Contingency plan

[Trylon]

With the recent closing of the main cavern, many sad feelings are there. We don't want it to end - we want to continue.
Find a way - make a home.
Of course, there still is a little hope that Cyan will be able to provide us with a continuation, but if that doesn't really work out....
I'd like some comments about a contingency plan I've been brainstorming about with myself:

For starters, we would be in a legal predicament if we were to start up our own Uru servers, high risk of shutdown, and potential other problems.
What I've been thinking about is this:

What if we were to do our own "Uru Continuation" - (or perhaps "Uru Returning") - we try to get a Fan-Fiction license from Cyan (way more easy to obtain than MOUL server code ), and start building a Guild of Writers story. A home to tie all our fan ages into.

This would require a game engine - but we have the ability to adapt other game engines - our experience in hacking Uru taught us much about 3D gaming and design - even about multiplayer 3D environments.
I was thinking about taking an existing game engine, and adding networking code to it, so it would become a multiplayer environment.
Some key features I was thinking about:
- Peer-to-peer content transfer (to avoid the load on main servers when transferring new content)
- Distributed server (every client becomes part of the server - perhaps it can even become a server for certain Ages if necessary) reduces load on main servers.

Of course, a game engine on itself means nothing - it needs content and story. With a fan-fiction license from Cyan, we could tie in the story as a continuation on the fall of Uru Live, and keep the Art, Ages and Linking Books in there as a main story device. It can be kept in the D'Ni universe.
And we do have a fair amount of content already - since Ages are made in Blender, they could be converted easily (from a user-perspective that is)

In my very preliminary visions, it would be awesome to use the City of Ahra Pahts as the starting point - the core of the new installment.

It would require a storyline, initial puzzles, an engine, content (including new avatars and new clothing), etc... but we can do it with the group we have here now. (Yeah, the very very unlikely event that Cyan would allow us to work with Moul game engine, would make this a lot easier )

And if it turns out to really work - it may even be possible that Cyan would be willing to cooperate with us.

Well, that's just some brainstorming here - I'd like some comments.

[Lontahv]

I've often thought of IRC player location and chat transfer--python is very good at sending and receiving IRC messages. I think that the biggest problem would be the avatars.

I think that this would be a great project to have for the inbetween time when UL is dead and an UU thing is just around the corner.

For a game engine I'd use Ogre an opensource game engine that looks better than plasma (sorry plasma) It's state-of-the-art and can be programed in python (the language of choice for me) AND better yet; if can run on directX OR openGL! That means; A RICH 3D ENVIRONMENT THAT CAN RUN ON LINUX!!!

Here's the link to Ogre: http://www.ogre3d.org/


~Lontahv

[Almlys]

I know that you guys want to assemble your own engine/toolset etc, and don't want to heard anything about Alcugs/7d7 again.

But, I desperately need testing material for 7d7.

So, for curiosity if there is anybody interested in seeing how their age/work/world looks under 7d7, please let me know.

Milestone 2 is due in 2 weeks, although I think that Milestone 3 will be the first version recommended for public usage (1 month)

Also, we use Ogre3d as the rendering engine.

For a game engine I'd use Ogre an opensource game engine that looks better than plasma (sorry plasma) It's state-of-the-art and can be programed in python (the language of choice for me) AND better yet; if can run on directX OR openGL! That means; A RICH 3D ENVIRONMENT THAT CAN RUN ON LINUX!!!

Is OGRE A Game Engine?
No. OGRE can be (and indeed has been) used to make games, but OGRE is deliberately designed to provide just a world-class graphics solution; for other features like sound, networking, AI, collision, physics etc, you will need to integrate it with other libraries, something several frameworks have done, and we have a collision / physics reference integration library as an example in our distribution.

Ogre is only a rendering engine, you need to assemble the entire thing as we are doing with 7d7.

There are some interesting resources and information about other game engines in the 7d7 wiki. For example, you can check Soya3D, or Lake that is an entire engine that uses Ogre3d+OpenAL+Lua, etc...

- Peer-to-peer content transfer (to avoid the load on main servers when transferring new content)
- Distributed server (every client becomes part of the server - perhaps it can even become a server for certain Ages if necessary) reduces load on main servers.

Yeah, that's the Grail. As for 7d7 that's planned (but not confirmed) for phase 2 (2008-2009) or phase 3 (2009-2010), not sure yet, all efforts are concentrated on phase 1.

And for those users that are stuck on Windows, I have intentions to start testing 7d7 on a windows system by the 17th.

[andylegate]

Having no experience with helping create a game engine, I fail to see how much I can help here. But I can offer outside point of view and opinion.

The idea has merit. A LOT of merit!

It would, can could be a good answer to the threat of not having any authentication or simply being shutdown easily.

An other game engine would be an improvement over Plasma. Sorry, but while Plasma has done a good job in the past, it's just not quite up to par with ones that are out there now, or even in the last couple of years.

This would give a lot of people hope. It will also turn off some people. Those being the Cyan Fanatics as I call them, who are not willing to adapt and would rather cling to Cyan. But I also see them being a small minority. Even the most loyal Cyanist, will want to see Uru, or the idea of Uru continue, even if it's under a different name, or enters a new Error, with the D'ni being only mentioned as something in the past, that made the current thing possible.

This fits will: Looking into, and trying something during this waiting period that we'll have to go through anyways. We know that for at least the next 2 months, there's not a whole lot we can expect from Cyan as far as answers go. And developing something like this will take quite a while, I know that.
But at least it will go faster than if we had no knowledge at all! Thanks to all of you (and I mean ALL of you, from Almys to the newist Writer), we've kinda got a head start on this.

That means we need to be open to everyone's ideas and thoughts.

Sounds good to me.

EDIT: forgot to mention this:

One advantage that all of us have over Cyan: we're not in it for the money. We're in it because we want to be, and because we'd like to see everyone happy.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

If we don't get approval to start our own servers (using URU:CC content only - no MO:UL content), then starting our game engine would be a good backup plan. As Almlys pointed out, that's why he's developing the 7d7 engine.

I've also heard of a few efforts to build Myst-like environments in Second Life.

[Marcello]

Almlys, in my opinion it would be silly to not be interested in your engine. Your knowledge of Plasma and engines in general is worth a lot. So as far as I am concerned: yes let's have a thorough look at 7d7. I would be more than willing to test is.

I really hope you will feel connected with our group here soon.

[Trylon]

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion only, and nothing I say can be considered definite. This is still a concept.

Andy:
Were we to get this project off the ground, engine developement would be only part of the project.
The real work would be storyline, Age, backstory and puzzle development. Something you can be very involved in.
In such a case, it would also benefit to have the maintainers around, as a quality assurance team.

Almlys:
Times change, and situations change - while the entire plan is not even remotely definite, we will probably profit from a co-operation in some form in this regard. A full explanation of the current status,vision and inner workings of 7D7 would help in determining in what form co-operation would be feasible.
P.S. I can send you my tutorial age's blend file, if it helps you test anything, P.M. me if that would be helpful.

In general, I'm glad to hear such positive responses.
Remember, in this case, the game engine isn't the real project.
The storyline and the content are even more important - and with that, anyone can help.
Unfortunately we will have to wait until more information is available to decide on anything...

[Robert The Rebuilder]

A full explanation of the current status,vision and inner workings of 7D7 would help in determining in what form co-operation would be feasible.

Almlys made a post yesterday on his blog about this:

http://almlys.org/archives/146

[Nek'rahm]

This does have a good idea, but this is only if we can't use Uru:CC content or MOUL content.

I e-mailed Ryan Miller, he should reply shortly, so I'll post when I hear this.

Other than that, I think we could still give the Uru Shards an attempt... though it may not be the most plausible thing to do.

Other games DO exist with Avatars. I used to play Star Wars: Jedi Knights in that series. I was even mapping with GTKRadiant for that

[MustardJeep]

Just wanted to chip in a obvious thought since peer-to-peer was raised.

Torrent clients the bad child of the internet that no ISP likes are largely open-source. The game server would be one client among many tied together with p2p torrent elements. Of course getting Ages seeded would still take a while before the real benefits of p2p could be seen by the casual user.