Thursday 2 August 2012

Planeshift

Development

PlaneShift is currently in the alpha stage of development at version 0.5, codenamed "Arcane Chrysalis". PlaneShift has been open to players for free since its first public release. At that stage the game had very little functionality. The first major version (0.1) released on May 2, 2002 was codenamed "Atomic Blue".Four different public versions of the game came out since then, with different changes in functionality between them. The current version "Arcane Chrysalis" being released on December 10, 2009. The server side engine code and the client code is written from scratch by the PlaneShift team, while the 3D rendering features are based on the Crystal Space 3D engine. The internet connection for the game server is donated and has been known to suffer issues with long latency times.

The game uses two different licenses, with the engine being released under the GNU General Public License, while the content is released under a proprietary license. The artwork, ruleset, dialog, and other non-engine content of PlaneShift are proprietary and licensed under a custom license: the PlaneShift Content License (PCL). The PCL prevents modifications, redistributions, and assigns the copyright of accepted contributions to Atomic Blue. This license also forbids using the content for profit or for unofficial hosting. PlaneShift has been used in multiple studies regarding development of free software and video games.

The PlaneShift development team organization resembles one of a software company, with departments and leaders, and has been studied as a collaborative software engineering organizational model.