Closing up shop. See the status page for details.

So, as reported, a company (Multiverse) has acquired the rights to produce a MMO Firefly game. I made two attempts to contact them asking what there policy was regarding fan projects i.e. do they have issues with them or not. The second email got this reply:

From: Ron Meiners <[email protected]>
Subject: [Fwd: Firefly Fan Projects followup]

Hi Reid,

We appreciate your approaching us for clarification on this, but unfortunately we can't really answer your questions.

Fox is the one you should talk to, they're the current owners of the Intellectual Property.

best,

Ron Meiners
Developer Relations
Multiverse

So, they haven't explicitly said anything aside from they aren't the ones to ask. Now I take this to mean that we don't have anything (or much) to worry from Multiverse. But, I have asked for verification of my assumptions. No reply yet.

That being said, I have enough warm fuzzy feelings from this reply to continue work on this project again. We're back!

I've just found out that there is a company that has bought the rights to produce an Firefly MMORPG. This puts this project in a very bad place legally.

It is because of this that I must shut this project down to see what this company does. Perhaps one day, development can continue, but right now, we can't take the chance.

Good-day, and we hope to see you again soon.

Obviously I've been somewhat busy. First it was organizing my schedule, then it was an increasingly stressful life. The stress actually resulted in a change in cities (don't ask). At any rate, I've finally got my desk, etc and am finally able to start developing again. So, off I go :)

Well, I finally got fed up with setting everything up and took a second crack at finding a hosting solution for our project. I'm happy to say that I found ourproject.org and they have accepted our application! Our project page can be found here.

I've just got everything that was in CVS moved over and we will begin collaborating shortly.

The 'Verse project is pleased to officially welcome Michael Rocco to the team. Michael will be working on the Windows and Linux ports presently and will be leading the developments for the AI in the future.

So, I had some problems at 2 am this morning trying to get anonymous CVS access through SSH working. But, now it seems to be working. At least for me it works (but I'm on the inside of the network). Going to have to get someone else on the outside to test it from there *knock on wood*.

The developer docs have been converted to html, updated, etc and put up here.

One may note the the data storage has changed from the implied flat files to using SQLite. So, the meaning of Milestone 1 has changed slightly. Everything will be arranged/re-arranged by the end of next weekend.

Upon re-reading the documentation I wrote, some of it is more like notes written to myself than anything that I'd reasonably expect someone else to understand. So, I spent the evening re-writing some of the documentation. Almost done with those ones, and I'll work on putting the others into HTML format when done that.

After all that is done, I add it to the site :)

A couple days ago I got an invite to be a beta tester for Gmail hosting the mail for fireflylabs.ca and I just got around to and finished setting it up right now. So, now any core developer will be able to have an @fireflylabs.ca account through Gmail.

Since the only monitor I have access to that is big enough to work with went, I decided to upgrade the network. Not exactly scheduled, but something I had a window of opportunity to do. It's pretty much finished at this point, aside from those loose ends that always come up.

So, the site has been down for the past couple days. This was apparently because of a bad filter on the line (DSL). Though I suspect a loose connection somewhere outside (first problems occurred during a storm and the problem was weather related).

At any rate, we're back up and all seems well. Knock on wood that Murphy does not pay a visit ;)

Finished the move just over a week ago as well as my first week of classes for the summer. Also, my boss is now starting to apply pressure to get some serious work done. Things are starting to settle down. That's the situation.

Now, what this means for the project is that I've finally been able to organize my time such that I will have some free time starting this week and possibly this weekend!

So, production of code will begin again quite soon :)

Due to real life issues, I haven't been able to put much work into the project over the past month. But, starting in May, I'll have a good chunk of daily time to put toward this project. So, from then on, steady progress.

Because one of our primary goals is to be as cross-platform as possible, I thought I'd take a look at creating Universal Binaries for Mac OSX. I think I have it all sorted out (it compiles, runs and doesn't complain), but I still have the need to actually test the binary on a non-PPC OSX machine.

So, all has been quite on the site for a little bit. Well the reason for that is that I got a job. So, I've been busy getting to know my code surroundings and such. Once this is all done, which should be before the end of this coming week, I'll get back to some regular work on The 'Verse.

Reid

CVS is setup and we go live!

The coding since the last update has been slow due to RL. That being said, things are still progressing steadily.

It's 1am this "morning" and I just finished writing what I think is a complete set of documentation for a new developer to help with the work in Milestone 1.

Which means that Milestone 0 is technically completed. It is obviously an ongoing thing, but for this part it is done. Yay, one Milestone done!

The web server is setup the way I want it now, but I still have yet to setup the CVS server as well as give the ability to browse the CVS repository through the web. There is also the matter of mailing lists to tend to.

Continued writing some documentation. I think that Milestone 0 is starting to come to a close.

On Friday Feb 24, 2006 I submitted an application to BerliOS to have this project hosted there. I just received an email stating that that is not going to happen. Apparently, due to resource limitations that cannot accept anymore games or game frameworks; project denied.

Sure I could apply at Sourceforge, but then the code would be in the US. And with the DMCA (among other ridiculous laws), I just can't let that happen. So, I have to host it myself, which will require a good chunk of time to set things up.

Thus, work on the project itself has been suspended until I can setup the necessary functionality on my server. It shouldn't take more than a couple days.

The project gets underway.

Imported are general design concepts for the game engine as well as the file format for the character models. These ideas will be fleshed out when the appropriate Milestone is reached.

I have started to write the documentation for coding standards, etc as per Milestone 0.