Re: [Metacosm-dev] Informal IRC meeting summary 10/9/03

[Chris Laprun]

On Oct 10, 2003, at 3:50 AM, Cyril Hansen wrote:

> Yesterday, three of us (Elkine, Oumph, Horus) hold an informal meeting 
> on irc.
> We discussed motivation, schedule and developer availability problems 
> as well
> as technical choices. Feel free to skip until the end for a summary,
> especially if you are offended by my English.
>
> Motivation:
>
> It appears that we are still motivated by the completion of the 
> milestones, as
> they were described on the web. Oumph said he was mainly interested in 
> the
> server side, aka simulation model. Elkine expressed willingness to 
> work on a
> (graphical) client or editor, and was eager to work with another
> language&library than Java.  I just said that I would like our 
> milestones
> objectives to be more graphical, more fun, to be able to do some cool 
> demos, a
> la World Forge.


Hmmm.... I thought I'd chime in with my $.02...

As far as I am concerned, I don't see metacosm as relevant anymore. The 
less ambitious new goals render the project pretty much similar to a 
number of other ones out there. If you want to use C++ and remove the 
framework aspects of the project, join one of the gazillion MMORPG 
projects that already do that. Why start a new one?

Another relevant issue is the point made by Julien. Java is more and 
more used in the gaming space. Actually, it seems that metacosm is 
retrograde with respect to what's going on in the industry. When 
everyone was doing stuff in C++, we chose Java. Now that people are 
starting to realize that Java is not so bad, you want to go back to 
C++? This change of heart is four years late! Not really an inspired 
choice... But, then again, choosing to develop yet another mmorpg is 
not that original either.

In short, I am not very confident about metacosm's future. To parallel 
Jansel's point, I stopped bothering about metacosm because it wasn't 
fun anymore: too many communication problems, licensing issues, etc... 
The future is not in MMORPG as they are right now but in the next 
generation in particular in the mobile space. I don't see any 
opportunities for us to create something interesting out of another 
client/server project, at least not as it is currently defined with the 
new stated goals. There are more mature projects out there with more 
experienced developers for that kind of stuff. How do you intend to 
provide something of value in this crowded space? How would you 
convince me that it can still be fun to work on metacosm? I really want 
to know...

Best,
UBiK