Well, there are two ways to accomplish changes... There are things which are actually fully legal to do, and then there are things you can do and probably get away with because no one cares but it's technically infringing on Cyan's property.
Nev'yn wrote:Question: Is it possible to open new parts of the city? (Like the palace courtyard?)
Yes, but you wouldn't want to see them. The parts of the city that
are open are pretty badly unfinished, and if you see the places they didn't give us access to, you'd know why. We could add our own, as described in this thread, but there are two problems with this method: it's a lot of work, and Cyan didn't build the city to be expanded very well or very easily. Most of the spaces are... cramped and poorly-built. Because of this is becomes difficult to add things without touching their stuff in a way that would require infringement.
Nev'yn wrote:Or are we restricted with just creating places that seem *like* they are new parts of the city?
Not at all, it's just much harder because we don't have the originals, and because modifying the existing parts can't be distributed legally. That hasn't stopped some groups for doing it, and frankly it seems Cyan doesn't care (so far) but it's a line which is best not being pushed when possible. Good faith breeds future stability.
I was working on the possibility of creating some new spaces in the Neighborhoods a while back, and while it's easy enough to add new places to visit, it's almost impossible to
access them because Cyan never cut out the walls behind the doors, and the rock wall (and its collision) is all one giant mesh making minor replacements practically infeasible. It becomes almost an easier task to create a replacement Neighborhood, as Chloe suggests, which is something I've been working on since...
Sirius wrote:There is a way to circumvent legal issues on MOUL-based shards though. Cyan forbids modifying existing resources files, but you can tell the game to load a new resource file alongside all the others from the city (there are roughly 50 resource files, generally 1 location = 1 file). This means you have to import the existing file you want in Blender, edit it to your likings, and export modified objects in a new PRP file.
Now, you have new objects in the city, but you also need to disable the old version of these objects in Cyan's resource file, otherwise you won't be able to access your new areas (and you'll have weird visual overlapping if you modified visual objects).
This is essentially the method used to add Tre'bivdil's linking book to Gehn. We had the coordinates for the book stand (thanks to Kaelis!), popped a new book in that spot in a new file, and added that new GehnAdditions PRP to the load list for the Neighborhood. Then I
fixed the Python script for the books to actually be flexible for
any books we want to add to those stands, along with the new stained-glass. This was all relatively easy because it's adding something new and self-contained in an open space (and the only other thing that goes in that space has SDL-controlled visibility); the hardest part is just making sure it's lined up correctly.