To address a, there are hundreds of text MU*s (most of whose licenses are essentially source-available, free for non-commercial use) with more than a few players, and there's no reason to believe that it'd be any different with an open source MMORPG.
To address b: Yes, I agree that this can happen, and we're trying to avoid that. We want to make GM customization as easy as possible, while at the same time avoiding bloat.
One thing we're doing is trying to keep most of the things a user would like to change (like mechanics and world issues) out of the core server, and make it modular, so people who write "WF modules" (for lack of a better term) for things like this don't have to fork anything, and can distribute their modules independantly. Some of us have thought about module distribution schemes (think CPAN, rpmfind), but that's something for the future (our project leader, Bryce, wrote a nice little article about it, and I'd dig it up if the website wasn't down).
Another way to do this is to make the common things configurable without even looking at code. It's good style in general not to hardcode things, and there's a pile of things that don't need to be, such as PK/no PK, the length of a day, classes, etc.
We also want the clients to be flexible enough to adapt to different games transparently to the user (a lot of this will be taken care of by having a separate media distribution server).
If you've got any more ideas about this, we'd love to hear them. It'd probably be better email me, or subscribe to the worldforge mailing lists, though, since I don't think the rest of slashdot's interested in this anymore.
Thanks for the mention. Unfortunately, our web site is down at the moment. Altima changed its name to Worldforge in order to better reflect its goal, basically: "To create an Open Source MMORPG". This involves many subgoals, including art, music, clients, servers, content creation tools, rules, game systems, etc. Some of our objectives are:
Openness: It's free software, so that's a given. It's a good thing in itself, and also adds to the player experience. How many times have you heard "Oh, $GAME is great, except..." or "If I was $GAMECOMPANY, I'd..."? If it was open source, you (or someone else) could fix it, try it out, and try to convince other GMs to use your changes. But I don't need to convince slashdot of the benefits of free software.
Flexibility: You aren't stuck to a certain platform or type of game. We intend to have clients of as many types (currently we're working on 3D, 2D iso, and text) for as many platforms as possible (and of course, you can write your own), and the ability for GMs to easily design their own world and rules, and combine and modify existing worlds.
Accessibility: We want the barrier of entry for both DM'ing and playing low. You won't need the latest and greatest 3D card, processor, or OS to play (of course, if you do have them, it'll be faster and prettier), and you won't have to have a T3 and know how to code to run a server (but you might nto be able to support 50,000 players). Got DSL, a PII, and know a reasonable amount about computers? You can run a server.
And much more. The thing about a project with this broad a scope, and with so many people involved, is that everyone has different goals, skills, and interests, and still work together to achieve our common goals.
Just so nobody misunderstands me, this is all heavily in development. This means you can't play yet.
If this interests you, and you want to help make it happen, hit the web page (when it's back up), or join us on irc at irc.worldforge.org. BTW, you don't have to be a master hacker to help out. There are plenty of non-coding things to do, such as graphics, music, writing, and coordination work, and there's always room for enthusiatic newbies to learn by doing.
CMU has Andrew Linux, which basically is a very modified Redhat that looks and feels like the Unix machines in the clusters. It's got stuff like afs, CMU zephyr, CMU kerberos, etc., which are normally non-trivial to get (find the secret source code, compile, configure it for your system rather than Andrew Unix, compile, realize that you got an old version that doesn't work anymore, compile, realize that the afs kernel module doesn't match your kernel, compile....). However, this is probably not very useful for anyone outside of CMU.
Think all the current MMORPGs suck? Want to play from Linux (and on alpha, ppc, sparc, mips, arm, whatever. *BSD or commercial unix, windows, anything you can get it to compile on, too)? Want to run your own world? write your own client? Then free software is the way to go. Check out Worldforge, a project to create an open source MMORPG.
In my experience, the games advertised in this way aren't really worth playing. If the game's so pathetic that they have to use tasteless sex to sell it, well, thanks for warning me that only sexually frustrated teenage heterosexual males will get anything out of it, and thanks for saving me the time I'd spend considering buying your game.
Debian is working on apt-console, a replacement for dselect. If you wanted to write a front end to the packaging system, you would write a front end for dpkg (dselect is a front end. writing front ends for front ends doesnt work very well.).
First RMS Linux, and now they're trying to be SPI as well.
RHCOS (from the link in the story):
sponsor, support, promote, and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public.
SPI (from the bylaws, at):
to support, encourage and promote the creation and development of software available to the general public.
You know, I used to be fairly confident that Redhat wouldn't try to take over other distributions, but now I'm not so sure...
If the article is correct, and eventually, everything will be software, everything will then be covered by software patents, making all the fuss about what's patentable or not irrelevant. If we could get rid of software patents now, though...
Slashdot Mirror
To address b: Yes, I agree that this can happen, and we're trying to avoid that. We want to make GM customization as easy as possible, while at the same time avoiding bloat.
One thing we're doing is trying to keep most of the things a user would like to change (like mechanics and world issues) out of the core server, and make it modular, so people who write "WF modules" (for lack of a better term) for things like this don't have to fork anything, and can distribute their modules independantly. Some of us have thought about module distribution schemes (think CPAN, rpmfind), but that's something for the future (our project leader, Bryce, wrote a nice little article about it, and I'd dig it up if the website wasn't down).
Another way to do this is to make the common things configurable without even looking at code. It's good style in general not to hardcode things, and there's a pile of things that don't need to be, such as PK/no PK, the length of a day, classes, etc.
We also want the clients to be flexible enough to adapt to different games transparently to the user (a lot of this will be taken care of by having a separate media distribution server).
If you've got any more ideas about this, we'd love to hear them. It'd probably be better email me, or subscribe to the worldforge mailing lists, though, since I don't think the rest of slashdot's interested in this anymore.
- Openness: It's free software, so that's a given. It's a good thing in itself, and also adds to the player experience. How many times have you heard "Oh, $GAME is great, except..." or "If I was $GAMECOMPANY, I'd..."? If it was open source, you (or someone else) could fix it, try it out, and try to convince other GMs to use your changes. But I don't need to convince slashdot of the benefits of free software.
- Flexibility: You aren't stuck to a certain platform or type of game. We intend to have clients of as many types (currently we're working on 3D, 2D iso, and text) for as many platforms as possible (and of course, you can write your own), and the ability for GMs to easily design their own world and rules, and combine and modify existing worlds.
- Accessibility: We want the barrier of entry for both DM'ing and playing low. You won't need the latest and greatest 3D card, processor, or OS to play (of course, if you do have them, it'll be faster and prettier), and you won't have to have a T3 and know how to code to run a server (but you might nto be able to support 50,000 players). Got DSL, a PII, and know a reasonable amount about computers? You can run a server.
- And much more. The thing about a project with this broad a scope, and with so many people involved, is that everyone has different goals, skills, and interests, and still work together to achieve our common goals.
Just so nobody misunderstands me, this is all heavily in development. This means you can't play yet.If this interests you, and you want to help make it happen, hit the web page (when it's back up), or join us on irc at irc.worldforge.org. BTW, you don't have to be a master hacker to help out. There are plenty of non-coding things to do, such as graphics, music, writing, and coordination work, and there's always room for enthusiatic newbies to learn by doing.
CMU has Andrew Linux, which basically is a very modified Redhat that
looks and feels like the Unix machines in the clusters. It's got stuff like
afs, CMU zephyr, CMU kerberos, etc., which are normally non-trivial to get
(find the secret source code, compile, configure it for your system rather
than Andrew Unix, compile, realize that you got an old version that doesn't
work anymore, compile, realize that the afs kernel module doesn't match
your kernel, compile....). However, this is probably not very useful
for anyone outside of CMU.
Think all the current MMORPGs suck? Want to play from Linux
(and on alpha, ppc, sparc, mips, arm, whatever. *BSD or commercial
unix, windows, anything you can get it to compile on, too)? Want to
run your own world? write your own client? Then free software is the
way to go. Check out Worldforge,
a project to create an open source MMORPG.
In my experience, the games advertised in this way aren't really worth playing. If the game's so pathetic that they have to use tasteless sex to sell it, well, thanks for warning me that only sexually frustrated teenage heterosexual males will get anything out of it, and thanks for saving me the time I'd spend considering buying your game.
Debian is working on apt-console, a replacement for dselect. If you wanted to write a front end to the packaging system, you would write a front end for dpkg (dselect is a front end. writing front ends for front ends doesnt work very well.).
RHCOS (from the link in the story):
SPI (from the bylaws, at):You know, I used to be fairly confident that Redhat wouldn't try to take over other distributions, but now I'm not so sure...
If the article is correct, and eventually, everything will be software, everything will then be covered by software patents, making all the fuss about what's patentable or not irrelevant. If we could get rid of software patents now, though...