Contingency plan Storyline

[Kato]

Could've been Las Bellezas, I don't remember

I don't like the idea of shards--they would only further split us apart.

As far as the "iconic structure" I was talking about--I don't know. We didn't get to the exterior of the church beyond the boarded-up entrance--I was working mainly on the interior.

-Kato

[Trylon]

My major problem with shards is in the splitting up as well.
Though to address the diversity pappou mentioned: it would be possible to have multiple "entry"//"core" ages for different groups if things turn out to be going well.
So one could choose to start with e.g.:
- The Guilds
- The Anti-Guild-Committy (just making up names for groups... )
- The Healers
....

[Lontahv]

I think that it should focus on the part of Uru that we didn't get and wish we could. So, if Uru comes back it won't be in conflict. Here are what I think are main reasons/points for going to D'nay:


Ok... This list is long but I think it's worth reading.

1. Guild Power. The guilds have quite a bit of power over the people .ie the Maintainers have the control to ban fan-ages that haven't been registered until they get approval.

2. Age creation. Everyone should be able to write ages as long as they are ok with the GoMa, but there should be perks to being with the GoW .ie GoMa doesn't have to test ages that come out of the GoW for non G-rated content because if the age is made in a group it would be overseen by guild-masters and higher-ups the whole way along.

Another perk should be that the ages that are made by the GoW are displayed more/get heard about more, and they get to be put in under "GoW ages:" in the library/nexus-type-thing.


3. Creative expression in clothing. Ok, I know what you people are thinking: "second-life-unreality-syndrome" but there would be a sub-guild of the writers called the Guild-of-Clothing-Makers which would be mostly for a) people who just want to request an item to be added to the closet. b) would approve and index all clothing that people make

4. City not be based around puzzles. I take it that this may be un-popular but... if you want puzzles go to a "GoW puzzle age" all I'm suggesting is that the main city not have puzzles built-in. Think of the city and the hoods in MOUL--do you find puzzles there: no. I think that puzzles in the city here would be kind of corny.


5. That this game can be peer-to-peer except for public areas.


6. That it be the law there for visuals be really good(like uru) but try not to be more bloated than uru and not have niche things like nvidia-shaders(uru doesn't).


7. That it be free but not a breeding-pool for people who don't want to pay for their MMO. Free, but with a strict code of conduct (stricter than uru maybe because it won't be a for-pay game) I think I way to keep non myst-fans is to make the installer kind of hard-to-find and make the install NOT a breeze.


That's all I can think of right now.

Note: I think we should think about having a one-time cost--such as a kagi.




~Lontahv

[pappou]

Please speak to me more about:

“4. City not be based around puzzles. I take it that this my be un-popular but... if you want puzzles go to a "GoW puzzle age" all I'm suggesting is that the main city not have puzzles built-in. Think of the city and the hoods in MOUL--do you find puzzles there: no. I think that puzzles in the city here would be kind of corny.”

The only alternative to non-puzzles is multi player sociability, right? Otherwise, what else do you do in a city, all by yourself? [Calls up visions of Charlton Heston going down to break into the empty corner drug to get a paper from three years ago.]

But if we are not multi player (as the current ages sent to the Relto book shelf are not), then what would you do in your City? Go looking for Charlton Heston?

[Lontahv]

Um, it is my idea that this "Contingency plan" is not planning to be just a bunch of ages like AhraPahts. The city would be multi-player--we can make a multi-player age for CC right now I think. If this plan involves replacing uru temporarily of (even forever --depends on cyan as we all know. ) Then this post/inter uru has to be multi-player at all costs. If people didn't want multi-player uru then they'd be content with a ULMed CC. It can't be a replacement if it's not multi-player.


~Lontahv

[Trylon]

6. That it be the law there for visuals be really good(like uru) but try not to be more bloated than uru and not have niche things like nvidia-shaders(uru doesn't).

Visuals should be really good! Otherwise they can just submit their stuff in second life

7. That it be free but not a breeding-pool for people who don't want to pay for their MMO. Free, but with a strict code of conduct (stricter than uru maybe because it won't be a for-pay game) I think I way to keep non myst-fans is to make the installer kind of hard-to-find and make the install NOT a breeze.

Note: I think we should think about having a one-time cost--such as a kagi.

Or, how about an invite-based system.... like google did wiht GMail a while back..

[Grogyan]

Just my tid bit, one thing I have noticed is that people generally hang around when there are puzzles involved, multiplayer puzzles or not thats draws them in.

[Lontahv]

I like the idea of an invite system.

Only we still want to make it hard to find the place to ask for an invite because we don't want to crash those ol' servers but I have other plans(more on this coming up).

What about this game being kind of not-WorldWideWeb dependent kind of what I was saying about the part peer-to-peer idea. I think this could reduce lag VERY much:

1) Server login

2) Link to private age(no server contacting needed except auth stuff on occasion. You serve if you have people there but... not many people come)

3) Link to nexus-thing--strictly private so that you can use you full bandwidth to download the "AgesUpdate"(that's just a file that has a list of current ages and appends to the AgesConfig file instead of downloading a new one every time--uses checksome type things) General "getting ready for multi-player" happens here if you don't have an internet connection you're stuck at this point, you can only access your age that you wrote (if you set it to have public and private instances) if you change the files it does the svn "commit" thing every time you come in contact with an internet connection.

4) Say you have an internet connection: You get the new list of ages and can either go to the city, a GoW age, a public fan-made age or if you have an invite you can go to someones "private age" not the private age listed above(that age is truly a private instance)

5) Say you go to the city and there's 100 people there(not really but... IF there was ), you take a while to link but, if you can't make the link you can stream chat--if you have a friend in the city then you can pm him/her and say something like "I can't get in, could you give me a chatstream from there?" and he/she can type something like "/mirrorchat current-age <playername>" this does NOT however mean that you get that person's PMs etc. all you get is the public feed from that age and when he/she links out... the chat mirror expires and they'd have to hook you up with the feed agin for you to hear the chat in the age they're in. With special permission from the maintainers set up a live feed on a screen in your age. Now, the people in that age you're getting the stream from know that that age's chat is being streamed --grey users on the age-players-list--and if you're uncomfortable with people reading your chat if they're not in that age, if it's your own age, or you contact a Maintainer then you can kick the listeners off(not with the city however).


Sorry for yet another large-ish blob of text but, I had to brain-dump(eww ) Sort of should be in the tech side of the forum oops .

I hope you all enjoyed my speculating.


[EDIT:] Oh and we should think about communication devices(KI replacements). I vote for a smart-phone(modern-day) kind of communication/KI replacement(IF we must have voice-chat let's force peer-to-peer in certain situations).

~Lontahv

[T_S_Kimball]

Looks like I'm going to have to post SL pics using the new Windlight client, to show how far along things are there.

Anyway, I've been watching this thread a bit now. My (more serious) comments:

-> Invites are Ok but could become a double-edged sword; Be prepared to remove it (or automate the approvals in some way like Kagi) when things get popular enough.

-> I don't think anyone's leveraged peer-peer much in the ways described here (other than voice - look up vivox); That could be an uphill fight in finding and/or changing an existing world system. However, if done right you could have sharding (sort of) while still having one central server system. The model in this case is similar to ActiveWorlds or OpenSim.

-> As for *how* to separate from the existing storyline, the earlier suggestions mostly summarize to 'the old Ages were closed off to us (for whatever reason[s]), so we decided to take what we learned and start anew.' That works pretty well without having to get into major details; It can be expanded on after we find out what's really going to happen.

-> Communication UI - Still mulling over that one. I'm not a fan of BlackBerry-style devices though. The real trick is explaining how we re-build inter-Age comms (if that's even allowed at first - I'd say allow only intra-Age to start and if it becomes required invent and install the appropriate 'relays').

--TSK

[BladeLakem]

The conversation seems to be shifting back and forth between technical considerations and story/background considerations. It seems to me that the primary thing from a story perspective is what TS said - we had to leave the old Ages behind for some reason.

From there, we delve into narrative decisions based off of design decisions (i'd suggest it be called 'setting' rather than 'story'). If there is a single distributed environment, then that leads to one set of questions. If a shard approach is taken, then that leads to another.

I personally favor the shard approach, simply because that allows people to do their own thing if they want, even on the low levels (and good work by shard hackers could be adopted into the core distribution).

I'd suggest taking a page from tabletop RPG design - design the game so that you can easily have your own shard that is customizable if you want to put the effort into it. People can access whatever shards they like. The guts should be as flexible as possible to provide a sort of toolbox.

However, develop a core 'setting' that is the starting point for Guild design to start off of. This wouldn't be a 'canon' that people had to adhere to. But rather, it'd be a 'default' that people could use if they don't want to make their own. Think of it as a default presentation layer (a skin, so to speak). When technical things are being built, the idea would be to build them with this core setting in mind, but design the internals with as much flexibility as possible.

Then the 'setting' decisions made in the GoW are based around this core setting (which is what this thread would be focused on discussing, I think).

In that way the Writers would provide the ink and books (tools and servers) as well as some writing (default ages/setting). But writers can run in different directions from there on their own. I'd think taht would be the best of both worlds.