A number of open source projects, including WorldForge and NeL, are redefining the frontiers of massively-multiplayer gaming. Take a peek at the games, the gearheads, and the gizmos that make play work
Life online is certainly getting complex. As if spam, spim, crackers, and worms weren’t enough, you now have to worry about dragons, thieves, spells, and Sith lords. It’s almost enough to make you pull the RJ45 plug. But don’t. Dragons aren’t a new Windows exploit (yet), and you don’t need to protect your hard disk from the Sith. And while you might run into such beasties online, have no fear: you’ll have a trusty axe, light saber, or passel of pigs to protect you.
Over the last several years, massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have grown more and more elaborate and even more popular. In games such as EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and the classic Ultima Online, thousands of people go online simultaneously to battle, socialize, trade, cooperate, and compete in vast worlds that exist only in the lines of code and bits of data that define them. In a MMORPG, you don’t have to remain Bob Accountant or Jane Programmer. You can be a bounty hunter, an elf, a Jedi, and Bob can be Jane or vice versa.
But the richness of modern MMORPGs comes at a price: as worlds become increasingly complex, so does the code required to create them. Indeed, developing the software, designing the settings, and maintaining the day-to-day infrastructure of cutting-edge MMORPGs is a massive endeavor. Usually, large teams of developers and artists toil for eighteen months or more to produce game software (which then sells for upwards of $40 per player,…
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