Hello.  I'm a long-time Empire Deluxe player.  I've been playing
Empire ever since I picked up a copy of the text-only version while
working at Steve Jackson Games many years ago.  (One night Steve and I
stayed up all night long playing Empire . . .  me upstairs and him
downstairs on the fast computer.  I finally left at 9am and he was
still conquering away!)  I didn't even hear about the 2nd Edition
until after Empire Deluxe came out and I read about it in the strategy
guide, and I picked up ED as soon as it came out.
    I haven't played for a couple of years now, but just yesterday I
fired it up again to play a small game, and now I'm looking to give a
multiplayer game a try.  Anyone currently have an opening that needs
filling?

    Over the years I've used the scenario editor to create a few new
maps and scenarios.  I'll upload one or all of them soon.  :^)

Pfc. Dave Seagraves   dseagraves@...   1 (512) 835-7527
Scout-Sniper (19D), 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division, TMHS

Thank you, yes I think that would be fun, a game with more players,
letīs
do it, but we also will continue with our play ?!!

rtyo348985@... schrieb:

> I am always looking for a game. Either 1 on 1 or multi. I am currently
> playing a couple other games. I could ask if they are interested. Let
> me know.
>

> Yes I'll give it a try.  Let me know when you are ready.

    I'm ready.  I would prefer a multiplayer game over a one-on-one,
the more the merrier.  Otherwise anything goes.
    I'm also willing to step into an existing game if a player needs to
drop out.
    I just got on ICQ: 133993068.

Pfc. Dave Seagraves   dseagraves@...   1 (512) 835-7527
Scout-Sniper (19D), 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division, TMHS

It seems to me that if you are responding to a game posting you
should not reply to the group.  Instead, take the time to change the
TO: field to be the the person who posted.  If you keep the messages
down so that they are of general interest, it is easier to tolerate
the fact that we cannot get rid of the ads.

I created at database at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/empire-deluxe/database
for people who are actively seeking a game a place to find others who
are actively seeking games.  The database has 14 people in it.  There
is a field so that you can tell how long ago they added themselves.
I have not received any junk mail because of being in that database.

Arne


--- In empire-deluxe@y..., "Dave Seagraves" <dseagraves@a...> wrote:
>    Hello.  I'm a long-time Empire Deluxe player.
<snip>

Thanks for the info, Arne.  That was my next question: "Is there a
mechanism already in place to locate players?"  I've added my personal
info to the database.

Pfc. Dave Seagraves   dseagraves@...   1 (512) 835-7527
Scout-Sniper (19D), 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division, TMHS



>It seems to me that if you are responding to a game posting you
>should not reply to the group.  Instead, take the time to change
>the TO: field to be the the person who posted.  If you keep the
>messages down so that they are of general interest, it is easier
>to tolerate the fact that we cannot get rid of the ads.
>
>I created at database at
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/empire-deluxe/database
>for people who are actively seeking a game a place to find others
>who are actively seeking games.  The database has 14 people in
>it.  There is a field so that you can tell how long ago they
>added themselves.  I have not received any junk mail because
>of being in that database.
>
>Arne

My friends and I are working on a project to make an empire style
game that will play within a browser, and allow for huge, massively
multiplayer games.

If you are interested in helping out or have some suggestions email
me at dangime7@... . Thanks.

--- In empire-deluxe@y..., carlfetterman@c... wrote:
> Yes I would be interested in helping out.  Please send me
information on what
> areas you are need assistance.
>
> Carl

Thanks for the reply. Serveral others have repiled by mail. Right now
we are still in an organizing phaze, and how we proceed will has yet
to be determined, but will need anyone with programing knowledge
first, java, perl, flash, shockwave even, then playtesters. We've
setup our own yahoo group for this,
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/onlineempireproject .

i would love to help

If folks are looking for an ED type project to contribute to you might
want to look at gempire.sourceforge.net .  This project has been worked
on off and on for 2-3 years now.
Reinventing the wheel is so tiresome<G>.

I don't know, I'd like to see something that was fun to play.

Rimfire


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason King" <jhking@...>
To: <empire-deluxe@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: [empire-deluxe] Digest Number 168


> If folks are looking for an ED type project to contribute to you might
> want to look at gempire.sourceforge.net .  This project has been worked
> on off and on for 2-3 years now.
> Reinventing the wheel is so tiresome<G>.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

Might I suggest opening a project at sourceforge (www.sourceforge.net)?
This will make it easier to control and add coders...

   Regards,

   Mark Tomlinson
--------------------------------
In the field of observation,
chance favors the prepared mind.

      - Louis Pasteur
<------------Cut Here ------------------>



-----Original Message-----
From: empire-deluxe@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:empire-deluxe@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 10:42 AM
To: empire-deluxe@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [empire-deluxe] Digest Number 168


There are 2 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

       1. Re: Hello Empire players
            From: dangime@...
       2. ed
            From: rtyo348985@...


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1
    Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:47:18 -0000
    From: dangime@...
Subject: Re: Hello Empire players

--- In empire-deluxe@y..., carlfetterman@c... wrote:
> Yes I would be interested in helping out.  Please send me
information on what
> areas you are need assistance.
>
> Carl

Thanks for the reply. Serveral others have repiled by mail. Right now we
are still in an organizing phaze, and how we proceed will has yet to be
determined, but will need anyone with programing knowledge first, java,
perl, flash, shockwave even, then playtesters. We've setup our own yahoo
group for this, http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/onlineempireproject .





________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 2
    Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 06:39:12 EDT
    From: rtyo348985@...
Subject: ed

i would love to help


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________



Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Hm open code? nah........Why leave the door open to the first cheater
who wants to mess with our code and hack the game once we get it
going. That's one of the reason I don't play earth and more, my once
mighty 250 memeber alliance couldnt stand up to 2000 automaticly
controled script bots.



--- In empire-deluxe@y..., "mark tomlinson" <marktoml@h...> wrote:
> Might I suggest opening a project at sourceforge
(www.sourceforge.net)?
> This will make it easier to control and add coders...
>
>   Regards,
>
>   Mark Tomlinson
> --------------------------------
> In the field of observation,
> chance favors the prepared mind.
>
>      - Louis Pasteur
> <------------Cut Here ------------------>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: empire-deluxe@y...
> [mailto:empire-deluxe@y...]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 10:42 AM
> To: empire-deluxe@y...
> Subject: [empire-deluxe] Digest Number 168
>
>
> There are 2 messages in this issue.
>
> Topics in this digest:
>
>       1. Re: Hello Empire players
>            From: dangime@y...
>       2. ed
>            From: rtyo348985@a...
>
>
>
______________________________________________________________________
__
>
______________________________________________________________________
__
>
> Message: 1
>    Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 20:47:18 -0000
>    From: dangime@y...
> Subject: Re: Hello Empire players
>
> --- In empire-deluxe@y..., carlfetterman@c... wrote:
> > Yes I would be interested in helping out.  Please send me
> information on what
> > areas you are need assistance.
> >
> > Carl
>
> Thanks for the reply. Serveral others have repiled by mail. Right
now we
> are still in an organizing phaze, and how we proceed will has yet
to be
> determined, but will need anyone with programing knowledge first,
java,
> perl, flash, shockwave even, then playtesters. We've setup our own
yahoo
> group for this, http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/onlineempireproject .
>
>
>
>
>
>
______________________________________________________________________
__
>
______________________________________________________________________
__
>
> Message: 2
>    Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 06:39:12 EDT
>    From: rtyo348985@a...
> Subject: ed
>
> i would love to help
>
>
>
______________________________________________________________________
__
>
______________________________________________________________________
__
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

--- In empire-deluxe@y..., dangime@y... wrote:
> Hm open code? nah........Why leave the door open to the first
cheater
> who wants to mess with our code and hack the game once we get it
> going. That's one of the reason I don't play earth and more, my
once
> mighty 250 memeber alliance couldnt stand up to 2000 automaticly
> controled script bots.
>
>
>

If that's your only objection to open source, I think I can convince
you of other ways to prevent cheating.

First of all the client-server model already makes cheating pretty
hard, even if the source is open. To cheat, you would have to find a
flaw in the client-server protocol.  To prevent cheating, you can fix
flaws as they are discovered.

With respect to your offered flaw (bots that move quickly), why not
rate limit a given player's piece moves?  Only let someone move 10
pieces per mintue, with each piece limited to two spaces per second?
The server could easily implement that.

Another idea would be to not allow too much jumping around.  That is,
a bot would tend to move pieces all over the board and not focus on
one area at a time like a human player would.  So the server could
track how far apart subsequent piece moves are and impose a minimum
delay of 10 seconds between piece moves that are too far apart.  This
would make a bot move much more slowly than a focused human player.

Do you agree this would kill the advantage bots have?  I'm curious to
hear more about the cheating scenario you are refereing to above.

Also, you will have a hard time attracting many programmers to your
project unless you make it open.  I think your plans are pretty
ambitious and you will be shooting yourself in the foot if you limit
at the outset that number of programmers you can attract.

Chris Mashall

If you think you can stop the cheaters I only I have one more issue
with it. As far as the Cheating issue in Earth2025 I'll explain it.
In earth2025, you're supposed to only control 1 country. Unfortuently
there are ways around this, hotmail accounts, IP masking etc. So
someone comes up with a script and a server which will run 2000
countries, with the same plan, everything day. He keeps these
countries relatively hidden, low key, and seperate of his semi-
legimate alliance. While not fighting he uses the countries to
manipulate the public market, buying up goods at a low price, then
reselling all the goods at a much higher price on the market. Then
when someone ticks off his semi-legimate alliance, he uses the 2000
bots to attack your legimate alliance of only 250, who although
powerful, have no chance at those odds. So in effect, one guy has
runied the game for 250 people, tainted it for all others, and holds
them in fear of the scripted hoards. The game is no longer fun.

Limiting the speed at which the bots move may or may not help. They
have all the time in the world. Once the scripter learns of the
limitations in place, he can work around them. Bots are naturally
more difficult in a map based game, the AI would have to be much more
complex, but who would want 2000 bot players infesting the game with
a program to build transports and infantry and send them flying
everywhere?

However...I really believe this was a failure on the creator's part.
It was blatantly obvious that these countries were cheating, evidense
was brought forward to the Admins, and no action was taken. Now they
are promising to clean up their act, but it has strings attached...A
game like this needs active admins to aren't afriad to put a few (or
alot) of countries to the sword if they even smell like they are
cheating.


Well I have one question about open source then. What is the business
model reguarding this? If the code is open, are the trademarks,
intellectual property, etc also denied any sort of protection from
copyrights etc? I don't plan to charage anyone, but it would suck to
see someone come and rip the game off directly.




--- In empire-deluxe@y..., christopherlmarshall@y... wrote:
> --- In empire-deluxe@y..., dangime@y... wrote:
> > Hm open code? nah........Why leave the door open to the first
> cheater
> > who wants to mess with our code and hack the game once we get it
> > going. That's one of the reason I don't play earth and more, my
> once
> > mighty 250 memeber alliance couldnt stand up to 2000 automaticly
> > controled script bots.
> >
> >
> >
>
> If that's your only objection to open source, I think I can convince
> you of other ways to prevent cheating.
>
> First of all the client-server model already makes cheating pretty
> hard, even if the source is open. To cheat, you would have to find a
> flaw in the client-server protocol.  To prevent cheating, you can
fix
> flaws as they are discovered.
>
> With respect to your offered flaw (bots that move quickly), why not
> rate limit a given player's piece moves?  Only let someone move 10
> pieces per mintue, with each piece limited to two spaces per
second?
> The server could easily implement that.
>
> Another idea would be to not allow too much jumping around.  That
is,
> a bot would tend to move pieces all over the board and not focus on
> one area at a time like a human player would.  So the server could
> track how far apart subsequent piece moves are and impose a minimum
> delay of 10 seconds between piece moves that2 are too far apart.
This
> would make a bot move much more slowly than a focused human player.
>
> Do you agree this would kill the advantage bots have?  I'm curious
to
> hear more about the cheating scenario you are refereing to above.
>
> Also, you will have a hard time attracting many programmers to your
> project unless you make it open.  I think your plans are pretty
> ambitious and you will be shooting yourself in the foot if you limit
> at the outset that number of programmers you can attract.
>
> Chris Mashall

>
> Well I have one question about open source then.
> What is the business
> model reguarding this? If the code is open, are the
> trademarks,
> intellectual property, etc also denied any sort of
> protection from
> copyrights etc? I don't plan to charage anyone, but
> it would suck to
> see someone come and rip the game off directly.
>
>

I haven't thought about the business model but I
suppose now is as good a time as any.

Let's assume you keep the source closed.  How do you
plan to make money on it?

I assume you will sell subscriptions to the massive
online game.  Accounts, in other words.

If you open source all of the tools, or the main game
engine, then you worry that someone else would have an
easy time duplicating what you have.  Fair enough.

Consider Ebay, though.  What makes Ebay Ebay is the
fact that they established a user base before anyone
else did.  If you had the same tools as Ebay, you
couldn't start a competing service because no one
would want to make a bid on a service that only had a
handful of users, when they could make a bid on Ebay
with their immense following.

So I would say your only hope of making money is to
get your service going before anyone else does.  Then
put your effort into being responsive administrators
unlike the earth2025 people were.

If you close your source, you will have a hard time
getting any contributions from anyone except your core
group.  Is your core group really that big and
talented that they can pull it off?  If it is, perhaps
you are better off being closed source.

If it isn't, however, then I don't think you have any
choice but to go open source.  Especially if what your
core group has that few others have is an
understanding of how to administer a game better, and
not necessairly how to code better.  In other words,
what's your value add?

Chris Marshall


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com

>
> I haven't thought about the business model but I
> suppose now is as good a time as any.
>
> Let's assume you keep the source closed.  How do you
> plan to make money on it?
>
> I assume you will sell subscriptions to the massive
> online game.  Accounts, in other words.

No, I really doubt many people would pay for the game. Even if we did
get people to, its been shown that about 1/3 to 1/2 of the players of
these games are under the age of 18 and these people don't have
credit cards, and not to mention, we're no everquest. But there's
this...we aren't distributing MP3s, or streaming video or something
like that, its a game and doesn't hog as much bandwidth in servers so
advertising can be used for revenue, since the audience is targeted,
gamers, etc.


>
> If you open source all of the tools, or the main game
> engine, then you worry that someone else would have an
> easy time duplicating what you have.  Fair enough.
>
> Consider Ebay, though.  What makes Ebay Ebay is the
> fact that they established a user base before anyone
> else did.  If you had the same tools as Ebay, you
> couldn't start a competing service because no one
> would want to make a bid on a service that only had a
> handful of users, when they could make a bid on Ebay
> with their immense following.
>
> So I would say your only hope of making money is to
> get your service going before anyone else does.  Then
> put your effort into being responsive administrators
> unlike the earth2025 people were.
>
> If you close your source, you will have a hard time
> getting any contributions from anyone except your core
> group.  Is your core group really that big and
> talented that they can pull it off?  If it is, perhaps
> you are better off being closed source.
>
> If it isn't, however, then I don't think you have any
> choice but to go open source.  Especially if what your
> core group has that few others have is an
> understanding of how to administer a game better, and
> not necessairly how to code better.  In other words,
> what's your value add?
>
> Chris Marshall
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
> http://personals.yahoo.com


Okay, So what exactly is open? Is it open throughout the whole
project? Is it open afterward? I'm guessing that even if the code was
open, trademarks etc....could not be taken....so no one could claim
to be "us" right? If that's the case I guess it could be ok.....

The only bad thing is someone huge could just come out of the sky and
steal it. You don't think enough people would be interested in a
closed source game, even if it wasn't going to charge people, and be
sort of, a public project?

> Okay, So what exactly is open? Is it open throughout
> the whole
> project? Is it open afterward? I'm guessing that
> even if the code was
> open, trademarks etc....could not be taken....so no
> one could claim
> to be "us" right? If that's the case I guess it
> could be ok.....
>

I am proposing that you make the main game engine
open.

There could be all sorts of other tools that you might
develop to run the service that you could keep closed.

> The only bad thing is someone huge could just come
> out of the sky and
> steal it. You don't think enough people would be
> interested in a
> closed source game, even if it wasn't going to
> charge people, and be
> sort of, a public project?
>

The only bad thing?  What about never finishing the
project for lack of programmer hours?  Is that bad?

Again, if you can line up enough programmer hours to
pull this off in your core group, then you don't need
to open source it, and you might be better off not
doing so. But if the main thing your group is bringing
to the table is not programmer hours, but ideas of
what the game should be like and how to run such a
game, then you won't get anywhere closing the source.
Your project will never get finished.

Interested?  I think people would be interested in
playing a good, closed source game.  I don't think
anyone would be interested in contributing programmer
hours to a closed source game, no matter how good,
unless you paid them.

Another thought about someone coming out of the sky
and stealing it: the knowledge required to put a
complex piece of software to good use, open or not,
isn't necessairly that easy to come by.  Eric Raymond
tells the story of a company that was doing web design
using an in-house product called Zope.  They were
trying to get financing from a venture capitalist and
he advised them to open source their software.  The
company did and did well afterwards.  The reason this
made sense was that the company realized that Zope
required a lot of talent to use effectively and that
by opening it, they were not making it trivial for
competitors to do what they could do with it. Opening
it gave them two benefits: other people started
contributing ideas and programmer hours to it, and the
software itself became a very effective form of
advertising, which landed them more clients, which is
where they were really making their money.

Do you think the good administration of a multi
thousand player game is something you have special
insight into?  If you do, then you might want to place
your bets on THAT being what makes people want to use
your service and not the underlying game engine by
itself.

Chris Marshall

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com

Alright lets do it open source then. Anything I should know before I
do what was orginally suggested and go to sourceforge?

Ok we'll do it open source let's do it.

Sourceforge takes a little getting used to.

You will have to read the docs on the website and get
familiar with a few tools, mainly ssh and cvs.  ssh
stands for "secure shell" and is the way you connect
to your user account there.  cvs, the concurrent
versions system, is the configuration management
system for managing software projects with multiple
developers.

You can get ssh and cvs for windows.  You'll be very
thankful you took the time to learn cvs once you do.
I just started with it a few weeks ago (I still
haven't set up a cvs repositry at sourceforge myself;
I'm still learning about it).

I suggest you start by going to www.cvshome.org and
printing their excellent online manual.

Then download wincvs and start trying commands out.

Then worry about ssh.

Chris M
--- dangime@... wrote:
> Alright lets do it open source then. Anything I
> should know before I
> do what was orginally suggested and go to
> sourceforge?
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
> http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com

SourceForge encourages the use of the GPL (GNU Public License), but they
have several other open source license models they permit. You can check
these all out at:

http://www.osdn.com/history/

for a list of the various OS licenses and their particulars.

Regards,

Mark Tomlinson
------------------------------------
http://www.tomlinson-web.net/

-----Original Message-----
From: empire-deluxe@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:empire-deluxe@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 11:55 AM
To: empire-deluxe@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [empire-deluxe] Digest Number 170

There are 4 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

       1. Re: Digest Number 168
            From: dangime@...
       2. Re: Re: Digest Number 168
            From: Christopher Marshall <christopherlmarshall@...>
       3. Re: Digest Number 168
            From: dangime@...
       4. Re: Re: Digest Number 168
            From: Christopher Marshall <christopherlmarshall@...>


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1
    Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 17:26:21 -0000
    From: dangime@...
Subject: Re: Digest Number 168

If you think you can stop the cheaters I only I have one more issue
with it. As far as the Cheating issue in Earth2025 I'll explain it.
In earth2025, you're supposed to only control 1 country. Unfortuently
there are ways around this, hotmail accounts, IP masking etc. So
someone comes up with a script and a server which will run 2000
countries, with the same plan, everything day. He keeps these
countries relatively hidden, low key, and seperate of his semi-
legimate alliance. While not fighting he uses the countries to
manipulate the public market, buying up goods at a low price, then
reselling all the goods at a much higher price on the market. Then
when someone ticks off his semi-legimate alliance, he uses the 2000
bots to attack your legimate alliance of only 250, who although
powerful, have no chance at those odds. So in effect, one guy has
runied the game for 250 people, tainted it for all others, and holds
them in fear of the scripted hoards. The game is no longer fun.

Limiting the speed at which the bots move may or may not help. They
have all the time in the world. Once the scripter learns of the
limitations in place, he can work around them. Bots are naturally
more difficult in a map based game, the AI would have to be much more
complex, but who would want 2000 bot players infesting the game with
a program to build transports and infantry and send them flying
everywhere?

However...I really believe this was a failure on the creator's part.
It was blatantly obvious that these countries were cheating, evidense
was brought forward to the Admins, and no action was taken. Now they
are promising to clean up their act, but it has strings attached...A
game like this needs active admins to aren't afriad to put a few (or
alot) of countries to the sword if they even smell like they are
cheating.


Well I have one question about open source then. What is the business
model reguarding this? If the code is open, are the trademarks,
intellectual property, etc also denied any sort of protection from
copyrights etc? I don't plan to charage anyone, but it would suck to
see someone come and rip the game off directly.




--- In empire-deluxe@y..., christopherlmarshall@y... wrote:
> --- In empire-deluxe@y..., dangime@y... wrote:
> > Hm open code? nah........Why leave the door open to the first
> cheater
> > who wants to mess with our code and hack the game once we get it
> > going. That's one of the reason I don't play earth and more, my
> once
> > mighty 250 memeber alliance couldnt stand up to 2000 automaticly
> > controled script bots.
> >
> >
> >
>
> If that's your only objection to open source, I think I can convince
> you of other ways to prevent cheating.
>
> First of all the client-server model already makes cheating pretty
> hard, even if the source is open. To cheat, you would have to find a
> flaw in the client-server protocol.  To prevent cheating, you can
fix
> flaws as they are discovered.
>
> With respect to your offered flaw (bots that move quickly), why not
> rate limit a given player's piece moves?  Only let someone move 10
> pieces per mintue, with each piece limited to two spaces per
second?
> The server could easily implement that.
>
> Another idea would be to not allow too much jumping around.  That
is,
> a bot would tend to move pieces all over the board and not focus on
> one area at a time like a human player would.  So the server could
> track how far apart subsequent piece moves are and impose a minimum
> delay of 10 seconds between piece moves that2 are too far apart.
This
> would make a bot move much more slowly than a focused human player.
>
> Do you agree this would kill the advantage bots have?  I'm curious
to
> hear more about the cheating scenario you are refereing to above.
>
> Also, you will have a hard time attracting many programmers to your
> project unless you make it open.  I think your plans are pretty
> ambitious and you will be shooting yourself in the foot if you limit
> at the outset that number of programmers you can attract.
>
> Chris Mashall



________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 2
    Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 11:22:03 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Christopher Marshall <christopherlmarshall@...>
Subject: Re: Re: Digest Number 168

>
> Well I have one question about open source then.
> What is the business
> model reguarding this? If the code is open, are the
> trademarks,
> intellectual property, etc also denied any sort of
> protection from
> copyrights etc? I don't plan to charage anyone, but
> it would suck to
> see someone come and rip the game off directly.
>
>

I haven't thought about the business model but I
suppose now is as good a time as any.

Let's assume you keep the source closed.  How do you
plan to make money on it?

I assume you will sell subscriptions to the massive
online game.  Accounts, in other words.

If you open source all of the tools, or the main game
engine, then you worry that someone else would have an
easy time duplicating what you have.  Fair enough.

Consider Ebay, though.  What makes Ebay Ebay is the
fact that they established a user base before anyone
else did.  If you had the same tools as Ebay, you
couldn't start a competing service because no one
would want to make a bid on a service that only had a
handful of users, when they could make a bid on Ebay
with their immense following.

So I would say your only hope of making money is to
get your service going before anyone else does.  Then
put your effort into being responsive administrators
unlike the earth2025 people were.

If you close your source, you will have a hard time
getting any contributions from anyone except your core
group.  Is your core group really that big and
talented that they can pull it off?  If it is, perhaps
you are better off being closed source.

If it isn't, however, then I don't think you have any
choice but to go open source.  Especially if what your
core group has that few others have is an
understanding of how to administer a game better, and
not necessairly how to code better.  In other words,
what's your value add?

Chris Marshall


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 3
    Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 03:21:51 -0000
    From: dangime@...
Subject: Re: Digest Number 168


>
> I haven't thought about the business model but I
> suppose now is as good a time as any.
>
> Let's assume you keep the source closed.  How do you
> plan to make money on it?
>
> I assume you will sell subscriptions to the massive
> online game.  Accounts, in other words.

No, I really doubt many people would pay for the game. Even if we did
get people to, its been shown that about 1/3 to 1/2 of the players of
these games are under the age of 18 and these people don't have
credit cards, and not to mention, we're no everquest. But there's
this...we aren't distributing MP3s, or streaming video or something
like that, its a game and doesn't hog as much bandwidth in servers so
advertising can be used for revenue, since the audience is targeted,
gamers, etc.


>
> If you open source all of the tools, or the main game
> engine, then you worry that someone else would have an
> easy time duplicating what you have.  Fair enough.
>
> Consider Ebay, though.  What makes Ebay Ebay is the
> fact that they established a user base before anyone
> else did.  If you had the same tools as Ebay, you
> couldn't start a competing service because no one
> would want to make a bid on a service that only had a
> handful of users, when they could make a bid on Ebay
> with their immense following.
>
> So I would say your only hope of making money is to
> get your service going before anyone else does.  Then
> put your effort into being responsive administrators
> unlike the earth2025 people were.
>
> If you close your source, you will have a hard time
> getting any contributions from anyone except your core
> group.  Is your core group really that big and
> talented that they can pull it off?  If it is, perhaps
> you are better off being closed source.
>
> If it isn't, however, then I don't think you have any
> choice but to go open source.  Especially if what your
> core group has that few others have is an
> understanding of how to administer a game better, and
> not necessairly how to code better.  In other words,
> what's your value add?
>
> Chris Marshall
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
> http://personals.yahoo.com


Okay, So what exactly is open? Is it open throughout the whole
project? Is it open afterward? I'm guessing that even if the code was
open, trademarks etc....could not be taken....so no one could claim
to be "us" right? If that's the case I guess it could be ok.....

The only bad thing is someone huge could just come out of the sky and
steal it. You don't think enough people would be interested in a
closed source game, even if it wasn't going to charge people, and be
sort of, a public project?



________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 4
    Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 06:46:31 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Christopher Marshall <christopherlmarshall@...>
Subject: Re: Re: Digest Number 168


> Okay, So what exactly is open? Is it open throughout
> the whole
> project? Is it open afterward? I'm guessing that
> even if the code was
> open, trademarks etc....could not be taken....so no
> one could claim
> to be "us" right? If that's the case I guess it
> could be ok.....
>

I am proposing that you make the main game engine
open.

There could be all sorts of other tools that you might
develop to run the service that you could keep closed.

> The only bad thing is someone huge could just come
> out of the sky and
> steal it. You don't think enough people would be
> interested in a
> closed source game, even if it wasn't going to
> charge people, and be
> sort of, a public project?
>

The only bad thing?  What about never finishing the
project for lack of programmer hours?  Is that bad?

Again, if you can line up enough programmer hours to
pull this off in your core group, then you don't need
to open source it, and you might be better off not
doing so. But if the main thing your group is bringing
to the table is not programmer hours, but ideas of
what the game should be like and how to run such a
game, then you won't get anywhere closing the source.
Your project will never get finished.

Interested?  I think people would be interested in
playing a good, closed source game.  I don't think
anyone would be interested in contributing programmer
hours to a closed source game, no matter how good,
unless you paid them.

Another thought about someone coming out of the sky
and stealing it: the knowledge required to put a
complex piece of software to good use, open or not,
isn't necessairly that easy to come by.  Eric Raymond
tells the story of a company that was doing web design
using an in-house product called Zope.  They were
trying to get financing from a venture capitalist and
he advised them to open source their software.  The
company did and did well afterwards.  The reason this
made sense was that the company realized that Zope
required a lot of talent to use effectively and that
by opening it, they were not making it trivial for
competitors to do what they could do with it. Opening
it gave them two benefits: other people started
contributing ideas and programmer hours to it, and the
software itself became a very effective form of
advertising, which landed them more clients, which is
where they were really making their money.

Do you think the good administration of a multi
thousand player game is something you have special
insight into?  If you do, then you might want to place
your bets on THAT being what makes people want to use
your service and not the underlying game engine by
itself.

Chris Marshall

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________



Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

I take it everyone who tried GEMpire ran into a roadblock of one sort
or another and lost interest.

If anyone would like to share the exact nature of the roadblock, I'd
be much oblidged.

Was it any of these?
	 couldn't handle unzipping the tar.gz file
	 manual was too confusing or not to the point
	 didn't want to download and install java from sun
	 tried the sample commands in the manual and got an error message of
some sort
	 something else

I recently started using CVS, did a cvs import to the sourceforge
page, and feel like I might be going through another burst of
development activity on GEMpire.

Chris Marshall

My problem was my unzip program tells me the file is not in zip format.