The WorldForge Project Celebrates Three Years!

cyanide writes "Well it has been three years since The WorldForge Project was first announced on Slashdot as an effort to develop open source Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORG ^? ). Back then we were calling ourselves 'Altima', but since then we've released our first game, Acorn, and are now working on our next release, Mason. The project really is thriving now, and I'd love to see some new blood join us. "

Continued Use?

[Angry Black Man]

For the past 2 years, WorldForge has been able to provide for all of its own infrastructural needs. We have been experimenting with SourceForge for a few weeks, and it has some nice features yet may be too limited for our future needs. Should we continue use of SourceForge for functions not yet provided by the WorldForge infrastructure, or should we strive to provide those same functions under our own control, ourselves? Would it be worth setting up the SourceForge software on a WorldForge infrastructure server for purposes of managing the sub-projects within WorldForge? Definitely something to think about this weekend.

Re:development pace

[Chris Johnson]

Actually, it's more like the problem is clear but unprioritized goals that have zilch to do with actual gameplay fun. This might have changed since I hung out with WorldForge people- dunno- doesn't sound like it.

By this I mean: by the time you actually _have_ elves and barbarians and such, or whatever you have in the way of gameplay, you also have houses composed of zillions of individual 'brick' objects which are independently quarried and sold by autonomous mason software 'agents' so peasants make their houses brick by brick and you can do the same- it'll take several months- and at some point you have to ask, why? WorldForge much more closely resembles an academic project than any sort of game. This is a fine thing- but I don't think that means it's going to turn INTO a game, ever.

What's going to be done is 'everything'. If you needed half a brick, you'd be able to go to a house anywhere, break the wall, get a brick out, break the brick and dynamically form two half-brick objects. A new type of object! Exciting! Who knows what you can do in a game where you can dynamically create wholly new types of objects due to the great flexibility of the underlying software! I'll tell you- you can sit there holding half a brick. If that bores you, you can break it again, and sit there holding a quarter of a brick. Maybe you can hit somebody with it, though there is a (laudable) pacifist streak in WorldForge development that makes it questionable you'd be allowed to do unkind things like that.

WorldForge is an impressive dream- but it shouldn't be considered a game. Perhaps it'd be better considered an artificial-life or artificial-world project.