MORE Roadmap and Press Conference Announcement!

[Nynaveve]

GoMe News Service:
Roadmap and Press Conference Announcement
Cyan has asked me to immediately post the Roadmap, referred to within Cyan's Letter to the Community. (This should have been posted with the letter, but I misunderstood. Please accept my apologies. Marten)

Quote:

MORE Roadmap
+ MORE servers will be restarted. These will be run by Cyan and run on machines that are either owned or leased by Cyan. The software and game assets will be as it was when Myst Online was shutdown on the GameTap servers. However, all accounts and avatars from the GameTap servers will not be available and will have to be re-created.

+ There will be some restructuring of MystOnline.com to accommodate the new direction of MORE. Including the forums and the policies running the forum.

+ Release of the 3DS Max Plasma plug-ins for creating MORE content. Release of the source for the plug-in (only) to the Guild of Writers. This will allow for the easier creation of fan created tools as well as being able to use what Cyan used for creating Myst Online content.

+ The Guild of Maintainers (in conjunction with Guild of Writers) will act as an agent in approving fan created content creation for MORE.

+ Create methods and processes for testing fan created MORE content. How this will work has not been determined but is crucial for fan created content. Then a process will be created to bring Guild of Maintainers final approved and tested content forward to main server for all users to enjoy.

+ Release binaries for a few front end servers to be run on fan run servers (front end shards). These fan run servers will have to be registered with the Cyan server and will help alleviate bandwidth issues. These front end processes will be limited to game servers and file servers. All authentication and avatar databases would still be handled by Cyan servers. This way a user needs only one account with all their avatars, no matter what front end shard they connect to. As a matter of fact, accessing the front end shards will be seamless for the user, and they may never know (or care) which one they are running on.

+ Create processes and release binary updates to the front end shards so that shard owners can host specific age game instances (such as a particular Neighbourhood) and be able to control the states of that instance. End users will not have to do anything special other than link to that age and they will be routed to the shard that is hosting it. This will allow the front end shard owners to provide unique experiences on the age instance that they host. (By the way, the states the front end shard owner's change will only affect the instance of the age they are hosting and will not affect other age's states, even if it is the same age.)

+ (Pie in the sky milestone!) Cyan Worlds will create new content and storyline. This may be done solely by Cyan or in conjunction with the Guilds.




Press Conference
To answer the inevitable deluge of questions arising from this roadmap, Cyan will conduct a press conference on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) starting around Thursday July 3, 2008 at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time (Noon Eastern). (For a list of international cities and times, please see timeanddate.com.
If you are not familiar with IRC, the Guild of Messengers has put up a gateway to make your experience easy and pleasant. Visit http://rel.to/IRC and click the "#cyanchat" entry, and after a moment, you will be prompted for your name. Enter your nickname and press "Connect", and that is all you need to do. No pre-registration or account is needed.

If you are a veteran at IRC, all of the information that you'll need to join the press conference is listed on the http://rel.to/IRC page.

Note: Conversation that you observe from a user named "CC" is being channeled into #cyanchat by a relay connected to CyanChat,Cyan's own chat room. For relayed chat, the name in brackets following "CC" is the identity of the speaker.

Messenger Szark

WOW! This is amazing news for you Writers! I am so excited for you! You get the tools for 3DS Max AND the plug-in source!! AMAZING!!

[andylegate]

Going to need it, as not everyone can afford 3DSMax.....wish I could but I'd literally have to take out a bank loan to get it.....

[Tsar Hoikas]

A reason to keep on developing PyPRP

[andylegate]

Hoikas, will releasing the source of their plugin help you guys on the Dev team at all?

[Tsar Hoikas]

Hoikas, will releasing the source of their plugin help you guys on the Dev team at all?

Marginally at best... Like I said earlier, it's presenting the data in Blender that's the major hurdle.

[andylegate]

Then yes, for us poor folk who can't afford a program that's the same price as a used car, it would be good to still have the plugin for Blender worked on!

[Preachr46]

Other than the 3ds Max plugin being mostly unhelpful, they might actually get something going.

I'm also wondering what it will cost a "front end shard owner" to be a part of all this?

[D'Lanor]

It seems odd that you have to pay to help alleviate bandwith. Apart from the cost of keeping your shard up. And all that for being able to push a few semi-global SDL buttons on your own shard.

Oh well, that's what we are fans for I guess...

[Nynaveve]

I think (and I'm not sure on this, take it with a grain of salt), that its just the cost to actually build/buy the machine, plus a static IP address for your box through your ISP. Should be similar to hosting a web server out of your home.

[Chacal]

I can't see anything in the announcement about paying anything to Cyan for running a server.

EDIT: Ah yes, it's in the original letter: "Additional fees may apply for future Cyan content, front-end shard ownership"

There are operational costs:

The cost of a high-end dedicated machine (not so bad)
a static IP (not so bad)
and a lot of bandwidth in both directions (ouch).


I should be OK.