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The MMORPG Ryzom goes free...."software"?
This article was just posted on the developer blog of Ryzom...what does it mean for the regular Joe?
PARIS, FRANCE, May 6, 2010 — Winch Gate Properties Ltd, the developer and publisher of massively-multiplayer online science-fantasy role playing games, is proud to announce the release of the source code and artistic assets of the popular MMORPG Ryzom to the Free Software Development Community.
Developers can now access the source code of the end-user client, content creation tools and server in order to make modifications, enhancements or to create their own virtual worlds. This move marks a milestone in Ryzom’s long history and dedication to the free software movement. In order to ensure that Ryzom continues to grow and foster as a free software project, Winch Gate is now releasing Ryzom under the terms of the Free Software Foundation’s GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPLv3).
Winch Gate is also excited to provide the free software community with high quality professional artistic assets including 3D objects, animation tracks, particle effects and thousands of textures. All of the Ryzom artistic assets will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) to ensure that they and any derivative art will be available to all free software projects. These assets will be hosted in a new online repository in partnership with the Free Software Foundation.
By freeing Ryzom code, Winch Gate is transforming the MMORPG marketplace and is setting a precedent for how gaming software should evolve—in freedom. The source code released totals over two (2) million lines of source code and over 20,000 high quality textures and thousands of 3D objects.
Welcoming the news, Free Software Foundation executive director Peter Brown said, “This is a unique opportunity for the free software movement and the emerging free gaming field to accelerate the production of free games and 3D worlds. We recognize the importance of gaming and the current dominance of proprietary gaming software, so today represents a significant breakthrough from which our community can benefit.” The FSF has published more information about the scope of today’s release, and suggested ways for developers to get involved.
Vianney Lecroart, Chief Technology Officer of Winch Gate says, “The Free Software community often has a difficult time finding great graphical assets that they can use in their own projects. We are sure that the thousands of textures and 3D objects we are releasing under the CC BY-SA will help a lot of Free Software projects.”
Winch Gate intends to incorporate certain code changes and enhancements into the official version of the Ryzom game. All code developed outside Winch Gate’s in-house development staff will be thoroughly reviewed to ensure quality standards, stability and security. In order to engage and foster growth in the Ryzom project, Ryzom will have a group of community managers who can manage patch submissions and feature requests. Support will continue to be given for the official Ryzom software only, with third-party projects unsupported by Winch Gate.
Initial projects will include bug fixes and porting to operating systems such as GNU/Linux and Apple Mac OS X. Timeframes for these enhancements will vary depending on the scale of the project and the project team. The level and world data associated with Ryzom will not be released as free content and their use will remain exclusive to players of the Ryzom game.
The source code and additional information will be available from the Ryzom Core Development Portal.
The Ryzom’s free media assets are available from Ryzom’s Asset Repository.
About Ryzom
Ryzom is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing or MMORPG Game set more than 3.000 years into the future, on a living, evolving virtual world: beautiful Atys, where after creating your own personal avatar you will guide it through this strange fantastic planet to uncover its mysteries.
The game boasts a unique science-fantasy setting, a distinctive and artistic visual style and a sophisticated plot based upon the conflict of two mysterious supernatural powers. The storyline was awarded “Mmorpg.com Best Story” award. Gameplay is highly adaptive to your personal preferences and the actions/skills system is remarkably unique, sophisticated and profound.
Ryzom Ring (R²) is the proprietary innovative free expansion that brings MMORPGs to a new level. Ryzom Ring allows you to create your own role-play and RPG Adventures on the world of Atys.
About Winch Gate
Winch Gate Properties Ltd is the developer and publisher of the massively-multiplayer online science fantasy role playing game Ryzom since 2009. Former employees from Nevrax joined the company to continue to work on Ryzom.
For more information contact:
Vianney Lecroart, Chief Technology Officer
[email protected]
irc: #ryzom on irc.freenode.net
Comments
Oh they released the source code to the public.
It was something the last developer made a big deal about when they reopened the servers in august of 09.
Since then Winch gate aquired Ryzom and it seems the source code project has finally come to fruition.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
This is an incredible news.
I'm not sure if the free software developers will understand the meaning of this release:
for the first time, a commercial game, costed millions of euros and years of developing, is entirely open-sourced. Server, client, tools and art assets!
Considering the features the game has, that most other companies always were scared to implement, and the solid networking code, this is the biggest addition in the free software ever done.
There are no free MMORPG projects in the FSF, that can match the quality of Ryzom.
Nickname registered on www.mynickname.org
So, players have complete access to both client and server side software for the game...
Just think of all the hacks and exploits people could make with such free access to the core software!
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In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
this means lot of university will use it as a tool to bench mark their new techno since the other they use is getting kind of dated!
I think this is a great move to generate interest in game/company.
It also provides insight to the Devs of tomorrow.
Props to them for not just thinking outside of the box, but actually doing something with their ideas.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
This might also be good news to armchair developers who want to have a look under the hood, so to speak. And maybe we'll see some new indie games sprouting up out of this.
It's very cool on their part to do this, anyway.
I think the most important thing is that, with such quality software open sourced, maybe we will stop having half-finished, overhyped, crappy money sinker MMORPGs in the future.
Who cares of hacks and exploits?? In the free software community, the community itself already knows how to defend itself and it will do.
Also, do you think other MMOs around were not reverse-engineered already in the past?
Nickname registered on www.mynickname.org
I think it is great for the MMO community to have such a decent engine available open source, I do not however think it is good for the game itself.
People will exploit this, Ryzom is not better because of this, but the MMO world is better because of this. I mean, the Ryzom engine is old, but infinitely better than any other open source engine out there.
Wow, I'm actually impressed.
What a move, will be interesting to see what will come of it
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
It's p2p, but you have to consider it is very cheap (8 euros/month) so i suppose this price will remains to guarantee the tech support to the players. If anyone will come with other games based on this, it will be up to them to decide what paying model it will be good for them.
Sure, Ryzom the game can benefit a lot from the creativity of experienced gamers with developing skills.
Anyway this is a totally new path for a commercial company so, only the future will tell us if this will be good for the game (and for gaming in general) or not.
The engine doesn't contain latest features, but still it has a very good directX and OpenGL implementation. Other features such as complete day/night cycle with seasons and weather, modular skill/abilities system and an animal AI i still have to see in the latest mmo releases: as a starting point i think this is a real dream for any developers that wanna start considering to write gaming software.
For anyone that wanna check it, try the 21days trial, be sure to jump in the mainland fast, and ask for a trip around the world.
Apart of the gameplay, that can be something you like or not, just look at the world and how it feels alive (and very dangerous) by its own.
Nickname registered on www.mynickname.org
I would never pay to play this game, but if someone would take-up an indie effort to actually make it more player-adoptable, graphically and game-play pleasing, I'd take a whack at it.
Oh my gosh! That is awesome for us indie devs, as our indie research programmers will have more material to work with now. R&D is the slowest part of deving new indie games, and always good to have polished code to glean from. Great!
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
Maybe someone can write some code that will let you jump?
Or make the game fun?
Got rhyzom some publicity anyways. I hope some people try it out.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren