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The Daily Grind: Open source MMOs
In an amazing bit of news yesterday, Cyan Worlds decided to fully open-source Myst Online: URU Live. When we say fully, we mean it - art, client code, server code, development engine, everything. It was a bold move for Cyan to take; essentially trusting in the fans and other MMO addicts to take their code and continue growing Myst Online: URU Live.This morning we thought we'd ask - now that this first step has been taken, what other games would you like to see go open source? Which ones would you like to work on, purely as a fan contribution? What would you build into those worlds if you were given the chance?
Myst Online goes fully open-source
As many know, Myst Online: URU Live has had an incredibly rocky road throughout its history. First sunsetted by Ubisoft, then by GameTap, URU's fans agreed to trying MORE (Myst Online Restoration Experiment) after Cyan Worlds got their IP back. Most recently in October, Cyan posted word that due to financial difficulties, URU and the entire MORE project would be placed on indefinite hold. Since then, nothing - until now. In a startling move, Cyan Worlds has decided to release all of URU Live's assets to the public as open source. This includes the client and server architecture. Amazingly, they aren't simply releasing it into the wild and leaving it alone; Cyan has decided to hold one Myst Online server shard open for players to have a centralized world, despite the fact that others can now freely put up their own Myst Online servers. It's a bold and daring move to open source a project of this scale. We applaud Cyan Worlds' dedication to their fans and love of their game to take a brave step like this, and wish all the URU users the best as they develop their worlds as they see fit. It's going to be really interesting to see how this develops.
Open sourcing your MMO
Many single player games have gone open source with raving success. Take Quake for example. When Id Software released the Quake engine as open source with Quake 3, people went nuts with it. How many mods and games were created after that using "The Quake Engine"?So the question posed over at Stroppsworld's blog is why can't we open source our MMOs? Stropp makes some great points for open source, against open source and a common ground that may be a viable alternative. It seems he's covered all of his bases and asked the questions we'd need to ask for a project like this, but wants your feedback on his ideas.
Open-source MMO engine updated
The Torque MMO kit, first published last year by Prairie Games and GarageGames, has recently announced their newest version of the open-source engine which developer TalentRaspel describes as "completely revised". In this version 1.1 SP3 of the engine, TalentRaspel is proving that their continued support of this product since they took it over late last year promises a step in the right direction for independent game developers.Not only that, but this could be good news for those smaller companies looking to spend more resources on other aspects of running an MMO, and kicking it off with an established, well-maintained engine. The Torque MMO kit engine was first responsible for powering Minions of Mirth, which is said to have 70,000+ users. Plus, with a price tag of $199 to $999 (depending on sales expectations) for the kit combined with Faust Logic's Arcade FX effects library, you just can't beat that.
The Daily Grind: What is your quest?
One of the things that we can't seem to get away from no matter what MMO we're playing is the presence of Monty Python quotes. A particularly funny exchange combined with the daily news surfing brought the concept of open-source GPL MMOs (like PlaneShift) to mind. These worlds essentially allow talented folk to join the team and make up their own quests using the world that is already established. For today we thought we'd ask -- if you had the knowledge and time, what kind of a quest would you make? Now let's take it a step further and ask about the worlds you play in; if you could write a quest for any MMO, either currently available or in beta, what game would you write it for, and what kind of quest would it be? Would you make up one of the "go collect x items" quests, or would you write in more history, instead sending players all over the place? Would it be really easy, or really hard? Would it be a holiday event or daily quest? Would it involve killer rabbits?
