Curious, I came upon this today.
Looks interesting, with the authors claiming a test server with 150 clients attached and running about with no lag and 10% CPU utilization on the server. (I believe it was a quad core client running 150 bots against a quad core server)

Has anyone looked at Multiverse? What do you think?

For me, free is always nice, (you make money, they want a slice, though) I have concerns over java security, but that's probabky just my paranoia creeping in when I remove my tinfoil hat...

Multiverse

Cheers!
Mark

I'm using MV on two projects: one for an National Science Foundation research project into MMOs and education; the other is creating a class for DeVry Online about teaching MMO skills to students.

So far it seems okay. It's very close to Second Life in terms of "feel". The business model is very attractive for education and research since you don't owe them anything unless you charge something for your services first. Their architecture is meant to appease all the goodies like server load balance, dynamic bandwidth throttling, etc.

Where did you find the 150 client statistic? To my knowledge, they hadn't taken it up beyond maybe 50 but that may have changed.

All in all, MV seems to be the leading contender for the highly prized title of MMO-Maker. It is backd by some HEAVY hollywood hitters as advisors (landau and cameron) and I have been personally told by the developers that they have enough of a cash "cushion" to burn through a few years before they have to start making it back.

This is DEFINITELY one to keep an eye on for the near furture.

(PS: it's free to become a developer and DL version 1.0 so if curious, nothing stops you from trying!)

WOW, checking it out, might be just the thing I need, Thanks...

Not Bad !

In the gallery all games made with it , would need real skilled 3D artitst,
not bad , but not pro.
Far from Guild Wars characters (that use only a specular shader) for example.

I'm not attracted by any game made with it caus all look really not professionnal enought. Yes 3D art is one the most important thing.

May I ask how to develop things with it?

Do we get the source oder a SDK? Which language did they use and what lang we need to use?

This looks _very_ interesting to me and I will definitely try it out soon.

You get an SDK with some access to source. It's all c++ and I don't think you can tinker with everything but can modify select bits.

Expert: Consider that in an MMO, great graphics mean nothing if you have lag and latency and poor client/server performace. Right now, MV is at the stage where they need to make sure the system is stable; guilding the lilly will come later.

Wop, and what's about extending the whole thing?

Like I said, you can program extensions to it but within limits. So I don't think you can change the network protocols but you can tweak the walking and combat systems to your liking.

In the future they will provide modules, like physics, economy, combat, that should plug into the system. Not sure yet how that will work but sounds promising.

Oh, and I would keep an eye on it but I wouldn't really consider doing anything commercial with it for at least another 6 months so it has enough time to shake down the software.

Fastlane: The 150 figure comes from an early post in their Developer Forums relating to a performance test video posted on YouTube.
Forum Entry

"Initial performance test of Multiverse's pre-release virtual world server. This short video shows a single server running 150 clients simultaneously. CPU load for this test was at just over 10 percent. Continued scalability and performance advancements expected."

It's just recently posted version 1.0, and there are a lot of areas that are still lacking, (like outer space simulation - my reason for not going there yet) but there is activity here, and the programmers are working hard...

Mark

Thanks Mark... that's a good bit of info to have.