Leaving Opensim

Below is the text of the post I made to the OpenSim core-devs about my decision to leave the OpenSim project.

I have decided to leave the Opensim project. You will probably not even notice if I leave, as not being a programmer my only inputs were the writing of the step-by-step tutorials, the drafts of the OpenSim User Manual on the Forge, and helping out in the IRC channels, for newcomers. You may find my reasons for leaving Opensim interesting though (and please do not construe any of my reasons as an attack on anyone).

1. The Platform
I raised this several times in the past in IRC, and made posts on my blog about the product lifecycle of the platform. I believe that the platforms underpinning both Second Life and Opensim are quite long in the tooth now, and I questioned how much product lifecycle there was left, particularly given that Opensim is now nearing 3 years of development, is still in Alpha, and if the current release of 0.6.7 is any indicator, then still only around two thirds into the development cycle. With the (inevitable) coming of much superior platforms, such as Blue Mars (as a virtual world); and Unity, for browser-based Virtual Worlds; and now UDK (for creating sandboxes, standalones, and open grids), then I fear that Opensim has missed the boat as far as the remaining lifecycle of the platform is concerned. When you show people what is possible with these engines (for example this avatar editor for the forthcoming APB (using the Unreal Engine):  or this city  (using the CryEngine), then neither SL nor Opensim stands comparison.

2. Lack of Support for Currency in Opensim
I felt the impact of this when I first made the switch from SL to Opensim. I had a thriving RP sim in SL (over 50 people, mainly female) and they all agreed to follow me over to my Opensim and the OSGrid. However, within a month they had all left, citing the same reasons, the lack of places to shop to buy the quality stuff they wanted (skins, hair, clothes etc), as a quality appearance, and the fun of shopping is what all the females placed high on their requirements from a Virtual World. They drifted back to Second Life, and the guys followed them. I have always believed that the lack of support for currency in the core was a mistake, but that is just my opinion.

3. Marketing
I have also raised this issue several times, and blogged about it. It is far from clear just who an eventually released Opensim is actually aimed at. I think that any company that is interested in a firewalled corporate solution to collaboration and prototyping will already be looking at the Enterprise solution that is currently available from Second Life; that any indie group that is thinking of running a themed grid will need an economy to stay viable; and any individual who is looking for a private sandbox solution for their SL work will need full compatibility (which is not the case with the OS version of LSL diverging from the SL LSL). So, just who is the platform aimed at? I was also very disappointed in the view of one of the core devs who said that 'marketing is a null concept for us'.


I am currently designing and creating cities for Blue Mars, and involved in a team for proving the UDK as a platform for the design and creation of sandboxed or standalone Virtual Worlds (as opposed to purely games), and with so much documentation available for these mature engines (particularly for the UDK, Blue Mars lags behind somewhat in that department, but are working to put that right), I am achieving the productivity I want, building the worlds that I want, with stable crash-free platforms.

However, I do wish the Opensim team the very best in their endeavours, and I sincerely hope their goals are eventually achieved.

If anyone would like to take over the main Opensim Tutorials pages and the Additional Tutorials (they will need some updating following several changes) then I am more than willing to pass the posts over, and of course the Opensim User Manual is there in the Forge for anyone to develop further.

Best Regards and Good Luck

Rock

Diary: 13th November, 2009

Blue Mars Progress Painfully Slow
I have been stalled in my city creation for weeks now. This has been mainly due to a lack of information on scripting, vehicle editing, and understanding the differences between the editors. I see in the Developer Forum poor Takuan has been soldiering on, with little or no support, in trying to get to grips with Lua scripting. He must be very frustrated.

I hope more resources become available soon so I can resume my build.

UDK Development Making Good Progress
I have been working on a proof-of-concept virtual world development using the Unreal Development Kit I blogged about earlier. With another developer from Blue Mars and a modder named Ridders from the UDK forum, we have been conducting experiments to establish a net-wide interface to enable a server running a map or game to be accessed remotely by another client across the net. I am happy to report that these experiments have been successful, and remote connections are now possible, and understood. The need for experimentation is also due to the lack of good quality step-by-step documentation, but in general the wealth of documentation available to UDK modders is huge, compared to the documentation available for Blue Mars.

Here are some of the resources I have been using:

UDK General Features with much useful Info

UDK Getting Started 

UDK Content Creation

UDK Programming Home

UDK Documentation Forum

Rock

Now the Unreal Engine 3 is Free

Epic Games, Inc. announces the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the award-winning toolset like never before. This software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available.

An unprecedented milestone in game development, the release of UDK awards free access to the same world-class tools and technology used by many of the world’s best video game developers and publishers. Unreal Engine 3 is a constantly evolving game engine, and UDK contains all the most recently added features and technological enhancements, including many that have yet to be seen in an Unreal Engine game. Furthermore, Epic Games will release ongoing, upgraded builds of UDK for free.

There is no charge for noncommercial or educational use of UDK. Over 100 academic campuses currently use Unreal Technology as part of teaching game development-related courses, and colleges with plans to incorporate UDK into their curricula include the University of Pennsylvania, North Carolina State University, The Art Institute system of schools, Drexel University, Westwood College, DeVry University and Atlantic College, with many others to be announced.

Individuals and companies wishing to develop software for commercial purposes should refer to licensing terms at www.udk.com/licensing. Commercial terms have been structured to make it easy for independent developers, start-up firms and seasoned professionals to use UDK with minimal financial barrier from concept to deployment. UDK is currently for PC use only, although console support is under consideration. Developers approved to make games for Xbox 360® and PLAYSTATION®3 may inquire for more information by emailing udklicensing@epicgames.com.

Benefits of UDK include the following:

• Immediate access to Unreal Engine 3, the critically acclaimed 3D game engine technology for cross-platform game development.
• Easy content creation with the Unreal Editor, a fully integrated suite of top-tier development tools, which comes complete with:
• Unreal Content Browser, a revolutionary tool for browsing, searching and organizing game assets with collaborative metadata tagging system.
• UnrealScript object-oriented programming language and Unreal Kismet, a visual scripting system that enables rapid prototyping on the fly.
• Unreal Matinee, a powerful tool with movie director-class controls for building in-game cinematics and gorgeous cut scenes.
• Unreal Cascade, an advanced particle physics and environmental effects editor that aids the creation of fire, fog, explosions and other visuals.
• NVIDIA® PhysX®-powered physics system with Unreal PhAT visual modeling tool for creating character and object physics rigs.
• Unreal Lightmass, a global illumination system that dramatically lights and shadows with minimal effort required by artists and designers.
• AnimSet Viewer and AnimTree Editor, which give animators precise control over every muscle and bone movement.

• Time saved thanks to technology integrations with leading game development middleware tools including SpeedTree®, Bink Video®, and FaceFX®.
• Output of standalone applications: Games created with UDK run entirely on their own with no additional software required. This means anyone can make UDK content and distribute it for free.

“I’m excited about the possibilities the Unreal Development Kit opens to those who are looking to get into the game business but don’t otherwise have the means to acquire world-class technology and tools like ours,” said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. “UDK is Unreal Engine 3, which has been used to create games in a wide range of genres, as well as military simulations, 3D architectural walkthroughs, animated movies and more. Users are only limited by their imaginations. Go ahead make something Unreal!”

Psyonix Studios (www.psyonix.com), a game studio based in San Diego, Calif., created the first proof-of-concept game using UDK in less than two months using a two-man team of one artist and one programmer. “Whizzle” is a downloadable vertical scroller in which players swim through underwater levels as an adorable sea creature that collects items and frees allies from captivity. To read more about “Whizzle,” view the developer diary video, or download technical documentation, visit www.udk.com/showcase-whizzle.html.

Until now, noncommercial access to the Unreal Engine 3 toolset has been available only through the PC versions of games such as Epic’s “Unreal Tournament 3” and “Gears of War” games. Users made new game experiences, called modifications or “mods,” by changing existing game assets or creating original content through the Unreal Editor tools that ship with every game copy. Many of these mods have been showcased through the $1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest (www.makesomethingunreal.com), which awards over $1 million in cash and prizes to aspiring game developers.  While mods require running the original game for interaction with user-created content, UDK provides a standalone experience every time, meaning a smaller digital footprint and no additional software requirements.

“The Ball,” an award-winning “Unreal Tournament 3” mod by Toltec Studios (www.toltecstudios.com), is available now as a free UDK-powered download at www.udk.com/showcase-the-ball.html. Anyone authoring mods for Epic’s PC games can port their original content over to UDK.

Support for UDK includes over 200 pages of newly unlocked documentation at the Unreal Developer Network (udn.epicgames.com), dedicated forums (www.udk.com/forums), as well as other resources available through the UDK web site, www.udk.com. 3D Buzz also hosts hundreds of free video tutorials for using Unreal Engine 3 technology at www.3dbuzz.com.

Furthermore, Sams Publishing and 3D Buzz recently published two definitive guides for learning the Unreal Engine toolset, “Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3” and “Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume II: Advanced Level Design Concepts with Unreal Engine 3.” Both books are bundled with a free, downloadable copy of “Unreal Tournament 3” for PC.

About Unreal Engine 3
The award-winning Unreal Engine is known for cutting-edge graphics and its best-of-breed toolset. Unreal Engine 3 maintains those features in addition to multi-core processor support, Xbox 360® and PLAYSTATION®3 optimizations, massive world support, and a highly mature tool pipeline. Unreal Engine 3's consistently evolving toolset is designed to accelerate developers' productivity for PC and console games, visualization applications, training simulations, and linear animated content. Additional information on Unreal Engine can be obtained through the Unreal Technology Web site at www.unrealtechnology.com.

About Epic Games
Epic Games, Inc., based in Cary, NC and established in 1991, develops cutting-edge games and cross-platform game engine technology. The company has created multiple million-selling, award-winning titles in its “Unreal” series, including “Unreal Tournament 3” for PC, PLAYSTATION®3 and Xbox 360®. Epic’s “Gears of War” won over 30 Game of the Year awards, and the sales of "Gears of War" and “Gears of War 2” have eclipsed 11 million units. Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is the three-time consecutive winner of Game Developer magazine’s Best Engine Front Line Award and is this year's Hall of Fame inductee. Unreal Engine 3 has also been recognized as the number one game engine by Develop magazine. Additional information about Epic can be obtained through the Epic Games Web site at www.epicgames.com.

© 2009, Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Unreal, AnimSet Viewer, AnimTree Editor, Unreal Cascade, Unreal Content Browser, Unreal Development Kit, Unreal Editor, Unreal Engine, Unreal Kismet, Unreal Lightmass, Unreal Matinee, Unreal PhAT, UnrealScript and Unreal Tournament are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Codename: Nebraska

Yesterday, November 4th, 11:15 am - 12:00 pm PST, Doug Thompson (Dusan Writer in Second Life) moderated a mixed-reality panel at Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco and Metanomics inworld with:

• Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, 
• Neil Katz, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Director IBM Virtual Spaces, CIO Office Innovation Initiatives, 
• Steve Aguiar, Program Manager at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center's (NUWC's) Metaverse Strategic Initiative,
• Douglas Maxwell, Program Technology Lead also at NUWC's Metaverse Strategic Initiative.

Mark Kingdon

Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab, unveiled “Nebraska”, the LL code-name for a stand-alone solution based on the technology that runs the popular Second Life virtual world. “Nebraska” is the much-anticipated behind-the-firewall solution which allows enterprises to host their own virtual world environments within their organizations, which was first introduced back in April.

Mark spoke about the benefits of the platform, the intended audience, and how it fits into the broader challenges and opportunities of “enterprise 2.0”. Mark was joined by a number of customers who had used Nebraska during the closed beta phase of development.

Nebraska consists of two rack-mounted servers, hosting two software packages: a world server and a voice server, which can be installed on an enterprise's network, and as it does not have to stream all the content that LL normally streams for Second Life, it is blazingly fast. Similar to the standalone version of Opensim, but much more polished.

The avatars in Nebraska are all 'suits', with none of the Pamela Anderson and Professional Wrestling lookalikes that seem to predominently populate Second Life. The package supports up to 800 avatars over 8 regions, each of which can be turned off, and replaced with another using a different theme. So, you could have training regions one week, then replace the regions with conference and show regions the next, saving to, and loading from, the region inventory at will.

But how much does all this cost? Well, the mooted price is US$55,000, plus US$14,000/year in fees, which should bring a big sigh of  relief to the open-source Opensim community.

Nebraska is aimed at providing enterprises with a SL-looking virtual space for their corporate activities, without the seedy association of SL itself.

In addition to Nebraska, Mark also introduced the Work Marketplace, where corporate customers could download ready-made regions, providing solutions for virtual conferences, events, exhibitions, training, marketing, etc., and a selection of business and work-related avatars, office suites, and much more, for their Nebraska customers, under a site license.

It remains to be seen whether this is a major new direction for Linden Labs.

Rock

Unity now for Free & FriendsHangout

Unity
Early in 2009 I mentioned the recent trend in Virtual World design that required little or no downloads, and where all content was streamed directly to your browser (basically, if you can watch streamed movies on your PC you can use streamed games and virtual worlds). As we approach the end of 2009 one company stands out as the leader of this trend, Unity Technologies.

The Unity software allows anyone, with no programming experience whatsoever, to quickly develop games and virtual worlds, that can be run in a browser, using simple drag and drop tools. A player can start a game or visit a world on their home PC, then continue on the move via their mobile phone!

Up until recently, the Unity software came in two main flavours: Unity Pro, at US$1,499 and a cut-down version, Unity Indie, at US$200. That has now changed. Unity Indie has now been renamed to simply 'Unity' and is now available at zero cost, while still allowing the user to create commercial applications. The main restriction between Unity and Unity Pro is that Unity is limited to a maximum of 20 avatars per 'world', which is ample for most applications. Unity is available in both Windows and Mac versions, and versions are also available for creating applications for both the iPhone and the Wii.

The Unity download comes complete with a simple but powerful Editor, and a sample project, Tropical Paradise, which is available to browse, along with other projects in Live Demo format on the Unity website.

Models and objects for your world can be created in almost all current 3d applications. A list of 3d formats, image formats, video and audio formats supported is available on the Unity Asset Importing page.

Of course, once you have created a virtual world you will need to host it so your customers/friends can access it through their browsers. Hosting can be on a dedicated server, a Virtual Private Server, or even on your home PC if your upload speed is fast enough. So, what do you do if your ISP does not quote your upload speed? The answer is - you measure it. Use one of the internet connection speed measurement services. The one I like best is SpeedTest.NET Just select the recommended server to test with (click on the yellow pyramid), and it will measure first your download speed, then your upload speed. My upload speed is 1Mb/sec and it handled myself and a visiting friend with no problem at all. I did not check how many avatars 1Mb/sec could handle (but hey, you have to have something to check yourself, right?).

FriendsHangout
Many Games, 3d Chat Rooms and Virtual Worlds have been built now using Unity, and  one such company that provides over 4000 chatrooms, virtual worlds, and custom 3D worlds, using Unity, is FriendsHangout (terrible, unimaginative name, I know). You select the World you wish to visit from a rotating set of destinations boards (think Blue Mars Destination Island here, but rotating).

 There are no facilities for creating objects in FriendsHangout (that privilege is reserved for the creator of the world), but if you are looking to update your avatar, you will find clothing and animations to bring your character to life in your own custom style.

You can also create your own custom chat room and virtual world and buy furniture and various props to add your own design to each and every item in their catalogue.

Give it a try.

Rock

Blue Mars Developer Guidebook

While the most visible faces of the Avatar-Reality team have been working on the Blue Mars Client, providing more and more functionality, squashing bugs, arranging Meet & Greets, gathering feedback etc, other teams have been busy creating the developer tools, and providing detailed manuals for their use on the Blue Mars wiki pages.

The Wiki team is led by Scott Matsuda, the CSR, QA, and QC Manager at Avatar Reality Inc.

The Getting Started section of the Developer Guidebook explains the different types of developer in Blue Mars:

The Item Editor
Made specifically to have everything an Item Creator needs

Sandbox Item Editor is a 3D geometry model viewer and material editor for Blue Mars Project. The primary purpose of this tool is to convert 3D models in Collada format into a Blue Mars internal data format, examine the results visually and edit material properties of converted models as desired. Sandbox Item Editor uses CryENGINE2 for rendering; thus, it displays objects exactly as they will appear in the game. The manual provides a detailed description of its menu commands and special functions.

Note: in some images and documents, linked to this page, the Item Editor is also called Sandbox Viewer, which is the old name of this tool.

The Cloth Editor

Created specifically to have everything a Clothing Creator needs

The Cloth Editor is a tool for creating wearable assets: clothes, hairstyles, shoes, jewelry and other items, that can be attached to an avatar.

The Shop Editor

Created specifically for developers who are creating shops in Blue Mars.

This Editor is currently under construction.

The Block Editor

Created specifically for developers who are developing Blocks, a subset of a City.

The Block Developer leases a Block from the City Developer to develop Shops and to create Residential housing on it. The Block Developer may choose to lease out their Shops to Item Developers and Housing to Residents, or decide to develop the entire Block by themselves. The Blue Mars Sandbox: Block Editor is the 3D software editor that enables the Block Developer to place their Shops and Residences on their Block. Block developers may also design limited Flow Graphs. Lastly, the Block Developer may place vegetation in the Block, but only as brushes.

Also under construction, but is filling up fast.

The City Editor

Created specifically for developers whom are creating entire cities.

The City Developer leases their City from Avatar Reality, then creates Blocks which can be leased to Block Developers.

Also under construction, but filling up nicely. 

The Shop, Block and City Editor pages all require a login to view their pages, and only are only available to registered city developers.

Other sections of the Wiki will be introduced in future posts.

Rock

New Blue Mars Release Part 2/2

The new Blue Mars client has a few more tricks up its sleeve.

The login screen now has buttons to link to the Tutorials pages, and for retrieving a lost password.

 Another change is the Clothing Inventory. At first I thought they had forgotton to add a 'Cancel' button, but that little arrow on the left side of the Inventory window closes it.

I could be mistaken, but it also appears that the list of Animations and Gestures has been increased significantly. I certainly don't remember a Fart animation before!

I now have a pic of that missing texture I mentioned in Part 1. Here it is:

I also noticed a strange alpha problem. You see that archway that my shadow is pointing towards? Well, if I swing my camera around (using right-mouse button down, and dragging the mouse), so it looks our from inside that archway, then not only do the boat, railings, water, and other objects disappear, but I do too! In the third screenshot you can see my name-tag is still there, and my shadow, but not me!

This is what the camera 'should' see:

This is what it actually sees:

So, what else is there lurking under the bonnet of this new release?

• Avatar draw distance has been doubled.
• Room customization UI has been changed.

I also referred in the first Part to the Preferences button, and how you can change the Client window resolution. The new supported resolutions are:

• 1920 x 1080
• 1600 x 900
• 1440 x 810
• 1280 x 720 (Default)
• 1024 x 576

 MyPage

 The developers have had a MyPage for some time, but now all Players will get their own MyPage. Players can log into the Player MyPage to purchase BLU and manage their profile information, avatar, items and Residences.

In this release:

• Edit your account email and password.
• Edit your avatar name.
• Choose how you want your avatar name to be displayed in Blue Mars (first and last name, first name only, last name only, hide all).
• Reset your avatar's face.
• Reset your avatar data (including the face, cosmetics, clothing, and animation).
• View a list of your friends and their online status.
• Download the latest Blue Mars Player Client.
  

 Coming soon:

• Buy BLU!
• Click to see friends' profiles.
• Message your friends. 
• Manage your Residences (pay rent, register your friends as guests).

I shall post the link to MyPage as soon as the server is back up.

Have fun

Rock

New Blue Mars Release Part 1/2

Today saw a new release of both the Blue Mars server and client (version 0.0.5664.4). The first surprising thing about this new client release was the size. At 1.3Gb it is not any bigger than previous versions, despite including two extra cities, GridRock City and Soswaewon Garden. I will attempt to find out how this was achieved and report in an edit to this blog piece.

As part of the server updates one important change is that the registration of new player accounts is now automatic (rather than by the previous manual email notification system) so now when new applicants register, they will get access immediately.

So, what did this new client release include?

Well, there are two new Cities: Gridrock City and Soswaewon Garden. The Blue Mars Tweet said that there would be three, the missing one being Small Islands (maybe disappeared due to global warming?). More on the two new cities later.

As far as the UI is concerned, a number of changes have been made:

Avatar Names over the heads of avatars. It appears that it is the ID that that appears here (take user name, remove spaces, convert to lowercase). If you right click an avatar you get their ID followed by their User name. It would have been more preferable to have the User name over the avatar's head. One Blue Martian was complaining that his Password was over his head!

A Preference option, which allows you to choose the Screen Resolution and Rendering (graphics) Quality.

Several Blue Martians had problems following trying out the Screen Resolution settings. Once they had selected a resolution, and if it was not the right one, they could no longer click on any of the on-screen buttons, not even the Preferences button to change the Resolution back again. This neccessitated edits to the game.cfg file to get things back again, but as they had no idea what the settings for screen height and width  were prior to their experiment with the Preferences, they had to try several trial and error settings.

The Bubble Chat window has had the automatic scrolling and last line visibility problems fixed

Avatar head customization is now available in-world in the Welcome Area. where you can choose the style, shape, ethnicity and hair of your avatar. Unfortunately it is confusingly called Face Customization, when there is also a Face icon that does something completely different (it is more of a cosmetics editor. One of these two functions needs to be renamed, and I would suggest changing Face Customization to Avatar Customization.

The destination jewel that appears when you click the ground is now dark blue instead of light blue (why?)

The two new cities posed something of a problem for me:

In the Soswaewon Garden I found that moving outside of a very small area was just about impossible. Clicking the ground ahead had no effect outside of this area, and steep slopes hemmed you in on several sides, as did undergrowth. I must try harder.

In Gridrock City  I was lagged out completely. My fps fell from 18fps in the Welcome Area, and 15fps in Venezia, to 1.5fps or less in Gridrock City in several areas. Others did not have similar problems, so I guess it is down to my PC specs.

GridRock City (click to enlarge, and notice the fps reading)

The last noticeable thing about the UI is the Log-Off screen, which now has a Twitter link and recent Twitter posts. Unfortunately you cannot click on the 'Yes' button to confirm your log-out until the Twitter has completed its retrieval, which meant I had to wait a further minute before I could confirm my log-out. It would be much better for the Yes/No buttons to be immeditaely available, and not have to wait until the Twitter posts are retrieved.

Currently MyPage is not available, so I will report on this when it returns, and on any other information from the Release Notes, which are expected later today.

That is it so far, more functionality, but more bugs, but hey, that's Beta!

Rock

Eos

I thought I would share a little about what I am doing in Blue Mars.

My City is based on the Valles Marineris, that huge gash across the face of Mars.

The Valles Marineris

Following the terraforming of Mars the Valles Marineris would be completely submerged, being a massive depression. Close up images of the VM from orbiting probes show that the terrain is very similar to a natural feature we have on earth, the Grand Canyon.

 The Grand Canyon

It was quite easy to get the heightfield data for the Grand Canyon from the US Geological Survey, and import that into the Blue Mars Sandbox to form my terrain. I then set the sea height so that the highest part of the plateaus surrounding the canyons were about 15m beneath the sea level, so there are some shallows, but also some gorges which are 150m below sea-level.

Into the cliff faces of the canyons and gorges are being built Volexes, these are caves, tunnels, caverns etc that can be built directly into the terrain. Some of the caves have a way in and a way out, some go for miles then result in a dead-end, and in some of the caves there is some company!

The idea behind this City is that it will be an attraction for those who like adventure both on the surface of the sea, and beneath it.

The build will consist of four blocks, each a mini-city, rising from the sea-bed on huge towers that will have marinas at sea-level, underwater viewing galleries, and glass-domed elevators riding in the flutes of the tower's column. Residencies will be at various heights up the column, each served by its own private elevator, and the main part of the city will be at the top level, where stores and entertainment venues will be present. The elevators also go all the way down to the ocean floor, opening into domed airlocks, where a resident can enter his submersible, open the external locks to flood the dome, then ride out to explore the canyons of the Valles Marineris.

The marinas will have all manner of craft, from tall sailing ships, to schooners, yachts, power boats, and jet-skis, some old-world, some futuristic. We are also looking into programming the sea, to give various wave heights, including storm and typhoon systems (that really will sink your boat if you get in the way of them).

The Valles Marineris is entirely Ocean, with no land masses at all (above sea-level). The names of the mini-cities give the clue to their actual location within the VM, i.e. Tithonium, Melas, Ophir and Eos, and we do plan in a later release to include maps.

Here is some work-in-progress on the first city, Eos:

 Eos

There is an underwater viewing gallery to enjoy the incredible sea-life, and below that the domed airlocks where the submersibles will be moored, while at the surface is the beginnings of the marina. Elevators take you up the central tower to the apartment levels, while at the top will be the main city, with its stores and entertainment venues.

The entire structure is about 200m in height, and the total navigable sea area is 64sq kms.

Anyone interested in leasing one of the other 3 blocks to develop an oceanic city, just let me know.

Rock

Crytek releases CryENGINE® 3

All-in-one multiplatform development solution now available for licensees

Frankfurt a. M. (Germany), October 14th 2009 - Crytek GmbH (“Crytek”) is excited to announce that their latest all-in-one development solution CryENGINE 3 is now available for all developers. CryENGINE 3 is the first game development platform for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, MMO, DX9/DX10 that also is truly Next-Gen-Ready - with scalable computation and graphics for all major upcoming platforms. It provides the complete game engine to create AAA quality next generation games, and includes the redesigned CryENGINE 3 Sandbox™ level editor, a production-proven, 3rd generation “What you see is what you play” (WYSIWYP) - tool designed by and for professional developers.

CryENGINE 3 also introduces CryENGINE 3 Live Create™. It allows developers to work with a single editor, but see and play the results in real-time on PC, PS3 and Xbox360, hooked up to a single dev PC.  The engine takes care of the conversion and optimization of assets in real-time; enables instant, cross-platform changes to any part of game creation and as a result materially increases the speed, quality and significantly reduces the risk of multiplatform development.

“With CryENGINE 3 we are releasing the best development solution available today and tomorrow. With its scalable graphics and computation it is next-gen ready and with new features like CryENGINE 3 Live Create the best choice for game developers and companies developing serious games applications alike. It is the only game engine solution that enables real-time development and can ensure teams are able to maximise their own creativity, save budget and create greater gaming experiences.” said  Cevat Yerli, CEO & President of Crytek.

“We’re delighted to launch CryENGINE 3 and we look forward to seeing what developers achieve with our all-new technology. CryENGINE 3 isn’t just about providing our trademark highest-quality graphics and our out of the box AI and physics for the first time on consoles – it also delivers real benefits to all disciplines in games development.  Programmers will create awesome new effects and gameplay; art, design and audio teams can play as they create with the fastest, entirely real-time WYSIWYP pipeline ever, materially reducing development time and risk – even producers, project managers and suits will love CryENGINE 3!  Of course, our international team of more than 20 dedicated support staff are available right now to help our licensees make the most of CryENGINE 3; at their studio or at one of our support centres around the world.” added Carl Jones, Director of Business Development CryENGINE.

CryENGINE® is the underlying technology for Crytek’s critically acclaimed games Far Cry, Crysis, Crysis Warhead and NC Soft’s recently released MMORPG blockbuster AION. It has already been licensed to a number of major game companies around the globe, including several recent serious games training and simulation projects.  CryENGINE®3 is the underlying technology for the highly anticipated Crysis®2.

www.mycryengine.com

About Crytek GmbH
Crytek GmbH ("Crytek") is one of the world’s leading independent development studios for interactive entertainment with its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and additional studios in Kiev (Ukraine), Budapest (Hungary), Sofia (Bulgaria), Seoul (South Korea) and Nottingham (UK).Crytek is dedicated to creating exceptionally high quality video games for the PC and next-generation consoles, powered by their proprietary cutting edge 3D-Game-Technology CryENGINE®. Since its foundation in 1999, Crytek created the multi-award winning PC titles Far Cry®, Crysis®, awarded best PC Game of E3 2007 and Best Technology at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards and Crysis Warhead®, awarded Best Graphics Technology at IGN Best of 2008 Awards.

Crytek, Crysis, Crysis Warhead and CryENGINE are registered trademarks or trademarks of Crytek GmbH in the USA, Germany and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.