Breldur, my new age

[Pavitra]

Let the example of Breldur stand as a dire warning to all developers: Release early, release often.

[Calena]

Let the example of Breldur stand as a dire warning to all developers: Release early, release often.

This "dire warning" is not making sense to me. The developers have been releasing a fairly steady stream of work to this community. The Age Writers haven't, but as far as I know, none of them have suffered any negative consequences for choosing not to share their work online with the MOUL community.

Please excuse me, but this whole warning sounds silly to me. Jonnee either hasn't had access to a computer for the last few years or he doesn't give a hoot about releasing Breldur to the online community. Either way, I don't see where not releasing it caused him to suffer "dire" consequences.

[tachzusamm]

Release early, release often.

Jonnee decided to not release an unfinished Age. Although I'm sad that I cannot walk through this amazing Age now, and maybe never, I fully respect it.
We don't really know what happened, I still hope Jonnee comes back some day. At least a short message if he's okay would be appreciated.

Anyway, his Age, his decision.

[Tsar Hoikas]

"Release early, release often" is an axiom used in much, much more active modding communities than this one. The idea is that you should release your work early and update it frequently so that people will maintain interest in your mod. Otherwise it "becomes" vaporware/abandonware, and people lose interest or begin to outright hate you and anything you make.

That reasoning doesn't really overlap with us because there just aren't that many mods (read: ages) out there. So, there is considerable interest, even after years have passed. What I suspect Pavitra was intending to point out is that it's nice to release something so that users can enjoy your progress for themselves, rather than be disappointed that all they have is screenshots. Of course, if they don't even have screenshots, then the point is moot.

[Calena]

Thanks Hoikas! Now it makes sense . I agree that our little community can't be compared to the larger modding communities. I've peeked at them occasionally and that's a completely different world than what we're dealing with. I suspect we've had a few of those "modders" show up here from time to time, but they always leave when they discover that they can't jump right in and start pumping out mods left and right in our world .

Breldur is beautiful and it would have been nice to visit and it would be even nicer to hear from Jonnee. We don't know why he left and it could be leaving wasn't his first choice. As Tach mentioned, let's just hope he's okay and simply chose to do something else.

My personal preference is that the community stay focused on quality and leave the "Rapid Age Design" concept behind. I think the people that are attracted to the Myst universe are attracted by the visual and conceptual quality rather than massive amounts of content. Those that are still here are happily laboring away to keep that quality. It takes time.

I will admit though that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring all those ages on Deep Island, so I sort of understand where Pavitra is coming from. Okay, some of those ages I linked into and wondered why they even bothered publishing, they are so ridiculously bad. But it was still fun and I'm glad we have Deep Island where anyone can publish without being intimidated that their work isn't good enough. I guess you could say we have the best of both worlds .

[janaba]

I will admit though that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring all those ages on Deep Island, so I sort of understand where Pavitra is coming from. Okay, some of those ages I linked into and wondered why they even bothered publishing, they are so ridiculously bad. But it was still fun and I'm glad we have Deep Island where anyone can publish without being intimidated that their work isn't good enough. I guess you could say we have the best of both worlds .

Exactly ...

As to 'why even bothering publishing 'bad' ones' I'd say that I suppose it is for respect and honoring of the old times and the beginnings ... As I've been lucky to be there back then I know how that feels and what that 'means' ... When I came to UntilUru in 2006 there were 'only' ages like 'Kato's Lab', 'Tyndior', 'Galamay', Eder Rilteh', 'Pre-Swaltu', 'Vaiskor1 and 2' whereas Vaiskor 2 and Pre-Swaltu were already special as they were huge, yeah and ages like that ... There was also 'Niveerah', which was also absolutely special and awesome back then as for it's hugeness and quality and also the grand age of 'Ahra Pahts' and 'Terrati Lab' etc. etc. ... The miracle was that there were actually environments besides the Cyan ages at all, which you could explore with your avi inside of Uru or even with several people on Ashtar's test shard, though it wasn't possible to be in there with more than three or four people, later sometimes six or seven ...

Everyone can imagine that the ages of Janga or even Jo'nae or Jo'nae Hood were just THE awesomeness, and when they created (we all together btw) and released 'Takla Ma'kan' and there came ages like 'Aerie', 'The Maze' or the 'Box Age', 'Tunnel Demo' and then Andy's ages and all those came afterwards as a continual progression ... Yeah, and when you've been there, testing, while they were creating and developing their worlds at the same time btw, and exploring everything from the beginning and have felt the excitement to link to even Tyndior or Vaiskor2 with good friends (two or three, sometimes four or even five lol), and have been in awe to just be able to just run there and dance or even swim, and we've done that all almost day and night very often while communicating through Teamspeak and we've been posting our exploration reports vividly on the forums etc. etc.... I believe, you all guess already what I'd like to convey here, what actually cannot be conveyed appropriately to someone who wasn't there of course, but I think you're all getting the picture somehow ...

So, those ages were the proud products of much work back then of honored age creators in the beginning stages of course, and they were all friends and there was a much much more deep connection and respect within the community ... and as diafero and Wolle etc. were very much involved in all of that too, I can imagine that it'd be not very easy to 'just' dismiss those worlds as 'bad' as they actually are, not really bad, but in the very early beginning stages lol ... Fact is that they could be 'dismissed', why not, those days and times are gone and to reflect the high quality and expertise of nowadays' age builders, which is so much advanced and highly sophisticated, but maybe those older ones could still serve as an encouragement for inspired creative new comers or so to not only be confronted with the awesome 'stuff' of nowadays' experts lol ...

This now turned into a little tribute to the (g)olden age building days and times lol ... as to Jonnee, I believe he was from Berlin as I am lol, or was it Quasimodo or both, but I never met him and I don't know what happened as my 'german contacts' declined considerably when I became a member of 'The Great Tree', like, a day (whereas I mean the whole day and night circle lol) has only so many hours lol ... It would be in fact wonderful to just get to know that everything would be ok with him irrespective of what happened to Breldur and Jonnee's great passion for age creation back in the days ... Jonnee, c'mon ... say that you're ok, and we'll be fine with everything ...

[Calena]

Oh, gosh (Calena knocks herself upside the head). I hate to name ages, but it's probably better than giving the wrong impression. Without naming the specific ages, there is one age that is nothing but a single plane with a really poor grass texture on it. That's on my list of really bad ages . There's another one (something to do with LOL) that is basically nothing at all except a link-in spot.

As a builder myself, the truth is there are very few ages on Deep Island that I haven't found "diamonds" in. Yes, there are some ages that I prefer and I think overall they are better IMHO than others. The thing that intrigues me is that even after studying and practicing age-building for thousands of hours, I can still go into almost any age on Deep Island and find a technique or idea that I never thought of or don't know how to do.

And to get this thread back on topic, Jonnee built circles around anything I can do yet, but I'm working hard to improve! He left us a great example to learn from.