CyanWorlds.com Engine

CyanWorlds.Com Engine Open Source Project

Cyan Worlds, Inc. and OpenUru.org jointly announce open source delivery of the CyanWorlds.com Engine client and 3ds Max plugin, aka Plasma.

Cyan Worlds Announcement

The following message was posted on the mystonline.com forums on (date):

(Insert Cyan Worlds' announcement text here)

OpenUru.org Announcement

OpenUru.org presents the debut of the CyanWorlds.Com Engine, Cyan Worlds' Plasma game engine from Myst Online: Uru Live. The OpenUru.org team is thrilled that the CyanWorlds.com Engine has been released by Cyan Worlds as open source. We are honored that Cyan Worlds gave OpenUru.org the opportunity to prepare and release it to the Uru community and the world. The initial release of the CyanWorlds.Com Engine includes Cyan Worlds' client and 3ds Max Plugin.

OpenUru.org is especially pleased to simultaneously announce MOSS, by a'moaca' with cjkelly1, a CyanWorlds.Com Engine server. MOSS was derived from a'moaca's work on her client protocol Wireshark plugin, a project also hosted on OpenUru.org. Cyan Worlds cannot release their server code until more is done to clear it for open source, so a'moaca's completion of her open source server couldn't have been more perfectly timed.

OpenUru.org is prepared with tools to support new development of the CyanWorlds.com Engine with MOSS. We welcome all developers, issue reporters and users to contribute to the effort. Contributors can work on our Foundry with Atlassian tools such as JIRA, Fisheye and Crucible to manage development projects and Jenkins (previously known as Hudson) for Continuous Integration to produce automated builds.

What It Is

CyanWorlds.Com Engine is the client, server and tools used to develop and operate the Myst Online: Uru Live MMO. The server code needs more work before Cyan Worlds can clear it for open source. However, the client and 3DS Max plugin are now available in open source.

How To Get It

CyanWorlds.Com Engine is available on OpenUru.org's Foundry, hosted on a Mercurial code repository. There was much discussion on the Myst Online forums about the strengths of various repositories after Cyan Worlds' initial open source announcement in 2008. We listened. Mercurial was selected due to the needs of a distributed developer community.

OpenUru.org needs to throttle the initial download traffic due to the expected extreme demand built up during the long wait for open source. Therefore, developers wishing the initial release needs to create an account on the Foundry at http:/Foundry.OpenUru.org/jira. The Foundry is secured via SSL throughout the site. A browser security certificate is needed. Instructions are available on the certificate installation page.

Developers who have created an account will be given access to pull the CyanWorlds.Com Engine repository as quickly as possible, using email notification. Once the developer traffic has subsided, the repository will be opened to the public and the curious. No doubt those very developers will assume some of the load themselves to speed up distribution.

Development

Some developers will be invited to join the team in management and development positions for the CyanWorlds.Com Engine project. But generally, anyone who demonstrates the skills and becomes a positive force in the project may contribute to development.

CyanWorlds.Com Engine version 1.0 will consist only of a buildable client and plugin. There will be no new features and no bug fixes, except those necessary to replace proprietary third party libraries that Cyan Worlds needed to removed before the release. Once there is a successful build is released, phase two may begin to fix known issues. After that, the fun begins with new features and full steam ahead to keep on chugging down that open source track.

Once things get rolling, we'll be looking for people to fill or help with the following positions:

• Project lead (integration of job flow, patches, release schedules)
• Documentation lead (create and integrate cross-platform documentation for JIRA, web, Wiki, PDF, IDE)
• Technology lead (site integration, resource integration, security, builds)
• Development lead (prioritization of issues, issue assignments, tools, set up code review)
• Web community lead (development of web presence and content to introduce, educate and deliver open source projects

Documentation

What documentation? The code documents itself! Right? Actually, there was an early effort to maintain directives used for automated Doxygen documentation from code. Their use fell off as time went on. Introduction of integrated documentation is considered crucial to the successful development of the CyanWorlds.Com Engine. Therefore, Doxygen directives will be accepted into the main trunk from the start. We want to build integrated documentation originating from the source code for use beginning with Fisheye (our repo browser), wiki, PDF, and the Visual Studio IDE.

Everyone

Everyone will be able to download and watch progress of the CyanWorlds.Com Engine project and enjoy the benefits of exploring new worlds.

The Team

The CyanWorlds.com Engine Project was brought to you by Cyan Worlds - Rand Miller, Tony Fryman, Mark DeForest and the collective talents of everyone at Cyan Worlds who ever worked on Uru Live over many years, and OpenUru.org - JWPlatt, Mac_Fife, rarified, a'moaca', and cjkelly1.