Suppose we get tools from Cyan now...

[Chacal]

Okay, I said I to myself was going to be nice from now on, but now Hoikas is adopting is "kill the idiocy" persona. If I seem a bit harsh, please forgive me... I really need to stop writing these posts before morning coffee (looks around for coffee... Oh wait there is none).

That's OK, we're getting used to it.
Besides, I work with young devs frequently, I know how they see the whole planet populated by idiots.

WRONG. Cyan has never said we could spread our knowledge. My Plasma 101 wiki article is pushing it.

I know. All I'm saying is there's no longer a need for secrecy, but as usual I don't expect Cyan to actually saying it out loud.

It's mostly a question of "is the writer smart enough to consider what happens in the logic if multiple people are around?"

True. That's when several writers will discover the difference between "coder" and "analyst". Probably the natural thing to do is get help from people who have that skill. Maybe we could have a "wiring" team doing that for writers.

As to the accuracy of our reverse engineering... Let's just say that we know every function and variable name in the MOUL Live2 build. That's from around December, 2006... Of course, Cyan went and changed a lot of stuff in Live 5, but we've got that figured out.

Yes, you do but I don't. Hence my call for an end to secrecy from Cyan. Your Wiki article was great and I'd like more of it. I'm sure you know that sharing knowledge is the natural step after getting knowledge. Speaking for myself, the most satisfying thing after a successful hack is explaining how I did it.

I would like Cyan to actually publish specs, I would like you, Zrax, Dox, Trylon and Dustin to publish plasmalib and your own findings. If only for my intellectual curiosity.

[belford]

Cyan has never said we could spread our knowledge. My Plasma 101 wiki article is pushing it.

Do you know it's pushing it because a Cyan person has told you "Don't go any farther than that"?

If we're being blunt now...

If Cyan wants to foster Age development, they need to either post Plasma format documentation, or give permission for GoW people to post it. I don't care which. Low-level documentation, top-to-bottom documentation, lists of concepts that the system contains, how they relate. Your wiki article is great except that it needs to be followed by 102, 103, 201, 301, and 412.

(Note: if that sounds irate, it is not at you or anybody else in the Guild.)

I say this as somebody who recently wrote 60kb of documentation for a 40kb Javascript library. As long as the core community people feel constrained to not talk about how things work, a big foggy cloud will hang over Age creation.

[Nek'rahm]

Would it be bad to say let's just continue our work while keeping respect to Cyan's old rules? And then until they change em to either help or hinder us we just don't go any farther than what Hoikas did?

To be blunt?

[Paradox]

WRONG. Cyan has never said we could spread our knowledge. My Plasma 101 wiki article is pushing it.

I know. All I'm saying is there's no longer a need for secrecy, but as usual I don't expect Cyan to actually saying it out loud.

It's mostly a question of "is the writer smart enough to consider what happens in the logic if multiple people are around?"

True. That's when several writers will discover the difference between "coder" and "analyst". Probably the natural thing to do is get help from people who have that skill. Maybe we could have a "wiring" team doing that for writers.
[. . .]
I would like Cyan to actually publish specs, I would like you, Zrax, Dox, Trylon and Dustin to publish plasmalib and your own findings. If only for my intellectual curiosity.

During MOUL, we were essentially told that if we spread any information, we would risk being banned. I once submitted a ticket asking that Cyan not use identical version numbers for Myst V and MOUL, and I was told outright that I was violating the ToS and that if I said anything it could be an immediate and permanent ban.

Cyan can be as open as they like... their lawyers are not, and never have been. Until I hear a reply from Cyan legal that I am allowed to publicly release documentation of classes again, it will remain in private places. Cyan has still not replied to my emails from two years ago when they initially asked us to stop spreading information.

Rand's dreams don't always make it down to the legal department.

I'm sorry that I don't want to risk 4 years of development by spreading information that most people will find useless anyways. My documentation takes the form of C++ code that is in many ways identical to Cyan's.

[Trylon]

I would like Cyan to actually publish specs, I would like you, Zrax, Dox, Trylon and Dustin to publish plasmalib and your own findings. If only for my intellectual curiosity.

Ehm you do know that the PyPRP code is open-source do you?
Basically most of what we know about what you want to know is in the PyPRP source code. It even has some nifty comments in some places

[Chacal]

I know but I tend to forget.
What I need is two weeks vacation time with heavy rain.

[Tsar Hoikas]

I hate to talk about a tool that's in heavy development, but the long-awaited (and rewritten multiple times) successor to PRPExplorer will be 100% open source. It includes a separate .NET Plasma Library. Zrax is working on his own in C++ which is much more complete (and has been under development for much longer, might I add). I like that there are two libraries under development because competition spurs innovation.

Anyway, I am considering a "Public Feedback Release" of the new tool soon... But some... Interesting... bugs have popped up. Namely the geometry decoder barfs on MOUL files and SynchedObject support in Hex Isle is iffy.

Now, I'm done derailing the topic.

That's OK, we're getting used to it.
Besides, I work with young devs frequently, I know how they see the whole planet populated by idiots.

Glad I'm not too offensive. I'm really a nice person deep down... You just have to look past my.. Oddness..

[Mystdee]

What kind of tools do you think Cyan has?

Their tools are very similar to our own, except that Cyan's tools are all based on the expensive 3D Studio Max program. Unless Cyan is going to encourage the pirating of 3DS Max, or spend years writing their own 3D program that will never be as complete as Max or Blender, our tools will still be the ones that most people end up using.

And our tools will always be available to the public, through an open-source license, which makes them free for use.

What about G-max it's the free version of 3DSmax. They may lean in that direction. . . . . . . I have used it, not very user friendly at first, but once you get familiar with it not so bad.

[Paradox]

I seem to recall someone saying the G-max was no longer supported and that it only had version 4 of Max. Cyan toolset is written and integrated with at least Max 5, likely Max 7 or 8.

[Zrax]

I would like Cyan to actually publish specs, I would like you, Zrax, Dox, Trylon and Dustin to publish plasmalib and your own findings. If only for my intellectual curiosity.

Trust me, if Cyan allowed us to, there'd be a LOT of info out there. At least from me if nobody else . But libPlasma, although I've not yet officially released it, is basically available to the public still... If you want to peruse the source, go ahead and knock yourself out with the URLs below:

http://uru.zrax.net/svn/Plasma
http://uru.zrax.net/PlasmaTools.zip (Compiled Windows binarires for the above source)

It does support both CC and MOUL, and to some extent, Myst 5 and Hex Isle too. At this point, it's mostly just the library and a few small tools, as I was wanting to finish PlasmaShop 3.0 before officially releasing it; but it seems popular enough to at least make it available for now to interested parties.