Multiverse Developer Newsletter

Volume II, Issue 2

In this edition:

• Corey's Column
• It Takes a Guild: Multiverse at GDC 2007
• Multiverse Licensing Terms and the Road Ahead
• Tech Corner: 3ds Max Export Tool - A First Look
• Guest Column: Creating a Minimap
• New on the Wiki

Corey's Column: Changing the <virtual> world

Multiverse is dedicated to the proposition that virtual worlds are a new medium.

Other people have tried to kickstart this medium various times over the last couple decades, but it could only have flourished right now, at this point in the evolution of humankind. Only now do we have the technology (blazing GPUs and widespread high-bandwidth connectivity) and the culture (people able and eager to interact in 3D spaces via avatars) to support this new medium. Today, the most prominent use of virtual worlds is entertainment, MMOGs and social spaces with user-generated content. But the medium can and will be used for so much more: education, training, simulation, business collaboration—it's a huge list. Just like you can use TV, books, and the web for many different applications, the same is true virtual world technology.

We're committed to kicking out the barriers to entry so that anyone—especially independent developers—can enter this industry and begin to experiment, and ultimately succeed. We saw this in our time at Netscape, especially after our CEO Bill Turpin and his team invented JavaScript: enabling indies leads to innovation. That's what's going to move forward the medium of virtual worlds.

Speaking of those indies, over half of our developers are building games. But many of our customers are building non-games like social worlds, business rehearsal spaces, even first-responder simulations. And all of these worlds can be accessed with the Multiverse Client. The consumer is always just one click away from any world on the Multiverse Network. This means that worlds can be, at the discretion of the world developers, closed or interconnected with one another. You have complete freedom to implement whatever works for your particular world.

We were included in a recent Associated Press article that ended with a quote from Steve Prentice, a vice president at technology research group Gartner: "Once you can move from one virtual world to another, the growth we have today is going to look pretty stagnant."

We couldn't agree more. We're on the edge of a brand-new medium breaking into the mainstream, and we're glad to have you with us.

—Corey

Corey Bridges
Executive Producer, Multiverse

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It Takes a Guild: Multiverse at GDC 2007

by Ron Meiners (Random)
Multiverse Developer Relations Manager

First off, I have to thank everyone involved in our effort at GDC: the dev teams all did a stellar job, putting in long hours and pulling off amazing and new things in every case. And our engineers also went above and beyond to support them, working nights and weekends to support them as best we could. My thanks to all of you; we looked so great at GDC because of your efforts.

I want to call out one other part of being at GDC with the teams... the collective energy, the synergy, of so many talented and inspired developers was almost a tangible thing, and it was really amazing, and a whole lot of fun. Now, the Multiverse Network is a collaborative proposal in many respects. Part of what will help your game succeed will likely be the array of many worlds and MMOGs built on Multiverse, making our network a prime destination for gamers. We're already seeing contributions made available to the general community that extend the platform, like Draive's pets script. And our forums are a stellar example of the community supporting itself, with people helping each other out every day.

And, as I said many times to people at GDC, our success at Multiverse depends on the success of our developers. We are directly concerned with what you want and will do our best to provide it. Those I spoke to "got it," and walked away genuinely inspired by the potential to create new and innovative worlds.

But it was... really awesome to see the connections forming at GDC, and to know that the teams involved were forming relationships that would extend beyond the show. That the bonds formed at GDC wouldn't stay at GDC (though perhaps some of the events at the show really should stay there...), but would persist in collaborations of many kinds, from support in the forums to possible joint projects.

The real poster child, of course, was the Forgotten Legends demo, and the team led by Doomsberg, well-known in our forums as a knowledgeable and supportive member of the community. He started out working solo, figuring out what he needed as he went. But along the way, interacting with others at the Multiverse Forums, he attracted other contributors, with different skills, to join him in the project. The Multiverse community is really becoming a community, with leaders who are respected and recognized for their contributions to the group. And the ideal of the Multiverse Network gets one step nearer, where individuals with unique skills are able to collaborate with each other to create MMOGs that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Even though Doomsberg couldn't be at GDC (this year) The Forgotten Legends demo world was a total hit. People loved it, and we loved to show it off.

It's amazing what a powerful dream can do—and we're just beginning to see the worlds that are created as a result. You can check out some screenshots in the updated Image Gallery.

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Multiverse Licensing Terms and the Road Ahead

The flurry of activity around Multiverse (and the teams that joined us there) at GDC 2007 also saw the announcement of our licensing terms. You can see the complete write-up on the Multiverse website.

The basic terms are: Multiverse is free for non-commercial worlds, and is available for 10% of the gross receipts of worlds that have paying customers. The platform is also available as a pre-paid stand-alone package if you prefer (contact us for more information on this option).

One of our core goals is to remove barriers to the creation of MMOGs and virtual worlds of all kinds: whatever kind makes sense to you, the creator. And we've already seen amazing innovation (see the GDC pics in this newsletter).

We have also put together a high-level roadmap document that describes our upcoming technology goals and time frames, enabling you to plan your world's development. The document is intended to be an overview, since development priorities can shift in response to input we receive from you, our developer community. We hope the roadmap will enable you to plan with greater certainty. We will continue to develop the Multiverse Platform, to provide you with a stable, scalable, flexible, extensible technology platform for creating a new generation of virtual worlds.

See the Multiverse Developer Wiki for the complete Multiverse Platform Roadmap.

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Guest Column: Creating a Minimap

by Tim Holt

Tim Holt is a research assistant at Oregon State University and an active serious games developer. He is working on the Project Mars virtual world on the Multiverse platform.

A common developer request has been the ability to create a minimap, a graphical representation of a a bird's eye view of a player's position in a virtual world. This month, Tim Holt describes how he created a minimap for his serious game virtual world, Project Mars.

In this tutorial, you will make the Multiverse Client display a simple minimap, which displays a "birds eye view" of the player's current position in the world. To the right is a screenshot of an example of a minimap, created using the methods described here.

To create the minimap:

1. Create overview image, the basic map background, and add it to the client UI.
2. Add code to draw a small red dot image on top of the background map.
3. Add client Python code that, at frequent intervals:
   • Gets the players position.
   • Transforms the player position to coordinates in the minimap overview.
   • Repositions the small red dot image to the coordinates of the player.

This article continues in the Multiverse Developer Wiki.

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3ds Max Export Tool - A First Look

by John Hessler
Multiverse Technical Art Director

Multiverse recently released a new tool, the 3ds Max export tool, that enables you to quickly and easily export models directly from 3ds Max into Multiverse mesh format.

The export tool redefines the pipeline process from 3ds Max, enabling a larger number of developers to move assets into their worlds and dramatically speed up the process for art teams already in development. It enables faster iteration of assets in the development process, and helps improve the final assets qualitatively and quantitatively. The tool also reduces production time by creating a layer of functionality between the command line process and the 3ds Max export process. Artists can also use the tool to organize their work on model sets and animations.

The 3ds Max export tool is designed to speed up your development process and support your team in the process of rapid prototyping. If you want to use the Multiverse platform to its fullest check out the tutorial and give the tool a try.

To help you understand this tool better the article on the wiki describes each of its rollout categories and describe the major features, benefits, and potential work process solutions.

This article continues in the Multiverse Developer Wiki.

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If you haven't yet done so, Download 3ds Export Tool. For more information, see Using the 3ds Max Export Tool on the Developer Wiki.

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""I believe it was Shigeru Myamoto (creator of Mario Bros', Zelda, Donkey Kong et al Nintendo) during his keynote at GDC who said "film was the medium of the 20th century, so shall games be the medium of the 21st century. Even something as simple as this weather collaboration seems to be indicative of that."

—VortexMusic, Multiverse Developers Forums