‘Shared Worlds’ might be a different thing to different people, but here it’s all about sharing assets, history (I won’t say story) and contributors.

There are some obvious problem with making/creating this ‘shared world’ without thinking; here I list the things that pops out of my mind:

• A lot of effort before anyone use it, if any will — wasted time for all
• Hard for people to contribute to a world that is “non-existent”  no boundaries will lead to an unattractive bloated world
• Willing contributors without a common goal, leads to endless discussion

How can we remedy these problems before they occur?

There are some as easy solutions as there are problems; One is to use a pre-existent world, from let’s say a game that is FOSS and don’t have any connection to a closed/owned world, the bigger the game is the better. A problem here could be current lead manager not agreeing with this idea, to me that hangs on communication. So go out and find one for us!

Another way would be to set out from the real world, and adding some spice to it. Imagine technology advances stooped in the early 1920, Titanic (still a boat) got to its destination, the Eiffel tower got blown away by gnomes who suddenly appeared from below.. (this could go on). But this ‘solution’ only solves the number two problem listed. On the other hand it will solve any legal harassment, depending in what we spice it up with. Any thoughts on this is greatly appreciated!

A way to simply solve the last of my listed problems is to get hold of a strong-willed lead, someone or someones who can hold fast to a vision, pure blood into that, and make other people interested/fascinated. Is there a better way to make all who want to contribute, work toward a similar of not same goal?

Similar project that already are out in the wild got mentioned

They don’t really cut the cake but they are worth research: Biggest and best of the mentions comes first Angels Fall First (AFF) — To me it is Star Wars and Star Trek sans aliens and Hollywood cliché, to bad this is not truly open for us. Second is the Tux world — to me this hardly even makes it to this list as it is somewhat lacking in ingredients, even white the aid of freedroid.

I almost forgot, go post your thoughts on the fgd forum too!

Game developing with m64

m64 aka the inside man, is writing a very interesting blog, he talks at large about most things that is interesting in my opinion.  In this post he talks at large about one very interesting topic “shared worlds”,  and in a way it go along similar lines that I have previously explored. I have long been thinking about why the Open Source Gaming Scene have not come up with anything like Firefox and Open Office. And just like m64 writes it’s about projects aiming at big commercial style games that needs loads of assets from 3D models to music. And with that the painful realization that there are not enough good artists around the FOSS scene.

I also think he have hit the nail on this one too, creating a universe/world that many games can use. The trick here is to make project leaders and developers understand that you can tweak the shared objects individually to archive the glorious ‘unique’-stamp that they all seem to stick too. If you are interested in this please by all mean head over to m64’s blog and read up.

Sindwiller – the space captain or space simulator man, on how to make a (space-sim) game fun.

Another interesting blog that recently surfaced from the FGD-forum is Sindwillers rgame blog, if you want to make a space-sim game that will be fun and not like the other ones already around, I think you better have to read some of what he have to say about these kind of games. Or better up head over to the IRC channel #freegamer at freenode and hit him hard.

Timong – Dev turned composer, money raiser

Here is a real gem, Pal Zoltan Illes (sounds like a composer right?) have released his second jcrpg soundtrack. Which to my ears sounds truly fantastic in a game like jcrpg. If he manage to get the donations in he will even drop the nc part in the creative commons license which will turn this cool soundtrack very free.

Head over and donate or just listen to the fine tunes.