Classic MMOG Raised From the Dead by Past Players 360
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."
Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong (Score:3, Interesting)
Classic games that you can never find again (Score:4, Interesting)
BBS games were before my time (or I just missed out on the craze), but I was a big fan of single-person text adventures before they were Interactive Fiction. I was especially fond of a couple of adventure games on some pay-per-minute service, Compuserve or Prodigy maybe. One in particular stands out because it involved a vampire (Dracula?) and it was designed to be incrementally solvable. It's where I learned the maze mapping skills that came so handy in Adventure later (even though it came out earlier).
Does anyone else remember this vampire-themed adventure game that was available on some early ISP? Even a name would be a start...
Re:What is this? (Score:2, Interesting)
To the CI architect (Score:2, Interesting)
Illegal? (Score:2, Interesting)
And on that note, do they have the 'right' to use the game code?
Re:Well. (Score:3, Interesting)
And remember, these guys are stuck on a game that's 10 years old. They aren't necessarily keeping up with the times
since the article is still unavailable... (Score:5, Interesting)
what's the legality of taking over a project that was aborted? even though the company who owned it literally trashed the project, don't they still own some sort of rights to it?
if it became popular, could they do anything, since they bought the rights from Starwave... or does throwing it in the trash forfeit those rights?
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is more how it was thrown away. If the dumpster was located on private property, then that's tresspassing. Public property - that's a different matter entirely. Laws vary from state to state on this. But you do not see much enforcement anyway, as it's trash.
I imagine that there are different laws for each state that prohibit people from climbing into dumpsters for safety reasons..
So much as the code goes, I searched and could not find information about the status of code ownership/trademarks or current license. I do note that a non-profit was started for the sake of preserving the game.
As an aside, I think this exemplifies why current copyright law is too long, and favors those who have deep pockets for lobbyists to protect a "few" things, while literally everything else goes to the trash.
A similar fate (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure some of the things done to obtain the software were ethically questionable, but when you really love a game a lot, its hard to see it completely given up on. A lot of this love comes across with the development team that ressurected castleinfinity. It wasnt the first MMORPG that was resurected, and it wont be the last, as long as you have a deep emotional tie with a game (bordering on adiction, believe me, I know) you cant just let it go.
Thanks for bringing back some memories that were close to me with this story.
Re:A note from one of the Architects. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:since the article is still unavailable... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyhow, what you're asking about is the copyright, no doubt. We've had some succinct answers offered in this thread already, and I'll have to back the "maybe" on this. If it went to court, the arguments would be pretty interesting! Can you throw a copyright in the trash? I don't think the law specifies, and I don't think the courts have ever ruled on it. Interesting concept, though. If I were the lawyering type, I'd want to argue that the copyright was trashed, unless there is some evidence to suggest that the work was retained, or the copyright sold. My argument would be that the material entered the public domain due to abandonment -- although I'd find out what the accepted Latin phrase for that is, to underscore my lawyerhood.
How about, "if a copyright owner abandons all physical embodiments of the work, and has not entrusted the preservation of that work to another party, then, ceterus paribus, the copyright has also been abandoned." (Latin included only for show.)
Re:I don't supppose... (Score:2, Interesting)
Doom went this route, and, well, it is runable on any os because volunteers have made it work on just about anything. Same could happen to your project!
Re:Recommended minimum hardware requirement. (Score:2, Interesting)
Admittedly dymanic content such as ASP/perl would be tricky however it would reduce server load.
Re:since the article is still unavailable... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, when a company no longer exists, and nobody bought the copyrights, their product becomes public domain. An awful lot of abandonware titles actually come from studios that went belly-up. In these cases, since there's no longer anybody who can make a claim to the copyright, the product in question becomes public domain.
The difference between Abandonware and Warez comes in whether the product is still within its natural saleable life. Only the vendor can make that decision, and when the vendor comes to that conclusion, there's two things they can do: they can either abandon the title, or they can release it for free download (like Rockstar Games has done with some of their material). As long as they think they can still sell it, it's not abandonware.
Re:Sadly, trash is where most MMOG's belong (Score:2, Interesting)
If you could just hop in and have fun, then you might not come back. MMORPG's are like work, you have to show up every day and punch in, clock your hours, and punch out. Your innate ability means nothing. For instance, I fire up Enemy Territory, hop on a server, and proceed to wipe out the guys with 1000+ experience. Why? I'm good (The fact that I can afford a decent rig doesn't hurt either, but we won't coun t that right now). Now I fire up EQ, hop on as a level 1 ranger or something, and proceed to get my ass handed to me because I haven't put the necessary hours into levelling my character up. I can't just walk up to a level 50 fighter or whatever and try to duel him, no matter how good I am. I am limited by the game, and the rules of said game. That's why rpg's can put 60+hours of gameplay on the box, because there's no way in hell you can beat the game using a level 8 character. You have to get up to level 75 or some crazy shit.
And that's why there are few (if any) MMORPGs that you can just hop on and have fun. You can try the non-graphical versions that you can go and just talk to people without fear of garden slugs. It's called IRC.
Re:Anyone Remember Faazuul from Galacticomm? (Score:3, Interesting)
In 1980, MUD1 was online on the internet.
Compuserve was first able to put Islands of Kesmai up as a commercial offering in 1984.
In 1985, Galacticomm's MajorBBS and Compuserve's British Legends were both available.
The BBS software that Galacticomm wrote was called MajorBBS, and I used to help run a BBS, and customize some of the programming and configuration for it. (Borland C with DOS Extender on a 286!)
What made Galacticomm unique was their invention the Galactibox, which was a large computer case with 16 ISA slots that connected to a PC via an interface card -- of which you could have multiple. This allowed BBS operators to put together the hardware to run 16-64 modem lines much cheaper than, say, Compuserve.
I used to help run a MajorBBS in Michigan called SOLARIS until the con-man that owned it skipped town and left all of the hardware, so my then girlfriend and I decided to run it out of our home. We were always in the red over the phone bill, so we eventually closed it down.
Here's an interesting timeline to check out if you're interested: http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/mudtimeline.
Habitat closer to first. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do have a small bone to pick, though. Castle Infinity is not "one of the first" by a decade or so.
The first graphical MMOG I know of was Habitat from 1987. Yes, that's 1987 not 1997. Habitat was built by a partnership between Lucasfilm Games Division (now LucasArts) and Quantum Computer Corp (now America Online). It ran on a Commodore 64. Though usable at 300 bps, you really needed 1200 bps to do more than poke around.
Habitat didn't make it out of the beta test in the US because it used an indecent amount of server hardware. Quantum needed the hardware for the beta version of AOL. Habitat's bastard stepchild did make it to release, though: Club Caribe. In 1988 it had tens of thousands of players and supported upwards of 1000 at once.
Lucas later released a standalone game using the Habitat engine. You may have played it: Maniac Mansion.
Re:Quick Question (offtopic) (Score:2, Interesting)
The server side software is complicated. Rick Lambright, who is honestly one of the smartest people I've ever met, built a system that did all the stuff you'd expect from an MMOG, but he did it before there were any examples to learn from. Unfortunately, our goals never explicitly included making the software run for anyone else, so I'm not surprised it has taken some work to port it.
I was one of the original client-side programmers at Starwave. We put an awful lot of ourselves into Castle Infinity and it was heartbreaking to see how badly Starwave managed/marketed it. It's really nice to see new people taking the system over and keeping it running.
Congratulations on keeping the game online and bringing it back to people's attention.
nathan