Ryzom returns?

Toward the end of 2006, a company called Nevrax went out of business. Nevrax was the operator of an online multiplayer game called Ryzom which had developed a dedicated (if insufficiently lucrative) following. A group of free software developers, former Nevrax employees, and assorted Ryzom players sensed an opportunity here: perhaps the source for Ryzom could be obtained from the failing company and turned into free software. It seemed like a winning solution for all sides: Nevrax's creditors could get whatever money could be raised for the code, Ryzom players would continue to have a game, and the free software community would get an extensive new code base. All that was needed was to convince the relevant bankruptcy court that this was a good idea.

To that end, the Free Ryzom project raised some €170,000 in pledges - an impressive amount of money. The Free Software Foundation offered $60,000 toward this goal. But, in court, another suitor (Gameforge) won out with a plan to keep the game proprietary. The Free Ryzom folks became the Virtual Citizenship Association and faded from view; it seemed that this story was done.

Only it seems it's not done. In February, the project sent out a news update on what had been happening over the past year. It seems that Gameforge stopped paying its employees in June, 2007, and, by August, was not paying its creditors. In October, Gameforge France went back into the bankruptcy process; then, last February, the Ryzom servers were shut down. This particular plan to save Ryzom, it seems, was not as successful as one might have liked.

So it seems that the Ryzom source might, once again, be up for grabs. A news update suggests that the process is moving quickly, but the project could make a try for the code if it is able to come up with a large (at least €230,000) bid in the immediate future. As of this writing, the Free Ryzom folks are examining their options and trying to come to a decision on the best course to take.

There can be no doubt that this code would be a valuable acquisition. Despite the fact that some of the very first multiplayer online games were free software (consider Netrek, for example, which occupied rather too much of your editor's time some 15 years ago, or some of the early MUD and MOO systems), free software does not have much to offer in that area now. The lack of competitive offerings in this area is one of the biggest motivations for people to use Windows. A free Ryzom could be a strong step toward better online gaming with free software.

[PULL QUOTE: One has to wonder why we seem to be unable to put together a competitive game without relying on a huge infusion of source from the proprietary world. END QUOTE] That said, one has to wonder why we, the larger free software community, seem to be unable to put together a competitive game without relying on a huge infusion of source from the proprietary world. There are certainly projects out there; consider Battle for Wesnoth or WorldForge, for example. Wesnoth is an addictive game with basic multiplayer capability and an active developer community, but it is a turn-by-turn game with relatively rudimentary graphics - though the graphics and soundtracks are quite nice by free software standards. WorldForge has high ambitions and a lot of infrastructure, but it never really seems to get out of that pre-alpha state. A look at WorldForge's CVS logs suggests that very few developers are actively contributing to the project.

There are critics of the free software community who would argue that gaming is the sort of program that free software just cannot do as well as proprietary software. A certain amount of planning and direction is required to pull together a coherent virtual world, quite a bit of artistic work (artwork, sounds, etc) is required, and so on; a project without a business-based revenue stream just cannot compete in this area. There might be some truth to this claim - but not that much. When one looks all all that we have accomplished, it does not seem like an online multiplayer game - challenging though it might be - should be beyond our capabilities.

What seems more likely is that we just haven't gotten the project management right yet. Anybody who has hung around with people who are interested in computing knows that game playing is certainly an itch that many feel the need to scratch. We just haven't yet made it easy enough for that scratching to happen.

What's needed is a relatively simple core upon which people can easily create virtual worlds. It should be straightforward for people who are not developers - artists, musicians, script writers - to contribute to the system, and their contributions should be made welcome. The desktop projects have had a certain amount of success in bringing in non-developer contributors; a look at how they have done that could be worthwhile.

Arguably, we should have most of the pieces we need. Battle for Wesnoth has shown that it's possible to put together a community which goes beyond just software developers. WorldForge seems to have a good start on some important pieces of infrastructure. There may be some useful code to be had from the Second Life client, which has been free for a year now. We are a large and talented community, we certainly have the ability to do something interesting in this area. It should not be necessary to wait until we get a code dump from a dead proprietary software company.

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The thing that lots of people seem to miss is that MMOGs provide a service; maintaining a
persistent game world for Massive numbers of users is a lot of work and carries some
substantial hardware/bandwidth/management expenses entirely independent from the cost of
development.  

While Free Software drives the cost of the latter towards zero, it has no effect on the price
of hardware and bandwidth.

Also, most FOSS software is "useful" first, but games are meant to be entertainment first, and
it's a lot harder to justify donating your time for something that's fundamentally
unimportant.

True.

But so does maintaining a encyclopedia with 10 million articles in 200 languages that is among
the top-10 visited destinations on the web.

So we as a community are clearly capable of running projects which require substantial
infrastructure.

Besides, hardware keep getting cheaper. What was a beefy expensive server a few years ago is a
cheap entry-level server today. A 1U dual-core 4GB bog-standard machine for like $2500 runs
circles around the Dec Alpha "big iron" server we used to run a decade ago, and that machine
was more like $100K

Hardware is getting cheaper, but the processing requirements of modern software is always
increasing.    Second, hardware costs is only part of the ongoing expense; people also tend to
cost more over time.

Wikipedia is a poor example, because there is actually a legal organization set up to deal
with the administrative crap and ensuring the servers and bandwidth are paid for.  Sure, they
rely on a lot of volunteers for the actual encyclopaedia itself, but there is a very real (and
dysfunctional) paid cabal behind the scenes.

People cost more measured in -dollars-, but it's no harder for an individual to donate a dozen
of his/her hours now than it was a decade or a century ago. Most Open Source games are
overwhelmingly volunteer-run.

Sure, there is a legal organization handling the ownership of WikiPedia hardware, hosting and
so on. Somebody has to do it afterall.

Firefox has the Mozilla Foundation. KDE is represented by KDE e.V in legal and financial
matters. Gnome has the Gnome Foundation.

Basically, any project will, when it reaches a certain size, need some kind of legal entity
that is capable of doing stuff like having a bank-account and signing a contract. 

We handle this for hundreds of projects already. It's perfectly possible that a successful
Free Software MMORPG would -ALSO- need some kind of legal entity to handle paperwork, finances
etc, if so, we will make one. I don't see the problem.

You underestimate the community severly if you, despite numerous examples to the contrary,
believe that we are not capable.

> The second option (free server code) is apparently our editor's desire, as evidenced in the
first installment of this saga. I realize that it does not look too viable right now, but
stranger things have happened.

And as others have pointed out, the "code" (either client or server) is actually the least
time-consuming part of game development.  Design, art, and metadata effort is measured in the
hundreds of man-years for modern A-list games.  And that art isn't really re-usable in the
same sense that code is.

>If such a universal, free game engine would ever gain traction, studios might create their
own games (or more exactly worlds), and charge for admission. It is a fun concept.

I'm confused -- isn't this more or less what we have now?  There's already quite a choice of
game engines, even if you restrict yourselves to those that are Free Software.  Anyone can
build anything they want on top of any of those engines, and charge (or not) for admission.

Granted, there's no "grand unified game engine" but I see that as a strength.

> If ever there is a standard protocol for player-world interactions free software might even
become the most popular choice.

That is the key to everything else -- Technology is always advancing; with a standard protocol
(that facilitates inter-world interaction) will come the true advances, and Free Software will
be behind it all.

> Also, changing the subject to artwork and other non-code resources doesn't address the point
that game services can cost money even if the software itself is free.

> Corbet is addressing the question of free software games in a thoughtful and constructive
way. In contrast you seem to be making vague and implausible arguments to the effect that it
just can't be done. What exactly are you trying to achieve? From here it appears that your
goal is to discourage anyone from even trying.

...If the code is free but the art (presumably included in the "game services" you menioned)
is not, how is this any different than what we have now?   

We already are in a situation where "game software" is free, both on the client and server.
What remains non-free is the "game content" and that is also the most expensive part of game
development, in part due to its general non-reusability.  

If I'm discouraging effort it's only because I'd rather that the effort go into something that
is actually lacking. 

where free software excels is that once you have a barely usable version out, individuals dive
in and 'scratch their own itch' providing their own individual improvements.

the problem of starting a opensource project are primarily
1. getting things to a workable level
2. getting people to know about it

after that the tinkering starts and the big problem becomes managing (and to a lesser degree
directing) the resulting progress.

the larger a project is, the harder it is to get to a usable version, and the slower the
contributions will be initially (as it takes time for people to understand the project)

after that the management of the project becomes the big factor, if the project accepts and
integrates contributions easily, it will tend to get more contributions. if it's hard to
contribute, or it takes a long time for that contribution to reach a release, the contributer
is less likely to contribute as much in the future.

the free virtual worlds have not reached the usable stage yet, so it doesn't surprise me that
they aren't attracting a lot of effort. Wesnoth seems to be doing well, but it's not the
format that people are looking for. 

In the 1990's, the demoscene was able to release free (at least as in beer) software with good
artwork and music on Amiga, Atari, C64, PC... Several democoders became game coders. I don't
know how the demoscene is going now, but it was strong.

There are supposedly several GPL'd MMORPG engines out there. Here's a rather nice-looking
example based on Crystal Space:

http://www.planeshift.it/

Their art, though lovely, is effectively proprietary. So I think the real problem is getting
high-quality 3D models and graphics, not writing the code.

I'm pretty sceptic about planeshift. I have some (not much) sympathy about 
not releasing the artwork under a free license, but together with the fact 
that they require copyright assignments for code, it makes me think that 
they intend to take it proprietary once the quirks are fixed by the 
community.

    Art is the key here.  In any 3D game the art requirements are counted in man years, but
with MMORPGS it's much, much worse.  There to put a half-decent world together the traditional
way, you need at least 10 man years of work from competent, dedicated artists.  Beyond that,
you need continued artist input to keep the world going.

    Speaking as a professional game developer, and one who has worked in (and run) startups,
it is very hard to find artists willing to contribute that much effort without a salary.  Even
if you find one who is initially willing, the volume of produced results tend to be...
underwhelming.  The art itself is usually high quality, but the rate of production starts low
and drops quickly.

    Art isn't analogous to code here; while you can reuse artwork in other projects, there is
little value to be had in pulling it apart and tweaking the way there is with code.  If you
know how to make a 3D model, there's not much that looking at someone else's 3D model will
teach you.

    As a result, there isn't much of a "free art" movement the way there's a free software
movement.

    Good art is a requirement for good games, with rare exceptions; you can occasionally get
away with procedurally generated artwork or simple art, but only rarely.  To produce an Okami,
a Panzer Dragoon, a Katamari Damacy or a Rez, you need good artists dedicating a lot of effort
to the project.

    Art goes beyond the basic visuals, as well.  Artists are often responsible for a lot of
the level design and level metadata; if there are areas where a character can hide in shadows
or take cover, an artist has probably manually marked those.  An artist may well have laid
down pathfinding information, collision data, material information (so you get the splash
sound instead of the crunch sound when someone steps in a puddle) and so forth.  If a door
opens when your character approaches it, an artist probably laid down the trigger volume.  The
artists are responsible for a sizable amount of the game experience.

    If the free software community wants to be competitive in the game industry, the art
problem will have to be solved.

> Art isn't analogous to code here; while you can reuse artwork in other 
projects, there is little value to be had in pulling it apart and tweaking 
the way there is with code.  If you know how to make a 3D model, there's 
not much that looking at someone else's 3D model will teach you.

Another reason for why it's not so easily reusable, is that the same 
graphics get old pretty soon. (how many games with penguins we have?)

New games need new graphics.

I think you missed my point about "corporate code dumps".  The derogatory way you put it makes
it clear you think corporate contributions are somehow inferior.  This sort of attitude is why
free desktop software may remain a niche for a longer than it needs to.  The two most
prominent desktop open source projects that I can think of (Firefox and OpenOffice) started
off lives as proprietary.

Regarding the Second Life viewer beta, I'll remind you that "alpha" and "beta" are just
labels, and while we're not ready to take the "beta" label off yet, the software runs as well
or better than just about any other 3D software on Linux.  It's just not up to the level of
our Mac and Windows products.  Making production quality software available on *any* platform
is hard, and making it on Linux (with OSS/ESD/ALSA/PulseAudio/whatever system comes next) and
video driver issues (which 3D apps are very sensitive to), it's even harder on Linux.

With respect to Ryzom, we might actually be in agreement, but for different reasons, I think.
Ryzom enthusiasts should absolutely be pooling their money to help free the software that
they're so enthusiastic about.  However, anyone who isn't already a Ryzom user (like the FSF,
for example) should be very skeptical of investing money in this cause.  The free software
community already has plenty of momentum and alternatives in this area.  The Ryzom codebase is
now going through its second financial crisis.  Banking on Ryzom plays into a far more toxic
stereotype than the one you've identified, which is "open source is the refuge for losers who
can't cut it in the proprietary world".  Efforts in the corporate open source world should be
on efforts that have proven revenue models to fuel development.  It's one thing to free the
source code, giving developers access to the source code, but it's so much better to then be
able to pay the most productive developers (and QA, and project managers, and documentation
writers, and usability specialists) to improve it for a living.

Well, maybe you're right about me not understanding you, so let me ask a question.  Who is
"we"?

Having read this whole exchange...

If you're curious where the oppositional tone you're inferring from Jon 
Corbet's words is coming from, I suggest you take a look in the mirror.

I'm sorry for being way more combative than I needed to be.  Looking back through the
exchange, you're right.  My last message was meant to be conciliatory, but I just didn't write
enough or in the right way.

I still believe my question about "we" is valid, because it gets to the heart of one of my pet
peeves.  The benefits of a good infusion of previously proprietary code from a corporate donor
is a matching infusion of developers who used to be proprietary developers.  Saying that "we"
don't need these infusions is saying that "we" don't need the developers to be part of the
"we".  Now, I realize that nobody here would actually mean to say that, but that's why I think
being sloppy about the use of "we" is dangerous.

So, that's why I'm asking about "we".  I figured rather than assume the worst (as the above
paragraph does), I'd ask point blank what is meant by "we".

I have questions about other phrases, such as what is meant by "free software can't actually
invent anything" (as a stereotype to be feared).  Well, as written, that's mostly true.  I
think true invention is actually beyond even Eliza, though it wouldn't surprise me if Emacs
has a M-x invent-anything command.  

I understand the gist of what is actually meant by that phrase (though a clarification would
help), but I don't understand why it's so worrisome.  The bulk of desktop software is
proprietary now; it's better if the existing software is made open rather than rewriting it
from scratch.  Anyone so worried about that stereotype shouldn't be out creating yet another
virtual world platform or online gaming system, they should be creating a whole new category
of software.

The ideal would be to have some distributed p2p client that other groups or companies can use
to build worlds on. 

It would get hairy in some places when it comes to trusting certain content/code, especially
with respect to user-generated content, but the distributed model may also provide some
technical advantages.