Andrew Plotkin said the following on 01/17/2008 12:07 AM: > Our protocol is documented, and it would be perfectly feasible for > any XMPP client to support it. (For specific games, or for general > gaming if the client has a way to display our game plugins.)
I would really like to see your protocol documentation. Unfortunately, after several minutes of searching through volity.net and volity.org, I wasn't able to find anything that resembles a complete documentation for the protocol you are using. The wiki page about XMPP just states: > It is scary and low-level and not discussed much in this Wiki, since > it's thankfully rather mature and stable as well. >From what I saw in the wiki, it seems like you are just using XMPP as a transport for your own protocol; which is completely legitimate. > Our client and bot code is on the Apache license; we're not trying to > create a proprietary system. That's really nice of you :) > If you're asking why we didn't begin an XEP process (JEP process, at > the time), the answer is that existing XEPs seemed sufficient. (And, > indeed, turned out to be.[*]) There's nothing wrong with using XMPP > as an application platform. Existing XEPs may be sufficient for using XMPP as an "application platform" for gaming but they do not replace a standard which describes exactly how to play games over XMPP in way that most partie's interests are fulfilled and every jabber user (theoretically) can play with any other, independent of the client she/he is using. I think I do not have to explain on this list why (open) standards are so important. If your goal is really to get people playing games, then an open gaming standard certainly serves you best. Of course you won't migrate Volity to some other protocol in the near future, but if a standard for XMPP gaming gets established and widely used, you may want to do so in the long run. Working together on such a standard (especially after we release our ideas for MUG), contributing your experience and bringing in your own interests should be the thing you want to do, in particular if you want drive people to playing games. > --Z Torsten
