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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."
/., My name is Greg "Devil Dog" Kumparak, and I'm an Architect of Infinity. I hope I'm not doing the rest of the team a disservice by attempting to speak for them. I've been playing Castle Infinity since a very young age, and have volunteered on the game for quite a few years. Castle Infinity was developed around 1995/96 by Starwave. It grew a rather large fan base, which simply wasn't big enough to outweigh the cost of running it. After being transferred from company to company, it was eventually forgotten by all except for the original players. Sure, company after company brought it up for 2-3 months, but it was only a tease. Each and every time, Castle Infinity was closed down. The blow of signing on to see "Sorry, we're closing down until further notice" hit some of us quite a few times. That was until we realized that Castle Infinity had been thrown away. I do quite honestly mean thrown away. In a trash can. With a bit of good timing, and maybe a liiiiittle bit of fast driving, we got our hands on the server and a large portion of important data. (Thanks Kevin!) For the past few years, we've spent a large portion of our free time on rebuilding Castle Infinity. Months of server woes, countless bug fixes, and an unimaginable amount of stress on each and every member of the team.. and it's all lead up to this. We're up, we're running, and we're ready to dump as much cold water on our server as it takes to keep it from melting. Theres a lot of work to be done, but trust me - we're trying as hard as we can. We have quite a lot in the works. We're constantly working on ways to make Castle Infinity feel much more "modern", giving it features to make it compare to the MMOGgs of today's standard. Due to this, we're ALWAYS looking for a talented hand. Think you can help out in any way? Contact us. Don't worry, we're good people. With that, I welcome you. Welcome to the fruition of our noble quest. It's been a long, wild ride. Uncountable heartfelt thanks to all at Slashdot for running this story. Greg Kumparak Architect of Infinity
If only someone would rescue their webserver from the dumpster, so I could see what this is all about.
Zero comments and the linked site is toast. Perhaps "Castle Not-Quite-Infinity ..."
As you can tell, that went ..not so well. Not only did our server just eat itself in less than 2 minutes, but I managed to forget all about line breaks. *Laugh*
It's time for MORE extended downtime!
I figure that a fire hose is the only thing that's gonna keep that server from melting down now that it's on Slashdot's front page.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Hey! Anybody remember that thing? You know, it came with that something, and then you'd press that button, and then it would do that thing? And it came in this package with the squiggly in the back? I don't quite remember the name... something with an S or a T or a C maybe... or maybe not. I remember I bought it at this store... you remember that store? It was off the freeway on the number 3, next to that furniture place? Yeah, so if anybody remembers, please enlighten me.
The server got a bit hot - we dumped ice cold water on it. Unfortunately no one told us that water on a server isn't actually a good thing. Yeah. Thats what happened. *cough*.
S etup.exe
.. just kinda limping. And as I typed that, it went back down. We're gonna throw up a static page with a link directly to the registration and download pages.
Anyways, I have good news! There IS a direct link to the download. Unfortunately, the only way to register is on the website itself. So. If you managed to register but didnt get to the download in time, head on over to:
http://www.mediamerlin.com/castle/C8/C8Install/C8
On that note - the site is currently up, it's
My apologies for the mess. If you're interested, please bookmark the link - we're workin hard here.
Many thanks IamLarryBoy. As i mentioned a bit further down, I managed to forget line breaks under the stress of "AHHHHH THE SERVER JUST LIT THE CAT ON FIRE."
Who are we? Well, for one thing, we're a public-benefit, not-for-profit, California corporation. We're also all volunteers who were originally players, and who love Castle Infinity and want to see it fulfill its potential. We range in age from 15 to 53, and spend minutes to hours a day working on Castle Infinity.
Kevin Quitt ...
In putative charge is
Rev. Kevin D. Quitt, who came into his position of Benevolent Dictator by virtue of the fact that he went dumpster diving when Castle Infinity's creators (Starwave) decided there was No Commercial Potential for the game, and threw out the baby with the bath (servers and all). He is the game's and the corporation's administrator, but besides that, he designs some algorithms and codes some of the utilities we use.
John Cantu joined the Castle Infinity staff in 2000 and does assorted administrative tasks. (Have you ever noticed you can't hack connect.dat? That's because he did it first.) Outside C8, John is working towards his B.S. in Computer Information Science with a goal of becoming a systems/network administrator, and currently works as an analyst for a multinational media information company.
David Estes
David Estes is possibly insane due to being a mad scientist
David Estes is glad that this intruder chose to invade his wheat field
David Estes is well known throughout the community for his soccer talents
David Estes is the new assistant provost for teaching
David Estes is president of the lutheran child and family services of illinois
David Estes is one of the owners of pacific northwest distributing
Greg Kumparak's been around Castle Infinity longer than he wishes to disclose. He started playing around the same time he began sporting a Power Rangers lunch box. Greg is responsible for the majority of the new art (including this site) and likes to brand himself as "Lead Level Design" when discussing Castle Infinity with others. Children simultaneously adore and fear him.
He still carries around a Power Rangers lunch box.
Edward Marks, unlike the other architects, never had a chance to play Castle Infinity when it was still operated by Starwave. He began playing in 2000 and joined the architect team in 2002. His original job was as an artist, but Greg has taken over most of his former responsibilities. Now he is responsible for the organization and use of original Starwave material (a lot of it was left on those abandoned hard drives) and has created several body parts, items, levels, and ideas. Outside of the game, he attends Thomas Jefferson School, with Andy, but will soon graduate and enroll full time in Stanford University in California.
Andy Matuschak joined the Castle Infinity team in 2001 as a client programmer (he likes to refer to himself as the "Lead Programmer"), but he's served in various capacities since then. His largest projects for the game include the site you're reading now (which he coded), the Infrared update system, the currency system, and the HUD. On a day to day basis, Andy is responsible for new features in the client, web site updates, and most of the levels that require code. Outside of the game, he attends Thomas Jefferson School in St. Louis, MO (graduating in 2006) and spends much of what time remains working with the Open Sword Group on open-source Mac software.
© Castle Infinity, Inc. 1996-2005 (( -- but I hope they don't mind me posting this here. ))
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
hacked together
slashed,
a true hack and slash rpg
>>You have encountered a Slashdotting!
>evade
>>You cannot evade.
>evade!!!
>>You cannot evade.
>exit
geek@computer> nethack
Classic MMOG Server Razed From Slashdot by Future Players
Get your Unix fortune now!
A bit off in your math, though close. I'm actually 17, and I'm in no way "the guy" who rescued Castle Infinity. I'm part of a team of guys who each had a huge part in the process, ages ranging from 16-50. On that note, Agism is lame.
I think this raises interesting questions about abandonware...
what's the legality of taking over a project that was aborted? even though the company who owned it literally trashed the project, don't they still own some sort of rights to it?
if it became popular, could they do anything, since they bought the rights from Starwave... or does throwing it in the trash forfeit those rights?
Actually not. Once you throw it away, you're throwing it to the birds.
The problem is more how it was thrown away. If the dumpster was located on private property, then that's tresspassing. Public property - that's a different matter entirely. Laws vary from state to state on this. But you do not see much enforcement anyway, as it's trash.
I imagine that there are different laws for each state that prohibit people from climbing into dumpsters for safety reasons..
So much as the code goes, I searched and could not find information about the status of code ownership/trademarks or current license. I do note that a non-profit was started for the sake of preserving the game.
As an aside, I think this exemplifies why current copyright law is too long, and favors those who have deep pockets for lobbyists to protect a "few" things, while literally everything else goes to the trash.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Unfortunately, this is one of the topic's i'm not incredibly well informed about. On that note, and for that same reason, this entire post could be completely wrong. If that's the case, please ignore it and hit me with a stick or something. The main reason we needed the server was for the server/db software that (luckily) was on the hard disc itself. The rest of the server was either trashed, far too out of date to use, or just over all crud. We have upgraded from that server, which actually required quite a bit of work. The software/db stuff that is required for the interconnectivity of the game and the website is rather hateful, and required some INCREDIBLY specific stuff. Of course, we got around all that eventualy. Sadly, the software still hates us. Basically, our hardware rocks - its the software side that's killin us. (And to answer your other question - sorry, to my knowledge we've already given away or tossed any server hardware we didnt need. The original server would be very outdated by now, though.)
We were in fact given permission to "retrieve"(Read: Dumpster dive for) the server and do whatever we please with it. The ownership/trademark issue is one we've dealth with for the past few years, and is a large part of the reason we're just now trying to get a foot up in the world. And by the way, I absolutely agree with you on how copyright is currently handled. It's a bit absurd.
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
Was one of Redmoon. (http://www.redmoon.co.kr/ Korean version) An english server lasted for at least 5 years, but due to mismanagement, ingame and secuirty, the server software was "obtained", and now countless old players can download it and set up their own, or play on one of the many private servers, I have first hand knowledge of these events because I was a Redmoon player for a long time, I've followed it from the US version, to the Singapore company that bought it, to its home right now as a player created/tinkered operation.
Sure some of the things done to obtain the software were ethically questionable, but when you really love a game a lot, its hard to see it completely given up on. A lot of this love comes across with the development team that ressurected castleinfinity. It wasnt the first MMORPG that was resurected, and it wont be the last, as long as you have a deep emotional tie with a game (bordering on adiction, believe me, I know) you cant just let it go.
Thanks for bringing back some memories that were close to me with this story.
There is truth in humor.