Classic MMOG Raised From the Dead by Past Players

Chromain writes "Back in 1996, the Seattle-based company Starwave created one of the first graphical MMOGs: Castle Infinity. Though it was well received by all who tried it, it quickly sank under bad marketing, extended downtime, and sloppy leadership. Now, nearly 8 years since disappearing off the map, the game has been (quite literally) rescued from a dumpster by a group of past players. It's available for free at their new website."

A note from one of the Architects.

[Chromain]

/., My name is Greg "Devil Dog" Kumparak, and I'm an Architect of Infinity. I hope I'm not doing the rest of the team a disservice by attempting to speak for them. I've been playing Castle Infinity since a very young age, and have volunteered on the game for quite a few years. Castle Infinity was developed around 1995/96 by Starwave. It grew a rather large fan base, which simply wasn't big enough to outweigh the cost of running it. After being transferred from company to company, it was eventually forgotten by all except for the original players. Sure, company after company brought it up for 2-3 months, but it was only a tease. Each and every time, Castle Infinity was closed down. The blow of signing on to see "Sorry, we're closing down until further notice" hit some of us quite a few times. That was until we realized that Castle Infinity had been thrown away. I do quite honestly mean thrown away. In a trash can. With a bit of good timing, and maybe a liiiiittle bit of fast driving, we got our hands on the server and a large portion of important data. (Thanks Kevin!) For the past few years, we've spent a large portion of our free time on rebuilding Castle Infinity. Months of server woes, countless bug fixes, and an unimaginable amount of stress on each and every member of the team.. and it's all lead up to this. We're up, we're running, and we're ready to dump as much cold water on our server as it takes to keep it from melting. Theres a lot of work to be done, but trust me - we're trying as hard as we can. We have quite a lot in the works. We're constantly working on ways to make Castle Infinity feel much more "modern", giving it features to make it compare to the MMOGgs of today's standard. Due to this, we're ALWAYS looking for a talented hand. Think you can help out in any way? Contact us. Don't worry, we're good people. With that, I welcome you. Welcome to the fruition of our noble quest. It's been a long, wild ride. Uncountable heartfelt thanks to all at Slashdot for running this story. Greg Kumparak Architect of Infinity

Parent ... but a bit easier to read

[IamLarryboy]

/., My name is Greg "Devil Dog" Kumparak, and I'm an Architect of Infinity. I hope I'm not doing the rest of the team a disservice by attempting to speak for them.

I've been playing Castle Infinity since a very young age, and have volunteered on the game for quite a few years. Castle Infinity was developed around 1995/96 by Starwave. It grew a rather large fan base, which simply wasn't big enough to outweigh the cost of running it. After being transferred from company to company, it was eventually forgotten by all except for the original players.

Sure, company after company brought it up for 2-3 months, but it was only a tease. Each and every time, Castle Infinity was closed down. The blow of signing on to see "Sorry, we're closing down until further notice" hit some of us quite a few times. That was until we realized that Castle Infinity had been thrown away. I do quite honestly mean thrown away. In a trash can.

With a bit of good timing, and maybe a liiiiittle bit of fast driving, we got our hands on the server and a large portion of important data. (Thanks Kevin!) For the past few years, we've spent a large portion of our free time on rebuilding Castle Infinity. Months of server woes, countless bug fixes, and an unimaginable amount of stress on each and every member of the team.. and it's all lead up to this.

We're up, we're running, and we're ready to dump as much cold water on our server as it takes to keep it from melting. Theres a lot of work to be done, but trust me - we're trying as hard as we can. We have quite a lot in the works. We're constantly working on ways to make Castle Infinity feel much more "modern", giving it features to make it compare to the MMOGgs of today's standard.

Due to this, we're ALWAYS looking for a talented hand. Think you can help out in any way? Contact us. Don't worry, we're good people. With that, I welcome you. Welcome to the fruition of our noble quest. It's been a long, wild ride.

Uncountable heartfelt thanks to all at Slashdot for running this story.

Greg Kumparak
Architect of Infinity

Well.

[Chromain]

The server got a bit hot - we dumped ice cold water on it. Unfortunately no one told us that water on a server isn't actually a good thing. Yeah. Thats what happened. *cough*.

Anyways, I have good news! There IS a direct link to the download. Unfortunately, the only way to register is on the website itself. So. If you managed to register but didnt get to the download in time, head on over to:

http://www.mediamerlin.com/castle/C8/C8Install/C8S etup.exe [mediamerlin.com]

On that note - the site is currently up, it's .. just kinda limping. And as I typed that, it went back down. We're gonna throw up a static page with a link directly to the registration and download pages.

My apologies for the mess. If you're interested, please bookmark the link - we're workin hard here.

GOOGLE CACHE

[Anonymous Coward]

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:g67FaBUao30J: www.castleinfinity.com/+castle+infinity&hl=en&star t=1 [64.233.187.104]

Re:..Wow

[OverlordQ]

Coral [coralcdn.org] is your friend?

Re:/. already?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're working hard...not hardly working. ^_^ Plus Vortico is a lot more powerful than Apache( The server we run the website on) I don't really think Chromain predicted the Slash Dot effect happening so fast. But log in, it is a pretty fun game. Especially if you're a fan of platformers.

The "Who are we" page.

[darkonc]

I managed to get one response. Here it is..
Who are we? Well, for one thing, we're a public-benefit, not-for-profit, California corporation. We're also all volunteers who were originally players, and who love Castle Infinity and want to see it fulfill its potential. We range in age from 15 to 53, and spend minutes to hours a day working on Castle Infinity.

Kevin Quitt ... In putative charge is Rev. Kevin D. Quitt [quitt.net], who came into his position of Benevolent Dictator by virtue of the fact that he went dumpster diving when Castle Infinity's creators (Starwave) decided there was No Commercial Potential for the game, and threw out the baby with the bath (servers and all). He is the game's and the corporation's administrator, but besides that, he designs some algorithms and codes some of the utilities we use.

John Cantu joined the Castle Infinity staff in 2000 and does assorted administrative tasks. (Have you ever noticed you can't hack connect.dat? That's because he did it first.) Outside C8, John is working towards his B.S. in Computer Information Science with a goal of becoming a systems/network administrator, and currently works as an analyst for a multinational media information company.

David Estes
David Estes is possibly insane due to being a mad scientist
David Estes is glad that this intruder chose to invade his wheat field
David Estes is well known throughout the community for his soccer talents
David Estes is the new assistant provost for teaching
David Estes is president of the lutheran child and family services of illinois
David Estes is one of the owners of pacific northwest distributing

Greg Kumparak's been around Castle Infinity longer than he wishes to disclose. He started playing around the same time he began sporting a Power Rangers lunch box. Greg is responsible for the majority of the new art (including this site) and likes to brand himself as "Lead Level Design" when discussing Castle Infinity with others. Children simultaneously adore and fear him.
He still carries around a Power Rangers lunch box.

Edward Marks, unlike the other architects, never had a chance to play Castle Infinity when it was still operated by Starwave. He began playing in 2000 and joined the architect team in 2002. His original job was as an artist, but Greg has taken over most of his former responsibilities. Now he is responsible for the organization and use of original Starwave material (a lot of it was left on those abandoned hard drives) and has created several body parts, items, levels, and ideas. Outside of the game, he attends Thomas Jefferson School, with Andy, but will soon graduate and enroll full time in Stanford University in California.

Andy Matuschak [andymatuschak.org] joined the Castle Infinity team in 2001 as a client programmer (he likes to refer to himself as the "Lead Programmer"), but he's served in various capacities since then. His largest projects for the game include the site you're reading now (which he coded), the Infrared update system, the currency system, and the HUD. On a day to day basis, Andy is responsible for new features in the client, web site updates, and most of the levels that require code. Outside of the game, he attends Thomas Jefferson School in St. Louis, MO (graduating in 2006) and spends much of what time remains working with the Open Sword Group on open-source Mac software.

© Castle Infinity, Inc. 1996-2005 (( -- but I hope they don't mind me posting this here. ))

Re:A note from one of the Architects.

[Chromain]

*Laugh* Sorry, not us. The page just happens to have the words "Castle" and "Infinity" on it, with a few pictures of guys-that-could-possibly-be-dorky. Good guess, though!

Re:How old is this guy?

[Chromain]

A bit off in your math, though close. I'm actually 17, and I'm in no way "the guy" who rescued Castle Infinity. I'm part of a team of guys who each had a huge part in the process, ages ranging from 16-50. On that note, Agism is lame.

Re:/. already?

[Chromain]

Actually - the game itself is INCREDIBLY well optimized and requires VERY little bandwidth per player.

Re:Quick Question (offtopic)

[Chromain]

Unfortunately, this is one of the topic's i'm not incredibly well informed about. On that note, and for that same reason, this entire post could be completely wrong. If that's the case, please ignore it and hit me with a stick or something. The main reason we needed the server was for the server/db software that (luckily) was on the hard disc itself. The rest of the server was either trashed, far too out of date to use, or just over all crud. We have upgraded from that server, which actually required quite a bit of work. The software/db stuff that is required for the interconnectivity of the game and the website is rather hateful, and required some INCREDIBLY specific stuff. Of course, we got around all that eventualy. Sadly, the software still hates us. Basically, our hardware rocks - its the software side that's killin us. (And to answer your other question - sorry, to my knowledge we've already given away or tossed any server hardware we didnt need. The original server would be very outdated by now, though.)

Re:Illegal?

[Chromain]

We were in fact given permission to "retrieve"(Read: Dumpster dive for) the server and do whatever we please with it. The ownership/trademark issue is one we've dealth with for the past few years, and is a large part of the reason we're just now trying to get a foot up in the world. And by the way, I absolutely agree with you on how copyright is currently handled. It's a bit absurd.

Re:since the article is still unavailable...

[kfg]

. . .does throwing it in the trash forfeit those rights?

No.

KFG

Re:I don't supppose...

[Chromain]

:-/ Sadly, chances are slim to none. We tried it once, and it didnt exactly go over so well. On that note, it CAN run under Mac OS X.. under VPC. Just.. without sound. But it's better than nothing! Buuuut - if you like it enough without sound, you could pick up a computer at the flea market for 10 dollars with enough power to run this game:-)

Re:How old is this guy?

[Chromain]

*laugh!* True enough. Oddly, the dictionary definition of agism defines it in relation to prejudice against the elderly. A bit off. But I know what you mean:-P

First MMOG

[Geekbot]

It always cracks me up when I see this "first MMOG". I remember using Q-Link (AOL predecessor) when I was so young on my C-64. At one point they developed a game where you could walk around this island and collect stuff and chat using avatars. You could see other peoples avatars and they would walk around. It would be something of a conquest to run around and see who could find the most junk. They ended up ruining by having a bunch of mods that abused people for fun.

But that's just my own experience. Look at all the MUDs and such. I think the massive in MMOG is somewhat relative. There have been MMOG's for a long time in my opinion.

Abandonware

[jrboatright]

you would -think- that was true, and it is certainly reasonable, but it is simply not how the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act left things.

There is no such thing as a corporation which has no "heirs". At a minimum, if the corporation is dissolved, the debtors (in the case of a bankruptcy) and the stockholders have on-going rights in any intellectual property that existed unless the board of the corporation EXPLICITLY turned the companies intellectual property over to the public domain.

Or, under some circumstances the copyright reverts to the employees who did the work.

You may _consider_ the title abandonware and freely distributable, but that does not mean that it is _legally_ so.

This is why Project Gutenberg has such trouble scanning anything written after 1924. There are a gazillion photographs, magazine articles and so forth where the author can not be found, the PUBLISHER doesn't exist, no one knows if "Mark Trail" was a pseudonym or not, and finding him or her is impossible, but by golly, if we PUBLISHED that photo and made any money out of it, his or her GRANDSON might come after us.

Samething with software. Your position (abandoned) is one the Library of Congress recently asked for comments about. I hope you submitted one.

Re:Review with pictures on another site

[Chromain]

Thanks for posting that review. It's a few years out of date, so quite a lot has changed. New technology has been added, and quite a lot of features. The game can handle more than ever. The screenshots are accurate though:-)

Re:Abandonware

[jrboatright]

sorry, missed one. They have now posted the results of their request for comment, tho no conclusions. http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/index.htm l [copyright.gov] also, you might check out http://www.orphanworks.org/ [orphanworks.org]