New Content??

[janaba]

in view of the recent revelations (which weren't all too new for many of you here I suppose)

What revelations?

Please, see this post by Chogon on the MOUL forums to a topic they've removed because of 'it' (the revelations) ...

Branan is hinting to that resp. has even used the related topic as the basis for his awesome and very thoughtful blog post here ...

And if you really really want to know more and get a deeper glimpse of what this is all about then follow Andrew Plotkin's link
provided in the comments section on this website ...

Edit :I just realized that this isn't very much on topic, yeah I just answered without a further thought ... I hope it's ok ...

[Karkadann]

Branan is hinting to that resp. has even used the related topic as the basis for his awesome and very thoughtful blog post here ...

_______
Wow.....

[Chacal]

Sad story... I remember years ago when Patrick and Adrian were nervously creating a demo for presentation to Cyan.

[GPNMilano]

Two things...

1. Speaking of new content. Awhile back Tweek posted some concepts of a new GUI start up that people were interested in implementing (One was set in D'ni, however people over at the "official" forums didn't like it all that much, so he also drew up one that was set in the Cleft) I know there was some talk (I think Deledrius, but I can't remember and it's too early in the morning for me to go searching for the posts, so if I'm incorrect just sue me.) about implementing these for Gehn and other Shards. I wasn't entirely sure if anyone had started on it, and I wanted to make one up for my DIRT project so I just took the liberty and went ahead and did it. I'll post some pictures tomorrow afternoon of the GUIS in action. (Again it's late here) I chose to go with the Cleft version only because it fit my DIRT project more than the D'ni ones. However simple color changes and a swapping of the background texture should be sufficient if people would like to change them. There's a few things that still need to be adjusted (text not being centered right in some spots. Borders a bit to thick etc and the highlighting of the background of the text when choosing a player needs to be fixed) but other than those minor tweaks the GUIS all work properly. I'd be more than happy to make these final adjustments and release the source files here for people to use. They don't use any of Cyan's assets, however because i didn't feel like writing an entirely new xDialogStartUp.py script they simply overwrite the existing prps that comes with MOUL. So they're coded to work similar to Cyan's (same tag ids in the guis etc).

The downside to them is two fold. 1. I didn't go to in depth into Tweek's concept, mainly cause I didn't want the headache of trying to rework the dialog script so you could get the full avatar shot in the center, that's not implemented. 2. I built them in 3dsMax to make use of Cyan's plugin for building them, so there's no Blender files to export them with PyPRP (I could actually just move the meshes over to Blender and wire them up there however if it's something people really want/need.

2. Not wanting to derail this thread any longer, I felt I should point out that, as far as the whole Myst Movie thing goes that perhaps there is a rather simple way to look at this. Yes, one could assume Cyan did Adrian and Patrick dirty, however there's also an alternative and perhaps easier way to look at this. We all respect artistic integrity, and the need to keep it. Cyan felt this way once, which is why the SciFi deal for the miniseries fell through. However times have changed, Cyan's in financial straights and the movie could help put new life back into them and into the Myst Franchise in general. Perhaps this is what Issac explained to them when he pressured them to drop Adrian and Patrick. That Cyan until that point was being honest with Adrian and Patrick about wanting them to make sure that the Myst franchises canon was kept intact and that the story did not stray from the source material to horrifying degrees. However after the call with Issac they looked at it at a practical standpoint, a Myst Movie does nothing to interfere with the canon of the Myst franchise any more than a comic book superhero movie does with the canon of the comic book it is based of off. It's merely an adaptation of an original work. It can stray from the source material without damaging the integrity of it's source. Did a dancing-emo-Peter-Parker damage the Spiderman comic book? No. Was it respectful to the canon of Spiderman? In some spots yes, in others HELL NO. However, and this is the most important thing to remember. Did it make alot of money for the people involved? Yes. And the end result, well we got a reboot of the movie franchise that IMHO rocked. So remember, yes they may have had to let Patrick and Adrian go to ensure that the Myst movie went ahead and that it does indeed get made, even if it's not 100% true to it's source. But there's still a chance for success, and there can always be a more faithful reboot down the line.

[Deledrius]

Yes, I was working on implementing a new, cleaned-up StartUp Age, but due to crashes in the Max plugin involving the GUI modifiers I was unable to create one, and so I gave up. Without a working prototype, there was no point in doing the code work necessary to support it and test it. Some others had recently come forward offering to build a prototype, but at this point the whole thing's become very soured for me. I hope you have better luck than I did.

[N. Sigismund]

It's been a while. D:

Yes, the following is off-topic, sorry:

Funny that I chose to check up on the Myst community today, I was up until now completely unaware of the drama. I agree with GPNMilano's points. The drama puts the daft stuff I've done in the past into quite a lot of perspective! I will say that doing BoT first was always a moronic idea - it's a cool story but you can hardly pitch a movie which is a prequel to a prequel of a game that came out in 1993! At least the lengthy post from Adrian gives a forewarning that the project might end up a loose adaptation rather than a strict one. If that's the case then I'll no doubt be moaning along with everyone else about the canon changes, but I will at least be glad the movie is existent. It will help keep one of my favourite properties afloat and that's not a bad thing.

On the topic of new content, anyone that's messed about with what I managed to get done with Llantern and all the excellent projects released over the last few years knows that real solid content is definitely produceable, but - please don't hate me GoW people if I'm incorrect and it's different now, I've been out of the loop for a while - the issue of being able to effectively make that content on CWE, especially for Cyan's server, are problematic.

The viable development of content should not require an ancient version of Max. I've never been a fan of Blender and AFAIK there still isn't a decent CWE exporter from it either, but there are functional plugins for several modern Max versions. Anyone with access to Max should have access to multiple modern versions of the program (2009 up, really) and that should be the 3D modelling program of choice at the moment - Cyan should move on to a modern Max version if they want to use fan content, it's unreasonable to expect a modder in 2012 to use ancient programs.

Teams of one person don't produce much! This is pretty self explanatory. One-man teams don't produce much! I honestly don't know how to move forward with that. Llantern is very basic because I can't code. If I had a coder to be able to work with, that project would have got a lot further.

I'd love to be able to work with CWE again, but it'd have to be different than it was before - as part of a proper team with the infrastructure to support it. Proper discussions, file spaces with version control so people can feed in work for other team members, that kind of thing.

In my opinion if five people - at least one coder and one artist in them - got together to make something using the CWE Max plugin, you'd get a tonne of new content. It isn't hard to develop for CWE if you know what you're doing! Do some concept work, get blocking out done, get the coders and artists working, pull everything together, bug test, release.

Eh, I'm out of the loop. If more content is wanted on Gehn, the solution is making it together rather than separately.

[Karkadann]

Their in lies the problem, their has been several attempts to start a team of age creators over the last few years unfortunately all but two that I know of have met with failure for one reason or another.
every body is waiting for new content, and although I'm no pro I know I can contribute something as do others that have mentioned a wiliness to participate.
we have everything and everyone we need to produce something of good quality and yet nothings getting done.

Any Idea why? is their still a chance? Or is this Truly the Beginning of the End

New Contend equals Renewed interest, but if the new content does not happen regularly their will be no new interest and the caverns will be empty once again, of all but the Bahro and a few people who just use it as a glorified Chat room. If that what Cyan and the Myst community want so be it. all good things must one day come to an end.

[N. Sigismund]

A lot of people prefer to work alone. That's basically the crux of it. Nothing wrong with it in principle.

[Karkadann]

I also Prefer to work alone, What I had in mind a is few people get together in person or over the net and do some brainstorming on a potential age and produce some sketches and concept art.
then one person gets to work on the structure of the age, then passes it on to the next person, who does the texture, and then the lighting, sound, and then the coding, in what ever order works best, and then you load it on a shard and give access to a few people for bug testing, they report back on whats needed, whats redundant, and it sent back to the people who created it for improvements and bug fixing

each person is working more or less alone, you could set up a central web page where you can keep all the files Max or blender files, graphic files, python files ext so everybody working on it can have access to it.

unfortunately we cant even get enough people together for this one
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5675
As to why Im not sure but we could use some help even some
constructive criticizing as far as how we could make it something
that people would want to work on would be good at this point.

[GPNMilano]

For those curious I started a new threadas not to derail this one with the GUI stuff.