Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[schild]

Manishevitz

What is this...Manishevitz?

[Signe]

This is Manishevitz, the Jew dog.

[UnSub]

Will Metaplace have ragdoll in place on launch? Promising and talented FPS designers want to know!

Metaplace is not what you think it is.

Raph said Metaplace could be whatever I wanted it to be! Stop breaking my dreams!

[Sky]

This is Manishevitz, the Jew dog.

He's so in the f13 meatspace mmo. Boss mob.

[Yoru]

I haf question.

So Raph, will ordinary users building their own little MMOs be able to monetize their creations should they find success? Will there be micropayment/subscription functionality built into the Metaplace platform?

Further, could commercial entities license the Metaplace platform and leverage it to build their own stuff on their own servers?

Just how flexible are you trying to be? :)

[Raph]

We have answered question 1 in the affirmative already. Yes, you can cash out.

We haven't answered question two, about commercial entities. :)

[Kaa]

Raph, how about freedom for third-party developers? If someone wants to make a game about, say, crucified penises and baby-mulching machines, will he be able to? Or will Areae (as Bioware did with NWN) step in to block what it considers to be offensive stuff?

Kaa

[CharlieMopps]

Can you hire me? I can get coffee and stuff.
Unless you need a NOC technician... =( I chose the wrong career.

[Jamiko]

TechCrunch video is up:

http://www.techcrunch40.com/2007/presenter.php?presenter=37

[Bunk]

Interesting.

I think Raph was a little concerned about sounding geeky...

[Yegolev]

I think he was presenting to a very stonefaced crowd.  I got pretty excited about the linking and the XML and the Brittney.

[Slyfeind]

Yeah, his audience kinda sucked. He should have planted some people in there to gasp and ooo and ahh.

[Yegolev]

He had at least one investor out there.  I kinda got the feeling that they didn't know what Aye Oh Ell was.

[taolurker]

I still really don't understand the revenue model at all, especially with Raph continually referring to it as an "Open Standard". Yes the web and html are open standards, but people would still have to pay to keep the data someplace (like people pay for web hosting).

Even if there is a way for Areae to collect $ for data storage/hosting, I still can't imagine it in a "virtual world" sense, with everyone creating their own "world", because of the networking issues and how everyone who is just a visitor ends up using part of the bandwidth. Not only does that mean a huge data center that Areae is gonna need to serve all of these worlds at the same time, but it also requires billing people with worlds for bandwidth usage into their virtual world. Serving webpages, how it links together and "Web 2.0ish" stuff is cool, but I also couldn't really consider it a way to make money hats.

Another thing that bothers me about the usage of "Open Standard" and Areae is they're letting people use their tools, which means that obviously there are going to be a hundred other sites using Raph's ultimate world creator open source that he won't be able to collect a dime off of... Unless I'm missing something altogether.

[Raph]

It was definitely a challenging crowd. Mostly tech investors and tech press. And the presentation levels were erratic... There were a few real "droners" among them.

BTW, we have a new blog post on "How Metaplace Works":

http://www.metaplace.com/blog/9.html

[schild]

I don't see pictures. Words fail on the internet.

[Raph]

Apparently so does memory span. V-I-D-E-O n-o-w a-v-a-i-l-a-b-l-e. ;)

[schild]

Apparently so does memory span. V-I-D-E-O n-o-w a-v-a-i-l-a-b-l-e. ;)

[Slyfeind]

WTF GOLDFISH?! 

[Yoru]

Hopefully the original Areae client doesn't go the way of NCSA Mosaic.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Hey Raph can the current SWG team use these two features?

pathfinding
collision

Schild might even come back to SWG if they did  :-D

[Hutch]

Hopefully the original Areae client doesn't go the way of NCSA Mosaic.

Coming in 2010, as an Integral Element of the Microsoft Windows Operating System, codename "Lockdown".

[Salamok]

Manishevitz

What is this...Manishevitz?

Typically served at Passover.  It is a very very sweet dessert wine.  Imagine if Budwiser or Coors decided to get into the wine business and started off with port.

Oh wait, you may actually like cheap american beer.  Imagine if Mountain Dew got into the wine business, this would be the Game Fuel of wines.

[Yegolev]

Mmmm...

Halo 3 manishevitz.

[Margalis]

Fail.

The example I gave puts a picture on the UI, at the upper left corner. If your client can handle pictures, that is. You see, MetaMarkup is an open standard. Anyone can write a client for it. We figure, the more clients the merrier.

A game writer can’t assume that every platform out there will render every possible bit of MetaMarkup. Say you write a text-only client (something perfectly possible). That [UI_IMAGE] tag would get ignored. Or maybe the client would say “I drew ‘my picture’” just like a text web browser draws the ‘alt’ text for an image on the web.

You do realize Raph that the history of the WWW has been to move towards clients that render as similarly as possible, down to the last pixel, and that any differences between clients do nothing other than serve as a giant fucking pain in the ass?

I will never understand this. This is exactly the same mistakes the people at the W3C keep making, over and over again, never ever learning. Nobody wants a fucking "select" tag that can be a comboBox, a listBox or a radioButton, they want to design a page and know it will look EXACTLY THE SAME on every client.

You're just asking for giant compatibility problems and trying to turn making a game from something fun into something ass.

Your *job* is to write ONE FUCKING CLIENT that works perfectly that everyone can use, not to have 10 random disphits write 10 different shitty clients that now I have to code for.

NOBODY WANTS DIFFERENT CLIENTS THAT RENDER DIFFERENTLY. They don't want it in HTML and they sure as hell don't want it in a gaming platform. Why in hell would you purposely introduce compatibility issues into a standard platform?

Testing and eliminating compatibility problems is not fun. Trust me, I've spent the last fucking month on my job working around IE6 javascript and HTML DOM issues.

[Alkiera]

This MMO best viewed with Microsoft MeatPlace Explorer 2.0 (tm)

--
Alkiera

[Samwise]

It's always seemed to me like the bulk of compatibility issues arise not because the standards are too loosey-goosey, but because clients don't actually implement the standard.

[naum]

Fail.

The example I gave puts a picture on the UI, at the upper left corner. If your client can handle pictures, that is. You see, MetaMarkup is an open standard. Anyone can write a client for it. We figure, the more clients the merrier.

A game writer can’t assume that every platform out there will render every possible bit of MetaMarkup. Say you write a text-only client (something perfectly possible). That [UI_IMAGE] tag would get ignored. Or maybe the client would say “I drew ‘my picture’” just like a text web browser draws the ‘alt’ text for an image on the web.

You do realize Raph that the history of the WWW has been to move towards clients that render as similarly as possible, down to the last pixel, and that any differences between clients do nothing other than serve as a giant fucking pain in the ass?

I will never understand this. This is exactly the same mistakes the people at the W3C keep making, over and over again, never ever learning. Nobody wants a fucking "select" tag that can be a comboBox, a listBox or a radioButton, they want to design a page and know it will look EXACTLY THE SAME on every client.

No. No. No.

Problems with WWW has been that clients deviated from both standards and the fluid/dynamic nature…  …Netscape and then M$ wished to shoehorn clients, and it continues today whereas there are those that insist on bringing magazine covers to the net, when it's an entirely different affair…

…and since people are running applications on an even larger range of client displays (from cell phones to giant screen HD monitors), absolute pixel placement is the worst idea.

And just look at design and layout of successful web sites — those that stuck to platform agnostic and/or don't cater to absolute pinpoint precision have fared so much better — Google, Wikipedia, etc.… all infinitely more "useable" and render better on a greater variety of devices than the slavishly plotted out sites…

Granted, this is web site v. web application, but there's nothing that could presuppose form controls (which HTML controls were backwards evolution of UI, admittedly…) being part of a markup standard and left to the client to implement as wished…

It's far more expansive and inclusive approach that leads to richer possibilities…

[Mrbloodworth]

Fail.

The example I gave puts a picture on the UI, at the upper left corner. If your client can handle pictures, that is. You see, MetaMarkup is an open standard. Anyone can write a client for it. We figure, the more clients the merrier.

A game writer can’t assume that every platform out there will render every possible bit of MetaMarkup. Say you write a text-only client (something perfectly possible). That [UI_IMAGE] tag would get ignored. Or maybe the client would say “I drew ‘my picture’” just like a text web browser draws the ‘alt’ text for an image on the web.

You do realize Raph that the history of the WWW has been to move towards clients that render as similarly as possible, down to the last pixel, and that any differences between clients do nothing other than serve as a giant fucking pain in the ass?

I will never understand this. This is exactly the same mistakes the people at the W3C keep making, over and over again, never ever learning. Nobody wants a fucking "select" tag that can be a comboBox, a listBox or a radioButton, they want to design a page and know it will look EXACTLY THE SAME on every client.

You're just asking for giant compatibility problems and trying to turn making a game from something fun into something ass.

Your *job* is to write ONE FUCKING CLIENT that works perfectly that everyone can use, not to have 10 random disphits write 10 different shitty clients that now I have to code for.

NOBODY WANTS DIFFERENT CLIENTS THAT RENDER DIFFERENTLY. They don't want it in HTML and they sure as hell don't want it in a gaming platform. Why in hell would you purposely introduce compatibility issues into a standard platform?

Testing and eliminating compatibility problems is not fun. Trust me, I've spent the last fucking month on my job working around IE6 javascript and HTML DOM issues.

I agree... Doesn't sound like it would fun to code for...or..look even remotely stable after coding for..oh..2000000000000.1 possible clients.

I am still waiting for all web browsers to be code onces...not code onc... except for IE then do crap unless its ...you get the idea.. Its a pain.

Technically, Furcadia has a one up on you now.

I mean, so i make a game, how do i document it? In your example..i cant make a document for the user that says "Look at your avatar image" Because it may not even be there.

[BigBlack]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you'll have the option to restrict which clients can connect to your virtual world if you want.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you'll have the option to restrict which clients can connect to your virtual world if you want.

That could help. I also hope there will be a standard client, for reading that is, if all logic is in the markup (as it seems to be).

[Raph]

Of course we have our reference client.

But it's kind of silly to expect something to render the same on a phone as on a 3d video card. :P At least, not yet.

[Kaa]

But it's kind of silly to expect something to render the same on a phone as on a 3d video card.

It's also kind of silly to design a virtual world that will be as usable from a mobile phone as it would be from a full-blown gaming rig.

Theoretically, yes, it's looks attractive to have a rendering-neutral protocol and be client-agnostic. In practice this doesn't work so well. I suspect the effective outcome will be the pairing of specific virtual worlds with specific clients, and if you don't use the recommended client all bets are off. This could lead to rather ugly balkanization unless a dominant client emerges early.

Kaa

[Yegolev]

Balkanization is a good word.  I figure in the end we will have most things using general clients or the reference client, with Fancy Things using Fancy Clients.  Like how the spell-checker and tag-adder on f13.net uses some Java thing that doesn't work on my corporate laptop.  Sunrise, sunset.

[Mrbloodworth]

Of course we have our reference client.

But it's kind of silly to expect something to render the same on a phone as on a 3d video card. :P At least, not yet.

Sorry, i suppose i meant to imply for the same devices. As in, just PC ,just phones.

I'm a standards kinda guy.

Then again Why can't your client do this raph? You (it) were (is) the chosen one.