| Uru Live Goes Open Source
Cyan Worlds announced recently that it will release Myst Online: Uru Live game code to the open source community, after surviving several years of cancellations and transitions, and they are looking forward to the fans' efforts in keeping Uru live and evolving.
Tony Fryman, CEO of Cyan Worlds, posted the announcement on Uru's official website, noting that the open source release will be accomplished in stages and promised to follow up soon:
Open Source Uru Live
Shorah fans of Cyan,
As you may be aware, Cyan's situation has not improved on the "resources" front. We continue to work on small projects (including Myst for the iPhone/iPod Touch), and it looks like we will only be able to concentrate on projects that are fully funded for the foreseeable future.
However, all of us at Cyan and everybody that has ever worked on the creation and building of the dream called UruLive (a.k.a. Mudpie, Until Uru, MystOnline:UruLive and MORE) can not just let it die! (My definitions: "UruLive" is the original dream of the virtual world. And "MystOnline" is the current implementation of UruLive.)
So, Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.
This is a bit scary for Cyan because this is an area that we have never gone before, to let a product freely roam in the wild. But we've poured so much into UruLive, and it has touched so many, that we could not just let it whither and die. We still have hopes that someday we will be able to provide new content for UruLive and/or work on the next UruLive.
This is also a bit scary for the fans. We realize that this could turn UruLive into the "wild west" and lead to many fractured and diverse MystOnline servers. But it is our hope that with the help of dedicated core fans (if you are reading this, it probably means you) that a safe and secure MystOnline server set (many servers from around the world working together as one) can be created that will let people explore and live in UruLive.
We also are pretty sure that releasing MystOnline will result in some pleasant surprises for us. Our fans have always been so innovative, creative, and resourceful!
This release will probably be accomplished in stages, but we hope to get things ready for the first stage very quickly. More details to surely follow.
The news was received by the game's community with excitement and a new fan website will be launched to support the development community, as announced by JWPlatt:
Greetings,
Announcing OpenURU.org, a project site for the Uru community to promote Open Uru projects.
I'd like to say I was being prophetic, but the truth is, I was working on a proposal for Open Source Uru which I planned to develop with others who would join my efforts and submit it to Cyan in the Spring.
But now, with the news Cyan is actually open sourcing Uru, things have accelerated and I would like to offer the OpenURU.org domain for community use.
There is a forum now. Administration is not complete because I wasn't expecting an open house nearly so soon. But it's useable.
What I plan to offer the community in terms of resources:
Subdomains: Put up your own qualified project website on the domain.
Central forums: Everyone discusses their various projects here.
Dedicated project forums: Project leaders control their own forum and membership group.
Email: POP3 mailboxes for qualified project members.
There could be much more, but that's all I have developed so far.
Chogon (Mark DeForest, Cyan CTO) tells me "the source [will be] hosted at an open source repository, such as GoogleCode or LaunchPad. However, there will have to be a place for information about the game and where to go" and "it is not limited to those repositories."
The website still needs a home page. In the meantime, please use this link to reach the forums:
http://forums.OpenURU.org
Please feel free to register. After you are validated, you may join the Member group through your control panel to have access to post on the forum(s).
Stay tuned for updates to the landscape.
All the best to everyone,
JWPlatt
Stay tuned as we will continue covering Uru's transition into open source and all the exciting possibilities ahead! (NCsoft should take note of Cyan Worlds' brave move!)
Source: Myst Online Website & Amber Horizons
Permalink |
| But NCSoft can't, a lot of their games use existing engines which they do not own and have no right to distribute the source to. |
| Where there is a will, there is a way!(And NCsoft owns most of its propriety engines.) |
| Well Auto Assault and TR share an engine developed by Destination Games (who are now part of NC), CoH/CoV is a unique engine developed by Cryptic Studios which is also being put to use in Champions Online, so I don't think NC owns the source to that, and of course the most well known is Lineage 2 using the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine.
Add to that the fact they've just licensed the new Unreal Engine for some future projects, they really don't own a lot of their engines. In fact the only one I think they could legitimately release is the Tabula Rasa / Auto Assault one. I know they bought the IP rights to CoH/V, but I doubt that came with full engine rights. |
| You are absolutely correct, as I was noting the titles that are being shutdown (or already closed): Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. |
| There's just all kinds of contractual difficulties in releasing sources unless you own 100% of what's been created.
These days so many games use pre built physics engines, audio and graphical APIs and whatnot that they are not the owners of. It's really a rare case to see a source code launch. Only studios of talented programmers like ID software could even consider doing it.
On a related note - did auto assault use Havok? The physics seemed very Havok-esque.
*edit* after some reading, it seems the engine for Auto Assault is not owned by NCsoft, nor are the IP rights. As TR borrows elements of the Auto Assault engine, I wouldn't expect that to ever be released.
So by the looks of things, only Guild Wars could ever be released as source, since the dev team for that is 100% owned by NC, but I forsee GW going for a while yet. |
| NCsoft owns the Auto Assault IP entirely and the base engine it was built upon, while NetDevil owns certain code elements that were added. That main issue is that NetDevil was not able to meet the asked price for the IP and engine bt NCsoft, nor was NCsoft interested in taking over the remaining code portions. |
| I was under the impression it was the other way around. NC are a publishing company at heart with a few in-house developers, however NetDevil was not one of them. Meaning NC do not and have never owned the AA IP and refused to buy it out, this was the main reason for AA shutting down. Think about it, NetDevil were the ones unable to keep the servers up, NC has a huge cashflow and could have kept the game going as long as they wanted. Developing new IP doesn't seem to be their modus operandi, for the most part they publish games then buy out the IP rights if it makes financial sense to them.
I'm fairly sure the IP wouldn't have been NCSoft's if the whole thing was developed by a company not owned by them. |
| MrCheese, I had a detailed insight into the AA fiasco during the shutdown, but unfortunately, I cannot reveal any details. That said, NCsoft owns the AA IP wholly, as part of the publishing deal they signed with NetDevil. NCsoft provided their own propriety engine for this project, and NetDevil worked on adding their physics and network code, which they claim property of. The deal seemed tangled enough to prevent any single party from running off solo in case the product proved to be wildly successful.
In the days before Tabula Rasa's launch, NCsoft did not have bottomless pockets, they pushed every penny and asset to deliver TR that same year and AA was deemed expendable in favor of saving few thousand dollars a month. And the rest we know.
In addition to that, NCsoft was actually moving towards developing new IPs in the previous period, starting with AA and thereafter ending, after disappointing sales of AA and TR, with several in-house new IP projects canceled, and other 3rd-party deals like Blackstar.
There is more dirt if you dig deeper =/ |
| I see, the articles I'd read on the fall of AA seemed to imply that it was NC who were proposing buying the IP, but they must have just been worded badly.
Might have a look deeper into it, seems interesting. |
| Sweet! Uru sounds so awesome. (my friend plays it) |
Uru Live Goes Open Source
Cyan Worlds announced recently that it will release Myst Online: Uru Live game code to the open source community, after surviving several years of cancellations and transitions, and they are looking forward to the fans' efforts in keeping Uru live and evolving.
Tony Fryman, CEO of Cyan Worlds, posted the announcement on Uru's official website, noting that the open source release will be accomplished in stages and promised to follow up soon:
The news was received by the game's community with excitement and a new fan website will be launched to support the development community, as announced by JWPlatt:
Stay tuned as we will continue covering Uru's transition into open source and all the exciting possibilities ahead! (NCsoft should take note of Cyan Worlds' brave move!)
Source: Myst Online Website & Amber Horizons
Permalink