A new project.

[colin.barnette]

I am interested in organizing and taking part in a project that would
create a virtual world much like the one described in Neal
Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'. I'm not necessarily talking about
something 3d and I'm not talking about a game either. Like a MOO,
only virtual. And each 'user' is allocated space with which they are
free to edit in any way, within the confines of that space. I know
Second Life and others come to mind when you think of this, but
Frankly Second Life came off as sloppy to me. I want people to be
able to code their own objects and environments with the ease of
Python.

I don't know forget the suggestions, anything is on the table, but
there are just so many half-hearted and weak commercial attempts at
this I feel that it's time to get Python involved in the game and do
it right.

If anyone has any interest, ideas, comments or otherwise, e-mail me.
If some interest is shown we'll start a board, a site, an IRC channel
or whatever we have to do to meet and get the ball rolling.

Thanks.

 

[Clement]

I am interested in organizing and taking part in a project that would
create a virtual world much like the one described in Neal
Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'. I'm not necessarily talking about
something 3d and I'm not talking about a game either. Like a MOO,
only virtual. And each 'user' is allocated space with which they are
free to edit in any way, within the confines of that space. I know
Second Life and others come to mind when you think of this, but
Frankly Second Life came off as sloppy to me. I want people to be
able to code their own objects and environments with the ease of
Python.

I don't know forget the suggestions, anything is on the table, but
there are just so many half-hearted and weak commercial attempts at
this I feel that it's time to get Python involved in the game and do
it right.

If anyone has any interest, ideas, comments or otherwise, e-mail me.
If some interest is shown we'll start a board, a site, an IRC channel
or whatever we have to do to meet and get the ball rolling.

Thanks.

what do you really expect?

 

[John Nagle]

That's a perfectly reasonable idea. It takes money and people to
power it, but it's not impossible. If you have a clue.

You'll need a team of 5-10 nearly full time really good core people to
make it work, and probably about two years. You need at least one really good
3D programmer, at least one really good networking expert, and at least
one really good artist.

(I met with the core team of There when they were first starting up,
and it was about that large.)

Presumably you have a background in game production, or 3D graphics.
If not, you need to hire an experienced game producer.

Join IGDA, get to GDC, and start recruiting.

You don't have to do this from a cold start. You can start from some
existing code bases. Look at some of the VRML engines, or the Blender
GameKit. In fact, a reasonable approach might be to start converting
the Blender GameKit to multiplayer. It uses Python as a scripting
language, and already has the 3D machinery, collision detection,
and physics engine. What it doesn't have is scaling; it can't do a big
world.

There are other MMORPG engines. See

http://www.devmaster.net/wiki/MMORPG_Creation_Packages

for a list. This is far easier to do than it was five years ago.

John Nagle

 

[Stargaming]

I am interested in organizing and taking part in a project that would
create a virtual world much like the one described in Neal
Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'. I'm not necessarily talking about
something 3d and I'm not talking about a game either. Like a MOO,
only virtual. And each 'user' is allocated space with which they are
free to edit in any way, within the confines of that space. I know
Second Life and others come to mind when you think of this, but
Frankly Second Life came off as sloppy to me. I want people to be
able to code their own objects and environments with the ease of
Python.

I don't know forget the suggestions, anything is on the table, but
there are just so many half-hearted and weak commercial attempts at
this I feel that it's time to get Python involved in the game and do
it right.

If anyone has any interest, ideas, comments or otherwise, e-mail me.
If some interest is shown we'll start a board, a site, an IRC channel
or whatever we have to do to meet and get the ball rolling.

Thanks.

IMO, this sounds pretty interesting. Got any sources set up yet?
Thinking of this as something like a "community effort" sounds nice.

Interestedly,
Stargaming