Karnig
LoryenAlternately, I would support something just proposed...moving all old characters to a community controlled "experimental server". I am not sure how this would work, WinchGate would have to get creative and create a new GPL variant, testing environments, and rollout system, and probably a community driven proposal, request, and voting system for features...who knows, they might even pave the way for a new system of community-driven game/software development. I could see prospective developers/artists subbing just for the right to get game programming experience and content for their portfolio. Or schools buying "group licences". And of course, WinchGate, as part of the new GPL, would reserve the right to implement anything they liked from the experimental server to the actually "live server". The "live server" would be this new empty server they are now proposing.
I know my last few replies have been harping about the Ryzom Core community. But I'll mention it again.This means you can contribute in this way to Ryzom Core and it is immediately available to Winch Gate to use or not use. For example we mentored a student who added guild-based missions - a guild leader of high officer can accept a mission on behalf of the guild and all of members can contribute to completing it. This is now in Ryzom and available to their content developers.
- Ryzom Core is all of Ryzom minus the level design data (item sheets, NPC locations, etc)
- It is all of the artistic assets (minus some missing ligo bricks.)
- It is always synced with Ryzom's own source code bidirectionally.
I can't speak directly for them but I can say that when features are developed for Ryzom Core we apply them (unless they're radical game-breaking features, then we branch them but keep them.) You have the ability to do this today. There are half a dozen of us running Silan-shards for development. There's one whole new non-Ryzom themed game using Ryzom Core. And everything you develop can be offered to Winch Gate for the live game.
And I'm sure they'd gladly accept any volunteer efforts. I know we would in Ryzom Core.
I have been looking at the client code only so far. I attempted to work with the server a couple years back and was able to get a running server going. It does indeed take a cubic buttload of system resources to run it in it's current state.
I mostly am just familiarizing myself with the code in general before offering bug fixes and tackling the todo list.
My posts prior pretty much convey that if one did start a new game based off this and allowed for people to help manage it I would gladly join that effort. I have not seen any posting of any game servers aside from Silan starter islands mentioned up till your post here. I would love the info for the game you mentioned that is based off the Ryzom core.
Currently I am working on the client side first for making my own game type based off the Ryzom core. Eventually I will need to get into the server side of things. I also am trying to port the code to C# as I know that language a bit better. The one thing I do give huge credit to WG for even with all my complaints about this recent issue....I applaud the open sourcing of this and it has helped me learn much more about code than I think I could have ever learned through other means.
I would love to see far more activity and a larger interest/population on the open source project. I agree there 100%. My limited contribution is only due to getting to know the code and learning C++ first. I am sure with what I mentioned in this post that you can figure out who I am on the open source project :-)