I wanted to take a moment and update everyone about our journey so far and where we are going. It’s been an incredibly long and difficult journey, but also one that has been incredibly rewarding, and is extremely exciting when I think of what’s to come.

We have been receiving a lot of inquiries from you, the game players around "What is the future of the Realm". It sometimes manifests as "why isn't this fixed yet", or "I'm a programmer, can I help you fix it faster/port it to Linux?". We appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm, and wanted to share a bit more information so that everyone knows our North Star and how we plan on getting there.

The good news is we are now entering “The Silver ERA”. After years of resurrection spells, the game works. People can play it again, we have authoring capability. The bad news is the choices we made to rapidly open the game for people slowed down our ultimate goals. If you're technically minded, here's a summary of the challenge. The Realm is a multiuser text adventure game. The version we have running was salvaged and repaired from a very old high end workstation that ran the game at ICE Online in the early 90's. That workstation was an SGI Indy, which was found under Al’s stairs, preserved waiting to be resurrected like a Mummy waiting to rise again. The original hardware is error prone and failing. So I bought another one, which also failed. We found an emulator which could run the SGI code. It too was flawed, but worked better than dying hardware, and it was slow. So I bought a massive server. This emulator runs on a virtual Windows 10 box because it requires a network driver that doesn't work on Windows 11. The virtual machine runs on a Windows 11 host which also runs a Debian Linux VM for support functions and acts as a router/firewall. This all runs on the massive server and a series of networking hacks and tunnels. So the result is we found a way to get you playing the game, but it's fragile, and we find bugs at all the layers, most of which are not our code. Imagine when a crash or lag happens, it could be realm code, ICE Script code, SGI code, Mame code, network driver code, Windows 10 Code, Windows 11 code or Debian code. So in summary - it's complicated and error prone, and not easy to fix. However, we want the Majic Realm to have a long life, and have a plan.

We need to move forward. We, however, cannot do that without you. I’ve been supporting the Realm out of my own time and money. Matt and Freya have volunteered their time and have selflessly toiled to help you enjoy the game. For the Realm to be sustainable, it needs game-mastering, support, and engineering. There are three engineering tracks, an ECOM track which is our website and payment system, in-game/MAME Realm engineering, and ultimately a modern port to current Linux. There are two “in game” tracks, the first being item and quest scripting and maintenance, and the second being game mastering. Lastly, the support needs to scale so there is a support tool track. This will allow us to get to the “Golden Age” where we will have a modern Realm on stable service infrastructure augmented with a modern and innovative mobile front end that will generate enough money for the Realm to be self-sustaining.

To support this effort, we are both holding a fundraiser, and moving forward to a subscription model. There will be a "Kickstarter" to raise one-time funds to buy hardware, pay Matt, and (if I’m lucky) some cost recoupment. This is like a donation to show your appreciation that will unlock progress and be a good gauge of how much effort we should spend going forward. Of course, we will have lovely gifts for folks making donations. There will be a subscription charge going forward. The number of subscribers will drive the amount of work we can put in. It will have price tiers from cheap to pricey, with varying benefits on each tier. Lastly, we will resume selling game items, real estate, character modifications, and so forth to augment the income we collect through subscriptions.

Our hope is you have enjoyed the Realm coming back and will support us.

- Thelonius Monk

FAQ

Q: Why do you need money? A: We’ve spent a lot of time and money on the Realm to date, but it really isn’t sustainable without community support. We have four people working on the Realm right now on the tracks mentioned above plus hardware and service costs. Some of these people need money and are giving up their time where they could be earning money elsewhere doing this.

Q: Why not just port Realm to modern Linux now? That seems easy? A: The Realm is a complex application and was heavily optimized for the hardware of the time. As a result, the port is fairly difficult. It’s not rocket science, but it is a lot of code and testing. Primarily it’s around binary serialized data structures in a really old database with a lot of hardware assumptions. Another issue is that the Realm is largely scripted in “The worlds most unfriendly non script like script system” which is both not documented but also really difficult to code in and error prone. Our intent is to fix that as well to open it up to more people.

Q: Why is this taking so long? A: 1) Because it’s hard. 2) Because until fairly recently people have been doing it as a “spare time project”, meaning evenings and weekends. 3) There’s a surprising amount of under the covers work, for example all the support tooling, making the realm survive reboot, web coding, and payment processing. 4) When you have a small group of people over a broad problem space, it’s best to focus, but we decided to open the game early so people could renew their friendships and enjoy, but that created a lack of focus around the ultimate goals. Raising money and charging will help with this. The alternative would be to create focus by closing the Realm and working towards the long term goal.

Q: What if I don’t want to pay? A: Well, that’s your choice. It’s ok not to pay, but it’s also ok not to play.

Q: Why are you billing in US$? A: Our company is based in the US, and honestly we think in US$ and bank in US$. At the end of the day, we’re trying this for now but are open minded.

Q: What are the details of subscription cost, kickstarter items, etc? A: Some really cool XP boost and “bespoke” services for premium subs, possibly some limitations on the cheapest subs, kickstarter items you’ll love that can’t be stolen, and the knowledge you are supporting a team that has been supporting you. ;-)