MORE on indefinite hold

[GPNMilano]

Wasn't PhysX open source anyway? It was free when Cyan went for it anyway.

More than likely they had an SDK. Its not exactly open source, but its similar. However, PhysX was recently bought out by NIVIDIA, and discussions regarding what to be done with the PhysX code from the engine, would have to be made between Nividia, and Cyan, before any such code could be released to the community.

In regards to ripping out the code. You all did catch the part where Cyan is basically understaffed, underfunded, and just layed off 40 people right? They can't just devote manpower and money to ripping out code from a engine, just to hand that engine over to us afterwards. They have to support themselves financially before they can give into the wishes of the community. Otherwise if they spend the time on that, they lose more money from the other projects, and then they shut down.

I'd rather not get the source code, and let Cyan continue, then help bring a company under just so I can get my hands on the code needed to run and fix one of their games. To me that's just selfish and wrong. But that's just me.

I think certain things should be made open sourced and released, while others, until Cyan gets on their feet and can support the manpower needed to make an open sourced engine possible, should be left alone.

In a Cyan Employee's own words:

Open-sourcing MOUL would not only be a lot of work (everything needs to be documented, parts that cannot be open-sourced must be removed, related tools need to be made public, etc), but it would also be a message from Cyan saying "we give up and we don't care anymore." So, open sourcing it now, while there is still some hope, would be a very bad idea.

Let me clarify my stance a bit.

If Cyan would open-source Uru, one way or another, while offering no or minimal support, then the community suddenly gains a large responsibility: maintaining Uru. This responsibility is huge. The community will need to organise itself to avoid total chaos. No offense, but I can't see that happening any time soon.

Also, there is no point for Cyan to still work on an open-sourced Uru. Cyan won't be earning any money with it, after all. I know some people are thinking "oh but I could donate to Cyan" now, but the money raised by donations would be very low—pretty much irrelevant.

There is also the question of what exactly should be open-sourced. The engine? The content? The age designing tools? It's important to know that it may be impossible to make some parts public. For example, Cyan may be required to remove the dependency on PhysX before releasing the source.

Having said that, I think that open-sourcing (if possible) would be a good idea when there's really absolutely no hope anymore that Uru will ever be resurrected. But we're not quite there yet.

[Aloys]

IMO the question is not whether they can or not OS the whole thing (or even part of it) but whether they want to. And that's precisely what they haven't publicly talked about yet. They most likely don't want to, and will avoid the subject as much as possible. Some people from Cyan may like the OS idea (Mark, or Denis) but Cyan as a whole don't.

[GPNMilano]

IMO the question is not whether they can or not OS the whole thing (or even part of it) but whether they want to. And that's precisely what they haven't publicly talked about yet. They most likely don't want to, and will avoid the subject as much as possible. Some people from Cyan may like the OS idea (Mark, or Denis) but Cyan as a whole don't.

I can't say I disagree with them on that part. Plasma is their only engine, it belongs to them. Any future games they may be developing, if they get back on their feet, may end up being Plasma oriented. If thats the case, releasing the MOUL source code, could potentially open up future games to even more hacking and modding then before. Which is why, to them its a last resort, if they are going to go under then they may just open source the whole thing (or whatever they can) but until that day, they're only going to open source what they think is viable to do so without putting their future in danger. (Pretty much just the toolset is the most we can hope for till that day comes, and we're still waiting on that)

[SCGreyWolf]

Wasn't PhysX open source anyway? It was free when Cyan went for it anyway.

Using it was and is still free. It's available from nVidia's web site now.

[JWPlatt]

I am going to say this one last time

That's good to hear. Now we can move on with how it can be done rather than dwell on how it cannot. I think either you didn't fully read my outline, or didn't fully understand it, because some of your remarks don't fit.

IMO the question is not whether they can or not OS the whole thing (or even part of it) but whether they want to. And that's precisely what they haven't publicly talked about yet. They most likely don't want to, and will avoid the subject as much as possible. Some people from Cyan may like the OS idea (Mark, or Denis) but Cyan as a whole don't.

Without a proposal, the question might not come up. With enough noise, with enough quality in the planning, and when Cyan has enough time, they can address it. But they need to hear we are interested. Let's just hope they don't need to hear it for another five years this time.

There's little point in keeping the bone to themselves if it does them no good to keep it buried, wasting potential.

[J'Kla]

I guess I have to be the one to point this out to you JWP but your outline is not the only opinion and while I understand your position please bear in mind it is not a definitive final statement.

There are people out in the community that are willing to accept any option, pay almost any price and tolerate almost any amount of inconvenience.

There is a whole range of opinions and your position while laudable is not the only one.

So if somebodies remarks don't fit with your stance then that's their choice. You may want them to shut up but if the forum is to be an open debate you have to accept there will be people who don't agree with all of your ideas.

I for one see most of your statement as sense but I don't agree with all of it. I happen to believe there is room for UU as was or even better a version that will take fan written content but I am not fixed in that opinion.

As a community we have a diverse membership let's try and keep it civil and open to diverse opinion.

[Paradox]

On the other side, i'm really curious about the "major source of revenue" that dropped away so suddenly. I find it odd that it coincides with GameTap being sold, and merged with another company, and makes me wonder if the agreement that came between Cyan and GameTap that Cyan could host MORE, and GameTap would offer limited financial support till the launch time, at which point the support would come only from subscriptions from us. And that once the merger took place, the new owners of GameTap shut the project down, cutting off a major financial backing of MORE. This coupled with the Wall Street Crisis, and left Cyan with few projects to draw MORE resources from.

Cyan's QA business (CyanTest) shut down. They lost between 30 - 40 employees.

I was mistaken... CyanTest was the lost stream of revenue, but they didn't close entirely. There may still be hope if they can get another project.

[GPNMilano]

I was mistaken... CyanTest was the lost stream of revenue, but they didn't close entirely. There may still be hope if they can get another project.

I didn't think they closed. Or else Cyan would have put that into the latest news on their website, as they did with all the other news from the last few months.

What is the more likely option is that the outside influences that caused a loss in revenue, was that the major game that CyanTest was testing was canceled by its publisher, as a result the revenue from that testing, which was also going to MORE, was cut off. (The publisher probably canceled the game as a result of the global economic crisis.) And that this wasn't a fault of Cyan's, but that the publisher simply decided to cancel the game as it wasn't one of their more important projects, and were cutting costs in order to accommodate the economic crisis. This canceling, had a ripple effect unfortunately that also effected Cyan, and MORE.

[belford]

"What is the more likely option is that the outside influences that caused a loss in revenue, was that the major game that CyanTest was testing was canceled by its publisher..."

I agree that that's the most likely possibility. Does anybody know for sure? Paradox, are you looking at a news article, or getting gossip from Cyan people, or what?

[BAD]

I know (via an article I read in Game Informer) that a few publishers have dropped many of their titles due to the economy.

Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend to name some of the victims.