Giving the Maintainers a real adventure

[Erik]

I came up with an idea for the Writers and Maintainers that I would like to share with you all.

The future Maintainer's job will probably involve bug tracking. Writers' Rehearsal you could call it. Anyway, that sounds quite dull if you compare it to what the D'ni maintainers did.
Imagine being a D'ni Maintainer getting a descriptive book that has just been written. You'll be the first to link into the new Age. No one knows what the Age really looks like and you will be the first to find out. You pull on your Maintainer suit, wondering if there will be any dangers in this new Age ... is it safe? is it stable?

The job of the future Maintainers won't be that thrilling. They aren't the first to see the Age, since the Writer of the Age has seen every detail of the Age in his Blender models already. And the Age won't contain great dangers. For example: a Writer that wants to write a Garden Age, will build a Garden in Blender, and certainly not a supernova. So the Maintainers won't face great unexpected dangers.

Here is my idea... wouldn't it be cool if the Writers would give the Maintainers a real adventure every now and then? To remind the Maintainers of the dangers the D'ni Maintainers had to face?

Example:
A Writer writes an unstable Age on purpose. An Age containing a huge, streaming lava river. The Age has been configured to panic link the player away just before the player falls in the lava. The Writer goes to the Guild of Maintainers and says "Shorah! I've just finished writing a Garden Age, could a Maintainer inspect it?". The Maintainer, expecting a Garden Age, links some meters above a lava river and manages to panic link to his Relto by the skin of his teeth!

Wouldn't that be cool to do? Perhaps the Writers could make a few "templates" for unstable Ages that could be given to Maintainers every now and then. It makes the most sense for apprentices to give such an Age, as experienced Writers are less likely to write unstable Ages. The Writers that gives the Age to the Maintainers should talk in an IC way about it, because if the Writers would say "I've just built this Garde Age in Blender" and the Age appears to be a lava river, it would seem to be a very bad joke.

What do you think of it?

Shorah b'shemtee,
Erik

[Goofy]

I agree with you. I think we should at first create a few semi dangerous to down right dangerous ages. mainly because the main job of the maintainers is to make sure the ages are safe. If we didnt create them and suddenly were able to create completely safe ages then the maintainers job would be rather boring. Also ICwise it would be strange that explorers could write ages so easily. It would make the idea of explorers writing ages more believable.

The first ages we submit to cyan(when things get going) should be basic ages. something like what you said. It was our first experiment. kinda a test age to see if we got things figured out.

An idea I have for one of the first ages is an age that is completely dark. with only the maintainers light. Alittle ambient light would be cool, but not much and animal sounds are heard. Some don't sound to friendly.

[Trylon]

Also ICwise it would be strange that explorers could write ages so easily. It would make the idea of explorers writing ages more believable.

I dunno, Atrus could learn how to write almost expertly in about 3-4 years.
Who of you knows how long I've had my Rehevkor... (No I'm not sharing it!!)

Btw I think the idea of the occasional unstable age is pretty cool.

[belford]

I have no intention of limiting my audience. Anything I make, I'm offering to all Uru players. It's just not worthwhile to do less.

This doesn't mean I dislike your idea. But I'd offer it to everybody *interested* in Maintainer work. That is, to people who are (IC) interested in exploring a dangerous Age. OOC, it wouldn't have anything to do with the Guild of Maintainers (present or future), because OOC everybody wants to explore everything cool.

[Erik]

But I'd offer it to everybody *interested* in Maintainer work. That is, to people who are (IC) interested in exploring a dangerous Age.

It's the job of the Maintainers to prevent dangerous Ages from being released, so it wouldn't make any sense to release an Age like a lava river or a supernova to the public, even if it would be cool to see that. I think you have some good points though; it wouldn't be fair to give the Maintainers a complete Age no one else would ever link to, therefore not too much work should be put into these dangerous Ages. There could even be made some sort of template for Ages like that.

By the way, I'm neither supporting the Writers nor the Maintainers, so I'm not biased about this if anyone was wondering.

[Owehn]

I dunno, Atrus could learn how to write almost expertly in about 3-4 years.
Who of you knows how long I've had my Rehevkor... (No I'm not sharing it!!)

Btw I think the idea of the occasional unstable age is pretty cool.

I dreamed once that I bought a copy of Rehevkor at a garage sale. I remember wondering (in the dream) why the word "Rehevkor" was printed in English on the cover.

Anyway, isn't one of the Age concepts an unstable Age with a star fissure? I like that idea.

[Jojon]

Just because the link-in spot is in a dangerous location, that doesn't have to mean the whole age is a death-trap and that the book has to be burnt. Maybe after the initial adventure, the maintainers could start the follow-up adventure of working on making the arrival safe, or at least safe enough to bring a writer, who can then proceed to write a linking book at a safer place.

[belford]

"so it wouldn't make any sense to release an Age like a lava river or a supernova to the public, even if it would be cool to see that."

Attend to the fun, and the sense will attend to itself.

ADD: Did I ever tell the story of the very first time I linked to Eder Gira? I looked around for a few moments, charged up the slope, and ZOOP right over the edge into the lava. Total time in Age: eight seconds. If the Maintainers of yore let that slip -- without even a guardrail -- then we can claim that all sorts of dangerous Ages are canonically available. :)

[Tweek]

I like the sounds of this. If the Maintainers say "no the Age is too dangerous" it could always be leaked to the general public through illicit Age trading (which I would like to see).

[realXCV]

I don't think ages should be purposefully made unstables. Just look at any Cyan age. They don't do a full 3d model of an age and then delete it because their IC side (DRC) finds it instable because they put the linking spot a bit to low so the avatars can't link to the age without falling through it. However, ages are not perfect as soon as they leave the development team. They need to go to the QA team which inspect them. Even after that, ages are not always completely stables. Now if you translate all this into the guilds system, Maintainers (QA team) are inspecting writers (development team) ages. Of course, that's mainly the OOC side of it. For the IC side, you just need to adapt it a bit. When you see something about the water being toxic and that you should not swim, it can mean many things (OOC). Maybe the swimming area doesn't work and avatars sink or walk on water. Maybe the textures doesn't tile properly and you see all the edges. Or it can be the color that doesn't look exactly like what it should be.

As you see, no need to make unstable ages. They will have a level of instability by themselves so just send ages to the GoMa and I'm sure they will find something even if you didn't find anything yourself. However you can also do a fully IC age (no modeling, programming) that could be considered too unstable by the GoMa when you send it too them and then they burn the book. While this, you have time to work on stables ages.

Another point is that IC stability and OOC stability can be two differents things. You can assume an age like Tetsonot is stable OOCly but when it comes to the IC stability, it's another thing. On the other hand, some ages have some bugs (ooc instability) but they seem correct (ic stability) Most of what I said in this post is manly about OOC stability. The OOC stability could be used to see if the age can be available in-game and the IC stability for the illicit age trading.