[MUD-Dev] Jeff's Rant: A World Full of Wheel-Makers

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce <bruce at puremagic.com>

> An old list member, Jeff Kesselman wrote:

>    http://www.javagaming.org/WeeklyRant/weeklyrant.html

> Thanks to Greg Munt for tossing this my way. :)

> I couldn't find a archival URL for this, so here it is in its entirety:

[quote snipped]

Well, there finally seems to be a move away from this.  Right now,
there are three solid, flexible, and well-performing engines (not
counting Quake, which is not at all flexible) available for licensing:
The NetImmerse engine from NDL, the LithTech engine from Monolith, and
the V12 engine from Sierra (although that one has liscensing
restrictions that pretty much restrict it to small development
houses).  The NetImmerse engine has already been used to produce FPS
games, Space Sims, RPG's and is being used by Mythic for DAoC
(NetImmerse is different from the others in that NDL has no game
products of their own, they only make the engine and the tools to
integrate it with 3DS and other development software).

On the other hand, the only software currently out for the server side
of a graphical mud is the toolkit from Turbine (which doesn't seem to
have found any takers).  The V12 engine does have major server-side
components, but is primarily an FPS engine and might be difficult to
scale.  I don't know much about the server side of the LithTech
engine.  The NI engine has some server-side modules, but that is
probably its weakest aspect.

Frankly, iD's Quake engine was a step *back* for the concept of engine
liscensing, as John Carmack's refusal to do *anything* to make it more
flexible and insistence on rewriting it from scratch with each version
caused many projects using it to balloon in budget or go under
completely.  If I was looking for an engine to make a new game, I
would stay *far* away from it.  Name recognition isn't what you want
in an engine.

--Dave Rickey

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