by Paradox » Sat Jun 01, 2024 11:50 am
I don't think anyone would deny that the Gehn Shard isn't as up-to-date as people would like, but unfortunately there are a few reasons for that.
New content was first released on the Gehn shard, and much of that content has now also been added to Cyan's MOULa shard. There were some significant changes made to the content as part of the process for getting it submitted to MOULa, and those changes are incompatible with the existing content on Gehn Shard. We can't pull in updated content as-is without breaking the shard, so there's a conversion process that would need to be run every time content gets changed.
The Gehn Shard was also intended to be a showcase of the best of fan-created Ages, and while that is a bit of subjective criteria, some of the content that has been accepted on MOULa would not be considered for Gehn.
Lastly, Gehn is not a shard with ongoing storyline, and some of the updated content on MOULa is intended to be strongly linked to ongoing player-driven storylines that wouldn't make sense on Gehn. That content would need to be stripped out or made conditional, which may involve extra work for the Age creator and cause conflicts with the content as it exists on MOULa. So on top of technical challenges with compatible content files, there are also challenges around adapting the newer content so that it fits with the goals of the Gehn Shard.
Beyond all of that is the engine and scripting updates. We'd love to get those out to Gehn Shard players, but those sometimes also include minor content changes (such as adjusting collision boxes to remove toe stubs) and it's not feasible to pluck specific content changes without pulling in all of them.
That's not to say that the shard won't ever get updated, but it would be a significant amount of work to bring it up to date and at the moment people are busy with other things.
