The Multiverse Marketplace Progress Report

Yay I love seeing progress
thanks so much

Appreciate the hard work.


Have to admit I am eager to see the site layout.


Cheers

The site will essentially look like the current one.

Update please. I hate seeing posts in forums that are months old.

I really want to see some progress because I think you have a lot of potential here.

Hi IsometricRobot,

Yes, lots of potential, lots of ideas, lots of "Bacon"
Current challenge is; no time, no resources, few if any dedicated development personnel.

I've been MIA myself for several months now with full time work, family, and maintaining sanity.
We need qualified, dedicated, and passionate people to step up and take the reigns around several areas of "The Multiverse"
This would include the marketplace, but also the development of the engine itself.

Shane

CobaltBlues wrote:

Hi IsometricRobot,

Yes, lots of potential, lots of ideas, lots of "Bacon"
Current challenge is; no time, no resources, few if any dedicated development personnel.

I've been MIA myself for several months now with full time work, family, and maintaining sanity.
We need qualified, dedicated, and passionate people to step up and take the reigns around several areas of "The Multiverse"
This would include the marketplace, but also the development of the engine itself.

Shane

Has the dev team investigated the idea of a kickstarter? Crowd funding? How much would be needed to get key people working regularly on getting multiverse going?

Are you interested in helping with anything?

Yeah of course. I posted in the looking for team section. No one is quite looking for someone like me though as I have had no responses. I am a kickstarter geek and will likely be launching my own table top game within two months once I have my material ready for it.

I really like what this project represents to MMO development and think there is a lot of potential.

Well it depends on what you want to do. If you want to work on a team that is using Multiverse to build a world or do you want to work on the core development of the Multiverse system. If you want to help with the core system then you can download the sourcecode and become familiar with it. You will need to know C# for the client and Java for the server.

@CobaltBlues

question,

you guys planning to add serverside collision detection and player speed check anytime soon?

so far MV handle this client side which may lead to disastrous game play due of easy speedhack and pass thru walls due of no server side features.

The point being. Nothing can be added unless people add it. There is no one to do the work. We are not a business with employees. We do not have a team of developers. Unless the community does the work, it won't get done. This is an open source project. If you are willing to contribute then please download the source, learn it, and write some code

I don't mean to be harsh but that's the reality of it.

Thanks

yup,

I understand, open source = community driven.


I assume so far MV currently has no coders that are contributors, right?
since there is only 4 or 5 of us active atm and most of us are newbies.


but was wondering if the former multiverse.net company(business) had this engine without server side collision all this time.

quite a few core features missing , i wonder if they had it implemented before when they were in business and stripped it out once they released it open source?

or just plain, they missed all this much needed core features and were navigating all their entire life of the business without them.

They released what they released. I don't know if they stripped anything out.

yup,

same as the MV old/original forums, so much
info from it vanished 7 years worth of info lost in the thin air.

So is there any guidelines for pursuing fundraising options to fuel the community?

Since its open source can I launch my own kickstarter and hire programmers at will?

I am very much more of a Producer than anything else. My current sole proprietorship "Isometric Robot" is aiming to be an indie publisher. So far I only have one product which is a comic book journal, but I am looking to expand into video games. Thus my hunt for open source projects. Finding an MMO open source project was like a dream come true since most other establish engines need major work on scaling and complete custom servers to function.

I'm also a bit of an artist, researcher, and know a bit of C# (amateur skill level). I'm confident that it would be possible to do some sort of infusion into the community with some seed money, which may be captured via crowd funding.

Hi IsometricRobot,

As far as guidelines go, no we don't really have anything in place. We would just ask that, if you are willing, that you release any work done on the platform back to the community. However, you are not required to do so. You have complete freedom. You can do whatever you wish with the Multiverse Platform. It is open source under the MIT License which gives you great freedom.

If your interested in helping the core community and core platform development through your efforts than by all means you can join us or strike out on your own. I personally have a lot of dreams and hope for the future of Multiverse. However, I've gotten into a bit of a funk over the last several months doing everything myself. I've barely even logged into the forums since last December. There hasn't been any reliable people that will stick with it for the long haul. Of course, funding and payment for services could change that. It would take some good project management to ensure the money isn't blown and wasted.

I've briefly looked into Kickstarter and other funding sources, but haven't yet pursued it. If you want to give it a go.. by all means have at it!

Lot's to do and talk about.. Sadly I've begun to be a little disillusioned. Perhaps some day I will get the drive and dream back. Really I just need to find some good technical partners that are willing to work with the code, be professional, stick with it, and be willing to participate in an organized project. There are a lot of people that just haven't had experience in a development project. They work very erratically and ad-hoc. Which is ok sometimes, but we need some structure to the whole effort. I guess I'm spoiled as I do software development management for a career.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Long story short. Make it So!

Sounds like a great idea IsometricRobot,

I am new here, just getting to know the engine and hoping to contribute back.

been noticing that this nice engine was left behind by the mmo enthusiasts,

forums were kinda dead when i signed up a few weeks ago, now i see there is at least 4 or 5 of us active, hopefully more will join and make this happen.

the sad part is that i see that its been around 2 years now since multiverse became open source and it should of picked up by now(user base wise),
there are a lot of factors why it didnt.

new comers do not see the potential of this engine, since there is no eye candy demo world, so in order for a new dev to test, is for him to learn to run his own servers to even see the rendering engine in action and its features.

usually takes a few days to achieve this when new to MV, so that is why lots just leave without even trying.

also, those who take the time to see the client in action, they see the sampleworld which do not really help a lot , (cosmetically wise) even MV rendering engine axiom current version in MV is way outdated but still not bad since it supports directx 9, the sample world scene looks like directx 7,
so lots will see it as turnoff, at least that was the first impression i had about it, but finding out it was directx9, i knew the scenes rendering quality could improved a lot by adding nicer textures and decoration that what the current stock sampleworld offers since are way outdated stuff which makes it look like directx7 .


what this community needs in order to retain the new comers is a good simple eye candy demo so new users will see the capabilities of it and not just move on without even trying.


so i support your idea IsometricRobot, and if something i can help with just let me know, i am in.

I can organize Kickstarter efforts. My only challenge is that in the event of successful funding we need a place to funnel the money. If I put it in my personal account and then use the funds to pay for programmers it will screw up my taxes big time if funding were even successful by 10,000 USD.

One option:

What I can try to look into is seeing if I can make a small non profit for multiverse development and research. Once the business is registered and prior to achieving a non profit status I will be able to open a bank account under that organization.

That being said. I am not a solo player. If there are some of you interested in becoming part of that I'd like to know.

Second option:

I can reach out to a few local programmers I know, give them a task to specifically develop a certain feature (such as server side edge detection and player coordinates, to reduce chance of using third party tools or modified clients to exploit client side processing). Do a kickstarter for the amount they want to get paid and then funnel the funds directly from kickstarter to them.

Also, if local programmers are not up to snuff. I have a few contacts in India for outsourced game development, that can do parts of jobs or complete games.

That would require putting detailed documentation together for what is expected of them (if its not in writing they won't do it or do it however they please).

What we can do as a community right now is make a list of useful features we need in order to make the engine / tools more accessible to our developers.

I have already read on the forum their is a need for server side client verification with edge detection and coordinates (avoid clipping hacks, and flying/teleporting etc.)

Is this considered high importance or are their other features that need to be considered first?

Yes it was my intention to establish an official non profit org for the Multiverse Foundation. We have not incorporated as a formal business yet, for profit or not. We attempted to join the Software Conservancy. However, I don't believe that will be approved. They have basically ignored us because Multiverse, is a "game engine". I haven't actively pursued incorporating on our own because I was waiting on the conservancy. Perhaps its time to revisit that thought.

It will be a gamble to see if the Foundation would be approved for non profit status by the US government. It would have to be proven that the project is a benefit to society as a whole and that. They don't just hand out non profit status for anyone who asks so there is no guarantee. If non profit status is unable to be obtained before next tax season then the business would become liable for all the revenue. Therefore my recommendation generally is to nail down the non profit status first before generating any major funding. Just because the risk is too great that it won't be approved.

Generally it's been my "job" to build the Foundation aspect of the "Business". The Conservancy shied away from a "Game" project and I would suppose the government would do the same. This is why I've been trying to change the focus from a "game engine" to a virtual world, research, training, and simulation software. I have a couple of potential groups interested in using Multiverse for these purposes. That angle is much more likely to obtain a non profit status than merely another game engine.

Honestly I've debating within myself on whether to just jump ship and leave the rest of the dream to someone else. My real job, family, and other responsibilities make it difficult to focus on Multiverse. But perhaps you and I need to have further conversations to see this move forward

Doing a search of Software Conservancy's website I was unable to find any software classified as a game. This may be a dead end and as you said may need to consider business registration.

I am not sure what the banks are like in the UK, but in the US one needs a business tax id (obtained in the registration process) in order to open a bank account.

As registration of a business often does take a bit of time and money for filling out forms and fees, I'm sure we can drum up the needed funds for that so you can get that done.

We just need to throw around the numbers. And set a goal for what the first steps for supporting the community as a whole.

Let's continue the conversation offline. I'd like to chat with you about your ideas.

IsometricRobot wrote:

I am not sure what the banks are like in the UK, but in the US one needs a business tax id (obtained in the registration process) in order to open a bank account.

You don't need a business tax ID to open a business bank account here in the UK. I have my own business account for my freelance web design, and the business isn't officially registered in any way. Saying that though, the fact that I'm registering as self-employed might have been why they didn't need registration ID...

I'll look into it.

I'm not online much because of schooling and I've been really busy but the project is definately always in my mind. I find a kickstarter would be great personally and if we are able to get it going by getting a bank account for multiverse then I'd definately know some people who have talents in making videos and we can look into making a nice look to it. If we get that bank account I'd like to start a thread about it and we can discuss it more in details and get plans into making interesting to try and get some suport.