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PlaneShift (video game)

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PlaneShift
Developer(s)Atomic Blue
EnginePlaneShift Engine Crystal Space for 3D[1]
Platform(s)Macintosh, Windows, Linux, BSD
ReleaseUnder development. Last release on June 12, 2010 (0.5.4).
Genre(s)MMORPG
Mode(s)Multiplayer

PlaneShift is a 3D cross-platform Online Multiplayer Role Playing Game ( MMORPG ) in a fantasy setting.[3] The game is free to play, with no hidden costs for the players.[4]. The framework is open source with the server and client released under the GNU General Public License, allowing anyone in the open source community to contribute.[5] The artistic content is proprietary, but outside contributions are accepted. The game requires a client software to be installed on the player's computer. The client is available for Linux,[6] Windows and Mac OS X. It is a no-budget project produced by a group of developers, founded by Luca Pancallo,[7] and guided by the Atomic Blue non-profit organization.[8], with the objective to create a large community of roleplayers, which give life to a medieval world.

The development team comprises developers from all around the world, located in the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia [9][10]

Gameplay

The player interacts with the virtual world through a 3D representation of the fantasy world, using a first person view, where he sees through the eyes of his alter ego (called the "character"), or with a 3rd person view, where the camera is located usually few meters behind his character.[11]

The character starts with low skills and capabilities, and it will be up to the player to find different ways to develop the character, e.g. increasing his intelligence, strength, agility or others.[11] Characters attain Progression Points (PP) when they successfully engage in combat and uses of certain abilities, which are used for training skills. PlaneShift uses a skill based progression system, which allows the player to develop this character in any skills without the mandatory choice of a profession (ex.: wizard, warrior, etc..).[6][12]

Scope of the game

Screenshot showing Bronzedoors, an in-game area in PlaneShift

Like the majority of games of this genre, PlaneShift has no single objective the players should complete, but provides many options based on the playing style.

One aim of the game is to explore all the available areas and to acquire knowledge about the world by speaking with the NPCs. They will provide hints on how to proceed and unlock new areas, items and powers.[11] The NPC dialog system is a mixed system, made of predefined answers the player can pick from a list and freeform text entry.[13]

Another goal is to increase the character skills and knowledge by completing quests and tasks in the game. Some examples of quests may include retrieving a magical object to be used in an important event, solve a riddle, or help some NPCs to solve a problem.[11]

One of the main goals of the PlaneShift staff is to inspire roleplay between the players.[14] This is accomplished by attention to detail: background stories, books, and quests. New players are encouraged to read the guide set forth by the staff which details how to properly act in character.[15].

Character creation

Through character creation the player will create an alter ego, choosing his background, his main traits and life events. The character creation is aimed at providing deep background on the alter ego, so it will be easier for the player to role play it.

The PlaneShift character creation tool features two options. The first option is to choose to make a "quick" character, in which a player chooses a "path" and a character is randomly generated for them. A path reflects the career of the avatar in his youth, and has associated events which will drive the final skills and stats. The available paths are "Street Warrior", "Enchanter", "Fighting Monk", "Warlock", "Knight", "Rogue".[12] The second option is to make a character with the "custom" method. This method allows to choose many additional aspects of your character like the birth event, the parents jobs, the house and siblings, and the life events happened up to his adulthood.[13][16] What makes this unusual among other character creation tools is that the character's stats and skills will be revealed only at the end of the process.

Combat

Planeshift features both player versus environment and player versus player combat. The latter is implemented as the ability to engage in duels on a voluntary basis, which requires both parties to agree to the conditions of the duel. If two players' guilds are at war with each other, they do not need to agree to a duel in order to initiate combat with each other.[12]

The combat system features "stances" the player can choose from, spanning from defensive modes to aggressive modes. Players may fight with bare fists, known as melee, wield a variety of weapons, or use magic. Planeshift magic comprises several distinct "Ways" (Schools): Crystal Way, Red Way, Brown Way, Azure Way, Blue Way, and Dark Way.

Development

The server side engine code and the client code is written from scratch by the PlaneShift team, while the 3D rendering features are based on the Crystal Space 3D engine. The game engine is released under the GPL.[3][17][18] The content is released under a proprietary license.[19][17]

The game is currently in the alpha stage of development at version 0.5, codenamed Arcane Chrysalis. Currently planeshift is under heavy development being ranked at the 289th place of Most Active Projects of all times on sourceforge[20] with an average of about 10,000 individual source file changes each year in 2007, 2008 and 2009[21].

PlaneShift has been used in multiple studies as a base to develop video games and other free applications.[5][22][23][24][25][26]

PlaneShift team organization resembles one of a software company, with departments and leaders, and has been studied as a collaborative software engineering organizational model.[27][28]

The first major version (0.1) released on May 2, 2002 was codenamed Atomic Blue.[29][30] The next version (0.2) was released on March 7, 2003 and codenamed Molecular Blue.[30] The Molecular Blue server was shut down on December 16, 2004 and replaced on December 24, 2004 with version 0.3, Crystal Blue[31]. This was subsequently replaced by the version codenamed, Steel Blue on March 2, 2008.[32] The current version "Arcane Chrysalis" was released to the public on December 10, 2009.[32]

Bandwidth for the servers is donated by sponsors.[33][34]

Setting

PlaneShift is set inside a colossal stalactite named Yliakum, divided into eight levels, of which the lower two are flooded.[35] Players will find themselves into the main city, called Hydlaa, where they will start their journey. Life is possible because a huge crystal, named The Azure Sun, draws light from the surface of the planet. PlaneShift currently has 12 playable races[36] that all have their own homelands and characteristics.[12] Outside of Yliakum are the Stone Labyrinths and through these the player can access even more areas.

Yliakum's history is classified into five different epochs. The races of Yliakum were created by Talad and Laanx, the two chief deities of the setting.[37] Yliakum is governed by eight "Octarchs", one representing each level of Yliakum. Under them are lesser representatives, twenty in each level (160 total), called "Vigesimi". At the beginning of every year there is a meeting of all Octarchs and Vigesimi that lasts for several months, where they address issues pertinent to Yliakum's inhabitants. Ochtarchs generally remain in power for life.[38]

The main currency is the Tria, triangle-shaped coins made of sturdy alloys, metals, or crystals. The crystal mineral can easily be found in the mines and is transparent or light green in color. Magically forging the crystals produces a perfect triangle with rounded-off edges. There are other units of currency, including Hexas (hexagon shaped coins that have a 10:1 exchange rate with the tria), Octas (octagon shaped; 50:1 exchange rate) and Circles (circular gold coins; 250:1 exchange rate).[35]

When a character dies they are transported into the Death Realm,[13] a large network that the player must navigate.

License

For the players the game is free, and the license is like the standard end-user license agreement of many other games.[11].

For the development, the source code for the server and client has been developed by the Atomic Blue development group, and it has been released as open source[5] under the GNU General Public License.

As a rendering engine, PlaneShift uses Crystal Space,[39] an open source game engine.

All other elements like artwork, ruleset, dialog, etc. are proprietary[31] and licensed under a custom license: the PlaneShift Content License (PCL). The PCL prevents modifications, redistributions, and assigns the copyright of accepted contributions to Atomic Blue under work for hire clauses. This license also forbids using the content for profit or for unofficial hosting.[19]

Reception

As of 2003, it was the first open source MMORPG to reach 100,000 registered user accounts.[30]

In 2003 PlaneShift was elected the "Most Promising Linux Game" of the year.[40]

In 2004 PlaneShift was featured in an open source study made by CSC and was considered to be one of the most sophisticated open source multiplayer games.[10]

In 2008 PlaneShift had been invited as an emerging technology, to speak at GoogleTalk events in Google headquarters.[1]

In July 2008 PlaneShift reached 500,000 registered users.[1] This however does not reflect current user numbers, as this is over the course of the previous 4 years.

PlaneShift’s licenses have been mentioned to facilitate creativity among the development community, while preserving as unique the creativity of artists and designers who contribute.[10]

PlaneShift has been mentioned to have a mature and well established codebase, having increasing development activity year over year, and having a large active development team.

Planeshift has been criticized as being generic but good with its visuals, and for borrowing from the ideas of other MMORPGs.[41]

Latency times have been known to cause a disruption in playing the game partly due to lack of paid hosting services.[1][13]

Notes and references

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Massively Multiplayer Open Source Game Development". YouTube. 2008-10-16. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  2. ^ "Planeshift: System requirements". Planeshift.it. 2010-06-15. Retrieved 2010-06-15.
  3. ^ a b "Product Review - Net-Z/Eterna, ReplicaNet, SDLNet, and Plane Shift". GameDev.net. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  4. ^ http://www.planeshift.it/pix/PSinPCgamer_small.jpg
  5. ^ a b c Free/Open Source Software Development: Recent Research Results and Methods - Advances in Computers, Volume 69, 2007, Pages 243-295 - Walt Scacchi
  6. ^ a b "Jeuxlinux - Le site des jeux pour linux - Planeshift". Jeuxlinux.fr. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  7. ^ "Planeshift Second interview by MMOsite.com-www.mmosite.com". News.mmosite.com. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  8. ^ "PlaneShift. Download and information on Atomic Blue Corporation PlaneShift". Ptf.com. 2010-04-05. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  9. ^ "PlaneShift World Map". Planeshift.it. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  10. ^ a b c http://assets1.csc.com/lef/downloads/1142_1.pdf
  11. ^ a b c d e PCAction N.124 - Four full pages article on PlaneShift
  12. ^ a b c d "PlaneShift Player Guide". Retrieved 2009-07-23.
  13. ^ a b c d Template:Es icon https://www.linux-magazine.es/issue/18/Planeshift.pdf
  14. ^ http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/Planeshift/interview/Planeshift-05-Interview-Grinding-is-Pointless
  15. ^ "PlaneShift Roleplay Guide". Planeshift.it. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  16. ^ http://www.planeshift.it/pix/magazines/GameStar-LinuxExtra_July_2006.jpg
  17. ^ a b http://www.web3d.org/x3d/learn/presentations/Web3DGames2007Workshop.pdf#page=6
  18. ^ "Planeshift: a 3D MMORPG | Get Planeshift: a 3D MMORPG at". Sourceforge.net. 2000-07-17. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  19. ^ a b "PlaneShift License". Planeshift.it. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  20. ^ "Most Active - All Time". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  21. ^ "Project Statistics for Planeshift: a 3D MMORPG". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  22. ^ Prototyping Game Design Workshop (Second Edition), 2008, Pages 175-212 - Tracy Fullerton, Christopher Swain
  23. ^ "Using Virtual Reality to make cultural environments more accessible to people with physical disabilities". Re-Flex. 2005-06-22. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  24. ^ Patterns for computer-mediated interaction by Till Schümmer,Stephan Lukosch , Page 84
  25. ^ Dynamische Contentanpassung Bei Massive Multiplayer Online Games By Joachim Fohringer, Dr. Tobias Fritsch Page 57
  26. ^ Advances in computers: Architectural issues By Marvin V. Zelkowitz Page 262
  27. ^ Collaborative Software Engineering By Ivan Mistra-K, Page 317/318
  28. ^ Software process modeling By Silvia T. Acuña, Natalia Juristo, Page 14
  29. ^ "PlaneShift - News 2002". Planeshift.it. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  30. ^ a b c Thomas -Mystery- Valley posted on 29 Oct 2003 10:52 (2003-10-29). "WarCry Network : News : Free MMOG Planeshift breaks 100k Players!". Warcry.com. Retrieved 2010-05-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  31. ^ a b Linux Format March 2005 Issue 64, Pg 13
  32. ^ a b "PlaneShift - News 2008 2009". Planeshift.it. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  33. ^ Claudius posted on 28 Aug 2003 10:59 (2003-08-28). "WarCry Network : News : Feel free to play - Literally speaking". Warcry.com. Retrieved 2010-05-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  34. ^ http://laanx.fragnetics.com/
  35. ^ a b TUX December 2006 Issue 20, Pg 60
  36. ^ "PlaneShift for PC - PlaneShift PC Game - PlaneShift Computer Game". Gamespot.com. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  37. ^ PlaneShift - A 3D Fantasy MMORPG
  38. ^ PlaneShift - A 3D Fantasy MMORPG
  39. ^ http://www.planeshift.it/pix/magazines/page2_scaled.jpg
  40. ^ "PlaneShift - News 2003". Planeshift.it. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  41. ^ "PlaneShift Steel Blue Review | Video Game Blog, Video Game Reviews, Video Game News". Gamersyndrome.com. 2009-08-14. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
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