Gamemaking

Wherein I talk about games I am making

AGDC08: The better EULA panel and MP TOS feedback

 Posted by (Visited 6104 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking  Tagged with: , , , ,
Sep 222008
 

There was a fair amount of coverage of this panel, despite the relatively small attendance. This was the one where we announced the Metaplace TOS. Some of the coverage:

The discussion has been quite lively, and many excellent points were raised for possible revisions, many posted right here on the site in the discussion thread. I plan to reconvene with the lawyers and this feedback and present another draft for the Internet to argue over. 🙂

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Declaring the Rights of Metaplace Users

 Posted by (Visited 17242 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking  Tagged with: ,
Sep 152008
 

As has already been mentioned online, today at the Austin Game Conference Metaplace announced that its Terms of Service will be modeled on my 2000 article “Declaring the Rights of Players.” What does that mean?

It means, in a nutshell, that we are signing up for the following:

Rights of creators

  • Freedom of expression
  • Ownership, including earning money & running their own world
  • Privacy
  • Develop their own TOS

Rights of users

  • Freedom of speech & assembly, privacy
  • Rule of “law” and due process
  • Ownership of their IP

Responsibilities of creators and users

  • Don’t break the law

Continue reading »

How Metaplace was born

 Posted by (Visited 5306 times)  Gamemaking  Tagged with:
Sep 052008
 

I got asked where the idea for Metaplace came from on our public forums. I wrote this lengthy reply, which turned into a blog post over there, and now a blog post over here.

I came from the world of muds. That means I got my start in virtual worlds in the days when anyone could download a codebase, and assuming they had a server they could get going and dive into running a world of their own.

That went away with the big MMORPGs. But when we did UO: The Second Age, there had already been a movement among players towards having “grey shard” server emulators. Some of the tools users had made to hack the UO datafiles were actually better than the tools we had in-house.

So I informally floated an idea for the expansion that didn’t go anywhere. Why not release the game server as a binary, release documentation for our scripting language (which was fantastic for the time), release our tools client, and let people make their own worlds?

You will have to go over there for the rest. 🙂

Metaplace status update!

 Posted by (Visited 4532 times)  Gamemaking  Tagged with:
Jul 162008
 

For those wondering what’s up with Metaplace, we have a July Update up on the company blog that should serve to catch you up. We’re really really busy these days, gearing up for going beta.

We’ve seen some absolutely amazing work being created within Metaplace. We’ve had educational learning software, the start of basic RPG’s, an RTS, a beginning shooter game, arcade games, word games. We’ve seen people make procedurally generated maps, the start of standalone clients, and then all the games we’ve shown in our Community Spotlight posts. We’re consistently entertained by the creativity that is shown, and we are excited to see what you all can make.

The post also has a short term roadmap, and lots more…


Metaplace – Transition Tile Maker

 Posted by (Visited 7406 times)  Gamemaking  Tagged with: ,
Jul 082008
 

Another day, another little tool release over at the Metaplace site. This one is a little helper that assists in making transition textures between different terrain tiles. Sure, some engines do blending for you, but some don’t. And some effects really require handmade transitions. Well, the Transition Tile Maker lets you make your own blend masks and share them, or use the premade ones for making transitions. We figure there’s art tasks for UGC that are kind of tedious, so why not help the process along?

You can grab it for Windows or for Intel Mac…

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