Multiverse Developer Newsletter Vol. 1, Number #6

Multiverse Developer Newsletter

Volume 1, Issue 6


In this edition:

Corey's Column: Let the Worldbuilding Begin!

Open beta! What else do I need to say?

—Corey

Corey Bridges
Executive Producer, Multiverse


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Launching Open Beta!

The Multiverse team proudly announces the launch of our long-awaited open beta program. The Multiverse platform is now publicly available for download and development (you'll need your developer program login info).

The Multiverse platform opens a new chapter in MMOG and virtual world development: a robust, scalable, extensible platform available without prohibitive up-front licensing fees. A plethora of new worlds, new game ideas, and new creative visions of all kinds will be built on the platform.

This beta release is most appropriate for teams with experienced engineers. Ideally, you should be comfortable with command-line interfaces and hand-editing config files. Future releases will be increasingly "user-friendly", so jump in whenever you like. And naturally, there are still bugs to be worked out and features to be added, but we're ready to take the next step in building the Multiverse.

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Catching Up On Your Reading

by Rand McKinney, Multiverse Documentation Wizard

The Multiverse open beta release is accompanied by a thorough revision of the documentation in the Multiverse Developer Wiki.

Looking for an Installation Tutorial? It's here: Getting Started - Platform Tutorial.

Want to find out more about the new asset management system? It's here: Setting Up an Asset Repository.

As with the Multiverse platform as a whole, we're constantly improving and updating our documentation, so it's a great place to begin your work with all aspects of the technology.

If you've already been using the Developer Wiki, the first thing you'll notice is a completely redesigned front page that caters both to new and experienced developers. The Quick Links page is a new addition designed to provide more experienced with quick access to all the articles in the wiki. We've also added a New and Notable page, where we'll be tracking the latest and greatest additions to the growing documentation resources.

For all you server programmers out there, we recently published the complete server API Javadoc for your reference pleasure. We'll be adding more comments and information to the API doc on an ongoing basis.

Of course, it's always a good idea to read the Release Notes when you install a new build. They'll tell you what's new, what's changed, and any known issues:

Here are some other new articles from the wiki that you might find useful:

  • About Terrain - describes the Multiverse terrain system, which has been substantially improved in the latest release. Explains how to create terrain heightmaps with L3DT Pro (instructions for other third party tools coming soon).
  • Customizing Key Bindings - configuring key bindings for the Multiverse Client.
  • Particle Effects and Projectiles - how to serve fizzing drinks in your social world, or have wizards hurl fireballs in your RPG.
  • Writing Your Own Server Plug-ins - some meat and potatoes for server programmers.

And if you come up with a new trick or modification, you are welcome to add it to the wiki also. Contributions from developer teams are an important part of the wiki, and will continue to grow and benefit all teams. If you have a contribution to make, please don't hesitate.

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Screenshots, Trailers and Logos (We Want Yours, Too)

Sparked by the Austin Game Conference, several of our teams put together trailers of their games. Those trailers are now on the Multiverse web site. They look awesome. What's already been created on Multiverse is really impressive, and it's just the start. See our open beta announcement above. You can find the trailers at the Multiverse website.

On the website, you can also find screenshots from some of the projects in development in our growing Images Gallery, plus team descriptions and logos on the Upcoming Games page. If you'd like to have your work included, drop a line to developers@multiverse.net.

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Guest Column: Developing on the Multiverse Platform

by Adrian Wright, CEO Max Gaming Technologies


Adrian Wright has been designing online games since the first MUDs in the late '80's. He is now Managing Member with Max Gaming Technologies, leading the successful launch of Dark Horizons Lore Invasion, and currently working on several projects with MGT, including the MMOG Dark Horizons: Awakening, being built on the Multiverse platform.

Over the last ten years one of my primary responsibilities has been to evaluate technology for a variety of projects, including business applications and game development projects. No matter where I have been in my career—working for a large company or running Max Gaming Technologies (MGT)—cost/benefit has always been a important decision point, but never more so than as a independent game developer.

Most independent developers have a very limited budget for buying technology, so a decision to buy technology is one of the most important decisions you can make outside of which games to make.

When we originally started MGT six years ago, we had a vision of making an MMOG that at the time was just plain out of our reach from a technology standpoint. Without the ability to write a complete MMOG solution on our own, we scaled our project down to a more manageable size, which allowed us to create a persistent world with technologies available to us.

The choice for us was to procure a 3D game engine that was affordable for independent developers, and to use it to develop a backend solution that would allow for persistent tracking of player and faction stats. After 18 months of development, we reached our scaled-down goal of our first game.

Though not exactly where we wanted to go, many factors went into our decision making including:

  • Staff size and capabilities.
  • Technology available within budget.
  • Game design goal.

Six years later, these factors still play a big role in game projects we decide to undertake, and for indie studios, I believe these are rules to live by.

Over the last few years, we still have had the desire to bring our MMOG design to reality, and until recently have not been able to find a solution that made sense for us. Making our own engine would mean locking up a good portion of our staff in a room for a year or more, just to develop tech, then another 12-18 months to build our first world on top of it. The alternative, licensing a commercial engine until recently required spending many thousands of dollars on a technology platform.

Then, earlier this year, a colleague of mine pointed me to a solution that fit the bill: Multiverse.

Why we chose Multiverse:

  • Low cost of entry. Can't get much lower than free, which is what Multiverse is to any developer who wants to download it and make a world. Then if you charge for people playing your game, Multiverse takes what I consider a nominal percentage of your revenue as any publisher would. And, oh yeah, they handle billing.
  • Built on a proven indie rendering engine. Based on the OGRE rendering engine, the Multiverse client has the capability of providing us with the graphical tools we need to make a visually competitive game in the MMO market.
  • Provides a scalable server solution. This will enable us to expand our game as our player base grows.
  • Enables us to concentrate on building the game and not the technology.

In summary, Multiverse is enabling indies such as MGT to get a foot in the door to create new, interesting MMOGs that in the past were prohibitively expensive.

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Tech Corner: Creating Skyboxes

by Chris Schenck, Multiverse Art Director

"There is nothing so boring as a cloudless sky," my painting teacher used to say. Standing out in the fields with the sun at high noon and nothing but blue sky is a painter's nightmare. You might as well curl up in the shade and have a nap until there is something worth looking at up there in all that blue.

By the same token, making your game world is a study in making things interesting, creating drama. Dramatic vistas, rolling hills, jagged windswept peaks, parched desert plains; these are the things that make your game environment interesting. Don't settle for a plain old blue sky. In fact, the sky is one of the first and most important things that will be seen by your players. The sky immediately sets the pace, and conveys to the viewer the kind of world they have just entered. Paradoxically, the skybox is something that you as a game designer should hope that no one notices.

First, the sky is something that needs to be there—imagine your player's reaction when they log in and there is no sky—but also needs to be unnoticed. In other words, it needs to look great but not call attention to itself. If you were playing a World War II game and looked up and saw a bunch of planets and moons and a giant starship, that would kinda break the immersion, wouldn't it? So the sky you want to create should have some color harmony with the rest of the world that you are making, but not be so different that people think about it. That is, there should be some of the same colors in the sky as are in the ground textures, the trees, the rocks, etc. Now I don't mean that the rocks have to be sky blue, that would be silly. But because of the nature of reflective light scattering in the atmosphere, the colors in the sky are reflected a little in the rocks and everywhere else.

Your desert environment should have a lot more yellow and gold in the sky from the dust and heat than the sky for your deep jungle environment, which should have a lot more warm yellow green and cerulean blues in it.

To see some examples of color choices I made when creating the Multiverse Demo World, you can log in (instructions on downloading, installing, and launching the Multiverse Client are here) and see how the sky works with the rest of the environment, and compare it to the production work. Think in terms of "color families" when working on this. In the graphic below I have indicated some of the colors in the sky and how they relate to other items in the world.

It will be very helpful if you have Adobe Photoshop or Imageready, or another application that has a good color picker to help find specific colors and match them.

Now that you are all psyched up to make your first skybox, you can follow the complete tutorial available on the wiki: Creating Skyboxes with Terragen.


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Found in the Forums:

"I read an article that described Multiverse as a MMOG engine that anyone could use, but does it really have to be a game? For example would it be permissible for me to convert my blog, or a collection of blogs (complete with the avatar of the writers) into a multiverse world?" (Ed: The answer is yes, we're building a platform we hope will be extensible just about every way you can imagine...)

—Leon, Multiverse Developers Forums