Ryzom

Ryzom (formerly The Saga of Ryzom, cf dt rhizome ) is a free Massively Multiplayer Online Role- Playing Game ( MMORPG) for Windows, OS X and Linux operating systems from the former French independent game development studio Nevrax.

There are, among others, German, English, French, Russian and Spanish language versions. It is released by the USK ab 12 years. Playing on the official servers cost after a free trial period to Level 125-8 Euro per month and user profile.

First, classical MMORPG allowed players placing their own enhancements in the game. There is the Ryzom Ring (R ² ), which includes an editor to create custom game content with the player, which can also be uploaded on the official server and then recorded by others. Ryzom has a programming interface ( API ) through which the activities can be tapped live in the official game worlds.

Production manager and consultant in the development was Jessica Mulligan.

Game content

The game is set 2000 years in the future. It includes science fiction and fantasy elements in a complex story that is divided into episodes and was continued until 2005 in three gradually appeared Extensions ( chapters). The player stands between two world domination aspiring religions. With one of them he can ally with. One is a nature-loving, magical faction called the " Kami ", the other is a high-tech, who believes in an extraterrestrial origin of their species, called the " Karavan ". Since episode 2 they are at war.

The game won the 2005 Reader's Choice Award by MMORPG.com for the best game history.

Game system

The player moves on foot or riding animals in observer - or first-person perspective through the game world and meets individual and group missions. For the character can be selected that are connected within the game world with different simulated ecosystems (desert, seascape, forest, jungle), but have hardly different characteristics from four races. It can collect experience points in four skill areas ( professions) and regularly selectable new skills are acquired. The game system simulates a day-night and seasonal cycle of 16 days and different weather conditions (rain, wind, snow ), which influence the behavior of creatures and searchable materials. Equipment are manufactured from materials that come from the bodies of my enemies or must be collected and may be of varying quality. This depends, among other things, on the experience of the collector and in turn affects the quality of products made from it. The game world is changing, although as of and access to new areas or other be blocked. The game allows voluntary player -player fights both as an individual and as a group or to mass struggles.

Engine

The game is based on a 3D game engine called NeL (of Nevrax Library), which consists of several developed in C libraries and version 2 of the GNU Affero General Public License ( AGPL ) is released as free software. You can run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and supports graphics interfaces OpenGL and DirectX, and for sound output direct sound, FMOD, OpenAL and Xaudio 2 engine provides so-called dynamic model degradation, thus the geometric complexity and other image quality characteristics of the game characters depending be reduced dynamically by the number of figures in the field of view. Thus hundreds of characters can be displayed simultaneously in mass battles. With the dynamic terrain degradation selbiges also stands for the game terrain available. Each client can be synchronized with only up to about 2,500 bytes per second (with several hundred units in the area ) with the events of the common game world. An artificial intelligence controls the creatures depending on the respective simulated environmental conditions. It simulates, among other hunting and group behavior.

History

The game is being developed since 2000. On 9 December 2002 information has been released for the game, as Wanadoo was announced as a publisher for the first time. From April to 7 June 2004, there was a public beta test in September and the game was officially released - originally called The Saga of Ryzom. From the 16th current four game servers were open, but was due to supply difficulties in the client software then the 20 as the official launch date in history. In August 2006, the name for marketing reasons was shortened to " Ryzom ". On 3 October 2006, the expansion, The Ryzom Ring was released, which contains an editor.

The end of 2006 Nevrax went bankrupt. A group of former employees, players and free software advocates tried with an appeal for donations and the support of the Free Software Foundation, which pledged $ 60,000 financial support to redeem the entire game. This failed, however. Instead bought Gameforge on 21 December 2006 Nevrax and thus the rights to the game on. Gameforge wanted to market its new subsidiary Nevrax Ryzom, but this was only slightly successful. Gameforge France also became insolvent. After that was started in order to ensure the preservation of the game as free software by the community, a spin-off of the engine called OpenNeL. In 2008, when the new owner has created a new platform to support the free development of the engine, she was asleep until further defined and incorporated their progress in the local official main branch. After half a year of downtime, 2008, the game operation was resumed. The Cypriot company Winch Gate Property Ltd.. leads since May 2009 as the new owner also paid subscriptions continued.

On 6 May 2010 the Free Software Foundation announced that the source code and game content were passed to it. The game will be made available under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License ( AGPL ). All artistic content should be placed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike ( CC-by- sa). However, this is not the world itself, this is still only playable on the official server. The FSF speaks of the date probably the greatest contribution to the free games. Winch Gate wants to promote the crowdsourcing of the development work.

Since 30 November 2010, a native Linux client is available, which was developed on the basis of the release with support from the Free Software Foundation.

The Mac version of Ryzom is available since 15 April 2011 at the Mac App Store.