Coming Soon

[FloatingFatMan]

[Arcana]

As long as all the code used is the work of Codewalker and his team, and nothing is taken from the game code at all, NCSoft don't have a leg to stand on, legally.

They have a couple of legal legs to stand on, but none I think they would want to test in court with regard to a project like this.

I'm not specifically going to outline the two legal arguments they could promote, because that discussion doesn't go anywhere I want to go.  I'm reasonably certain legal eagles can deduce what they are, and non-lawyers don't need to know.  Suffice to say, you are almost never 100% safe when it comes to the law surrounding complex things like this, but the project as I understand it is most likely safe from the most obvious legal threats.  More importantly, its outside the realm of what companies usually try to enforce regardless of legalities.

[Arcana]

I think NCSoft might object to YOU individually running the client in connection to this -- they could always send any individual participant a C&D letter or file some kind of legal action... I'm pretty sure they would lose if it came to a full court case, but they could always bankrupt an individual with legal BS costs to force a settlement.

Actually, if they specifically targeted a single player and demanded they stop using the game client, there's significant legal precedent that they'd win that case.  But ordinarily there's no reason to sue a single player to stop them from using a game client.  It would be ludicrous for them to go after people one at a time, and I don't think they have a legal way to execute a reverse class to try to get us all simultaneously.  They could ask us all to stop, but the only option for them to compel us to stop would be to sue us one at a time.

[ukaserex]

I think "City of Catgirls" might be worth the cost and consequences of litigation. lol

This is a particularly fun idea. Looking forward to see if/how my character can be reborn - if I even have the Icon copy of my character...I'll have to look for it.

[Arcana]

Another question: How do you all expect this to scale? Have you tested with many simultaneous connected users? Does the load on the XMPP server scale linearly or super-linearly? How about the load on the clients? Is there a chat-lag effect that can occur?

Based on my understanding of the project and how XMPP works, "server" load which here is equivalent to XMPP messaging load would typically scale approximately quadratically.  As the number of clients increases, the amount of inbound traffic scales upward linearly, and the number of clients each message must be dispatched to also increases linearly. 

And one more, only loosely related to the above; is there any collision detection (Iirc, the mapserver used to handle this? I'm not sure now, it's been too long for me) or will characters be able to merge/'over-print' visually?

I would suggest, if you do not already do so, start using Icon.  Many of your questions like this are likely to be at least partially answered by how Icon behaves.

Edit: Short answer: the game client performs most of the collision detection.  I believe that's due to the fact the client does prediction - a technical term which means in many cases, particularly for movement, the game client guesses that most of the things the player does is something the server will be ok with, and so the game client does it without waiting for a server acknowledgement.  This is why even on very slow and high latency links player movement was pretty smooth.  But when the network was lossy or acknowledgements failed to arrive, the game client eventually was forced to throw its predictions away and reset.  We called that "rubberbanding."

In general, I believe City of XMPP is going to work more or less just like Icon, with the primary difference being you'll see other people in their Icons also in your Icon, also doing whatever Icon allowed (its possible there are a few things you can't do in Icon you will be able to do in CoXMPP, as well as a few things they might have restricted that you can do in Icon but they don't want people doing in an unlimited fashion in CoXMPP).

[Codewalker]

Actually, if they specifically targeted a single player and demanded they stop using the game client, there's significant legal precedent that they'd win that case.  But ordinarily there's no reason to sue a single player to stop them from using a game client.  It would be ludicrous for them to go after people one at a time, and I don't think they have a legal way to execute a reverse class to try to get us all simultaneously.  They could ask us all to stop, but the only option for them to compel us to stop would be to sue us one at a time.

Not to mention the massive negative PR that such an act would generate.

I mean, seriously, a chat client with no gameplay is not a threat to them in any way. Any news source in the world will see that as picking on the little guy. Just look at how well that worked out for the RIAA, and that was against people who were committing obviously illegal acts of infringement of music that was currently in circulation and being sold.

[rojahdom]

We have the best community ever. I may not post much , but i read these forums everyday. Thank you Codewalker , and others for your hard work and dedication.

[Arcana]

Not to mention the massive negative PR that such an act would generate.

I mean, seriously, a chat client with no gameplay is not a threat to them in any way. Any news source in the world will see that as picking on the little guy. Just look at how well that worked out for the RIAA, and that was against people who were committing obviously illegal acts of infringement of music that was currently in circulation and being sold.

The RIAA is a perfectly good example.  They were not always on firm legal ground, but they were perfectly willing to go after people left and right.  However, they generally only pressed their case when they had at least some version of some narrative that justified their actions, even if only to their constituency.  On occasions when that narrative was impossible to spin in public, they often backed off. 

That's why I always caution that there's the law, and then there's what people are willing to do.  When it comes to intellectual property in particular, the law is always at least a little grey or a lot complicated.  What NCSoft is likely to do in any particular circumstance depends in part on what narrative they think they can spin around their actions.  If they think they can spin it as "we're just protecting our rights, like anyone else would" they might try something.  If they don't think they can spin it that way, they are far less likely to do anything, irrespective of what the law said in either case.  Its not worth looking like a cartoon villain to protect a property that at the moment has no material value to them.

Frankly, I doubt they care enough to go after a project like this.  But then again, I'm crazy, but not that kind of crazy.  I never know what legal counsel on retainer with nothing better to do will pull the trigger on.

[epic]

I would like to be the first to ask this "Will someone PL meh"

On a better note, this is a great accomplishment. Thanks for all the hard work.

[Codewalker]

I suppose a bigger question is, if NCSoft caught wind of this, would it be problematic for the team that is still in negotiations with them?

I'll just put it out there that if someone does somehow manage to acquire the IP and server software from NCSoft, I'm happy to work with them to implement a similar compatibility layer, or even tie into the architecture we're using. It should be possible for them to take advantage of it to bridge out-of-game and in-game communications, making it easier for people to stay in touch with friends even when they can't launch the full game.

I don't see this as something that could devalue the IP. If said IP gets into the right hands, it could instead increase its value.

Whether or not NCSoft is wise enough to see that, I can only speculate.

[Arcana]

I'll just put it out there that if someone does somehow manage to acquire the IP and server software from NCSoft, I'm happy to work with them to implement a similar compatibility layer, or even tie into the architecture we're using. It should be possible for them to take advantage of it to bridge out-of-game and in-game communications, making it easier for people to stay in touch with friends even when they can't launch the full game.

Hypothetically speaking, I could imagine a thin client capable of talking CoXMPP and "injecting" them into a live game instance.  Their own thin client might not be able to render the game environment so they wouldn't see what other players looked like or even what their own avatar looked like, but they could cause everyone else to see their avatar as a properly rendered costume file.  You'd then see a very limited representation of what everyone else was seeing.  Make it HTML5 compatible, and we could even run it on our phones and tablets.

Not to make more work for you, but it seems to be within the realm of possibility.

[Nyghtshade]

Just wanted to thank everyone involved in this not only for your years of hard work in making Icon and Soon possible, but in doing so not just for yourselves but for the whole COH community.  You epitomize what has always made the CoH Community really great. 

And VV, welcome back, but so very sorry to hear of all you and your family's loss and hardships.  Please know you all are in my thoughts and prayers.

[Golden Girl]

The Nameless Enemy would be on very shaky legal ground with this - it's a non-profit program that interacts with something that's no longer earning them a cent - no one's making money off it, and they're not losing money because of it.

[Felderburg]

EDIT: And they're not scimitars. Try again.

Given that it's the XMPP logo, which is a chat client, they're probably chat bubble tails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_balloon#Speech_bubbles But I can't find any info on the XMPP logo to verify this. Alas.

[Arcana]

Given that it's the XMPP logo, which is a chat client, they're probably chat bubble tails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_balloon#Speech_bubbles But I can't find any info on the XMPP logo to verify this. Alas.

[Kheprera]

Given that it's the XMPP logo, which is a chat client, they're probably chat bubble tails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_balloon#Speech_bubbles But I can't find any info on the XMPP logo to verify this. Alas.

https://www.rajasandhu.com was the creator, no comment for inspiration.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Well the good news out of all the bad is the Disney project.  Three book (so far) deal, Young Adult Post-Apocalypse with magic.  They are promoting the heck out of this.  Fingers crossed.

i'd heard a little bit about some of the troubles you'd been having and i'm glad to hear things have gotten better. No need to apologize for having to hand over the Hail Mary to others, real life should always come first and things have muddled on quite well anyway. So it's good just to see you posting again, welcome back.

[Noyjitat]

Well now, thank you very much for yet another exciting feature of icon. Perhaps among other social things we can do with this feature, pogoman might enjoy using this while streaming savecohradio. We could meet somewhere in the city and chat there instead of only using chat feature of the radio site.

What's to keep NCSoft from swooping in and shutting this latest operation down?

The Pirate Bay
KickAsstorrents
and simply not giving a damn

[Arcana]

https://www.rajasandhu.com was the creator, no comment for inspiration.

I started to compose a reply then had to leave suddenly, so I accidentally hit post on a picture with no comment.  Whoops.  What I was going to say was that that above is the current XMPP logo.  I found this that seems to be an earlier draft idea from the same artist:



Taken together, I think its possible there is some evocation of chat bubble tails, but I think its also supposed to suggest the fact that jabber became XMPP and hints at the "X".  The colors are probably there to connect to the layered protocol, and also the relationship of XMPP infrastructure to client applications (the blue backbones supporting both green and orange interiors).

[Valtyr]