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PlaneShift releases patch 0.5.9

Eliot Lefebvre — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, Patches, News items, Free-to-play

Ever played an MMORPG and thought that you could do a better job making it than the developers? PlaneShift is more or less completely built around that idea. It's an open-source, community-developed game that's still not at full "release" status but does allow players and developers alike plenty of participation in the process. While the development cycle is slow by necessity, the game has just recently released its 0.5.9 patch, bringing with it a large variety of improvements and refinements for the engine and the game itself.

The game's art has received several sweeping overhauls; the biggest changes have been aimed at the game's engine in the form of fixing bugs and improving support for a variety of graphics cards. There are also updates to the game's AI scripting, allowing NPCs to act in a more organic and unified fashion. If you're an old hand at the game, the patch is no doubt worth checking out -- and if you've never heard of it, perhaps this is enough to pique your interest.

PlaneShift releases patch 0.5.9 originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Secret World's engine takes center stage

Eliot Lefebvre — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:00:00 EST

Filed under: Horror, Real life, Game mechanics, Interviews, News items, The Secret World, Miscellaneous

Unified engines for MMOs have long been a rarity, simply due to the time needed to develop a game and the number of different companies developing separate products. The Secret World manages to buck this trend, using the same core Dreamworld Engine as Funcom's Age of Conan. A recent interview with lead programmer Øystein Eftevaag discusses the way that the engine interacts with the newer game, how the unified engine helps both games, and what special features the game is using in a technical sense.

Eftevaag explains that the Dreamworld Engine benefits chiefly from cross-pollination; improvements made in terms of optimization for Age of Conan can be imported to the engine on The Secret World with minimal extra legwork. The engine also uses a series of dynamic equations to determine what player characters should be able to see, subsequently leaving obscured areas blank to save on processor cycles. It's an interesting look under the hood at the technical side of Funcom's upcoming conspiracy and horror title, even if this particular dream world is tilted toward a nightmare.

The Secret World's engine takes center stage originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: An interview with Brian Green (part 1)

Justin Olivetti — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Meridian 59, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, Free-to-play, The Game Archaeologist

Last week we began to examine one of the most significant MMOs in history: Meridian 59. While it never rose to the level of fame and subscriber numbers as its successors did, Meridian 59 was a daring pioneer that paved the way for all that followed. Its story is almost like a movie, with the title born from the fruits of two amateur programmers, surviving studio shutdowns and huge competition, and persevering from 1996 through today.

As I'll recount over the next two episodes of The Game Archaeologist, I sat down with Brian Green, a blogger and game developer who oversaw the resurrection of Meridian 59 in the early 2000s and ran it for the better part of a decade. Green graciously agreed to participate, saying that he always loves talking about games -- and this one in particular.

The Game Archaeologist: Hi! Please introduce yourself and your current position and project.

Brian Green: I'm Brian "Psychochild" Green, a long-time MMO designer and programmer. I'm known for my professional blog and my work on Meridian 59. I'm currently working on the Storybricks project as the MMO Wizard. We're a startup, so that means I do whatever needs to be done at the moment.

Continue reading The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: An interview with Brian Green (part 1)

The Game Archaeologist crosses Meridian 59: An interview with Brian Green (part 1) originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Grind: What game would you like to see go open source?

Eliot Lefebvre — Sat, 08 May 2010 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Game mechanics, Ryzom, Opinion, The Daily Grind

For a game long known for its emphasis on player-created content, mods, and even skills, the big Ryzom announcement perhaps should have been expected. But the revelation that the game was going into the murky waters of open source, albeit with a few omissions such as height maps and sound files, is a far-reaching one for almost any game not wholly built around user generation (a la Second Life).

And it naturally leads to the question: what other games would be nice to have access to from the source code up. It opens a huge number of doors, everything from private servers to full-on rewrites of the game as a single-player experience. For knowledgable coders, it turns every single patch and design decision into something that can be modified by the players. The breadth of options is almost overwhelming.

Of course, Ryzom is a niche title with a strong emphasis on these kinds of innovations, so in a way it's to be expected. But it's the closest we've seen to a mainstream game going this route -- so what would you like to see? An older game that could benefit from the publicity? A newer game you feel could be improved? Or a sadly-cancelled game whose source code could be used as a resurrection?

The Daily Grind: What game would you like to see go open source? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 08 May 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Code something for Ryzom's new API, win cash!

Seraphina Brennan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Contests, Culture, Game mechanics, Launches, Ryzom

If you're bored, have some free time, and enjoy coding programs then do we have the contest for you! The team over at Ryzom have put together a brand new API for their game, and they're celebrating its launch with a contest for budding developers! Even better, the prizes are all monetary!

What the Ryzom team is looking for is people who can utilize their new API for whatever gadgets, tools, or websites they can dream up. The winning use of the API will be the one that displays innovation, usefulness, ease-of-use, multilingual support, validity and completeness, and optimized coding. Popularity, stability, and availability will be taken into consideration as well with all coding entries.

The winning entry will receive 3,000 euros (approximately 4,200 US dollars), second place will receive 1,000 euros (1,400 US dollars), and third place will be netting 500 euros (700 US dollars.)

So what are you waiting for? Get coding!

[Thanks, J3kyll!]

Code something for Ryzom's new API, win cash! originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dungeon Runners releases characters in XML

Mike Schramm — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:30:00 EST

Filed under: Dungeon Runners, MMO industry, Tips and tricks, Free-to-play

This isn't quite the idea of MMO-to-go yet, but it's the first step towards something really huge in MMO gaming: a character API. An API is an Application Programming Interface-- basically a document or method of how to get computers to talk to each other through different applications. Facebook apps are made with the Facebook API, applications that hook into iTunes use the iTunes API, and so on. With an API, programmers can take information from one source, and do almost anything they want with it in other programs. Players have already done some amazing things with World of Warcraft's Armory (even without an actual API-- I'm pretty sure most of that is just HTML scraping), but now NCSoft's Dungeon Runners has upped the ante-- they've made all the character data in the game available to anyone as an XML file. With just a URL, you can access info on any player in the game, already marked up in XML.

What does this mean to you as a player? It means that programmers can create any number of applications using this data-- they can display your DR character's info almost anywhere at any time. And a skilled programmer could even track the info over time-- tell you how fast you leveled, how often you change your armor or gear, or how fast you've earned gold in the last day. And who knows what else people could come up with-- the best part about opening up information like this is that it gets used in all sorts of ways that no one could ever predict.

Jeff Freeman's exactly right: "This is really cool... just in case you don't get that." We're just scratching the surface of this stuff, but eventually you'll be able to do things like get text messages on your phone when your WoW auctions sell, or be able to monitor your guild's bank or your PvP team's wins via RSS (which itself can then plug into almost anything) When developers break out data like this for players, the possibilities are endless.

Dungeon Runners releases characters in XML originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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