allowing its destruction would deprive even the supposed retainer of the rights of the very rights he seeks to deny to others.
If IP in the trash stays in the trash, then that would certainly be an unconstitutional extension of copyright to infinity by denying it to the public domain.
If any act would deprive all of humanity access to the work, including the rights holder, those rights should be forfeit to the public domain.
Alas, while I think my position is morally sound, section 104A - Copyright in restored works, effectively allows creators to retain copyright over works restored by others, and moral rights in copyright in the UK has similar provisions.
However, it does suggest that until the work is restored, it is in the public domain. Once the work is restored, rights apparently go back to the original destroyer of the work as "if it had never entered the public domain in the United States."
Unless I'm misunderstanding what they mean by "restored" in that section. Is it work restoration or copyright restoration?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?