Originally posted by Petey Pothead
You said it all for me Xlore...They do this game in their spare time, when they get around to it. More then likely they have jobs/lives. The difference with a subscription is the game BECOMES their job. This game has ideals and concepts that far surpass current MMORPGs. Some of the current pay games aren\'t worth a dick, this one\'s potential is too grand to get for free. Your right though, most MMORPGs pre-alpha is extremely rescricted. Of course its not rescricted to 20 people online at once- its close to 1000 people partaking in pre-alphas (this taken from Ultima Online\'s pre-alpha). This game would be lucky if 1000 people heard about it, let alone interested in it. My cry for subscription fees comes from my ability to not be even close to bankrupted by a pety 10 dollar a month fee. You are right, i haven\'t heard about the opencode movement, they didn\'t excactly plaster it on my everyday news sources. As for the time it took other MMORPGs to be built, im not 100% sure- Id guess between 2-4 years. That didn\'t start from scratch though, I\'ll give ya that. They also have full dev teams, what am i getting at you ask? That 2-4 year span is tripled for PS, IMO, from its progress since i\'ve seen it.
Actually, Ultima Online wasn\'t even playable/testable until alpha, which they called \"pre-beta\". That\'s about 1 programming lifecycle stage farther than planeshift is at. The developmental timeframe for planeshift has been slow, yes, but that\'s because most of the open source programming focus across the world seems to be lying in a) awesome web browsers (Mozilla/Firebird/etc.) and 2) outstanding operating systems (Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD). The movement hasn\'t been broadcasted much in the past for 2 reasons - 1) those working on it deal with the internet, not physical magazines/newspapers - and even then, there\'s a HUGE supply of periodicals that are made for the opensource movement. 2) The Open Source movement is intruding on big buisness. Every day, there is open source projects being developed that are competing with software developed by major companies (like Microsoft) which are opposed to it, and have been increasing in their efforts to see it shut down. hey would rather you buy their unstable/insecure products than be able to download something that equals or beats it for free legally. After all, they can get the law on their side to help enforce piracy laws for those with illegal copies of propriatary software, but the law works against their efforts when it comes to Open Source.
If you want more information about opensource, check out gnu.org, or the freesoftwarefoundation.org (or was that just fsf.org?) websites. Games at this scale just haven\'t drawn that much attention by the programming community (unfortunately). If there was more attention by the programers, it would explode in development - unfortunately I don\'t see that happening until it gets a few stages further in development. Open Source is a tried & true, and continuously re-proven method of programming that ensures rapid stability & production of any project which attracts the attention of enough programmers. Planeshift is one of those types of projects that I can see drawing many programmers to it in time.
If you think paying the programmers to develop the project will help, I\'m sure they could set up some sort of donation program to help with the project\'s development, maybe even help one get a dinner from McDonalds
.
Personally, if I had the resources available again (hopefull I will soon) I\'d rather help out by supplying manhours for programming & development - as I like what I\'ve seen of planeshift - even if I only see it at 0.02 FPS when I connect. And yes, I did have connection problems at first, but I had to make some slight adjustments to the files on the two computers I am able to put planeshift onto in order to connect at all - changing the compatability options in Windows XP for a file for planeshift.
Let\'s see if I can remember how long it took for the MMORPG\'s:
Ultima Online - 3-5 years, and never truely getting out of \"beta\" according to it\'s manufacturers (always a work in progress & such). Considering it wasn\'t 3D, and IMO I\'ve seen better-designed chatrooms, I\'ve never considered it a MMORPG, but rather a train wreck.
EverQuest - 3-4 years, with a 1 year \"break\" during which the legal procedings against Verant Interactive for blatantly stealing the DIKU MUD code designs were dealt with. Of course, 989 Studios/Sony bought the DIKU code to stop the procedings, so nothing was ever officially decided in court over the proceedings. DIKU, by the way, had been around for about 8-10 years earlier, so if you include that timeframe into the developmental period... Also - ask any long-term player of EverQuest, it\'s broken, been broken forever, and rather than fixing it, all Sony does is add more broken things to it. Combined with past experiences I\'ve had with Sony computers & Playstations, plus their [not so]
wonderful customer service, I\'ve taken on a stance that \"
if it\'s made by Sony, it can\'t be good\". So far, I\'ve yet to find anything that proves me wrong.
Dark Age of Camelot - not entirely certian, as I was transitioning out of the Army and moving from Germany back to the states during the last bit of it\'s development, but I know that it was a flop - I\'d say it has about a 1-5% customer retainability factor to it, as there is little to no point to keep playing the game (according to friends I know online & offline who have played it). I think it took 3 years to develop.
Anarchy Online - Dunno a thing about this game other than it\'s name. If memory serves me, it\'s done by Microsoft, which means it probably is a rip off of some other game that\'s similar to it, and not all that great. I don\'t know how long it took to develop. Microsoft holds a little less value to me than Sony does.
Star Wars Galaxies - Wasn\'t that supposed to come out like a year ago? From what I\'ve heard from the Beta Testers I know of that game, it\'s just more fuel to my above statement about Sony.
Planetside - I\'m not even bothering with this, I\'ve been so jaded against Sony in the past. Nobody I know wants to play it, and I won\'t go near it. Maybe it\'s good, maybe it\'s not. I think it\'s been worked on for somewhere around 4 years, might be 3.
I kind of keep up with a lot of these things, have been watching World of Warcraft with interest, as it has some interesting ideas, Planeshift is really cool, and will be more impressive as it gets further developed. Majik3D is another one I\'ve kept my eye on, but unfortunately they\'ve gotten tossed around a lot. As a developer, I have sketched out how I\'d develop parts of games like these, dug through and see how I\'d improve/change them (through playing them usually) and do hope to one day bring it to fruitation, as it has been a burning passion/driving goal of mine for a long time. Oh, and I plan on it being free of charge if I ever get it off the ground, because I don\'t feel someone needs to pay through the nose just to play a video game.
