Raph is no longer taunting us (Metaplace)

[Ixxit]

Heh thanks for clearing that up (you too Hutch).

I agree, it's much to early to really come to any conclusions.  There is a lot of high level talk about metaplace which is generating both interest and scepticism, because all we have seen so far is that video of Raph's presentation that shows  an isometric room chat room put together with a few clicks of a mouse. On a certain level, I can appreciate the coolness of that, but as a consumer of technology and a gamer  it's hard to get excited until we can see something on a greater scale, and at least for me in full 3d.

Your point about Metaplace being similar to various click together game makers is interesting and I agree completely .  While these systems have their niche markets the stuff that is created by them is pretty much enjoyed only in that niche because of the limitations of the software, and the sameness of the end result.  If you move up to the next level with game centered rapid development tools like Dark Basic Pro, Blitz Basic or Game Studio the most important things you mention, time and talent, come into play.  Again you have small communities  that generate  content that is shared only  among that niche. Even the really creative and professional looking stuff.

When I read  the stuff on Metaplace's front page or Blog, I keep seeing the words "easy" and "a few clicks", which to me means "limited" and "cookie cutter" as well as statements about users creating their own 2d and 3d clients, systems etc which is the exact opposite of easy and a few clicks.   I really hate being sceptical and I really appreciate that Raph takes time to posts here but I really have trouble seeing how this will ultimately appeal to anything other than a small but rabidly loyal niche.

Darniaq, I followed the Active Worlds Facebook link and tried it out, and it looked exactly like it did years ago when it first came out. Cool technology yes, but ultimately unimpressive when compared to the 3d worlds we see in games and other kinds of media today.

[Samwise]

I agree with the first part, but not the second. The only way "Tools" can help make better games is if you limit the types of games that can be created into categorical Wizard-driven creation experiences.

No.  Absolutely no.  Compilers are tools.  How many of the games released in the past decade would have been made if the developers had had to hack them out in machine code? 

[Venkman]

Sorry, my definition of "tools" was all on the end-user side. I'm not a tech. Think of my use of "Tools" being the difference between C++ and Flash

[Samwise]

Some people will probably never be able to make a good game no matter how good the tools are.  I won't argue that.   

However, there are many people who are not currently making good games who COULD make good games if they had good tools.  The lower the barrier to entry is, the more people can get over it and get their game made.  Lowering the barrier to entry does not necessarily limit the types of games that can be made.

Again, C++ compiler vs. assembler.  In theory, anything you can do with C++ you can do in the assembler, and vice versa.  No difference in flexibility.  But C++ is way easier to use for most stuff -- you have to write less code to get the same result.

So, what I'm saying is SL is like the assembler.  In theory you can do almost anything with it, but in reality it's such a pain in the ass to use that very little of what's been done is worthwhile.  The barrier to entry is so high that most people who might otherwise do cool things with it get stymied by it and either produce something half-assed or give up.  This is what you were saying about will, time, and talent.  The amount of time and talent needed just to deal with the tools is too high for most people.  Much like assembly programming.

Now, if you can make the tools easier to use without losing any flexibility (again, C++ and assembler -- equal flexibility, but one is much easier to use), you can lower the time and talent requirements, without in any way hampering what can be made.  This means that some subset of the people who were unable/unwilling to implement their really cool idea with the clunky tools can now implement them. That's all I'm saying.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether Meatplace in fact accomplishes the goal of being a better game creation tool than SL or Facebookworld or whatever.  But I don't see any reason to think that the goal is inherently impossible.

(edit) To provide a bit of my personal perspective on this whole thing: I've got a couple of ideas for web-based games that I've been on the verge of doing something about for a while now.  The things that have been keeping me from getting my games made, apart from the usual apathy, are a combination of the initial investment required (buying a copy of the Flash tools, getting server hosting, crap like that) and the prospect of having to reinvent a bunch of wheels that I know everyone else who's ever made these types of games has already done to death.  Once I got past all that crap I could have fun making my games, but I don't have enough motivation to make it to that point; it's like grinding through 50 levels of dreck before getting to the endgame you want to play.  It's just not worth it.  Now, if Areae says they can twink me up to level 50 and put me right in the fun part, well, that puts a whole different spin on the thing, doesn't it?

[Samwise]

Couple of recent blog posts on modules and event system scripting.

So far no big surprises.  I'd like to see some more complex examples, but I guess those come with the tools.

[schild]

Wake me up when there's a shockwave presentation of someone making a simplistic game like Breakout or WoW.

[Samwise]

[Yegolev]

Har, wake ME when I actually can get the tools underneath my grubby typing finger.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Har, wake ME when I actually can get the tools underneath my grubby typing finger.

Ditto on that.  Color me interested in trying it out, but not interested in participating in the pre-alpha hype without having my own grubby paws on it to see what it's about.  Until I can touch it, it's just empty promises as far as I'm concerned.

[Venkman]

Har, wake me when any of the in-the-wings armchair designers who've complained about tool complexity for decades actually produces anything above eye-bleeding half-complete shit they couldn't finish because of their raid schedule.

I'm interested in what tools Metaplace can provide ad agencies and budding developers only.

[naum]

I confess I am^H^H will be excited when the tools are available for public consumption. Little blog posts about "oh look at this nifty game dev capability" is keen and all, but completely out of context, when you're not even sure what that context could be…

[SnakeCharmer]

I think I've seen Darniaq use the word 'shit' more times in the last week than I have in 2 years of reading his posts here....

'Sup, D?  Don't tell me you're falling to the angst side, are you? 

[Venkman]

Prescription ran out ;)

It was the week. "Insane" would imply it was measurable.

It is also in reaction to the same discussions we've had for years where merely the label has changed. For example, remove all the tech discussion from this thread and it would be 2002 when NWN was going to make irrelevant all MMOGs. Society did not suddenly spawn a double-digit percentage more of people who a) know what they're doing; and, b) have the free time to do it.

[DarkSign]

Let me know if an "evil management lawyer" spot opens up.  I've been working for the good guys all my career, but could be tempted to abandon my leftist principles and switch to anti-employee law for the chance to have live throwdowns over lunch (and enough $$, of course) 

Hey....that's my job. You can't have it! **calls evil 2L intern** "Write a memo on how we can destroy his career by lunchtime"

[TripleDES]

So, what I'm saying is SL is like the assembler.  In theory you can do almost anything with it, but in reality it's such a pain in the ass to use that very little of what's been done is worthwhile.  The barrier to entry is so high that most people who might otherwise do cool things with it get stymied by it and either produce something half-assed or give up.  This is what you were saying about will, time, and talent.  The amount of time and talent needed just to deal with the tools is too high for most people.  Much like assembly programming.

If by SL you mean SecondLife, then I have to say that SecondLife's model editor and scripting language is about as simple as it can get if you still want anything remotely like flexibility in creating dynamic items. Dumbing down the scripting language results in an inflexible and unwieldy mess.

Easy to use "scripting" is kind of like graphical programming. The analogy fits, because it's pretty similar, trying to achieve something by wiring up some simple building blocks. It's just a load of crap.

[Soln]

I like Raph.  But seriously.  Everyone read Sam's posts again.  Meatplace is very very very far from primetime.  People investing in it now are the Beards of Tomorrow.  And hats off to them.  But seriously.  It won't have mass appeal until the Neo-Beards have hacked out enough of the libraries the plug-and-fug-scriptkiddies need to make their dreams.

{Edit} and yeah, that wasn't insightful, but I'm catching up. 

[Samwise]

Necro so I can answer my own question:

What about version control?  Will Metaplace have built-in versioning for all the pieces of Metascript/Lua that make up a game?  If not, how hard would it be to "sync" it all down to a local PC?  Is it possible to run a Metaplace "server" locally so you can do development on your machine (with proper versioning and all that) and upload it when it's done?

I ask because I was just picturing using the web-based tools to make a game and realized that I couldn't see any obvious place to stick my own version control system in there.  And the idea of working on any project that takes more than a day to complete without decent version control for the whole thing scares the bajeezus out of me, especially if you have multiple people collaborating on one project.

Q.  Is there a way I can work on my game without making changes in realtime for the people who might be playing it?

Not just yet, but that has rapidly become one of our most requested features.  We have intentions to implement a full version control system that will allow script editing without impacting anyone currently logged into your world.  Details on that to come.

I'm frankly surprised that this wasn't one of the first things they implemented, but it's good to know it's being looked at.   

[Yegolev]

I also am surprised that this is a requested feature.

[Raph]

Can't win, it's mandatory and surprising... 

BTW, dev chat happening on Thursday afternoon. Get the latest Flash player (115). It'll be there at www.metaplace.com.

[sidereal]

Subversion + WebSVN + a little sugar to autocreate repositories and manage permissions.  Manage dev and live branches behind the scenes and support rolling by updating the live branch.  Without something like this you're going to be steamrolled by complaints from people who screw up the scripts they spent months perfecting.

[DarkSign]

What time?

[Samwise]

Subversion + WebSVN + a little sugar to autocreate repositories and manage permissions.  Manage dev and live branches behind the scenes and support rolling by updating the live branch.  Without something like this you're going to be steamrolled by complaints from people who screw up the scripts they spent months perfecting.

Give me cherry-picking or give me death.  Although theoretically the next release of SVN will have that.

[sidereal]

What time?

We're excited to announce that we will be having our first public Metaplace Developer Chat on Thursday, January 31st at 5:00pm Pacific Standard Time

Also, why am I not in the alpha?!  My idea for a Animal Crossing meets Mech Combat game is delicious!

[Raph]

Sorry about that, I see the time is already posted now though.

We have been gathering questions for over a week here:

http://forums.metaplace.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=847

[Margalis]

It would be far better to just let people develop locally. They can run whatever version control they want, work offline, etc.

[Raph]

Developing locally in an MMO environment (and specifically in MP's case) means having a server, web server, persistence database, and a bunch of web APIs on your machine. That isn't something we are ready to just hand out to folks, and would be a pain in the ass to set up for most everyone to boot.

That said, the whole system is set up to be distributed, so those pieces do not necessarily all have to be in the same place. We're working on version control too.

[HaemishM]

Can you have a free test server with your live server, work on that and let all the people who want to be on a less populated server come over and fuck up the community on your live server? That'd be awesome.

[Margalis]

A test server is another approach.

Allowing people to only make changes to their live apps is a non-starter. That would make it literally impossible to make anything other than minor changes to a large live application.

[Raph]

Didn't see any of you at the chat. Oh well, you missed your first chance to actually use MP. ;)

[Obo]

I was there. Trying to break stuff...

[Cheddar]

Didn't see any of you at the chat. Oh well, you missed your first chance to actually use MP. ;)

Myspace is soooo 2004.

[Venkman]

So is WoW And yet you say "MMO" to anyone that isn't a veteran of the genre and they immediately think "WoW".

Same with "social community site".

[Signe]

I actually meant to go and completely forgot about it.  I even sent myself a note. 

[Waldo]

Way too much hype around this product.  Way too much market talk   Every interview is the same old spin.  Raph's talks are wonderful to hear (I love hearing him present), but his hype about the new thing is not being backed up by the goods as of yet.  I'm sure it will happen, but it hasn't yet.

Not to mention it's the dumbest company name ever - no idea how to pronounce or spell it.  I tried typing in my best guess in Google and it didn't come up close.   Tie that in with people typing "meatspace" instead of "Metaspace" plus i'm sure Raph gets called "Ralph" a thousand times a year.  What's with this guy and spelling, eh? :^)

[Raph]

...hype about the new thing is not being backed up by the goods as of yet.  I'm sure it will happen, but it hasn't yet.

Well, I certainly appreciate healthy skepticism. :) And we do think there's been too much press at this point. We just don't have much more new stuff to talk about, since we've been pretty open about everything all along.

That said, we did the chat using Metaplace itself, and showed quite a lot of the things that we have talked about, including web integration, etc. There's lots of summaries on the Net now of the chat. So some of "the goods" were on display, anyway, if not yet actually for sale. :)

Obo, what did you think of what you saw?