Horizons not dead

Dans la courte liste des vaporwares trône tout en haut Duke Nukem Forever (avant lui ce fût Dungeon Keeper, mais c'était il y a bien longtemps..). Juste en dessous se situe, pour certaines personnes interressées du moins, Horizons: Empire of Istaria, le plus prometteur des MMORPGs à venir, et croyez moi j'en connais pas mal sur le sujet.

Bref, après un mutisme de près de 6 mois (même les forums étaient fermés), où les développeurs d'Artifact Entertainment bossaient 36h par jour avec de la cafeïne en intraveineuse, quelques communiqués de presse ont fait leur apparition.

Et, histoire de dire qu'ils ont encore les mains dans le moteur, un autre communiqué a été publié hier. Ils déclarent avoir passé un contrat avec Geodesic Systems qui leur a vendu une suite de logiciels qu'ils vont utiliser pour, premièrement, cleaner leur code au maximum, et ensuite comme extension de leurs wolrd servers de sorte qu'ils ne plantent jamais..

Communiqué de presse après le lien, pour les curieux.

CHICAGO - January 7, 2002 - Geodesic Systems, a leading provider of software solutions that automatically improve the performance and reliability of business-critical systems, today announced that Artifact Entertainment has added Geodesic software as an important new member of its "dream team" of computer game developers. Unlike the firm's usual programmers who work in cubicles, the Geodesic software actually will work inside the code that runs their hotly anticipated new title Horizons to optimize server up time and reliability for its uniquely passionate breed of customers.

"Up-time is absolutely critical to the online gaming world," says James Jones, president of Artifact Entertainment. "If a server goes down, it's literally the end of the world for our players. Geodesic software provides ongoing protection against that."

Artifact has licensed Geodesic's Great Circle® and High Availability Runtime (HAR)™ solutions to support development of Horizons, a subscription-based, interactive fantasy world, peopled by thousands of simultaneous, real-time players. With Horizons, Artifact aims to bring the Massively Multi-Player Online Gaming (MMOG) experience, already popular among the hardcore gaming crowd, to the masses proving to be receptive to fantasy-based storylines, movies and merchandise. To do that, Artifact has assembled a virtual all-star team of game programming talent.

"Being selected for use in a multi-player gaming environment proves the power of our software," says Michael Spertus, Geodesic's chief technology officer. "For Horizons to be successful, Artifact's servers simply cannot crash. Great Circle and our High Availability Runtime will be Artifact's safety net, enabling the development team to focus on what they do best - creating breakthrough game experiences."

On the front end, Geodesic's Great Circle already is helping Artifact developers create cleaner code, providing error detection and code diagnosis during development. At deployment, High Availability Runtime will be embedded in the Horizons application, using its patented Run-time Diagnosis and Remediation (RDR™) technology to find and fix potentially devastating errors while the application is running. This will ensure a seamless experience for Horizons players.

Only weeks after installing Great Circle, the benefits are apparent.

"Since our team started using Geodesic software, we're ahead of schedule," reports Jones. "Errors that used to take us days to locate, Great Circle finds in minutes. We expect Geodesic products to pay for themselves many times over, with better server performance leading to lower hardware costs, less co-location and reduced maintenance fees." We've made a few minor changes to the website today. We are in the process of creating a new information campaign that we will launch sometime after the beginning of next year. At that time we will begin adding new information to the website and starting the ongoing flow of information leading up to the start of beta and the launch of Horizons.


About Geodesic Systems, Inc.
Geodesic Systems, Inc., headquartered in Chicago, offers application infrastructure solutions that automatically improve the performance and reliability of business-critical systems. Many FORTUNE 1000 companies and government agencies rely on Geodesic High Availability Runtime™ and Great Circle® to help keep their business-critical systems running. Investors in Geodesic Systems include the Intel 64 Fund. For further information on Geodesic, its products, services and customers, visit the company's web site at www.geodesic.com.