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Jan 5, 2001, 2:02pm

http://www.botbarn.net/docs/display.asp?ID=letter01

(I'm not going to post it here, but I'll discuss parts of it if someone asks)

- Agent1

Jan 5, 2001, 2:26pm

Ok before you flame back, note this: I dont know for
sure, this is what I have heard and what I am guessing.

As far as I Know, awcom only has like 3 actual programmers.

As for how much money they make, you have to think of company costs:
Building rent,
Employees (pay)
(their own Pay)
advertising
legal

etc etc...

Plus the programmers not only doing R&D and programming for the next
builds, but they also have to adjust the builds to accomedate the 1000's
of users without 3.1 compatability. Alll this takes time.

I am not making excuses for them. just kind of look at the reality of
the situation, it aint cheap to just run a compay these days.
There are alot of things I want to see move faster and come better out
of AW, but progression takes time, and I am sure they program at
priority and
also on the wishlist, what they can accomedate as programmers and what
is beneficial to ALL AW users.

If someone could do better, why havent they?


Z!

[View Quote] > http://www.botbarn.net/docs/display.asp?ID=letter01
>
> (I'm not going to post it here, but I'll discuss parts of it if someone asks)
>
> - Agent1
>
>

--
Chris Waddell
dmonix at home.com
www.dmonix.net

Jan 5, 2001, 3:43pm

Yes, it does cost a lot of money to run a company, especially one as
"in-depth" as COF, what with server costs, paychecks, and the like. The
problem is where they're trying to get that money from. Instead of
trying to build a solid customer base (by listening to users' concerns
and thereby giving more people incentive to join) which they can use as
leverage in forming partnerships with other companies, they decide to
skip straight to the partnership part.

In fact, it's my hypothesis that we aren't COF's customers at all. COF's
*true* customers are the companies they peddle to. (e.g. NASA, Juno,
etc) My guess is they just see us (and, by extension, the entire
ActiveWorlds Universe) as a "test run". They release a new version of
AW, test it out in their Universe and on the people who "live" there,
and if it doesn't cause any major problems, then they try to market it
to whoever wants to give it a shot. (This, I suspect, is why JP felt he
could toss a weather bot in AW Prime and no one would notice)

Unfortunately, it is this philosophy that has caused them to run the
company into the ground. With the stock hovering around $.75 as of this
writing, and profits being lost left and right, Rick and JP are going to
have to wake up to the realization that there's more to life than just
corporate sponsorships and checks with a lot of zeros, otherwise you can
all kiss this community of ours, as well as all the other ones dependent
upon AW technology, (i.e. Outerworlds, Vectorscape, City4All, etc)
good-bye.

As for the wishlist NG, my guess is that they put it there in case they
were ever strapped for ideas. If their "creative well" ever runs dry,
they just skim through the wishlist group and say "Do you think those
companies could use this feature?" "Sure, sounds like an idea. Toss it
in."

[View Quote] --
Goober King
Ask not for whom the bell tolls... it tolls for COF...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

Jan 5, 2001, 5:52pm

[View Quote] lack of time, probably. Or maybe they are already busy...

Rolu

Jan 5, 2001, 7:59pm

I was told the only have 2 programmers.. HamFon and Roland.. but I prolly
mistaken.. Builderz would know.. he has been here since 95..

Jan 5, 2001, 8:10pm

I think Shamus is programming now. I'm not sure, though.

[View Quote]

Jan 6, 2001, 12:00am

I concur with you, Lanezeri. To my knowledge, HamFon and Roland are the
only two "main" programmers working for Activeworlds.com, Inc.

-Builderz

[View Quote]

Jan 6, 2001, 4:55am

Rest assured, interactive, real-time, multiuser level editing IS coming to 3D games. 10six, Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, Neverwinter Nights, Dawn, etc. AW is increasingly losing whatever market share it might've had had Rick, JP, and Roland actually had a clue about 3D gaming and where it's been going for the past 5 years.

[View Quote] [View Quote]

Jan 6, 2001, 6:00am

Man, i know of a huge proposal that is line right now, soon to probably
hit aw, that could change the face of all this.
and I aint talkin outa my butt.
Serious, we'll see what happens soon enough.
Thats all I'll say, leave it at that

Z!

[View Quote] > Rest assured, interactive, real-time, multiuser level editing IS coming to 3D games. 10six, Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, Neverwinter Nights, Dawn, etc. AW is increasingly losing whatever market share it might've had had Rick, JP, and Roland actually had a clue about 3D gaming and where it's been going for the past 5 years.
>
[View Quote] --
Chris Waddell
dmonix at home.com
www.dmonix.net

Jan 6, 2001, 5:34pm

That's just the beginning. We're just starting to see games appearing that
use etremely impressive new technological innovations, like NWN's 'build a
D&D campaign to play online' thing. Granted, that still uses an external
level editor and most-likely does some sort of compiling (of course, I don't
know for sure - and if it doesn't I'll be impressed). Regardless, if you
look around these days, you'll see games with extremely impressive
graphics - and that's just the beginning. Take Hitman's IK engine. It's got
bugs, but the dyanmic skeletal physics are impressive.

I'm afraid it's much too late for Worlds, Inc's little test project, though.
The rewrites required to bring AW up to par as far as performance and ease
of use would be incredible. At this point, more gains would be made by
beginning the project anew - with a new set of programmers, and a completely
new organization. The bulk of AW code is most-likely a horrid mess these
days.

Not to mention that the future of such a project, especially if you want to
bring in things like 'dynamic vis' (portal rendering, etc.) will not come
from software based on the referencing of premade RWX-format objects. It
cannot be done - at least not effectively. For any sort of true
interractivity, as well as the dynamic implementation of a vis system and a
full lighting/shadow system (..um... even this has to be saved a bit for
higher end systems; a true all-geometry shadow system would be intensive),
the editor of the geometry itself needs to be IN THE SOFTWARE. Eep, I've
heard you talk about putting object editing functions into the client, and
that's a good idea. But it is still not going to cut it, IMO. The server
needs to store the geometry, not just which objects are at what coords. It
needs to store the actual geometry of the whole world in a database. Why,
you ask? Because once the server and the client know the geometry, two
things can happen: 1) Editing is COMPLETELY unlimited, since you're BUILDING
THE GEOMETRY. 2) Since there's an easily-available database of geometry on
not just the server, but also the client, you can EASILY implement dynamic
vis, dynamic shadowing, COMPLETELY DYNAMIC GEOMETRY (as seen in Red Faction
[ http://www.redfaction.com/ ]), and ... well, at this point the
posibilities become very impressive (aside: once the client has the ability
to build and modify geometry on the fly, we enter new territory. At this
point, it's very plausible to implement kinetic physics engines, dynamic
(not by building interraction, more along the lines of destroyable) terrain,
etc. Treat the ground, if there is any, like solid mass, and give builders
(or players?) the ability to remove chunks of it by editing (or
destroying?). It's still in our best interest to section off pieces of
geometry, much like the "brushes" in Quake-based level editors, as there
still needs to be some sort of concept of an object for the application of
actions and so forth (movement for doors, etc. etc.). I would also recommend
the ability to import 3D models from certain formats (3ds, etc.) into the
geometry. Basically, this would rip the geometry of the object and throw it
into your world, wherever you specify. Texturing would most-likely be
handled in some manner to be determined by the (obviously skilled, if they
already built the rest) programmers, and a little trial and error. A more
user-friendly version of the texturing seen in quake-style editors would be
a good place to begin, unless one actually wishes to set the UV coords of
each vertex by hand (granted, not as difficult a task while you're looking
at the geometry and editing it). Build your rendering engine from scratch,
and use OpenGL. Direct3D is the easy way out - so you can support it too.
But concentrate on OpenGL, you'll be glad you did when the performance
improvements show themselves.

You see, this is how modern games generally get to such excellent
performance. The compiling process usually involves writing the geometry
into an easily-readable database, as well as performing lighting
calculations and vis calculations. These days, though, compiling would not
be required, as the needed information about geometry could be written on
the fly, and an acceptable completely dynamic vis engine could be written.
It can't happen in the current system, where the client is told by the
server where certain objects should be, the client downloads the object, and
then renders it. At least, not efficiently.

Here's the kicker ::leans in:: Remember Quake modding? Sure you do. Every
new game that knows what it's doing allows you to recode the game rules. So
you want the option for gaming? Just put in a simple mod-scripting system.
World owners can leave it alone (no game whatsoever - just a regular
building/exploring world, like we see in AW these days), or they can modify
the rules of the world (how much gravity? how much friction? how fast do
people run? can they jump? how high? can they fly? how fast? you get the
idea), OR they can write in rules for gaming (inventory? Weapons? What kinds
of weapons? Can you destroy geometry? Use IK? HUD info? NPCs? Entities?
(that's a critical one... if you want to make up your own actions (aside
from the defaults, such as opening websites, making things move, etc) for
'objects' (brushes) in the world, you have to code these actions, then link
the brushes to entities). etc.). It's probably a good idea to have a
module-based mod system. This way, people can download modules (such as an
inventory module, or something) and plop it right in. Tribes used a module
system for mods. It also is probably the best idea to leave this as an
uncompiled scripting language, just like in Tribes.

There. There's your future-product. It does everything all at once. You can
edit the geometry, you can recode the world so that it can by anything from
a simple public building world to a racing game, it will run fast, and you
build the world and drive the car (or kill terrorists, whatever your things
is) using exactly the same software. You'll never have to buy another game
again. Quite frankly, I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon.
Why's that? Simple. The people with enough resources to make it don't have
the vision. You have to remember that most (okay, not all) game companies
are as short-sighted as AWCI, they simply have more resources. Those with
the vision don't have the resources. Not in any way. And the companies with
the resources, but no vision? They're quite happy without vision, thank you
very much.

If I ever get tired of quantum physics and biochemistry, that's going to be
my project. ::points:: Who's with me? ::chuckle::
--
35850

[View Quote]

Jan 6, 2001, 11:42pm

It's not really correct to call the Aurora Toolset in Neverwinter
Nights a "level editor", because level editors require all the
programming & graphics skills of an experienced game professional
(oftentimes they are the same computing tools used by the game's
original designers). NWN's Toolset is specially crafted for ordinary
world-builders: you "paint down" objects & tiles, and "wizards" turn
your ideas into scripts--just like there's a big difference between
designing avatars & objects versus us ordinary citizens just plunking
down objects & making bot-patrol scripts by walking through the path
while a bot-wizard watches.

Yes, NWN's world-modules will be compiled, & the geometry will run on
the client. Because, unlike AW, there are lots of scripted characters &
events going on all the time. The server is not just taking care of a
modular database; it is also updating the state of all those characters
(& movable items) in all the parts of your world, & communicating all
those facts to all the client computers. Till bandwidth gets broader &
home computers get bigger, that's how it's going to be for awhile, as
you say. Because NWN is going to let ordinary folks with ordinary
computers run their worlds for others to visit over the net, like AW
(except the NWN world-servers will be for free). Most "level-editors"
compile world-modules -- but you have to download the entire compiled
module-program from a webpage, which is both inconvenient & risky. By
putting the same geometry & AI & objects in all the clients, NWN avoids
risk, is as convenient as browsing the Net, & puts ordinary people in
charge, not talented hackers & massive entertainment companies.



[View Quote] > That's just the beginning. We're just starting to see games appearing that
> use etremely impressive new technological innovations, like NWN's 'build a
> D&D campaign to play online' thing. Granted, that still uses an external
> level editor and most-likely does some sort of compiling (of course, I don't
> know for sure - and if it doesn't I'll be impressed). Regardless, if you
> look around these days, you'll see games with extremely impressive
> graphics - and that's just the beginning.

You are by no means limited to Dungeons & Dragons campaigns when using
the NWN toolset to design a world of your own. Bioware just wants to
make possible all the character races & types from a fantastic setting,
and all the combat moves & avatar costumes of a medieval environment. If
you want to go beyond using the toolset at the simple "paint" & "tell
script-wizard" level, you have access to all the objects, triggers,
events, weather systems, lighting effects, character traits, quest
outlines, personality quirks, etc. at the detail level, too, so you
could for instance have a game that is nonviolent, favors conversation &
love over monster-encounters & gore, & takes place in a forested, hilly
world of your own imagination.
....................

> the dynamic implementation of a vis system and a
> full lighting/shadow system (..um... even this has to be saved a bit for
> higher end systems; a true all-geometry shadow system would be intensive),
> the editor of the geometry itself needs to be IN THE SOFTWARE.

Neverwinter Nights has amazing lighting and shadow effects: check out
the screenshots at http://www.neverwinternights.com.

............................

> Treat the ground, if there is any, like solid mass, and give builders
> (or players?) the ability to remove chunks of it by editing (or
> destroying?).

A number of 2001's games are aiming to allow players to remove chunks of
ground or add new terrain while playing the game online. Or to build or
destroy objects in the world while playing online. The most promising
seems to be Atriarch, a science-fiction world in which player-builders
choose to play any of several alien races. (See
http://www.atriarch.com.) The price we pay for having shared online
world-construction privileges sometime in 2001 is to have to stick with
Massive Multiplayer Servers of the type AW has, & to do our online
building along with lots of other builders.

> .................
> new game that knows what it's doing allows you to recode the game rules. So
> you want the option for gaming? Just put in a simple mod-scripting system.
> World owners can leave it alone (no game whatsoever - just a regular
> building/exploring world, like we see in AW these days), or they can modify
> the rules of the world (how much gravity? how much friction? how fast do
> people run? can they jump? how high? can they fly? how fast? you get the
> idea), OR they can write in rules for gaming (inventory? Weapons? What kinds
> of weapons?
> There. There's your future-product. It does everything all at once. You can
> edit the geometry, you can recode the world so that it can by anything from
> a simple public building world to a racing game, it will run fast, and you
> build the world and drive the car (or kill terrorists, whatever your things
> is) using exactly the same software. You'll never have to buy another game
> again. Quite frankly, I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon.

..................

The problem for all of us AW fans is how to make AW secure through
2001! One shrewd thing that AW did, given its shortage of programmers,
was to snare a lot of free programming assistance from the players--I
mean the SDK, & all the bot programs that keep coming out. The best
single thing that AW could do now after 3.1 is to carry out Roland's
plan for "subbots" -- each citizen is still allotted 3 "bots" in a
Universe, but 100's of "subbots" in each World once 1 of the 3 "bots"
checks in there. The "subbots" would be able to do everything the old
bots could do, except log into a universe & world & start up a lot of
local bots. You could have a world with lots of "people" in it & lots of
special effects each managed by its own bot.

The second best thing that AW could do, given that it only has 2 or so
programmers, is to give bot programmers access, through AW, to
Renderware calls. The reason that AW is not exactly comparable to a
game-programming company is that it doesn't write its own "game engine"
-- which is written for it by Renderware (Criterion). It's paying for
the right to innumerable DirectX goodies, but it's using only a small
subset of them now, because it doesn't have enough programmers even to
test plug-in functions for them. It should isolate some of these, & let
its programmer citizens try to make them work. The SDK was a risk, but
it paid off handsomely: all that programming and new options, no
salaries, no pensions, & lots of new ideas for free! If you look at
Renderware's own programs, there are many uptodate effects that could be
used by AW -- that aren't used in AW, & that won't be used in AW anytime
soon: why not let AW citizen-programmers have a direct pipeline to those
effects? Maybe even 35850 will decide to take a break from quantum
biochemistry & do some razzle-dazzle for the rest of us. ;)

Jan 7, 2001, 3:52am

I think if Richard Garriott has a short-enough-term non-compete clause he could
come up with an engine like you (and we all) want. Maybe. He's got the vision
tho, and after all this time he has some expertise about how to make things
happen. As well as a name that can get him funds. And a lotta funds of his own
no doubt. But I think what you really want is pretty extensive and since the
graphix engines and such are evolving so quickly it's a real tricky thing to
code something that extensive because of the moving target situ.

But yah I think the server actually has to have the whole database of objects
used in the world at a *minimum.* That way you enter a world you can build in,
you wanna build something, the server can give you a browse list of models and
let you sort by category, function, etc. etc.. And the client has to keep all
artwork in ONE database so that it can keep track of art from various sources at
once. So let's say, I wanna just use the base artwork except ONE avatar I
made...I say look here for the artwork but if it's not here, just go up the tree
and find it in the standard path...so the client doesnt keep 9000 copies of
WALK10, the downloads arent redundant between servers, everything is way more
efficient. And the server should stream the artwork instead of relying on HTTP,
that is the DUMBEST thing about aw. :)



[View Quote] > That's just the beginning. We're just starting to see games appearing that
> use etremely impressive new technological innovations, like NWN's 'build a
> D&D campaign to play online' thing. Granted, that still uses an external
> level editor and most-likely does some sort of compiling (of course, I don't
> know for sure - and if it doesn't I'll be impressed). Regardless, if you
> look around these days, you'll see games with extremely impressive
> graphics - and that's just the beginning. Take Hitman's IK engine. It's got
> bugs, but the dyanmic skeletal physics are impressive.
>
> I'm afraid it's much too late for Worlds, Inc's little test project, though.
> The rewrites required to bring AW up to par as far as performance and ease
> of use would be incredible. At this point, more gains would be made by
> beginning the project anew - with a new set of programmers, and a completely
> new organization. The bulk of AW code is most-likely a horrid mess these
> days.
>
> Not to mention that the future of such a project, especially if you want to
> bring in things like 'dynamic vis' (portal rendering, etc.) will not come
> from software based on the referencing of premade RWX-format objects. It
> cannot be done - at least not effectively. For any sort of true
> interractivity, as well as the dynamic implementation of a vis system and a
> full lighting/shadow system (..um... even this has to be saved a bit for
> higher end systems; a true all-geometry shadow system would be intensive),
> the editor of the geometry itself needs to be IN THE SOFTWARE. Eep, I've
> heard you talk about putting object editing functions into the client, and
> that's a good idea. But it is still not going to cut it, IMO. The server
> needs to store the geometry, not just which objects are at what coords. It
> needs to store the actual geometry of the whole world in a database. Why,
> you ask? Because once the server and the client know the geometry, two
> things can happen: 1) Editing is COMPLETELY unlimited, since you're BUILDING
> THE GEOMETRY. 2) Since there's an easily-available database of geometry on
> not just the server, but also the client, you can EASILY implement dynamic
> vis, dynamic shadowing, COMPLETELY DYNAMIC GEOMETRY (as seen in Red Faction
> [ http://www.redfaction.com/ ]), and ... well, at this point the
> posibilities become very impressive (aside: once the client has the ability
> to build and modify geometry on the fly, we enter new territory. At this
> point, it's very plausible to implement kinetic physics engines, dynamic
> (not by building interraction, more along the lines of destroyable) terrain,
> etc. Treat the ground, if there is any, like solid mass, and give builders
> (or players?) the ability to remove chunks of it by editing (or
> destroying?). It's still in our best interest to section off pieces of
> geometry, much like the "brushes" in Quake-based level editors, as there
> still needs to be some sort of concept of an object for the application of
> actions and so forth (movement for doors, etc. etc.). I would also recommend
> the ability to import 3D models from certain formats (3ds, etc.) into the
> geometry. Basically, this would rip the geometry of the object and throw it
> into your world, wherever you specify. Texturing would most-likely be
> handled in some manner to be determined by the (obviously skilled, if they
> already built the rest) programmers, and a little trial and error. A more
> user-friendly version of the texturing seen in quake-style editors would be
> a good place to begin, unless one actually wishes to set the UV coords of
> each vertex by hand (granted, not as difficult a task while you're looking
> at the geometry and editing it). Build your rendering engine from scratch,
> and use OpenGL. Direct3D is the easy way out - so you can support it too.
> But concentrate on OpenGL, you'll be glad you did when the performance
> improvements show themselves.
>
> You see, this is how modern games generally get to such excellent
> performance. The compiling process usually involves writing the geometry
> into an easily-readable database, as well as performing lighting
> calculations and vis calculations. These days, though, compiling would not
> be required, as the needed information about geometry could be written on
> the fly, and an acceptable completely dynamic vis engine could be written.
> It can't happen in the current system, where the client is told by the
> server where certain objects should be, the client downloads the object, and
> then renders it. At least, not efficiently.
>
> Here's the kicker ::leans in:: Remember Quake modding? Sure you do. Every
> new game that knows what it's doing allows you to recode the game rules. So
> you want the option for gaming? Just put in a simple mod-scripting system.
> World owners can leave it alone (no game whatsoever - just a regular
> building/exploring world, like we see in AW these days), or they can modify
> the rules of the world (how much gravity? how much friction? how fast do
> people run? can they jump? how high? can they fly? how fast? you get the
> idea), OR they can write in rules for gaming (inventory? Weapons? What kinds
> of weapons? Can you destroy geometry? Use IK? HUD info? NPCs? Entities?
> (that's a critical one... if you want to make up your own actions (aside
> from the defaults, such as opening websites, making things move, etc) for
> 'objects' (brushes) in the world, you have to code these actions, then link
> the brushes to entities). etc.). It's probably a good idea to have a
> module-based mod system. This way, people can download modules (such as an
> inventory module, or something) and plop it right in. Tribes used a module
> system for mods. It also is probably the best idea to leave this as an
> uncompiled scripting language, just like in Tribes.
>
> There. There's your future-product. It does everything all at once. You can
> edit the geometry, you can recode the world so that it can by anything from
> a simple public building world to a racing game, it will run fast, and you
> build the world and drive the car (or kill terrorists, whatever your things
> is) using exactly the same software. You'll never have to buy another game
> again. Quite frankly, I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon.
> Why's that? Simple. The people with enough resources to make it don't have
> the vision. You have to remember that most (okay, not all) game companies
> are as short-sighted as AWCI, they simply have more resources. Those with
> the vision don't have the resources. Not in any way. And the companies with
> the resources, but no vision? They're quite happy without vision, thank you
> very much.
>
> If I ever get tired of quantum physics and biochemistry, that's going to be
> my project. ::points:: Who's with me? ::chuckle::
> --
> 35850
>
[View Quote]

Jan 7, 2001, 3:11pm

Quite true. Similar effects could be reached simply by giving the world
server all the information about every object... which could in turn be sent
to the client... which would be able to put that information to good use as
far as vision detection and the like. Still, I think a critical feature
involves the dynamic modification of geometry. Building an effective
geometry editor (in the style of 3D Studio MAX, one of the worst hackjobs
ever) isn't that difficult.

IMO, the dumbest thing about AW is the inefficient way it loads objects into
view (and has been since the first versions). Another good reason to convert
to a geo database instead of an object database... no horrible popup. Of
course, I've always been more concerned with problems I could see. =)

[View Quote]

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