
Orbit: EA's first open source project - frostmatthew
http://blog.bioware.com/2015/03/30/launching-into-orbit/
======
nshunter
So this isn't exactly true. EA has many open source projects that are not well
publicized.

[http://gpl.ea.com/](http://gpl.ea.com/)

Additionally, EA purchased ESN which also has open source contributions that
are maintained after the purchase. It might be fair to say that Orbit is the
LATEST EA open source project, but not the first.

~~~
dezgeg
Those aren't projects developed by EA. They are just source releases of the
LGPL components used in EA games.

~~~
dxq
These are just the GPL releases, but they contain bits of code from EA if you
start digging. IIRC the EAWebKit release contains a big chunk of EASTL. EASTL
is EA's implementation of the C++ STL that was for a long time considered so
great as to be a competitive advantage.

~~~
valarauca1
If anyone is interested in the EASTL here's the source code

[https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL](https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL)

Apparently works out of the box with G++/GCC, some modifications were made to
get it working Clang/LLVM

------
na85
I just surprised myself with how low my opinion of EA is. My first instinct
was that EA would never be so benevolent as to do anything open-source or give
anything back to the community and therefore this _had_ to be an April Fool's
joke.

I see some commits on the github are from 5 days ago, though, so now I'm not
so sure.

~~~
shultays
Same here, hopefully they won't bill me because I look at their github page

~~~
bhayden
Fork this repo for only 2000 EA-Bux!

~~~
seanp2k2
You can mess with it on GitHub, but the actual code is DRM'd so that you can
only open it in U-Code, and there is no offline single-player; you have to
have an Internet connection to run it under the debugger.

------
JackuB
My initial response was "will it have DLC?", but after reading this part again

> This initiative is the result of a lot of effort from people across BioWare
> and EA

I can imagine _" lot of effort"_ it took. I feel excited about this direction
and I hope that there are more projects coming.

~~~
lsadam0
My initial response: "Oh right, I forgot it's April Fool's day"

------
venomsnake
> Orbit is a modern Java framework that makes it easier to build and maintain
> distributed, secure, and scalable online services. It is inspired by a
> variety of existing frameworks and brings some exciting new things to the
> table.

Except both bioware and EA have dismal track record of massive online
services. Origin barely works, SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City - you know
the story, Battlefield launches are terrible and so on.

~~~
MAGZine
citation needed.

Origin works pretty well (i've seen this echo'd in various internet outlets...
reddit, gaming communities, etc), Sim City was launched by maxis a studio that
has little (apparent) online knowledge, battlefield launches suffer from buggy
gameplay, but their servers are generally solid. Also, most of the BF stuff
you interact with is Frostbite, not online (apart from battelog and online
connectivity)

Now, how about FIFA and Madden which have userbases that absolutely dwarf
those games? All of the news feeds, user statistics, video/image sharing, etc?
It works well and consistently. the people who do online at EA studios proper
are very knowledgable. I can't speak for Bioware, but you must realize that
studios inside EA have a fair degree of autonomy wrt technical decisions.

this is a huge step for EA. I applaud them and am rooting for the active
movers inside EA to keep pushing for more OSS.

~~~
serf
> citation needed

Okay.

[http://kotaku.com/5990165/my-simcity-city-thrived-offline-
fo...](http://kotaku.com/5990165/my-simcity-city-thrived-offline-
for-19-minutes)

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/03/09/ea-
simc...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/03/09/ea-simcity-free-
game/1974865/)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/simcity-launch-
dumb...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/simcity-launch-dumb-
electronic-arts-apology_n_2853690.html)

[http://techland.time.com/2013/03/12/were-ready-for-always-
on...](http://techland.time.com/2013/03/12/were-ready-for-always-online-
simcity-wasnt/)

[http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/8/4079894/ea-suspends-
simcity-...](http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/8/4079894/ea-suspends-simcity-
marketing-campaigns-asks-affiliates-to-stop)

[http://www.pcgamer.com/simcity-refund-ea-
origin/](http://www.pcgamer.com/simcity-refund-ea-origin/)

In fact, look up 'Battlefield', 'Origin EA' or 'Sim City' on Google News
between 2010 and 2014.

Not too many happy people.

I only included Sim City stuff because it was mentioned by your comments'
parent.

------
remon
This seems to be similar in scope and architecture as Microsoft's Orleans.
Interesting.

EDIT : After more careful review noticed this : "It was developed by BioWare,
a division of Electronic Arts, and is heavily inspired by the Orleans
project."

------
doomspork
Interested to see how this stands up against alternatives like Akka.

~~~
alexatkeplar
The interesting innovation (at least on the JVM) seems to be the use of
_virtual_ actors. At first glance this looks similar to Microsoft's Orleans
project: [http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/210931/Orleans-MSR-
TR-201...](http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/210931/Orleans-MSR-
TR-2014-41.pdf)

~~~
el_tone
I was about to suggest that they seem to have leaned more toward Orleans than
Akka. Orleans on Github:
[https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans](https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans)

~~~
muraiki
Orbit Actors is a framework to write distributed systems using virtual actors.
It was developed by BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts, and is heavily
inspired by the Orleans project.

[http://orbit.bioware.com/orbit-actor-
overview.html](http://orbit.bioware.com/orbit-actor-overview.html)

------
BSousa
The first EA open source project I remember was their own implementation of
STL [1] many years ago to deal with STL slow parts.

[1] [https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL](https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL)
seems to be a clone of it and has commits from 4 years ago

~~~
exDM69
To be strict EASTL is not an "implementation of" the STL, it's a "replacement
for". It has similar functionality (containers, algorithms) but the API is not
compatible. In particular, EASTL has different memory management that is more
suitable for games and especially consoles.

~~~
mattnewport
I used to maintain EASTL. I think it's more accurate to describe it as an
implementation of the STL than a replacement. As far as possible it is API
compatible with the STL, the API differences are primarily in the allocator
model and it is possible to write EASTL code that compiles against another STL
implementation with fairly minimal changes, almost none if you're not using
custom allocators. There are a few extensions / extra containers but we went
to great lengths to keep as much of the API identical as possible.

------
brkn
The building in the graphic looks like the International Congress Centrum in
Berlin.

Here a pic for comparison:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationales_Congress_Centr...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationales_Congress_Centrum_Berlin#/media/File:ICC_%26_Funkturm.jpg)

~~~
tormeh
It's a really cool building. Not pretty, mind you, but as a curiosity it's
super cool.

------
yareally
Microsoft released something similar they used for halo 4 called Project
Orleans[1]. I stumbled on it when I was looking for a C# Akka port, but it
ends up being much more than just what Akka provides with actors.

[1] [https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans](https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans)

