It's funny ya know. When the RoboCup was announced it was claimed that once we solve soccer, we'll be well on our way to solving all the problems of robotics. After all, for a robot to play soccer it has to be able to recognise objects right? Like the ball, the net, other players, etc. Well yes and no. If you're making a soccer playing robot you need to be able to recognise those 3 types of objects, but you don't need to code a general object recognision system to acheive that. You don't even need the robot to be able to learn new object mappings in a sensible amount of time (it doesn't matter if it took you 3 weeks to train the robot to tell the difference between the ball and the net, cause once it is done, it is done). So when a robot soccer team beats the world's best human soccer team, it just means that we've solved one more game. Some of that research will translate into research that will be good for solving other games (just like chess solving algorithms did) but most of it won't be any good for an actual product.
It's 1972. Intel has just released the 8008 microprocessor. Hobbiests and small electronics companies are struggling to sell "microcomputers" based on the new chip. It's up to you, do you buy one of these microcomputers, even though they're not as powerful as a "minicomputer", which btw, is something you can't afford anyway, or do you just complain loudly that microcomputers are useless and not really computers?
Fast forward to 1979. Apple is making a killing with their Apple I and the soon to be announced Apple II microcomputer. Everyone is amazed at how much this little thing can do. Do you suck up your pride and buy one or do you complain loudly that it's not really a computer cause it can't run vms?
Fast forward again to 1984. The Apple Mac and the IBM PC are fighting neck in neck for a slice of the market with little Amiga shouting in the background "I'm not a game machine damn it!" Do you buy one or do you complain loudly that they're still not really a computer cause it can't run unix?
Welcome to 1992. Linus has just announced his pet project to create a kernel for the wealth of GNU tools that almost everyone has been running on their unix boxes for years now. Do you go buy a 386 and contribute some code or do you complain loudly that it's not really a unix kernel cause it's not POSIX correct?
Pull ya finger out and get involved. Branson is the only person offering you a flight into space for anything you could ever hope to afford (if not in the first 10,000 people to go up at least in the next 10,000). You can't have a flight on the space shuttle or a deca-million-dollar trip on a russian booster, so buy the lesser product or support it until you can afford it and maybe one day we'll all get to go into orbit or to the moon.
Myth #1 - an MMORPG must include numerous "time sinks"; long periods of unrewarding time spent with little or no character progression.
You mean like travelling? If you don't have travel time you don't have a big world. If you don't have a big world you don't have a realistic economy. If you don't have a realistic economy you eventually have to manually intervene and correct for inflation. Players who have their gold "stolen" by the live team quit shortly after. Without oldbies your game has no history and feels empty to newbies. Without newbies your game dies.
Myth #2 - character death in an MMORPG must be a harsh, demoralizing experience.
Well actually "character death" is perminate. That's what death is. If it isn't perminate it isn't death. Maybe you should use the term "wuss slap" instead of death. In which case, why is the game wuss slapping you? Cause you can't play and the game is trying to teach you how to play by telling you when you've screwed up. Going back to your spawn point with your entire inventory and kit intact teaches you nothing. You'll just run out into the woods and get killed by that same mob again and again. Then you'll probably bitch that the game is too hard and quit.
Myth #3 - MMOG design must be driven by a philosophy that is inherently different than conventional games [insert lots of grandiose game theory and virtual world talk here].
You know what is fun to do in a MMORPG? Run around a kill other players, steal their stuff, block them when they try to go into doorways, talk about Jerry Sienfeld when they're trying to roleplay, etc. Griefing is a HELL of a lot of fun. If that's what MMORPGs are about (fun) then why do we all get so terribly upset when people behave like this? Because MMORPGs are not about fun, they're about experimenting with identity and a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm sure you think is bullshit. When a MMORPG is just about "fun", the game quickly gets old and players quit.
Myth #4 - any new MMORPG must feature a complex, impossible-to-balance skill-based (non) "class" system.
Yep, and that's why so many people get bored with doing all this 'barbarian' fighting, would really like to give the 'sorcerer' fighting a go, but are so attached to their character that they can't stand to start another. So instead they struggle on as a 'barbarian' hoping desperately that things will get better and they'll grow to like the 'barbarian' fighting style, but they never do, and because they can't reconcile their desire to be a sorcerer with their desire not to have to go through the early level treadmill again, they quit.
Myth #5 - the fantasy MMORPG market is "saturated".
Wow, one I agree with. There's millions and millions of people with computers that don't play MMORPGs. Some of us don't like the fee structure, some of us just don't like the fantasy theme (and think the space themed ones are two dimensional action games with no roleplaying). Claiming the market is saturated at this point is like Henry Ford claiming that the Model-T was the last car anyone will ever need to design.
Well technical issues aside (we could talk about cool technical solutions to this problem all day long) I hate having to deal with 10 simultanious players let alone 2,500 (let alone 200,000). Mind you, maybe if you knew you were going to have 50,000 people in a single world from the start you could design your game so that it's actually fun to have that many people around.
No, it means you need to show a little respect to the people who set out to make it possible for you (an assumably normal person) to fly into space, however briefly. It also means that you need to support these individuals so that they may make bigger and better rocket ships so that they can some day put you into an orbit. Complaining that they havn't done everything you want in one step when you freely admit that it's a damn hard thing to do and have done absolutely nothing yourself is just counterproductive. This goes for making rocket ships or operating systems.
You best hope that that one world is very very big (in which case you'd just use region based load balancing and it would be like they were all in seperate worlds anyways) cause otherwise you're just gunna have 200,000 people having no fun what-so-ever. Hell, 2,500 players on a single server best be a damn big world too.
Well other than saying "they don't intend this" I can't really defend them. They simply refuse to state unequivocally that they are not going to close the source at some future date. The argument for the proprietary art is to add some inertia to forking. This is understandable, no-one forks anything as much as they fork MUDs (which is what a MMORPG is). But if that's the case then why not promise to release the art to the public domain after say, 10 years. Surely if they havn't finished making Planeshift in 10 years then there's something wrong and they should let someone else have a go. Oh well, guess we have to make our own art.
I really have to reply to this. Linus was humble in that he didn't claim his project was the greatest most important achievement in the history of man-kind and that you simply MUST contribute to his project otherwise you're a toad. Oh, and when people said "gee, I've got this bit of code I threw together last week do you want it?" he said yes and thanked them for their contribution.
there a different between the highly skilled and the fresh out of college ok? You might be fine with making a game with quasi-amature modellers but the market will not be.
I'm also interested in hearing from anybody who has written any of the utilities/library functions for minix. If your efforts are freely distributable (under copyright or even public domain), I'd like to hear from you, so I can add them to the system. I'm using Earl Chews estdio right now (thanks for a nice and working system Earl), and similar works will be very wellcome. Your (C)'s will of course be left intact. Drop me a line if you are willing to let me use your code.
It's no accident that Linux was such an pleasant project to hack on way back when, Linus is just such a humble and polite person. He still is today. What ever happened to that? These days you're lucky to get a reply to an email when offering to contribute code to an open source project, let alone someone actually thanking you for going to the effort of making something for others to enjoy.
Umm, no. I don't want to give the wrong impression. They've always been very upfront about the fact that their art is not free. The problem with the copyright assignment for code is a different matter. I think the reason they're not upfront about this is simply that they havn't gotten around to updating the web page (or they think it is more appropriate to inform each individual person of the requirement as they ask to contribute to the project but that's just plain misleading in my opinion). Also they refuse to guarentee that they will never change the license to something that is unfree. They wont even agree to this in principle so I don't know what we're supposed to think.
As for forking the project, well, they have the art don't they? Regardless of their brain-dead opinions on licensing issues they are making an open source MMORPG engine and if you can support them by running and testing the game you'll be helping anyone who wants to use that engine in the future.
You do know there's more MUD players in the world than there are MMORPG players right? That won't change until your average geek can run his own MMORPG server. In terms of gameplay there's no difference between the two what-so-ever anyway.
Re:Doesn't matter what they THINK they signed up f
on
Wish Cancelled
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· Score: 1
I don't know if you're just being persistent or what, but you're ignoring what I'm saying. It doesn't matter what the law says you can do as the copyright holder, if you piss off the community of people you depend on to make money you're in for a lot of pain.
When you buy a comic book you're legally allowed to do anything you want with it. But if you walk into a comic book shop and buy that limited edition copy of superman #1 and say to the clerk "no need for a bag, I'll eat it here" you can be sure that within a week every comic book shop will have your picture on the front door and "banned for life" written under it.
Re:Already has one in progress..
on
Wish Cancelled
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Planeshift wont be doing that. They don't even permit players to share the artwork with each other let alone writing a distributed peer-to-peer network into their client. This was one of the many ideas I had for Planeshift which was shot down when I suggested I was interested in working on it. Unlike other open source projects Planeshift demands that their contributors only work on the things that the Planeshift team finds relevant to their specific vision. If you want to contribute something which they're not interested in they won't accept it, even if it could be useful to someone else who is thinking of using their engine. This, and them now demanding copyright assignment from all contributors, code and art, is the reason I'm no longer contributing to Planeshift.
For people who want to make these kinds of additions to Planeshift I'd suggest moving to a distributed form of revision control. I'd like to recommend GNU Arch but it's still not up for the task. This kind of control over developers is exactly the reason why the Linux developers don't use CVS. Those who control the centralized server, control the project. Linux developers now use bitkeeper, and I'm not aware of any other revision control system that is up for the task. Hopefully GNU arch will improve or some other open source revision control system will actually start letting people know they are available.
Slashdot Mirror
So let the robots talk too.. with speech.
It's funny ya know. When the RoboCup was announced it was claimed that once we solve soccer, we'll be well on our way to solving all the problems of robotics. After all, for a robot to play soccer it has to be able to recognise objects right? Like the ball, the net, other players, etc. Well yes and no. If you're making a soccer playing robot you need to be able to recognise those 3 types of objects, but you don't need to code a general object recognision system to acheive that. You don't even need the robot to be able to learn new object mappings in a sensible amount of time (it doesn't matter if it took you 3 weeks to train the robot to tell the difference between the ball and the net, cause once it is done, it is done). So when a robot soccer team beats the world's best human soccer team, it just means that we've solved one more game. Some of that research will translate into research that will be good for solving other games (just like chess solving algorithms did) but most of it won't be any good for an actual product.
You assume the robots will be permitted to have radio communication?! Why would you assume that?
Wake me when I'm thin.
they shouldn't be running IE anyway!
Which I just did, from Mozilla. 256kb download, woah, that'll break the bank.
To think that a game that has been out for a month can say ANYTHING about how an MMORPG should be designed is nothing but brain dead.
Fast forward to 1979. Apple is making a killing with their Apple I and the soon to be announced Apple II microcomputer. Everyone is amazed at how much this little thing can do. Do you suck up your pride and buy one or do you complain loudly that it's not really a computer cause it can't run vms?
Fast forward again to 1984. The Apple Mac and the IBM PC are fighting neck in neck for a slice of the market with little Amiga shouting in the background "I'm not a game machine damn it!" Do you buy one or do you complain loudly that they're still not really a computer cause it can't run unix?
Welcome to 1992. Linus has just announced his pet project to create a kernel for the wealth of GNU tools that almost everyone has been running on their unix boxes for years now. Do you go buy a 386 and contribute some code or do you complain loudly that it's not really a unix kernel cause it's not POSIX correct?
Pull ya finger out and get involved. Branson is the only person offering you a flight into space for anything you could ever hope to afford (if not in the first 10,000 people to go up at least in the next 10,000). You can't have a flight on the space shuttle or a deca-million-dollar trip on a russian booster, so buy the lesser product or support it until you can afford it and maybe one day we'll all get to go into orbit or to the moon.
Myth #1 - an MMORPG must include numerous "time sinks"; long periods of unrewarding time spent with little or no character progression.
You mean like travelling? If you don't have travel time you don't have a big world. If you don't have a big world you don't have a realistic economy. If you don't have a realistic economy you eventually have to manually intervene and correct for inflation. Players who have their gold "stolen" by the live team quit shortly after. Without oldbies your game has no history and feels empty to newbies. Without newbies your game dies.
Myth #2 - character death in an MMORPG must be a harsh, demoralizing experience.
Well actually "character death" is perminate. That's what death is. If it isn't perminate it isn't death. Maybe you should use the term "wuss slap" instead of death. In which case, why is the game wuss slapping you? Cause you can't play and the game is trying to teach you how to play by telling you when you've screwed up. Going back to your spawn point with your entire inventory and kit intact teaches you nothing. You'll just run out into the woods and get killed by that same mob again and again. Then you'll probably bitch that the game is too hard and quit.
Myth #3 - MMOG design must be driven by a philosophy that is inherently different than conventional games [insert lots of grandiose game theory and virtual world talk here].
You know what is fun to do in a MMORPG? Run around a kill other players, steal their stuff, block them when they try to go into doorways, talk about Jerry Sienfeld when they're trying to roleplay, etc. Griefing is a HELL of a lot of fun. If that's what MMORPGs are about (fun) then why do we all get so terribly upset when people behave like this? Because MMORPGs are not about fun, they're about experimenting with identity and a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm sure you think is bullshit. When a MMORPG is just about "fun", the game quickly gets old and players quit.
Myth #4 - any new MMORPG must feature a complex, impossible-to-balance skill-based (non) "class" system.
Yep, and that's why so many people get bored with doing all this 'barbarian' fighting, would really like to give the 'sorcerer' fighting a go, but are so attached to their character that they can't stand to start another. So instead they struggle on as a 'barbarian' hoping desperately that things will get better and they'll grow to like the 'barbarian' fighting style, but they never do, and because they can't reconcile their desire to be a sorcerer with their desire not to have to go through the early level treadmill again, they quit.
Myth #5 - the fantasy MMORPG market is "saturated".
Wow, one I agree with. There's millions and millions of people with computers that don't play MMORPGs. Some of us don't like the fee structure, some of us just don't like the fantasy theme (and think the space themed ones are two dimensional action games with no roleplaying). Claiming the market is saturated at this point is like Henry Ford claiming that the Model-T was the last car anyone will ever need to design.
Well technical issues aside (we could talk about cool technical solutions to this problem all day long) I hate having to deal with 10 simultanious players let alone 2,500 (let alone 200,000). Mind you, maybe if you knew you were going to have 50,000 people in a single world from the start you could design your game so that it's actually fun to have that many people around.
No, it means you need to show a little respect to the people who set out to make it possible for you (an assumably normal person) to fly into space, however briefly. It also means that you need to support these individuals so that they may make bigger and better rocket ships so that they can some day put you into an orbit. Complaining that they havn't done everything you want in one step when you freely admit that it's a damn hard thing to do and have done absolutely nothing yourself is just counterproductive. This goes for making rocket ships or operating systems.
It's more than you did.
Wow, you sound like an Amiga user. Do you shun free software cause it drives commercial development away from your platform too?
You best hope that that one world is very very big (in which case you'd just use region based load balancing and it would be like they were all in seperate worlds anyways) cause otherwise you're just gunna have 200,000 people having no fun what-so-ever. Hell, 2,500 players on a single server best be a damn big world too.
Well other than saying "they don't intend this" I can't really defend them. They simply refuse to state unequivocally that they are not going to close the source at some future date. The argument for the proprietary art is to add some inertia to forking. This is understandable, no-one forks anything as much as they fork MUDs (which is what a MMORPG is). But if that's the case then why not promise to release the art to the public domain after say, 10 years. Surely if they havn't finished making Planeshift in 10 years then there's something wrong and they should let someone else have a go. Oh well, guess we have to make our own art.
fair enough :)
Maybe you missed the part of the discussion where we said we were talking about 1992.
I really have to reply to this. Linus was humble in that he didn't claim his project was the greatest most important achievement in the history of man-kind and that you simply MUST contribute to his project otherwise you're a toad. Oh, and when people said "gee, I've got this bit of code I threw together last week do you want it?" he said yes and thanked them for their contribution.
The link 'Sep 1983 Stallman's announcement of GNU' doesn't appear to work, but if you search google groups for '771@mit-eddie.UUCP' you can find it.
there a different between the highly skilled and the fresh out of college ok? You might be fine with making a game with quasi-amature modellers but the market will not be.
utilities/library functions for minix. If your efforts are freely
distributable (under copyright or even public domain), I'd like to hear
from you, so I can add them to the system. I'm using Earl Chews estdio
right now (thanks for a nice and working system Earl), and similar works
will be very wellcome. Your (C)'s will of course be left intact. Drop me
a line if you are willing to let me use your code.
It's no accident that Linux was such an pleasant project to hack on way back when, Linus is just such a humble and polite person. He still is today. What ever happened to that? These days you're lucky to get a reply to an email when offering to contribute code to an open source project, let alone someone actually thanking you for going to the effort of making something for others to enjoy.
As for forking the project, well, they have the art don't they? Regardless of their brain-dead opinions on licensing issues they are making an open source MMORPG engine and if you can support them by running and testing the game you'll be helping anyone who wants to use that engine in the future.
You do know there's more MUD players in the world than there are MMORPG players right? That won't change until your average geek can run his own MMORPG server. In terms of gameplay there's no difference between the two what-so-ever anyway.
When you buy a comic book you're legally allowed to do anything you want with it. But if you walk into a comic book shop and buy that limited edition copy of superman #1 and say to the clerk "no need for a bag, I'll eat it here" you can be sure that within a week every comic book shop will have your picture on the front door and "banned for life" written under it.
For people who want to make these kinds of additions to Planeshift I'd suggest moving to a distributed form of revision control. I'd like to recommend GNU Arch but it's still not up for the task. This kind of control over developers is exactly the reason why the Linux developers don't use CVS. Those who control the centralized server, control the project. Linux developers now use bitkeeper, and I'm not aware of any other revision control system that is up for the task. Hopefully GNU arch will improve or some other open source revision control system will actually start letting people know they are available.