Mulligan's First Ryzom Letter

Jessica Mulligan, new Executive Producer for Saga of Ryzom, has put up her first top-down look at the Saga of Ryzom dev process. From the article: "Without boring you with obvious details, it became obvious that we needed to do some work on our tools, continue to work on content and redesign or upgrade some existing game systems. What we've done with this reorganization is to combine all the various "pools" such as coders, level designers, et al, into one large Live Content team, and then create 'strike teams' within that organization to deal with specific issues." It's also worth mentioning that Saga of Ryzom's next expansion is going for the brass ring of online worlds in their next expansion: Player Created Content. MMORPG.com has some first hand impression of Ring of Ryzom.

Open Source Videogames

[ZephyrXero]

I was happily surprised to find out Saga Ryzom runs on an Open Source Game Engine (Nevrax.org [nevrax.org]) a few weeks ago. Unless your making tons of money off them like Epic or ID, there's no reason to keep your game engine proprietary...the engine is not what makes your game unique it's the content built on top of that engine that makes you the money.

Re:Open Source Videogames

[Lisandro]

Completely OT, but what's that cute "Mushferatu" pet seen in Nevrax's galleries [nevrax.org]?. Have any idea?

Quality of the Ryzom engine

[@madeus]

I thought the quality and performance of the Ryzom engine was quite poor for a commercial title (and this is on my P4 3.2 Ghz w/2 GB DDR 400, Radeon 9800 256 MB and 10K RPM SATA HD). This, and the *HORRIBLE* UI configuration put me right off Ryzom quickly and permanently.

When companies like NC Soft (Lineage 2), Blizzard (WoW) use engines from companies like Unreal the difference in performance and quality is staggering, Epic offer a staggeringly adaptable platform for both FPS titles and MMOG's, which can

From one failing venture after another

[Bruha]

He/She whatever had a successful colum once but then also worked for Themis which does not seem to be a force in the MMO industry other than these small microniche markets of which many just peter out and die.

Course why leave Turbine if things were going fine or are they?

Re:From one failing venture after another

[Mathness]

I don't know anything about Jessica, except what is on the Ryzom site (only graphic MMO I have played), but since she joined there have been a lot of positive changes IMHO.

Re:From one failing venture after another

[Bruha]

I'm under the impression if things are going good then stay.. you dont go off rescuing companies like that unless you want to someday find yourself without a paycheck.

haha

[ArsonSmith]

They pulled a Mulligan!!

Of course

[FidelCatsro]

But where is the Endoplasmic reticulum

Re:Of course

[KDR_11k]

I hope still in the cells. Would suck if it was anywhere else.

People actually play that?

[KDR_11k]

I mean, yes, I was in the beta and it was kida fun but I haven't heard anything about the game since. It's kinda generic and there's a lot of grind, especially when you're trying to craft.