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Multiverse Developer Newsletter Volume I, Issue 1, February 2006 Action!
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http://www.multiverse.net |
| Welcome! Welcome to the first issue of the Multiverse developer newsletter! This is a humble start, but it will grow from month to month. We're committed to keeping the lines of communication wide open. Building a platform is a two-way partnership--as we build it, we need to know how it's working for you. Your feedback is critical in helping us keep it relevant and on-course. We don't win unless YOU win, so we're counting on you. Visit our forums often and let us know what you think. In this first newsletter, you'll see links to some of our more high-profile news, including: Titanic director James Cameron and MMOG pioneer Mike Sellers joining our advisory board, and our successful appearance at the DEMO2006 show, where we unveiled the first set of world-creation tools that we'll be putting into public alpha-testing in a few weeks. By the way, we're giving you these tools very early in their development process, so brace yourselves for bugs, if you choose to use them. We're doing this not because we're sadists, but because we really want to know what you think. We're early enough in the development process of these tools that you can still have a significant impact on what we build. If you don't like buggy tools, you can ignore them. But if you'd like to help shape the way the Multiverse platform is built, then roll up your sleeves and have fun. You might also have heard that we've partnered with SpeedTree, makers of the world's best tree models. We've built support for their technology directly into our platform, and you can use any of 10 species of trees for non-commercial use. The great thing is that YOU get to help choose those 10 trees. Full details at this discussion thread. We're dead-serious about building the platform that lets you make the virtual worlds you've always dreamed of. But as we do it, we should all have fun. Case in point: here's a sneak preview of the ad we're going to run in Game Developer Magazine next month. Let us know what you think--too outrageous? Not outrageous enough? And finally, thanks for registering with us. Over 2500 of you have signed up to be early developers on the Multiverse platform. I wish we had the resources to let all of you into the early beta program. We're working with only a handful of developers right now, but the good news for everyone is that we're about to release our first set of tools into open beta. We'll give you a sneak peak at those tools in this newsletter, and expect to hear even more in a few weeks. This means that everyone will soon have a chance to start building virtual worlds. And one final thing for you to chew on: this newsletter needs a name. It's YOUR newsletter, so let us know what you think we should call it. See you at the Game Developers Conference! --Corey Corey Bridges Executive Producer |
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Titanic Director James Cameron and MMOG Pioneer Mike Sellers
Join Multiverse Advisory Board On February 7, 2006, Multiverse announced its Advisory Board. The board is comprised of six members who bring expert credentials and clarity of vision from their respective entertainment and technology fields. The board includes James Cameron, writer/director of Aliens, Terminator, Titanic, and other Hollywood blockbusters, and Mike Sellers, lead designer of the very first 3D MMOG, Meridian 59. "The Multiverse team," said James Cameron, "inspired me with their vision of a new platform and toolset for creating virtual worlds which will engage millions of minds around the planet. Creating worlds is what I've always loved to do, and here's a whole new way to do. It turns out we share a common vision of the future of entertainment: immersive, interactive and personal. So it seemed like a great fit, and I'll do what I can to help them realize their vision." Read about the rest of the Advisory Board here. In related news, in the Feb. 13, 2006 edition of Business Week, James Cameron announced dropped this intriguing tidbit: "My next project -- which I'm currently writing the shooting draft for -- is going to be this completely crazy balls-out sci-fi flick. The plan is to develop an MMOG that takes place in the same universe and release it a little while before the theatrical release. That way people can start playing around and learning about this new world. Then we present a narrative in it with the movie." Read the full Business Week article here. |
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Multiverse Unveils tools at DEMO 06 CEO Bill Turpin and Exec Producer Corey Bridges made the trek to the DEMO 06 show in Phoenix Arizona, showcasing Multiverse to the assembled media and industry. Daniel Terdiman of News.com caught them during a polished, well-oiled, perfect rehearsal, which you can read about here. Note: not surprisingly, our boys did manage to pull it together, and pull off a great demo the next day. |
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Developer's Corner: Focus on Tools In this first developer blog I'm going to discuss the three development tools that we will be releasing to open alpha-testing in the next few weeks. The first, and probably most important tool for developers anxious to get started on their game, is the Model Viewer. This tool will let you display your 3D models in our rendering engine, so that you can ensure that it looks just the way you want it. You will be able to display or hide submeshes, play animations and adjust lighting. We will also be shipping command line tools that will convert meshes and animations from Collada files that you have exported from your favorite modeling tool, and save them in our native mesh format. Eventually, this functionality will be built into the Model Viewer tool itself. Along with the Model Viewer, we will deliver preliminary modeling guidelines, which will help you build your models in a way that works well with our game engine. The Terrain Generator tool allows you to build a terrain for use in your game. Our terrain system supports a base heightmap that can be very low resolution (for example, the island of Kothuria from our own game Kothuria: The World's Edge uses a heightmap with 128 meters per sample), and then layers detail on top using a fractal algorithm. This tool lets you create, import and edit the base heightmap, and change all the fractal parameters. I will talk more about the inner workings of the terrain system, and future enhancements to this tool in future blog entries. The World Editor tool allows you to place objects in your world. You can create forests and lakes, areas with different lighting, fog and sound, and place static objects (like buildings) in your world. Like all of our tools, the World Editor is still early in development. You will have to wait for future betas to add monsters, spawn points, or NPC characters, place environmental particle effects, build quests, etc. You can also expect some major UI improvements in the next beta. --Jeff Jeff Weinstein Lead Engineer, 3D Technology and Tools Add your comments in the forum. |
"Sound design is always a tricky thing in games. I've been writing music and messing about with samples for about 15 years now, but soundtracks for games? Wow, tricky. Soundscapes for games? Even trickier...
Now all I need is some programmers and a few more artists and some offices and a budget..."
Aedion, Multiverse Developers Forum
