Guild of Writers

Masters of the Art
https://forum.guildofwriters.org/

So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

https://forum.guildofwriters.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1857

Page 1 of 5

So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 2:06 am
by kaelisebonrai
Hi all, I'm just thinking its kinda high time to dispell any (false) beliefs, that anything to do with Age Creation is not "hacking"... =/

Its kinda getting on my nerves, I mean, most of us know, and are fine with the idea..

Perhaps, we've been involved with other communities like the Guild of Writers, other /modding/ communities. Other communities that have had to hack the files of a commerical game, to be able to do anything with the engine. It seems so weird that this community, has so much.. ill will to this kind of thing (by this community, I mean the uru community in general..)

Yet, some are beginning to assume that the things done by the GoW are something different, that it isn't breaking the EULA. That it /isn't/ distributing copyrighted content. (which all ages are, in a sense, by using the prp file format) I've been sort of watching the GoW for a fair while, only just recently posting, due to being utterly frustrated by cries of "oh god, we can't touch Cyan's stuff, oh god, lets not edit this or that, because it touches copyrighted content!".

I was a part of the Diablo II modding community, way back when, the Morrowind Community, which, while most of the time was sanctioned.. some things, some great things, were hacks of the exe, and so on and so forth, including decompilation of the exe, and all these things were widely advertised on the /official/ forums! I was infact the Department Co-ordinator/Head of a major modding community forum, for Oblivion. ( www.spellholdstudios.com ) I'm no longer in charge of the Oblivion section there, anymore, the main forums, and community, was run by an old friend of mine, and were utterly professional, and were originally primarily for Baldur's Gate II. So, I got a taste for /that/ modding community, too.

Modding communities... operate on the grey-area of things, as standard. The borderline of things. That is how hacks and edits, and /mods/ exist. Even total conversions are the same.. entire new areas... it is all dubious in legality.

Seriously, we need to get over this, and actually start getting into the nitty-gritty of user-created-content.

Some food for thought, for you all.

Take care,

Blake John "Kaelis Ebonrai" Heatly.

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 6:54 am
by Jamey
If what we are doing is bad, Cyan would have stopped us a long time ago. What we should do is create our own content. Messing with the game files of CYAN's Content such as Teledahn, Gahreesen, etc. should be a big no-no.

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 7:20 am
by Aloys
Technically Age creation and the surrouding activities are against the terms of the EULA. But it's only a problem if Cyan says it is one. As they've been tolerant with most of this, and even endorsing a good deal of it lately, it's not really a problem.
However distributing original Cyan Uru files (modded or not) is a big no-no. (Again: unless they agree with it; but I don't see why that would happen)

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 7:55 am
by Chacal
Welcome to the GoW, Kaelis Ebonrai. We're hackers, and proud of it.

You'll find several threads discussing the subject. There are those whose first reaction is always fear of what "Cyan legal" will think, or fear of an hypothetical impact on negociations between Cyan and Turner. The recent "Drizzle" events come to mind.

Yet the trend here is to just focus on getting the job done.

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:15 am
by Grogyan
Welcome.

Cyan at the beginning, long before Prologue in 2003 (I was there for a very short time), never it seemed to give modding their game any thought, maybe because they'll lose in some way their IP to their engine.

Nothing has changed on Cyan's legal front though we do know that Cyan was, (and after talking with EricL) had given up on release some sanction tools from them for use and reorganise their legal standing on modding the game.

Back just before Prologue just about ceased, work had already begun to create "tools", and these are the "tools" you see here. Every single one from the plugin to ULM is a hack, something that Cyan should have taken notice of in the game industry is the potential growth for a game when modders improve onto it, we did that without their permission

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:43 am
by belford
Cyan at the beginning, long before Prologue in 2003 [...], never it seemed to give modding their game any thought


I don't know why you say that. They've been *thinking* about it from the beginning. They've always talked about fan-created Uru work as a possibility. They started talking about it as a *reality* a year ago, when the Guilds were introduced, and (in-character) Watson spoke about Ages written by modern explorers.

What Cyan hasn't done is officially recognized Age creation as an activity that (non-Cyan) people do. (FCLs aside, which are more about the result than the process.) They have neither forbidden it nor invited people to do it. To my eye, they've *ostentatiously* stopped short of forbidding or inviting it. Their position on the official forums is "Please talk about that stuff on the *un*official forums."

So, it's a grey area because Cyan *wants* it to be a grey area. Which is a reasonable legal position for them to take. *Most* fan activity (in all fandoms) falls into this kind of grey area. In the end, I agree with kaelisebonrai: current GoW activity is bounded by what we're willing to do, not by limits that Cyan has put on us.

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:52 am
by Sophia
LOL I get a feeling you're preaching to the choir here, John :D

Ok let me elaborate just a tiny bit: I, personally, would not do anything that would hurt Cyan or Uru. In the case of age creation however, I STRONGLY feel it can only enhance Uru, and I have never heard arguments to convince me otherwise. I know that right now Cyan is not in a position to say yes, go ahead, but I have a feeling this is what they want anyway. So far they have not sent out signals of disapproval, between the lines I read quite the contrary.

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 3:13 pm
by Paradox
http://paradox22.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/im-in-ur-world-haxxorin-ur-game/ wrote:Things seem to have changed, and I'm not really liking the direction that things seem to be heading. (In more than one area, but I'm only going to focus on Uru and Age Creation stuff in this post ;)).

In 2004, Prologue shut down, Uru was dead, there was nothing more to do. So people started hacking. The day that Prologue closed was the day that Almlys started writing the (in)famous ALCUGS server project, and I believe that it was the same day as the closing when Anonymous54321 released the decryption routine for the whatdoyousee/xTEA encrypted files.
Soon there was flymode.
Eventually in 2005 Almlys released the PyPRP plugin to create our own Ages. PotS had been released, UU had been released; and people were pretty excited about creating their own stuff.

Always there was the thread of a cease and desist letter from Cyan. People were sent cease and desist letters during 2004 and 2005. But still people developed tools, developed plugin, and worked in the hopes of finally having the power to write their own Ages.

So MOUL is dead, and people still want to create Ages for PotS. The Guild of Writers exists for that reason, and somewhere along the way it seems that the threat from Cyan has diminished. Maybe it's due to Rand telling various sources that he thinks user-created Ages are important; or maybe from interviews in-cavern with Mark DeForest (Cyan's Lead Programmer) who talked about the tools that users could use to create Ages. Overall, lots of progress was being made, lots of very nice Ages were being produced.

Then Drizzle came along. Drizzle is brilliant! The ability to convert the MOUL content to PotS so that you can still visit Minkata and the pod Ages, the Guild Pubs, Jalak, even the two Eder Gardens. But Drizzle was quick to cause commotion on the forums. Everyone was ready to cry about how it was hacking, how it was immoral, wrong, evil, and that anyone who uses the tool should be ashamed of themselves.

Yes, Drizzle is hacking. So is PyPRP and all of the Ages over at GoW.
You tell Drizzle users to be ashamed of themselves, yet you offer advice and encouragement on GoW. There's a discrepancy here that is completely illogical, and one that I'm tired of trying to clear up.
In 2004 it was very common knowledge that all user-created stuff was hacked. It was violating the agreement with Cyan, it was technically illegal.
Now there seems to be this ignorance about that fact, and people don't even know the first thing about the tools that they are using.

I almost want to make a big banner and drop it on the GoW website. "Using these tools is considered hacking and is illegal/immoral/wrong!"

If you're on the GoW, you need to know what you are really doing. You are hacking a game, violating the End-User License Agreement, and doing all those things that you said people should be ashamed of.


source: http://paradox22.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/im-in-ur-world-haxxorin-ur-game/

For those who say that PyPRP isn't hurting Uru... there's really no technical difference between running a hacked UU shard and making a custom Age. In fact, PyPRP requires more hacking than a UU shard. Either hacking hurts Uru, or it doesn't...

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 3:15 pm
by Tsar Hoikas
Paradox wrote:Either hacking hurts Uru, or it doesn't...


You mean: Hacking either hurts Uru or helps it.

;)

Re: So, Age Creation is *gasp* Hacking? </sarcasm>

PostPosted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 4:18 pm
by Sophia
There IS such a thing as good hacking and bad hacking.

If somebody creates a beautification (is that a word?) for Uru, whether it is a complete age, a story line, a flower vase for Relto, that enhances the game. Sure, right now we can only use it offline, but hopefully, in time we will be able to use it online and show off our age, cozy relto or cool D'ni (hi)story to others. How can that possibly hurt Uru???

But if I proposed something that would completely bypass Cyan, put them out of business, act against their wishes and ignored a very clear message that asked me to STOP or I could endanger whatever I am endangering, THAT would be bad hacking. Whatever it is... I am not using any concrete examples on purpose here. Use your imagination, or any recent events if you can't dream one up ;) In that case I WOULD be told to be ashamed of myself, and rightfully so.

The world is not black and white, and there are even more colors than grey. The SAME thing could be right or wrong depending on the circumstances, even depending on the timing. To say that either hacking hurts Uru, or it doesn't, is like saying that either alcohol is good for you, or it isn't. It depends on so many factors, the amount you consume, your tolerance, any possible allergies, whether you need to drive afterwards, whether you drink it as wine or methylated spirit, etcetera, etcetera, etcerera. You consider all factors, and then you decide whether you are going to drink what is put in front of you or not. Nobody can tell you whether that is illegal, immoral or wrong... that is for you to decide.
All times are UTC - 7 hours
Page 1 of 5
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/