Should social chat spaces ever be stressful? The developers of Metaplace want to find out. Next Wednesday, April 30, at 5PM US Pacific Time, Areae will stress test their social chat space. They hope to get feedback on loading times, performance, and avatar creation.Once you have made your avatar, that newly-minted persona should follow you into the social world. They'll have forums set up to discuss the test afterward. Just surf to the Metaplace home page next week to take part.
TreasureMaze is a Metaplace-based game so innovative that Areae offered the developer a job. Developer "Arcturus" (not his or her real name), a musician and programmer, had in mind a multi-player RPG in the Legend of Zelda mode.
It took "Arcturus" only a couple of hours to put together the basics of the game, which says a lot about the sort of toolkit Metaplace provides game developers. The balance of time since then was spent scripting encounters, writing dialog for NPCs and adding extra scenery. "Arcturus" used Metaplace's art import tools to easily make use of Danc's Planet Cute game prototyping tiles. Making it simple to bring the work of developers and artists together may turn out to be Metaplace's greatest strength.
