Blog for Dreamer at GarageGames.com

Shameless Plug

Dreamer — 2007-01-18T07:33:46+00:00

Well it's been quite awhile since my last blog, I really need to get into the habit of doing these things more often. But what can I say so many exciting things have been happening around MyDreamRPG.com that it's been hard to keep track.

First off, I want to congratulate everyone who has come this far in the Make an MMORPG in 90 days Contest, with only 2 weeks remaining it's turning out to be an exciting time, and I can't wait to play the entries, they all sound like so much fun! if you want to play them stop by our site, final judging will be up to the community, and you can help decide who will walk away with the prize.

Secondly I wanted to take a moment and tell you about our newly revamped Gold Area where you can get a ton of content to help you start your game off right. This content is only available to Gold Members, but to help spur this section of the site on we have a special offer where you can get free Gold Membership just for contributing stuff for your fellow Gold Members to use in their own games.

Next I figured I should take a moment to congratulate Josh Ritter and the rest of the team responsible for Minions of Mirth on their recent award. It's an awesome achievement to be recognized in such a fashion, and they serve as an inspiration to us all. It's proof that with a big dream and a lot of determination, focus and hardwork, you can create excellence. I have been following Josh Ritters blogs lately and can't wait to see the next game him and his team create.

Also I wanted to congratulate Ari Rule, and the rest of BrokeAss Games
Ruin just underwent what amounts to a complete re-write, and it's looking fantastic! I truly believe that this game will be a force to be reckoned with.

I also wanted to drop a note and let everyone know that Tridnauts Weapons pack is currently on sale for only $15, thats an incredible bargain, and I can personally say that these are some of the nicest game ready weapons models, that can be bought at any price, these are easily worth 10 times thats price, so if you don't own it, go get it now.

Another note, if you hadn't heard, Jeff Faust and Faust logic have released Arcane FX I was lucky enough to be on the beta for this and let me tell you, it's one of the most incredible products that GG sells. What more can I say about this product other than WOW!

Finally I wanted to announce that Dream Games Inc, is about to do something big, and I mean really, really big. We will be starting it very soon and we are looking for artists and programmers that we can bring into the fold to help us complete the project on time. If you're interested please feel free to hop in our chat and talk with us.

Well I hope everyone has enjoyed my blog cleverly disguised as a shameless plug, and I'll try to update this more frequently with news and exciting information!

Regards,
Dreamer

Infuzor Installer and Autopatcher now shipping!

Dreamer — 2006-11-29T08:23:38+00:00

Howdy,
I figured I'ld update my blog to let everyone know that the Infuzor installer and autopatcher is now shipping.

Weighing in at a mere 1.4MB's Infuzor is small enough to fit on a floppy disk, and since it uses Subversion (aka SVN) as it's update source it can easily distribute and update, complex Multi Gigabyte applications.

SVN is a fantastic protocol for an updater to use, unlike rsync, ftp, or even bit-torrent, after the initial install SVN only pushes changes to files not the actual files themselves. So say you had a 10k file where 3 lines had been changed. Only the difference i.e. those 3 lines, would be pushed to the client. This could result in massive bandwidth savings. Our own decision to use Subversion in house has cut our bandwidth bill by over 500%.

The other nice part about SVN as a base for an updater is you don't have to try and keep a "patch list" or a list of files you've had to change, subversion does that for you automatically.

And the final reason to use SVN, as your updater technology is that if you're serious about developing your game you likely already have an investment in Subversion as your concurrent versioning system, you can now leverage that investment saving you time and money.

Infuzor is completely crossplatform, and will run out of the box on Windows, Linux, Mac,*BSD, Solaris or pretty much anything else with a JVM.
It is self contained and has absolutely no dependencies.
It can be deployed as a standalone application or as a Java Webstart application.
Complete source code is included with the purchase, but you'll likely never need it because it's written to be highly customizable with just a few simple lines in a text based config file.

Besides installation and update it also has launch control capabilites. And with only 3 lines of c++ code added to the main loop of your application, you can require that your application be launched from within Infuzor, thereby helping to make sure that only authorized users can use your program.

This product is not limited to TGE or TSE based games, it was designed to be used for any instance where you want to securely and regularly update a client application and can also be used to maintain control over who has access to your product.

Infuzor was created by me under contract for Voodoo Fusion Studios, for use in their upcoming title Conflict Omega.
They kindly allowed donated a copy to the Community Demo for the MMORPG Enhancement Kit, you can see the demo by going to MyDreamRPG.com and clicking on the link labeled "Demo" at the top of the site. User Name for the demo is "gst" password is "gstgstgst".

Can't wait? Want to buy now? It's for sale for only $50, exclusively at The MyDreamRPG.com Content Store

I hope you find this information useful,

We Got A New Look!

Dreamer — 2006-11-07T18:01:27+00:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that thanks to the efforts of Mike, Tom and Ashtara we have a new look over at MyDreamRPG.com
The old design was ok, but honestly all the black and chrome kinda hurt my eyes.

We've also added a ton of new content, including Ash's free video tutorials, and we've stuck a deal with Delgine to allow us to bundle the DeleD modeling application with the MMOKit and Titas.

Gus is busy making some new cuddly and not so cuddly critters.

Our $1000 contest is under full swing and time is running out to get registered, if you want to try your hand at making an MMO in 90 days and win $1000, you should hurry up and register :)

Finally thanks to KevinMc we now have a community demo effort underway, to showcase the MMORPG Enhancement Kit.

As for me I've been kind of everywhere but I have an exciting announcement coming up really soon.

Anyways if you haven't been by for a while feel free to stop by and check us out.

Regards,
Dreamer

MMORPG Enhancement Kit 1.5 Halloween Release

Dreamer — 2006-11-01T04:22:19+00:00

Hello everyone, as you know the MMOKit 1.5 has been a long time comin. We have been busting our humps at MyDreamRPG.com trying to get this ready in time for Halloween.
Today we release it, and also officially kick off our MMO in 90 Days Contest with a GrandPrize of $1000
Enjoy!

MMORPG Kit Full Release Day is Here!

Dreamer — 2006-05-13T06:15:58+00:00

Hello everyone,
The MMORPG Enhancement Kit for the Torque Game Engine is now complete and "released"*.
As promised the site MyDreamRPG.com will undergo a massive facelift today, and return with new and exciting content, more of which will be added daily. (MMORPG Tutorials will be the first thing to go up)

With this release we are also shifting focus, and once again making changes to be more about the community, of course with a big emphasis on MMORPG Development, but anyone developing any kind of game will be just as welcome there.

Also as an aside, I was glad to finally have a talk with some folks at GarageGames, and during the course of discussion it was determined that the way we were preparing to release would have violated the terms of the indie license. I was unaware of that fact previously, so in an effort to rectify that situation, I have taken a few steps.

The kit will be in 2 parts (don't worry you do get both) the first part is the code, which we were most concerned would violate the eula.
To this end we have decided to distribute the downloadable code as a diff against a clean pull from TGE CVS HEAD.

This patch file alone is 1.8MB and comprises 95,730 lines of code changes. I highly recommend you get friendly with your favorite patching program. Also included in the zip are quite a few files which do not come in a stock build of TGE, and as such are included in the codepack.

The second part of the kit is what we are lovingly calling the "artball", this bit is optional and will be updated regularly by various artists who wish to show case their up coming content packs, furthermore any source art included in the artball will be yours to use and modify however you wish but you may not repackage and/or resell the source art outside of the context of making a game.
In otherwords, no derivative content kits without the artists prior consent.

Finally I would like to announce that we will feature "Show Case" zones, which show case the skills of various artists in the community, more on this feature to come...

*You must be a licensed owner of the GarageGames Torque Game Engine (Indie or Commercial), prior to being allowed to purchase.
You may verify that by posting in this thead

MMORPG Kit Release is Imminent!

Dreamer — 2006-05-12T02:29:09+00:00

We will be releasing the MMORPG Enhancement Kit with 24 hours, we now have the featureset finalized and are working out a few minor bugs.
This is your last chance to pick up the kit for the early adopter subscription price of $10 per month*.
After release the price goes to a flat $99* with a free trial of the SVN update service for those who want to maintain the bleeding edge.

Yeah! No more moving target!

*You must prove ownership of TGE prior to purchase we have been using this link to do so

MMORPG Enhancement Kit Screenies (56k Warning)

Dreamer — 2006-05-01T19:55:52+00:00

Hey there everyone just wanted to show off some screenshots from the MMORPG Enhancement Kit.
It's very near Final Release!

This is the Character Selection Screen

This is the MainMenu

This is the Lobby

This is the Mission Loading Screen
[image]http://legaloffice.brinkster.net/screenshots/startupscreen_thumb.jpg[/ima...

I will add more screenies later, but I have a feeling this page is already going to take a day or two to load for those of you on less than a T1 line;)

The Kit Currently contains more features than I can possibly list but if you've been following along, we have added Levels (and color reflecting levels to names). As well as Guilds (with guild tags below names) and Grouping. Ridable horses, changeable armor, an experience bar...
And a TON of other stuff.

Come on by MyDreamRPG.com and check us out if you are the least bit interested in making an RPG or MMORPG!

Regards,
Dreamer

S3 will revolutionize content distribution

Dreamer — 2006-03-15T10:44:25+00:00

Hello everyone,
I've been evaluating methods for easily and cost effectively pushing updates to clients applications.
My options thus far have been SVN, FTP, Bittorrent, and a whole host of others.

FTP was my original thought, but my own experience with FTP in terms of controlling access, and the amount of load it places on the server has shown that this would be at best a suboptimal solution.

Next in line is Bittorrent, this is a fantastic protocol, basically everyone who wants your content has to share that content with others to recieve more content, while it does save you from placing excess load on the server, again access control is limited, also if you have to push multiple updates/bug fixes you may end up with stale patches and/or incomplete downloads. Furthermore setting up a proper bittorrent tracker or seed has shown to be a little problematic in my experience, and some hosts or even ISP, will even shape your traffic or possibly cut you off if you try to host one.

Thus far SVN has looked to be the natural winner, since each update is really only a diff from the previous revision, thereby reducing bandwidth on the server. And yes SVN can be used for any collection of files.
However controlling access to SVN could be time consuming and/or buggy and if a large number of people all need updates at once, your server will still be swamped.

Recently I read an article on a new service from Amazon called S3.
If you haven't heard about it before, this awesome new service allows you to store unlimited amounts of data for $0.15 per gig per month, and then $0.20 per gig of bandwidth for access to those files.
While at first this may not sound like a great deal, or even of any relevance or importance to you check this out.
You can make the content readable by anyone, or only a select list of people, through an easy to use ACL (access control list), which you can update on the fly.
Furthermore bittorrent is an integral option and using it will drastically reduce the amount of money you spend on bandwidth, since you only spend for actual data transfered and not network overhead.
This essentially allows you to upload any file or set of files, and have automatic bit-torrent capability. Without any of the drawbacks.
But what about the versioning capabilities of SVN?
Well here's the interesting thing, the S3 API descriptions mention that you can associate metadata of up to 4k with the file, and part of this metadata is accessible directly through the filename via a key value pair.
What does all of this mean?

It means that you could upload your data to your S3 storage service and use it for an update and distribution server.
For instance lets say you modified the root animation file player_root.dsq
After it is uploaded you associate some information with it for instance a time stamp.
You would wind up with a file you could easily distribute to any of your customers via any bittorent client, and you would have the added security of an access control list. You would also have the advantage of SVN in that if you later decided you made a mistake in the animation or whatever, you could roll back to the earlier version of the file simply by deleting it.

For me anyways this is great news, and as soon as I launch the MMORPG Enhancement Kit and the newest version of http://www.mydreamrpg.com/ I intend to begin creating tools to facilitate this.

I hope you find this exciting.
Regards,
Dreamer

p.s. For more information on S3 click here