Guild of Writers

Hello,

I've seen information here and there, short and lengthy, but I've not seen a concise summary of our current situation.

This would address the usual questions like "What's the status of the plugin(s)? How can I run/design/create ages? You are hackers and therefore bad for uru, right? Who is in charge of this guild? How can I get a 'rank' in the guild? etc..."

This would be a nice thing to have as we organize KImail "fliers" for the guild interest weekend. I'm putting together something basic, but I'd love to have this statement from someone better informed than me.


Oliver

The GoW doesn't really have someone like an "official speaker"... Hoikas is the admin and mod of this forum and the server, but that's about it. So I'd say the people "in charge" are the guys doing the work, whoever is stepping up and saying "I have this nice tool" or "I want to show you how to do this in Blender" or whatever fits in here. New subforums are created as people start discussing a certain subject more often here (most recent example: 3ds Max plugin). Nor did I ever hear of formal membership, let alone ranks, here.

Regarding the plugins, there are two of them: PyPRP, working in Blender, and the 3ds Max one from Cyan. I used neither of them, so I can't really comment - but if you want to know what can be done with PyPRP, have a look at the ages in UAM (okay, some of them use some handwork as final touch, but it's really mostly just the plugin). The guys using the 2ds Max plugin seem to do some progress and figure out more and more functionality.
The current PyPRP however won't work with the upcoming Blender 2.5, so work is going on on a brand new version, PyPRP 2. I think it's currently only Lontahv working directly on it, but he's using a programming library to deal with Plasma engines (Uru, MOUL, Myst V and so on) called "libHSPlasma", which is mostly written by Zrax, but hacked on by many people. But I guess this is getting too technical for you anyway .

You are hackers and therefore bad for uru, right?

Is there an "official GoW" answer to that? I doubt so . However I usually try to make people aware that it was the actions of these "hackers" that kept Uru alive, that made Cyan release UU (at least I was told this was a reaction to Alcugs), that brought us all the fan ages, that allowed us to play MOUL ages while there was no MOUL. So, well, I'd say all this can't be THAT bad. But after all, I may be a bit biased
Oh boy, I hope this does not end in a flamewar.

diafero wrote:The GoW doesn't really have someone like an "official speaker"... Hoikas is the admin and mod of this forum and the server, but that's about it. So I'd say the people "in charge" are the guys doing the work, whoever is stepping up and saying "I have this nice tool" or "I want to show you how to do this in Blender" or whatever fits in here. New subforums are created as people start discussing a certain subject more often here (most recent example: 3ds Max plugin). Nor did I ever hear of formal membership, let alone ranks, here.

Yep, this is one of the few placea where anarchy (in the "no rulers" sense, not the "no rules" actually seems to work

diafero wrote:

You are hackers and therefore bad for uru, right?

Is there an "official GoW" answer to that? I doubt so . However I usually try to make people aware that it was the actions of these "hackers" that kept Uru alive, that made Cyan release UU (at least I was told this was a reaction to Alcugs), that brought us all the fan ages, that allowed us to play MOUL ages while there was no MOUL. So, well, I'd say all this can't be THAT bad. But after all, I may be a bit biased
Oh boy, I hope this does not end in a flamewar.

My answer'd be:
"No, the Gow aren't all hackers, but there are hackers among us who made most of the tools we use.
We're not bad for uru since we always respected Cyans IP, and do not condone piracy in any way.
In fact, some of the work done by the hackers in the past is what kept Uru alive."

Oliver Knowles wrote:You are hackers and therefore bad for uru, right?

Of course no.
We have this bad reputation for wrong reasons; mainly because most people don't know/understand the work being done here. (People look at the 'hacker' word with very different points of view, what's important is that our goal is definitely not to harm Uru, the Uru community, or Cyan. Quite the opposite.
The goal of the GoW is to study and expand Uru: create (or adapt) the tools needed for this, and enable/support people to create content and enhancements of all kinds to Uru. Currently the most visible result of this is all the new Ages that are written and the various softwares used to create them.

This would be a nice thing to have as we organize KImail "fliers" for the guild interest weekend.

As far as I'm concerned I'm not able to attend this week-end unfortunately.