The Sims Online & "Open Source" Gaming Models 101
One of my old friends sent me a recent story from Business2 that talks about online gaming, combined with The Sims Online and community involvement in a game. It's not a very substantive piece, but a good discussion starter.
Not flamebait, just an observation (Score:2, Interesting)
Similar to this story submission.
Apart from the "good discussion starter" part.
How about giving us some reason to want to click the link.
Might as well post cool stories here [slashdot.org], check 'em out!
Re:Not flamebait, just an observation (Score:1, Flamebait)
Interesting but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why in this day does everything online have to be compared to something else online regardless of the differences?
Re:Interesting but... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are very right! To compare on-line gaming with a productive on-line community, such as an open source project is way wrong.
I'd actually go so far as to say that the article writer has had no actual experience of real open source development, nor has he really seriously played any on-line game. He speaks of development teams as gaming clans and open source developement as the same as providing game mods. I cannot do anything but say that this article is no better than the usual karma-whoring one can see here on /. from time to time!
Re:Interesting but... (Score:3, Informative)
Some Similarities:
- our mod team is international, and collaborates via the net
- anyone can contribute, and receive credit for their contribution
- mods rely on folks working together without necessarily getting pay for their work
- there is already a small community of independents producing work to be used in it, that hasn't been put into the project
- there's a large community of other mod developers, and we all kinda 'hang out' and help each other with techniques, approaches etc.
- anyone who contributes work, does it to give it to the community of players, moreso than for direct personal gain..
In our case, the source is closed. We've accepted the source under a license agreement (from the game manufacturer) that I'm not sure others wouldn't break otherwise. There are other reasons related to possible cheats (although I still think more eyes looking at the source is better for that in general).
Is it the same as OpenSource? No. Is it somewhat similar? In my opinion yes.
Re:Interesting but... (Score:5, Interesting)
> Interesting article but think participating in a
> online game is a world apart from participating in
> a massive open source project.
Going online to play a game for an hour is really different from an online game community. In the latter, people spend many hours of time working to create addons to the game to share with others.
Take "Creatures" for instance (the early Windows and Mac game, not the later online playing version). Creatures was a game where you bred, raised and cared for artificial life forms, chiefly "norns" (who had their own simulated genetic code, biochemistry, drives, etc.). Creatures had a thriving online community that created and shared genetically engineered norns, objects (created from graphics and the CAOS scripting language), add on programs, etc.
When Creatures 2 came out, it was badly broken. The community cried and screamed, and then set out to fix it. We couldn't do anything about program crashes, that had to come from the company that made it. Multiple teams tackled the insane zombies that used to be norns; my lab at Feral Farms (yep, I'm that Melantha Bacchae) provided the testing facilities for one of the strains of replacement norns. Objects were created to ease transportation snarls and to keep norns from starving to death if they wandered too far from the few food sources. There were even some open source utilities written as I recall. When we got done with it, Creatures 2 was playable and fun.
For the next version the maker, Cyberlife, got too greedy and tried to hoard the development information. They wanted to cut free volunteer work down so they could charge for what we did out of the kindness of our hearts. It didn't help that their newest generation of Creatures were more automatons than autonomous simulated life forms. I didn't stick around for the "online" version.
Different companies have different reactions to user contribution. Cyberlife at first valued it, but later tried to commandeer it for their own profit. Maxis encourages user contribution, hence all the user add-ons that have helped make the Sims popular. Microsoft squashes user contribution like a bug, naturally.
Creatures, however, stands alone. I have yet to see any other game community raise the issue of the rights of the game characters to the point of forming norns rights organizations (ERFN = Equal Rights For Norns) and making death threats over norn torture. Ah, those were the days.
Professor Melantha Bacchae
Paine University, Albia
Re:Interesting but... (MS squashes bugs???) (Score:1)
Microsoft is not know for it's bug squashing... I think "Microsoft squashes user contribution like compatition, naturally." would have been more accurate
On-line sims = real-life? (Score:4, Funny)
It's open source too (just read a physics book)
Re:On-line sims = real-life? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know you're joking here, but don't you think it's rather the opposite, that we are always trying to find and disclose the laws of nature/physics, somewhat akin to reverse engineering some closed source product?
If physics was open source, it would have been written in the scriptures...
Real Life security model (Score:1)
Re:On-line sims = real-life? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:On-line sims = real-life? (Score:1)
In that anology the physics book is the reverse engineering project (just like freeciv). For functional specification you should check the Bible.
Re:On-line sims = real-life? (Score:2)
The sims is the way of the future (Score:1, Insightful)
We'll even live in different countries from our partners.
The future is arriving.
Re:The sims is the way of the future (Score:1, Funny)
didn't get your nookie in a good long while, did you?
Re:The sims is the way of the future (Score:1)
No, we won't. If we have to go places, yes, it will be used for communication. But can you touch your partner with technology? No. That means no physical contact (use your imagination
We already have it. (Score:1)
Re:We already have it. (Score:2)
At least
everquest and the SIMS online (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheaters can delay the success of this scheme, but I think it will find it's way sooner or later. Everquest platinum may be virtual, but there are auctions at e-bay that move real dollars.
This is maybe a bit offtopic, but this reminds me of something I read here at slashdot: some people justify the bans micro$oft put on modded-Xbox users because modding your Xbox can allow you cheating on-line. Maybe an interesting topic: completely closed devices to make it impossible to cheat online - maybe next big justification for closed software-hardware (and bundling).
Re:everquest and the SIMS online (Score:1)
Modding your own box should only allow you at most to cheat yourself, no one else.
How do you think smart cards work? the "anti-hacking" they put in them are to protect the user, not the network.
Tom
need for closed hardware? (Score:1)
Sure, but M$ IS not doing it right. Happens that almost nobody is doing it right: look at cheat in Q3 online.
Besides, it's a security measure EASY TO UNDERSTAND for everybody. This have a huge market advantage since 99% of the users is clueless about criptography (100% is clueless of HOW it's being implemented in a closed commercial solution).
Do you want a system that only allows you to shut by an OS command? or do you prefer to have access to the PLUG that you know will power off the PC?
Not that I excuse M$ for such practices, but there are reasons for people justifying it.
Re:need for closed hardware? (Score:1)
Tom
No need for closed source... (Score:2)
Actually, with TCPA one of the points is that you can trust the program to be exactly the program you want, and not a modified one. With a TCPA OS (OSS or otherwise) + a TCPA app (open source or otherwise) you can ensure that only that application can connect.
Of course, I don't think it's very likely that an open-source TCPA app requiring a special TCPA signed linux kernel will show up, but it's theoretically just as possible.
Kjella
Now this angers me (Score:1, Interesting)
Great Journalism Jimmy, quit breakin my balls here
Re:Now this angers me (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Now this angers me (Score:5, Interesting)
I switched from Netscape to IE quite a few years ago (not because it was already installed, but because Netscape started to suck). Now I've switched (back) to Mozilla, because I'm one of those power-users who loves to customize and use all the new whiz-bang features. But the average user doesn't even KNOW there's a "preferences" area - all they care about is that their favorite sites look good and work properly. Unfortunately, I find myself occasionally having to revert back to IE to view a site because some DHTML-this or ActiveX-that doesn't work properly (sure, we can blame the web-site developer, but the average guy will happily blame his browser first).
Re:Now this angers me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Now this angers me (Score:1)
This argument about blamming a web-developer for using Microsoft products is bland at best. The web developer has made what they would believe to be a smart decision given the possibility of ...
If you want Mozilla to take off and support all those web-pages that you love to view but can only do so in IE, then go hack away and get it to read the flaky HTML etc. that IE can read ... all the bitching, hot air and passing the blame to everyone else isn't going to change a single thing. In reality there is no one to blame ... it is just a bunch of stuff that happened :)
Re:Now this angers me (Score:1)
Re:Now this angers me (Score:3, Interesting)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2123095,
IE 6 is growing, but mostly at the expense of previous versions. Netscape 7.0 is growing a bit, and Mozilla 1.0 commands 0.8 percent after four months of life.
The numbers above probably do not reflect AOL for OS X being based on Gecko (Mozilla's engine), or the use of Mozilla's younger siblings, Chimera and Phoenix. Nor does it give numbers for system specific browsers on Mac and Linux.
Mozilla, for its youth is doing great! Just look at that huge IE share as a bunch of people who don't know yet that there are better browsers out there.
Posted with Chimera.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
Re:Now this angers me (Score:4, Funny)
Good discussion starter? (Score:2)
Come on admit it, you're just happy a non-geek source mentioned the Sims Online so we could get away with talking about it some more!
Not very incisive (Score:5, Insightful)
The article basically says: Open Source Development projects and Online Game Mods both foster community - perhaps we can make one more like the other. Who knows what might happen! Tim Berners-Lee certainly doesn't!
I say: Sourceforge has done 100 times more for Open Source Development than Sims Online ever will. Making incremental improvements and getting something out there is going to be more effective than Blue Sky dreaming.
Re:Not very incisive (Score:1)
Has it? As a student, I applied to about half a dozen sourceforge projects. Total replies: 0.
Applied to about 3 game mods, was hired by one within a week, and have been solicited by about 7 others.
I think there are some projects on sourceforge that are a little too full of themselves..
Some aren't sure, but don't kid yourself. Open Source used to mean, I want to contribute therefore I can. That's not been my personal experience with sourceforge, that was more like applying for a day job...
Eh! (Score:2, Funny)
online adaptations (Score:3, Funny)
"Someone somewhere must be dreaming of a massively multiplayer redo of Tetris"
lol... personally i'm waiting with baited breath for the next development, TETRIS - The Movie!! starring: a load of bricks i found in the back yard, some of which were inexplicably T- and L-shaped ;)
It actually could work. (Score:1)
Re: Tetris (Score:1)
Re: Tetris (Score:1)
Do I see an open source tetrinet server/client project coming? I'm sure there must already be a few servers...
The problem is... the client keeps track of the player's specail blocks, score, et cetera... which lead to rampant cheating (Just basic editing of memory locations..) Which kind of ruins it..
Re:online adaptations (Score:2)
Re:online adaptations (Score:2)
"Bringing you other people's pain"
"We report the news, you believe".
Failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did it? Really?
Oh, I guess that lizard thingie laying on my desktop is just an explorer glitch then.
I think that the author of course doesn't give a damn about quality, but quantity. This is exactly the same debate as 'quake 1 sucks, no one plays it.'
Re:Failure? (Score:1)
Re:Failure? (Score:2)
Re:Failure? (Score:2)
What has Netscape's open-sourcedness and the Mozilla product done?
- Advanced Web browsing on non Microsoft platforms by several light years.
- Forced people to start expecting security from Microsoft.
- Provided a great cross platform toolkit for web developers and application programmers, for free, as well as being the basis for many other browsers.
It might not have made much of an in-road as a Windows desktop browser, but then again you're fighting Internet Explorer. You're never going to win overnight.I predict Netscape is never going to go anywhere with the Mozilla source. However, Mozilla has a bright future, and it's importance shouldn't be downplayed. When computers get Linux on the desktop, it's going to be Mozilla they are running.
Oh dear (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh dear (Score:1)
What's really needed is... (Score:2, Funny)
You basically play the MMORPG from $bash. ASCII art is just as good as those fancy sims graphics. As for sound.. the pc beeps as sufficient.
We'll call it GNU/OpenSims.
Take that Maxis!
Re:What's really needed is... (Score:1)
Anyone think they can get one through the lameness filter?
Two people.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like to see his weblogs
Re:Two people.. (Score:1)
Mondays: Hate Microsoft day, love mpaa, long live open source
Tuesdays: Praise Microsoft, bash mpaa, bash riaa, long live open source
Wednesday: Neutral to Microsoft, praise riaa, bash open source
Thursday: Troll day!
Friday: Whine about being home on a Friday night because we're all geeks at heart.
On the weekends anything is game...
Re:Two people.. (Score:1)
That guys deserves a -1
To quote the article (Score:1, Insightful)
It looks like whoever wrote this article is a complete retard. (No offense to real retards).
He needs to check his facts, because Mozilla today is more widely adapted than ever. Oh, did I mention Phoenix? It's creeping up on IE like the black death. Left and right I see people on Windows switching to Phoenix because it offers so much more without all the bloat and constant annoying crashes.
Obviously, that guy who wrote the article knows nothing about the current state of browser wars. While the usage numbers for IE are very favorable to Microsoft, they are taking notice.
the real life (Score:1)
Jimmy Guterman doesn't grok the subject matter (Score:3, Informative)
> Open source is an enormously successful method of
> software development, but so far it seems to work best
> on projects in which a relatively small, extremely motivated,
> often far-flung team can piggyback on the work done by others
> and develop more tools for the next set of programmers.
The author's impression of OSS development is skewed, I don't think he ever was involved in an OSS project himself.
Firstly, it has always been the rule that the core of an application is built by a rather small group of people. Every application core has a limited number of files/components with lots of interdependencies---there can only be a limited number of people who work at those at the same time. Building software is not like building a house where hundreds of people can lay down individual bricks as long as there is some master plan that tells them where to put them. It's more like erecting a big circus tent: of the people in the center, who pull up the actual tent (as opposed to those who set up additional stuff like trailers and cages), everyone has to know what the others are doing at the moment to prevent the thing from falling on their heads. Projects with a rather small, highly motivated team don't just work better, these are the only ones who work at all.
Secondly, I object to giving people the idea that successful OSS projects are "piggybacking" on other software. It's simly a fact of life that the times in which every program was written from scratch in Assembler are over. As software becomes more complex, more complex methods of building it have to be employed. You have to use sets of tools from various sources, re-use components, build upon the work of others, instead of re-inventing the wheel every time. Just because this is more visible in OSS projects, which display credits for the foundation they use instead of paying licence fees, that doesn't mean it's different from proprietary software.
Well, actually there is one difference: OSS projects that are also free software support the modern approach to software engineering much better. You can use them in your own work, which can in turn be modified, improved and used in other projects. Proprietary software developers, on the other hand, hide their work from each other and force each other to do exactly the same tasks over and over because everyone fears that giving away stuff for free wouldn't pay off in the end. Which is absurd in a way; imagine having to develop yet another stupid GUI widget that looks and behaves exactly like that from the competition, with the only difference that the development is payed by company B this time instead of company A.
Master Plan (Score:3, Interesting)
Say I produce a master plan for a few classes.
class masterplan public: {
public:
& plans(int planid);
& plans( planname);
protected:
etc....
}
A developer should be able to work on that plan without 'assistance'
Say I decide to write
plan& plans(int planid);
well I know there needs to be a private collection some plans so i implement
protected:
vector vplans;
public:
plan& plans(int planid) excepts elementnotfound{
try{
return vplans[planid];
}catch(...){
throw (new elementnotfound("Plans",planid);
}
};
And update the master plan
class masterplan public: plan{
private
vector vplans;
public:
plan& plans(int planid);
plan& plans(string planname);
protected:
etc....
}
Someone else comes along to implement plans(string planname)
they notice that oliverthered2 may not have done the best implementation of plans(int) so they contact oliverthered(who wrote the masterplan) and oliverthered2(who done some implementation)
etc.......
If OSS implmeneted that kind of design/implemtation practice then you could write software with everyone laying down a brick at a time.
Re:Master Plan (Score:2, Insightful)
What you suggest is what Niklaus Wirth suggested 40 and even 50 years ago: stepwise refinement. First draw a rough sketch, then fill in details, then fill in the details of the details. The problem with this is that it doesn't work any longer. You can't test a half-finished appliaction this way, because half of your routines are still pseudo-code. Rumours go that Wirth never executed any of the code he wrote, and they aren't that far away from the truth. It didn't matter for his little example Pascal programs, because he was clever enough to see they'd work. But modern software is too complex, the correctness of a program is hardly ever proved. Instead, you try it out, see if it works.
Of course, you _could_ test a half-finished program that's built with stepwise refinement. You'd have to replace every bit of pseudo-code with test stubs and drivers. But change the architecture just a bit, and you have to throw away that test code and write it anew. This approach is very, very hostile to state-of-the-art techniques like extreme programming, agile software development etc.---which are actually quite popular and common---maybe even necessary---in OSS development.
> If OSS implmeneted that kind of
> design/implemtation practice then you could
> write software with everyone laying down a
> brick at a time.
People _are_ contributing little bits _without_ taking such a tedious, error-prone approach. What they don't do, for good and obvious reasons, is divide the work of writing an application core in a way that would either require dozens or hundreds of people to know everything about each other's work, or some kind of super-genious who thinks of every detail beforehand and is just too lazy to write down the respective lines of code.
Re:Master Plan (Score:2, Interesting)
The methods I use aren't much different from the method I mentioned (just on a higher level), I will track down the people who are supposed to know the business process answers and kick people until inconsistancies are resolved(usually by asking them why they want this, and then refining there reasones into an design).
I write modular code and test each module in isolation. And yes I frequently write 'test' code as case studdies as part of the documentation.
The majority of the work I do is fixing design flaws in other peoples applications often doing large amounts of refactoring and documenting business processes that were missunderstood or poorly implented the first time around.
Re:Master Plan (Score:1)
Are you sure you can pritty much gaurentee you can write thousands of LOC without compiling them from time to time?
> design flaws in other peoples applications
> often doing large amounts of refactoring
> and documenting business processes that
> were missunderstood or poorly implented the
> first time around.
Looks like you're doing the Right Thing(tm). Yes, unit tests are good, and refactoring is very important these days. But isn't refactoring early and often pretty much the opposite of charting down a full-fledged design before writing one line of code?
Re:Master Plan (Score:1)
The users report some apparent bugs in the software.
The process that causes the bug is identified, say cancelling an order.
Scripts are produced to identify the BUG, they also provide a way for checking for associated bugs.
If the BUG is trivial then the software is corrected and tested using the above scripts.
If the BUG is non-trivial (e.g. a design flaw) then associated areas are reviewed, and sometimes the whole process needs to be redesigned or corrected.
If there's a reasonable amount of work in correcting the bug and the code's a bit crap then the code gets refactored.
Whenever a BUG is found a check is made for any similar bugs.
Changes are tracked in sourcecontrol and refer back to the bug any test scripts and design documentation.
Most of the processes can be impleneted at the pre-design/design stages of a project, except the bugs are thigs like, the application must do this, there should be far less refactoring and a lot more coding.
How else are you supposed to write good high quality software?
RYZOM - the open source MMORPG game and 3d engine (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:RYZOM - the open source MMORPG game and 3d engi (Score:1)
Re:RYZOM - the open source MMORPG game and 3d engi (Score:1)
The author of the article as well as many of
Well, I'm writing free software, and being paid for it. The Nevrax team (which writes NeL) has about 30 coders paid to write free software.
The key point : our companies don't sell software, they sell service. MMORPG developers sell server access, of course, but you could run any other support (see RedHat and Mandrake for more details).
Now back to the article, the author asserts that free software is necessarily developed in a Linux way, ie. completely ditributed and out of control from any corporation. Endorsing free software does mean endorsing the 'Bazaar'. You can keep your perfect corporate 'Cathedral' and produce free software, this a matter of license.
The question is not to see if 'free software' developers do it better than non-free one, the question is about choosing a license and understanding its impact.
Now I won't explain here why software should be free, but I can tell you it makes *a lot* of sense for MMORPGs companies. And that free software is not necessarily software developed by long-beared geeks in their spare time, IBM produce a lot of GPL material and they were suits
Disclaimer: I'm _not_ from Nevrax.
what a joke (Score:3, Funny)
This "article" is so "well" written and obviously the "writer" is so well informed.
But seriously, this article is so poor that it is almost a joke and should be taken lightly.. no need to get worked up
Mozilla (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, someone let me know who the other user is so I can keep in touch
Re:Mozilla (Score:1)
Maybe he was alluding to the two people who actually were reading that article.
TSO: A glorified chat room. (Score:2)
That's garbage. I was beta testing TSO for a few weeks, and in my opinion, it's not going to take off.
Visualize this: playing a computer game... in which one's avatar is... sleeping. For twenty minutes straight, because your stupid "energy" bar is low. Meanwhile, you are forced to chat with other players to keep your connection alive because they boot you after fifteen minutes of idleness.
Even if the damn game does inexplicably manage to sell and retain players, it doesn't offer anything new at all to the genre.
Re:TSO: A glorified chat room. (Score:5, Insightful)
Visualize this: playing a computer game... in which one's avatar is... sleeping. For twenty minutes straight, because your stupid "energy" bar is low. Meanwhile, you are forced to chat with other players to keep your connection alive because they boot you after fifteen minutes of idleness.
I know that sounds ridiculous to any reasonably sane individual, but that's exactly what playing EverQuest is like, and it's doing quite well. Gameplay in any MMORPG consists of doing some boring and repetetive taks (i.e. killing monsters , making arrows, or selling hamburgers) until your character gets tired (or low on hp), at which point you have to lay down for a while, and wait. People tend to be satisfied chatting or, trying to sell stuff, or getting a group together while they do this, in EQ.
You also have to remember that The Sims is mostly played by non-technical women. These are people that are likely to hang out in a chatroom, anyways, so that's not idle time to them; it's fun.
Even if the damn game does inexplicably manage to sell and retain players, it doesn't offer anything new at all to the genre.
Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps a better way to look at it is that it will have a profound effect on the chat room industry, and the game industry is an innocent victem caught in the cross-fire.
what would you do (Score:1)
Actually, I have no idea.
And that's the problem with all these people playing the sims.. they probably also don't know.
They could do something productive with their own life, create or learn something, get forward in their life.
But no, they decide to waste hours playing a game in which they have a virtual person achieving things which they'll probably never do themselves in their own life because they waste all their time.
I just don't get it.
Anyway, I've lost enough time replying here, could've done useful instead
Google hits. (Score:1)
about 397 000
sims (on Usenet) [google.com]
about 611 000
sims [google.com]
about 2 850 000
mozilla (on Usenet) [google.com]
about 1 170 000
mozilla [google.com]
about 5 400 000
Mozilla fans, verging-on-obsessive, upset that Jimmy Guterman wrote: "How many of you use Mozilla as your Web browser? OK, both of you can put down your hands." [business2.com]
more than bloody two!
Multi-player Tetris (Score:1)
"Someone somewhere must be dreaming of a massively multiplayer redo of Tetris."
Seems like the journalist never heard of Netris [netris.org], one of the cooler multi-player tetris clones.
Article on the Sims from David Brooks (Score:1)
If you don't know who Brooks is, he's a writer and political commentator who has spent a lot of time in the last couple of years looking at American Bourgeois life [of which he is a part] and his articles are fun and.. not abrasive like the comments most people make when they talk about society. This piece is damn interesting too.
After killing your friends, go share a coffee (Score:2)
Don't get it (Score:1)
Last Post! (Score:1)
probability that there will be a bomb on any given plane, realized that
the probability of there being two bombs on any given flight is very low.
Now, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...