What is the status of development on this game engine?

The relative silents on these forums makes me think that there is little or no work being done on this game engine.

From what I've see while trying to get item stacking to work, there's a lot, a whole lot, of this game engine that is incomplete.

This worries me.

So, I need to hear about what work is being done. I need to know that it's more than just 1 or 2 guys once in a while.

Don't get me wrong. I know that if I'm going to expect others to work on it, I'll need to add my own 2 cents worth to the pot. I just want to know if there's going to be more than 6 to 10 cents in the pot at the end of each month.

If there's anyone working on the engine, please speak up and let us know what you're working on. If nothing else, I should know what others are working on so I'm not trying to make/fix what you're already doing.

Thanks for listening to my rantings/worries.

TheWatcher

Unfortunately no not much is being done right now with the engine. There are a lot of plans but no cohesive and consistent development team. Most people who are interested in participating can only do so on an occasional basis. This happens in open source projects and until we get some experienced people that have the time and the desire to develop an open source project for free not much can be done.

I'm very open to someone with development experience and technical know-how to take lead on whatever they feel comfortable doing. Once we feel confident in the person then we can give them write access to the repository.

Thanks,
Shane

Thanks for the reply and the info.

I guess I have to wrap my head around what it means and see what I decide to do.

TheWatcher

Is there anything in particular that you need the engine to do that it doesn't do right now?

Yes let us know if there is anything in particular you want written. If it is not to complicated or is something that will be beneficial to everyone we will see what we can do. I have finally synchronized our server files with the open source versions (since they released a version as open source different different from what we were given before) so I can start updating.

Thanks for the help.
I'm hoping that I'll be able to do most of coding I need myself. It's just that ____ ____ learning curve for the way everything is laid out in the server and client that is whipping my tail. And the API's for them don't give much in the way of descriptions of the classes/functions.

And then there's Python and Java. I'm a C/C++ programmer and so much of the way Python and Java is done just looks wrong to me. (So please forgive me if I ask noob questions that have obvious answers to you.

My first hurdle was stacking. I want my game to have a rich and complex crafting system and economy. I'm thinking about 1/4 to 1/3 of the game depends on it. And it would be unworkable if stacking didn't exist. Thanks for helping with that one.

Many of the other things I want are described in one way or another in the wiki so I should be able to do them without begging for help, too much. Ex. I already have the terrain of a 22 by 24 Km island in my server. And I've started laying out vegetation regions and spawn areas. I have placed the first quest of a series of 20 or so starter quests.

And I am willing to share some of what I do do myself, especially if it's something that would work well in the generic Multiverse code. Ex. I want to include flying mounts which I'm sure many others may want also. If I get those working before anyone else does, I'll supply them to the open source and I'll try to keep the routines in files separate from the rest of the code so that others may add them, or not, as they choose.

But the hunting, harvesting, crafting, Player houses, gardens, farms, towns, etc. need to be done first. Oh, and tons of art work.

I noticed that the wiki seems to have shifted away from, or lost, the pages on how to import models from Blender. Is that section still around? (Not all of us can afford the $3000+ programs from AutoDesk.) I have already built a shack in Blender and imported it into the game, but I need to refresh my memory on the process to start building and/or modifying and importing more models.

Again, thanks for helping.

the hunting, harvesting, crafting, Player houses, gardens, farms, towns

While sadly none of these really apply to the current game I am working on I am interested in working on them so when you get to them let me know....I am a big fan of crafting in mmos.

Also I remember back when I first started and the learning curve was a lot worse now at least you can trace the functions to their source. But it is still a behemoth and not extremely friendly but if you need help or hints at what you want just ask.

I generally can point what parts of the code you need to look at to get something working

I finished transitioning the wiki to our new host Vanquish VPS that now includes single login Joomla integration. You may have visited the wiki when it was in transition but all the pages should be there now, including instructions for Blender.

The website and associated community tool is what I've been spending most of my time on. The new forums, marketplace, user points system, and wiki have taken a lot of time. In addition to getting our own master server and demo world running, which is not currently running. Because we are not an official development company with no full time development staff we have to rely on the passionate developers in the wild and those in the community to contribute to the engine. Tristan and I have put together many ideas and plans and are implementing them step by step, albeit slowly, in order to facilitate more shared involvement by the community.

A simple example of this will be the user points system. Certain contributions and activities within the community will grant points. These points can be used within the marketplace to obtain products from those vendors who participate in the points system. For example if someone is a great artist and wants to sell his new 3d models and textures to the community then he can in the marketplace. He could also choose to accept user points for payment thus participating in the collaboration of the community.

The intention is to foster teamwork and collaboration across otherwise scattered resources who may be casual or hard core. In my opinion this is a good way to accomplish this but the implementation is steady but slow. Other ideas in regards to the platform direction would be the ability to spend user points to "vote" for what fixes, features of the engine should be worked on next. e.g. what is the priority. Something similar to "Get Satisfaction" that Minecraft used for awhile. This provides a way for the community members who are not coders to also participate in the direction of the platform. There are many ideas to mitigate the realities of an open source project without a funded and dedicated development team regularly contributing to the project.

We don't have all the details worked out such as how much is 1 user point worth, or how many points do you get for particular activities but those will come with time.

Anyway, perhaps these are excuses and a lot of QQ, but they are instead the realities. Unless by some miracle we receive a multimillion dollar never ending investment, "hint hint to all those lurking billionaires", that would support a revived development company.. we will still have to work our day jobs.

Thanks,
Shane

Delurin wrote:

Also I remember back when I first started and the learning curve was a lot worse now at least you can trace the functions to their source.

LOLOL, Yeah, I remember those days.

I think that the project is actually coming along quite well, commensurate with the progress
of other projects I've seen and used including Irrlicht and Ogre.

I really appreciate the work the team has done.

Just acquiring Multiverse from the original developers and getting it setup and available to everyone was/is a ton of work.


Multiverse is a large complicated beast. What mitigates that for me is a sense of control and ownership.
If there is something that I want in the engine open source makes it possible to add it.

Another consideration is time. Multiverse doesn't have everything I personally would want but what it does
have would take me and a small team at least a few years to implement.
That considered I think we can deal with implementing some tools, missing features, bugs and inefficiencies.

Thanks to the team.


Happy Holidays

Well thank you. It's much appreciated. A lot of what has been done is behind the scenes and aren't directly related to advancement of the engine but instead building the foundation for the community and the like.