The logistics of Linking

[Kierra]

Most of us know that the information about the "rules" for linking are pretty vague.

I was working on one of my ages and ran into a problem....I had recalled reading somewhere that linking within the same age is one of the no-nos.

This is one of the reasons why the Nexus exists.

But then there are the Bahro, and yeesha, who can link wherever they want even within the same age. Well, that means it's possible, isn't it? The D'ni just never found out how.

So this got me thinking about the Rules of linking. Shouldn't we as Age builders know these Rules? But there is so little information on it, and what there is is vague, hard to find and full of theories rather than facts.

Is time travel through linking possible?

Or does the linking book capture a snapshot of that place and hold it there forever? For example, the D'ni ages...they were written who knows how long ago before the DRC and explorers began linking to them. Are those ages the same now as they were in D'ni times? Did they age and change as all things do (or should) ?

What about the fundementals of an age itself? When a Writer writes a descriptive book is he or she actually creating the Age, or does whatever magic that is the Writing art find a reality or universe that matches your description, and joins the two together? This was Atrus' theory, wasn't it? The shipwreck age (cant remember its name right now) where a native man swam to the island even though there were no natives described in the descriptive book.

For the most part we writers can get by on following the vague rules....but eventually if we're going to make really diverse Ages, we'll run into some issues.

There are several differing sources of information. What the D'ni knew, and what Atrus discovered, What Yeesha can do, and what the Bahro have been doing.

This Thread had explorers debating the known facts and present theories, but when it gets right down to it, we are *still* very vague on the rules.

And while we're on the subject....where did we, the Guild of Writers, find or make our special paper and ink? Not just any old paper and ink will make linking books, so we have to have found some or found a way to make it. Or did we just find a ware-house of unused descriptive books lying around?

And why is the sky blue?

And how do they get those little ships in those bottles, damnit! (Well at least I know the reasons for those last two )

~Kia

[Goofy]

Personally I think those rules were mainly guidelines that the D'ni created to keep people from wasting ink and paper and just to control what links get made. As far as I'm concerned the so called rules are guidelines that can be followed, but aren't really rules. So if say you wanted to duplicate what yeesha did at the end of path of the shell, then you could/should be able to.

As for linking within an age. Well I read somewhere that when an age is created the maintainers link to the age using the discriptive book. Once they are satisfied with the safety of the age they come back and then a writer is sent with a blank book and creates a linking book in a safe area.(maintainers could do this aswell, but I don't think the D'ni alowed multi-membership) In theory one could goto any age they have a link to and goto an area and create another linking book. Kinda like having multiple entrys into a city or room.

It depends on what cyan will alow. If they go with what the DRC(or whomever) knows about linking and thats it, then things may get rather boring and limiting IMO.

I look at art of writting is only limited by your imagination. Same goes for creating links within ages. Also I remember reading it stated that when a discriptive book is destroyed that all links to that age are useless. Very broad statement, but it tells me that multi-links can be created, but the D'ni either didn't alow it or frowned on it, but alowed it.

I'm sure most of us know theres a big difference between discriptive books and linking books. all a linking book is is a discription of a general area within a exsisting age. If you think about it sit in your living room and describe it, then goto your bedroom and describe that. I'm sure they will be different. Also if someone else did the same in your home thier discription of both places would be different aswell.

hopefully we will get some creative room when creating links to ages.

[D'Lanor]

I do not know anything about the IC linkingrules according to D'ni history etc. but I believe age builders should be more concerned with the technical OOC aspects of linking. The technical implications of linkingrules can be found on the Alcugs wiki. I also made an attempt to explain these rules in a more general way on the MOUL forums.

And to quote myself: "If there is one thing that can make a mess of a Plasma vault it is wrong linking. And although rumors that it will kill the vault are vastly exaggerated, wrong linking will definately cause avatar corruption. Linking is an art, both IC and OOC."

For that reason one should never link from a fan age to a Cyan age. Period. I strongly believe this should be check no.1 in the maintainers handbook.

[Goofy]

For that reason one should never link from a fan age to a Cyan age. Period. I strongly believe this should be check no.1 in the maintainers handbook.

heh then there'd be one big problem with any fan age. relto is a cyan age and disabling the relto book while your in a fan age may(as some stated about one of my age ideas) anger some. So there has to be some linking to cyan ages.


I think is should be something like: One should limit linking from a fan age to a cyan age. Period. I strongly believe this should be check no.1 in the maintainers handbook.

[andylegate]

IC wise...... linking from point to point within the Age: RAWA said you couldn't.

But then we have some great examples of that in MOUL, such as linking from any Hood that is within the Cavern to the GZ, or to Ae'gura. Another good point for that is the Bahro Stone that links you from Ae'gura to Decent.

Now, here's the thing. Two of those examples are Bahro Linking stones. Kinda hard to read a stone, that has nothing but the stone, cloth, and a glowing pannel!
BUT, there is the GZ book in the Hoods. It's a real book. Most people say that Yeesha made it. IC you could say that you're able to look in the book itself and understand how linking point to point with in a Age is possible. So THAT would be a nifty loop hole for an argument that the Modern Writers are able to do this.

Time Travel..... there's a problem with that IC wise. All the examples we have of it, you link using a stone of some sort. Minkata would be a great example of that. Again, IC wise, you can't open up a stone and read it. So I would see a problem with Writers figuring it out on there own right now. That might change, but I think Cyan will decide upon that.

Where did we find the ink and paper? Again, that might be something left up to Cyan as far as figuring that out. Most likely when they start including the Guilds in their story.

Oh, and the sky is blue because of the composition of our atmosphere acts as a filter for the color blue. Blue light from the sun is scattered through the air, making it look blue. This also has the side effect of making the sun look more yellow that it actually is. The sun is mostly white with some yellow, but in space your receptors in your eyes get overloaded and so it'll look white. Down here under our atmosphere, it will look more yellow because of the blue light being scattered, but.....if you try to look directly at the sun, it would still look bright white because your eyes are still being overloaded, meaning DON'T EVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN! Use special eye protection to do that.

[Kierra]

So what you're saying is.....you don't know how to put a ship in a bottle?



~Kia

[BAD]

LOL....

Ship in a bottle builders use special tools to build the ship piece by piece within the bottle. I know this because I am a model builder myself.

On topic.....

Whatever we do, will have to be approved by Cyan when we wish to add the age to MOUL. So they will be the main authority of what is possible, and what is forbidden.

However, since we are simply making ages to add to the offline game for now, there is no limit to what we can do. Of course story wise Cyan may not grant you a license if you step on to much of their IP.

So go nuts, but don't be to upset if Cyan asks you to change things for your age to be in MOUL.

[Chacal]

That's good advice.
Also, from a QA perspective, it doesn't make sense to say "this function is dangerous, so let's never use it otherwise it might crash the vault". If the function is needed, then we should say "this function is dangerous, so let's make sure it is used properly and let's test it thoroughly before releasing the Age".

Also, Cyan should say "we have found several functions that are dangerous to the server, such as linking, commands sent from modified client-side python code such as adminKI and flymode. Let's fix the server code so it's not vulnerable to such events anymore".

This gives me an idea for a new "security" topic which I'll start right now.

[Aloys]

Long story short any and all IC D'ni rules about linking were crashed down by Uru. And some of them had already been ignored in the previous games. Before Uru there were two fundamental facts about linking:
1) You can't link to an Age from whithin the Age itself.
2) When you link the book you use stay behind you.
Both of those 'rules' were destroyed by Relto (and incidently Yeesha). From there on anything is possible...
However, Yeesha is supposed to be a genius about writing and litterally hundreds of years more advanced than anything we, (humble begginners) could do.. So it would sound more logical (and more humble) to stick to the traditionnal linking rules.

About time travelling: I won't even go into that, because I think it's always a sure way to create a flawed story faster than you can say 'plot holes'.. But I guess it could be possible. At least Yeesha did it. But then again I think Yeesha means 'everything is possible' in D'ni..

[D'Lanor]

Ah, it seems I do know one thing about the D'ni linkingrules. Everybody seems to think the rule is: "you cannot link to an age from within that age". However the rule is: "You cannot link to an age that contains the book you link with". Yeesha came up with a simple solution. Just take the book along so that it is not in the age you link to (which breaks rule 2 that I never heard before). Nevertheless rule 1 is still broken when you share your Reltobook with another explorer within your Relto.