Developer Chat and Conference Schedule
We've been keeping up weekly with these blog posts and trying to provide information that helps to educate the public about Metaplace - but interactive Q&A sessions are much more helpful to make sure we're getting your questions answered. We're excited to announce that we'll be having a live developer chat in the coming weeks to help answer all your questions. Make sure to check back here to our website frequently and join our Metamail list for the announcement of the exact date and time. In the meantime, please brainstorm some questions that you are curious about and post them in this thread on the forums. We can't promise we'll get to them all, but we'll hit as many as we can.
Here are a few examples of some most common questions that we've been answering thus far:
1. I don’t want to make a world alone, can I edit my world with my friends?
Absolutely! The world creator has the ability to add and remove owners from their world at any time. You can set any number of people to be able to edit the world at the same time. It’s a great feature for teams to collaborate together. Eventually you’ll be able to work on separate instances of a world so that you’re not clashing with each other while you’re manically making changes.
2. Is there a way I can work on my game without making changes in realtime for the people who might be playing it?
Not just yet, but that has rapidly become one of our most requested features. We have intentions to implement a full version control system that will allow script editing without impacting anyone currently logged into your world. Details on that to come.
3. How many simultaneous users do you expect will be able to play a game at a time? Will I be able to make a gigantic MMORPG with hundreds of people per “zone”?
We certainly think so. We’re still working hard on things like optimization, bandwidth consumption, load times, and all the necessary factors into making a smooth gameplay experience for a large amount of people. We expect hundreds to be in the same place (the equivalent of a zone) at a time with no issues.
4. I’m shy. Can I make my world private so that no one can see it?
Definitely. That was an important part of allowing people to be able to work on and test in their worlds without distraction from players and other curious Metaplace developers. You have the ability to make your world completely private so that no one can log in to play/view your world and no one can edit.
5. What is the difference between a world, a server, and a place?
Server: Either the physical computer or the process that launches a world and keeps it running.
World: A world is a self-contained process that is launched from stylesheet data and runs on a server. It handles the Lua scripting, game data structures, physics, processes network input/output, and provides various platform services such as persistence and collision. An equivalent analogy to a World would be "shards" in UO or various "servers" in other content-mirrored MMO's.
Place: You can think of a "place" as what most MMO's call "zones." Each place has its own map and tile definitions, so that you can say, teleport a player to the "inside" of a tavern when they walk up to the door, moving them from the Town Exterior map to the Tavern Interior map and back again. Places can also be spawned or instanced easily from script, allowing you to dynamically spawn instances battlefields or whatnot in your game mechanics. Places have a concept of "anchors" similar to a webpage, allowing you to teleport players to specific pre-defined locations in a place. Without the use of anchors, players who enter a place will be put in the default starting XYZ for that place. Places also have their own view and camera settings, plus their own physics environments. This means that within one world, you can have one place rendered in isometric while in another (a shop's buy/sell window for the interior or something) it can be top down or flat. Space shooter in one place and Zelda in another, running within the same world.
6. I’m a horrible artist, where can I get art for my world/game?
First off, there are lots of artists who are already hungry for work on our Metaplace forums. You can always post an art request that accepts random submissions and people can help you out. Alternatively, there are tons of free assets available on the web for game creators. Here are some links to get you started:
Planet Cute prototyping tiles
7. What about sound and music? Are there free assets available for those too?
There sure are!
Stonewashed
8. How do I stay informed so that I don’t miss the beta announcement or any important details?
Sign up for our Metamail to stay on top of all sorts of information releases. Once we move into beta stage, we’ll be sending out an email to let everyone know.
To switch focuses for a second here, I wanted to mention the couple of conferences that Areae will have a presence at.
Our president, Raph Koster, will be speaking at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on February 18-22. There is definitely a lot to look forward to in his lecture titled, “Metaplace Postmortem: Reinventing MMOs” and also his Worlds in Motion session, “Why Gamers Should Care About Virtual Worlds.” If you’re not attending, keep your eyes peeled to the Web for the post-coverage on both of these talks.
In addition, we will be attending the Independent MMO Game Developers Conference in Minneapolis, MN on March 29-30, 2008. Mr. Koster will be delivering a keynote speech and Community Manager Tami Baribeau will be participating in a Community Issues Workshop panel.
We’re looking forward to chatting more and more about Metaplace as we get closer to being able to share it with everyone. Please remember to stop by our forums and post any questions you might have for our developer chat and check back for the exact date and time!
