Guild of Writers

While working on an area of the D'ni cavern I hope to have ready for MORE. I got to thinking about the difficulties in making the continuity of Fan Created Content and Cyan Content synch up. Until now Cyan has at least outwardly been speaking of strictly story related and age related things. (We can't add onto A'guera, but we can create new areas of the Cavern outside of already established areas in both Uru and the books, we can't make ages mentioned in Cyan's books and games, but we can make ones written by the D'ni) And such of that nature.

Here's my thing. How. Take the cavern for instance, while each area has its own unique architecture, most of the Cavern shares the same look. (The Textures are reused etc.) But thats just the aesthetics'. What about things like Pedestals. Lamp posts, Nexus Stations and Nexus Pedestals. Throughout the city and cavern they're all the same. How are we going to create realistic new areas of the cavern, that look like they belong in the cavern if we can't use the staples of the cavern. How are we going to make areas reachable through the Nexus without making Nexus Stations? Won't the new areas kind of stand out and not look like they belong in the cavern?

So here's what I'm thinking, perhaps we should bring this up to Cyan. Ask permission, in terms of keeping the new areas of the cavern created by the fans, looking like the same architectual style of the Cyan created D'ni areas, a repository is needed. Basically for the cavern alone, to keep the look of it the same throughout, a repository of models the textures associated with them. Not a free reign to the fans kind of deal. But a small repository where fans can download things like Nexus Stations, Pedestals, Lamp posts etc, to put into the buildings and caves and tunnels that they'll make for the cavern. So this way, while the fan areas will have their own textures, supplied by the fans, they'll also look like they belong in the cavern by including the staples of the D'ni architectual style (Like the sign posts, the pedestals etc.)

Any thoughts?

You are very correct in this. Even if someone creates a new "Hood" it has to look consistant with how the walls of the cavern looks, the lake, at the minimum.

Those things we can ask Cyan about, and I'm sure that they will let us use those things, as long as it's for an area of the Cavern intended for MORE (as far as how to get to the place, We'll let Cyan worry about that when the time comes).

However remember: There were many districts and many, many "Hoods" according to all the Myst Books and Journals in Uru. We're talking about 10,000 years of history.

Structure styles change or look slightly different. There are many things in Ae'gura that don't look like anything in the Hoods. I'm betting we'll get told to make up "New" stuff that has that same "D'ni" flavor to it.

In anycase, as you said: It can't hurt to ask.

I wondered about that too and I asked RAWA on the MOUL forums when he released the guidelines, how I got no answers, as I think it got lost in the flood of questions that occured in a couple days. (poor RAWA).
That's a very pertinent and important question. We must make a clear list of the assets we'd like to be able to re-use and then forward it to Cyan.
Ideas so far:
- Nexus stations (model, textures, sound)
- Hood/City 'hand' lampost model/texture
- Cavern Lake background texture? (the one seen from the hoods/city)
- A couple Cavern textures? (rocks? cobblestones?)

I don't think we can create any DRC-related content? I don't remember this being specifically addressed by Cyan.?

Back when RAWA was doing Q&A after posting his initial guidelines, I asked about using the Nexus in this post. He acknowledged the question as valid, but has not yet provided an answer.

They do have an Asset Request Form, to get permission to use their IP. The guidelines appear to be geared towards websites, but I would think they could adjust them to include stuff added to their own game.

I think we'll need to be able to use certain sound assets too. I'm especially thinking about the 'linking' sound as well as all of the different 'footstep' sounds.

We are already using the footstep sounds. The difference is that we are not distributing them with our ages.

And the linking sound just plays automatically when you link to and from a user age. It would be hard to stop that even if you wanted to.

We are cleared to reference any URU sound in our ages - see this thread for details.

andylegate wrote:You are very correct in this. Even if someone creates a new "Hood" it has to look consistant with how the walls of the cavern looks, the lake, at the minimum.

Except that RAWA has already stated that they're leaning towards disallowing views of the lake, city, arch, lagoon(ie. Cyan created elements of the cavern).

http://www.mystonline.com/forums/viewto ... 355#264355

I wish RAWA would post that here, on the relevant forums, instead of the overcrowded MystOnline forums *sigh*