Evennia MUD Server IRC Channel

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To improve collaboration, the Evennia MUD Server project now has an IRCchannel on Freenode, #evennia. We have taken it a step further and linked this up with our test game, so those messing around in-game can still talk/listen on the IMCEvennia channel (which is also replicated to the MudBytes Inter-MUD network).

Evennia is a Python+Twisted+Django-based MUD server. For those that who have no idea what this is, it’s a base for a persistent, text-based MMO. As far as I know, Evennia is the first MUD built on top of Django, and we’d love to see more community members stop by to help. Feel free to pop in IRC, join the IMCEvennia channel if you’re on the MudBytes IMC2 network, or join the Google Group at http://evennia.com.

EVE Online on Snow Leopard

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After a few hours of play, it seems like EVE on Snow Leopard brings anoticeable improvement on several fronts. First and foremost, there is a definite increase in framerate and performance with multiple clients open. I can not quantify this scientifically (or am too lazy to do so).

One of the other things that I’m really hyped about is that this brand new Macbook Pro runs a lot cooler with two EVE clients opened with a dual-head setup. I have always had to run SMCFancontrol to maintain a reasonable CPU temp, and still have to do so. However, instead of getting up over 70C and having the aluminum case heat up above and below the GPU/CPU, it now runs below 60C and stays reasonable cool on the outside. Big win here if not just for peace of mind.

I did see one crash while running two clients, but this can be expected periodically. I’m not sure if it’s Snow Leopard related or just EVE funkage. All in all, EVE runs just fine on Snow Leopard.

Django + EVE Online

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For the use of fellow Djangonauts out there, I introspected and fixed upCCP’s SQL dump of EVE Online data. This means you can now get access to everything from the comforts of the Django ORM.

The project is still very new, and I’m not even sure it’s going to be attractive given the table layout. At this point, it is a bunch of introspected models and a fixed up database dump. I’ll be adding convenience methods, __unicode__ functions, and etc with time to make it more friendly. Check it out at:

http://code.google.com/p/django-eve/

For now this will only work on Postgres until some kind soul wants to get the MySQL or SQLite dumps fixed up (some tables need ‘id’ primary keys).

Browser Games with Django (English)

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Just looking through DjangoSites.org and Googling around, I’mabsolutely puzzled by the lack of Django-based browser games. It is such an idea platform for developing these, yet there are only a few that are actually open to the public (some of which aren’t in English, and are thus inaccessible to me). There seem to be a few games out there in French, Chinese, and some other things I don’t really recognize, though.

Here are a few games in English I’ve been able to round up:

I’m particularly interested in anything open-source, as I’d love to contribute from time to time, but I’d love to hear of any playable games that I have missed, or any open-source games in development. As far as close-sourced games in development, they’re not of much interest to me if they’re at least not open for testing. Without access to the source or a reachable site, it’s as good as vaporware (and many of them never see completion).

So speak up, let me know if there’s something that I’ve completely missed!

Guitar Hero with a Real Guitar?

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It was only a matter of time before work started on something likeGuitar Hero that uses a real guitar as a “controller.” Guitar Rising by GameTank, Inc. is looking very interesting. Instead of using a little plastic, five-button controller, plug in your guitar of choice and get to it.

The advantage to this over Guitar Hero and Rock Band is that the player is actually learning how to play a real instrument, meanwhile enjoying many of the aspects that made this game’s predecessors so successful.

The only unfortunate thing is that Guitar Rising isn’t due out until late 2008, which more or less means early to mid 2009. This one is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

See the Official Site or the Gizmodo Article for more details.