WorldForge Developers Journal

GSoC applications are now open

Posted on Tuesday 29th of March, 2011 by alriddoch

Google have announced that student applications are now open for their Summer of Code program until next Friday April 8th. WorldForge has been accepted once again, so we are hoping to take on a number of students.

If you are interested in applying then you should think carefully how to apply. Review the list of ideas we have posted, but don’t feel you must be constrained by it. Applications should demonstrate deeper knowledge of WorldForge, so you will need to look into how the existing system works, and how new ideas might be implemented before writing a convincing application. We are happy to review draft applications, provide feedback and help you improve your application. Post on the WorldForge forums, the mailing list or come and chat to alriddoch or kai in #lounge on WorldForge IRC during the European working day.

Get your applications in quickly as there is not long for reviews and feedback before the deadline. I am really looking forward to getting some great applications, and working with some awesome talented people again this summer.

Posted in Google SoC | 1 Comment

Google Summer of Code 2011 is on!

Posted on Saturday 19th of March, 2011 by kai

WorldForge is again participating in the Google Summer of Code. If you’re a student interested in contributing to WorldForge this summer, Google now helps you flipping code, not burgers. The application period starts on March 28th, so now is a good time to head over to our list of project ideas, pick something you like and get in touch with us. If you have an idea that’s not on our list, you’re of course welcome to propose that as well.

Looking forward to your applications.

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Cyphesis 0.5.26 Release

Posted on Wednesday 2nd of March, 2011 by alriddoch

Cyphesis version 0.5.26 has been released and is now available from the WorldForge download site.

Cyphesis is a small to medium scale server for WorldForge games, with builtin AI. This version includes the demo game Mason which is currently in development. This release is intended for server administrators wishing to run a Mason server and World developers developing new worlds or game systems. Continue reading →

Posted in Software | Comments Off

I built this!

Posted on Monday 28th of February, 2011 by alriddoch

I built this all by myself, with only a little teeny bit of resorting to admin access! With the recent addition of a new task type to Mason, it is now possible to use a shovel tool to raise a mound of earth, and then use it as a base for construction. Almost everything required to make a basic fortification can now be done by a player character using in game crafting. The features required will be included in the upcoming releases of both Cyphesis and Ember, so won’t quite be there yet in the releases available for download now, or the servers currently online. Read on for how I did it, and some details of the things that are not quite there yet.

Continue reading →

Posted in Mason | 1 Comment

WorldForge History

Posted on Monday 17th of January, 2011 by alriddoch

An old article on WorldForge from 2001 has recently been republished here and is well worth a read. It gives interesting insights into the ambitious goals we have had since the beginning nearly 13 years ago, and how many of our ideas which seemed so ambitious in the past have been implemented by commercial games more recently, though perhaps not always in the ways we would like to see them done.

To me WorldForge is just as relevant now as it was back then. As the bigger games become more and more like well managed themeh parks, there is a huge gap for games which feel like living worlds where players have real influence and a sense of ownership in the world they are helping create.

Posted in Project | Comments Off

Improvements to the forums and blog

Posted on Sunday 16th of January, 2011 by alriddoch

Comments and discussions on this blog, and the Community Forums are now much more open.

Since I introduced both services over five years ago, keeping spam comments under control has proved very difficult, and for a a while all forum registrations had to be vetted manually, and blog comments were disable completely. Thankfully spam control technology has come on leaps on bounds, and I have now been able to make both sites much more open.

A few days ago I migrated the forums to running new software with more advanced protection, and as a result user registrations are fully automated. As an additional bonus the discussion interface is much simpler, and I hope it will be much easier for people interested in WorldForge to discuss things and help each other.

Spam protection on the blog has been fully updated, and now comments are open once again, including anonymous comments. I am not sure how well this will work, but I’ll leave it open for a while and see how things pan out.

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Your own desert island

Posted on Friday 7th of January, 2011 by alriddoch

Here is a video of me creating a small island from scratch in four minutes.

It shows how to select the Terrain Editor from the admin menu, and then how to drag and adjust the control points to get the terrain you want.

Posted in Ember | 1 Comment

Year 2010 in review

Posted on Tuesday 4th of January, 2011 by alriddoch

It’s the middle of winter, so what better time for a beach party? A bit cold for that? Perhaps I’ll write up what happened last year then.

For me 2010 was pretty quiet as far as WorldForge was concerned, but for the rest of the community it has been a busy year with lots of great progress. Below the cut are some of the major achievement broken down by month.
Continue reading →

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