Email from Chogon: Cavern Textures....

[GPNMilano]

I really hope Cyan doesn't allow people to use their meshes. That would truly be a step too far IMO and I don't believe they'd ever do something like that.

Personally speaking, I think the use of some mesh's is necessary. There are certain objects, Nexus Pedestals, Lamps, Book Pedestals etc that pop up in a variety of ages and areas in D'ni. They are a staple of D'ni, and not having them in D'ni specific areas breaks the continuity of it being "the cavern" for instance, going from the city, to a new area in D'ni, and finding a foreign looking Nexus Pedestal doesn't make much sense. If you travel down a city street, there's a reason all stop signs look the same, why city's have the same general look for their street signs, and why all stop lights have the same basic design. Its how they were designed to look.

Certain things in D'ni are staples of what it should look like. So certain objects, that fall into the idea of it being the same "city" should remain the same.

Cyan should be the ones to designate what mesh's and textures are for use in fan created areas and ages to be used in Uru. Obviously you shouldn't be able to duplicate the city library in your age, but having say, a book pedestal that appears in both the Library, and the Museum, in say a new hood, it makes sense.

[Grogyan]

Wow, Chogon has by the looks of things turned on his PC and downloaded his mail, only to find that he needed to do massive overtime to answer them all.

I too asked Mark something, relating to the FCAL proces, as I am still unsure of how the process is currently setup outside of Cyan

Hi Grogyan,

Yeah, things are in a big state of flux at the moment.
For now, all the FCAL request can be sent to me (or legal@cyan.com). If you guys have some that were sent to you, you can also pass those on to me.

Thanks,
Chogon



Hi Chogon,
I know you guys are busy with a lot of things to get MORE up and
running, hopefully sometime before the end of the year.

In any case we are just in the process of getting ideas for another
RAD (Rapid Age Development) contest, and one of the questions that is
wandering about, is where do we stand for applying for FCAL's?
and how would that affect us in the future and with MORE, please?


Thanks

Email edited to protect identities

[Lontahv]

I really hope Cyan doesn't allow people to use their meshes. That would truly be a step too far IMO and I don't believe they'd ever do something like that.

Personally speaking, I think the use of some mesh's is necessary. There are certain objects, Nexus Pedestals, Lamps, Book Pedestals etc that pop up in a variety of ages and areas in D'ni. They are a staple of D'ni, and not having them in D'ni specific areas breaks the continuity of it being "the cavern" for instance, going from the city, to a new area in D'ni, and finding a foreign looking Nexus Pedestal doesn't make much sense. If you travel down a city street, there's a reason all stop signs look the same, why city's have the same general look for their street signs, and why all stop lights have the same basic design. Its how they were designed to look.

Certain things in D'ni are staples of what it should look like. So certain objects, that fall into the idea of it being the same "city" should remain the same.

Cyan should be the ones to designate what mesh's and textures are for use in fan created areas and ages to be used in Uru. Obviously you shouldn't be able to duplicate the city library in your age, but having say, a book pedestal that appears in both the Library, and the Museum, in say a new hood, it makes sense.

Not all stop lights are identical down to the last bolt.

We're not that lame we can't just copy the design and make it look like the Cyan stuff. Heck, we can even use the model as a template for our new model.

Maybe some modelers here can group together and make some copies (not identical but very similar) of some staple D'ni objects (Nexus-pedestal etc.).

[Aloys]

But what would be the point then? We would end up with objecs that would look similar yet different enough to look not-quite-right...
We already had a couple instances of that with people adding cones and barriers in their Ages, and they looked decent but because they are not the original cones and barriers from Uru it's just unconfortable to look at. Makes you think you're playing some different game trying to plagiarize Uru..
Other example: I have a Hood project on the back burner, and I'd like to add some Heek table in there. Obviously I could recreate the Heek table mesh (and as a matter of fact I did) but what's the point? I'd spend a lot of time on something that just won't look right and will strike people as such.
And if I do end up spending the time to perfectly copy the original mesh, that's bordering on plagiarism IMO.
GPLmilano is right that the use of such staples of the D'ni universe makes you feel like you're in *the* D'ni Cavern, and not some D'ni-looking place.

I agree that some originality would be welcome and there are definitely instances where making something 'in the style of' but expanding the original thing would be better than just use the original thing (new lamps designs, wall/ground patterns etc) but there are some specific items (Nexus stations etc) where we need to use the Original thing to anchor the area in the continuity. IC speaking I'd assume that Nexus stations or Heek tables were all identical if not mass-produced.

[Whilyam]

Here's my version from Chogon:

Also, if any Cyan assets are used in building this age, we do stipulate that these assets can only be used with the plasma engine for fan create ages (i.e. MORE, ULM, etc.).

So it's not just cavern textures, from what I read in that. Obviously, though, any developer still needs the FCAL for their age.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

I just realized that Chogon's letter means that the Maintainers will need to make an exception while inspecting ages for copyrighted material. Perhaps any age submitted to the GoMa that uses Cyan's textures should be accompanied by a list of these textures - to avoid getting rejected.

And this probably extends to the FCAL panel as well.

[Dot]

I just realized that Chogon's letter means that the Maintainers will need to make an exception while inspecting ages for copyrighted material. Perhaps any age submitted to the GoMa that uses Cyan's textures should be accompanied by a list of these textures - to avoid getting rejected.

And this probably extends to the FCAL panel as well.

Good idea. I'll add a note on this in the FCAL discussions.

[Whilyam]

I just realized that Chogon's letter means that the Maintainers will need to make an exception while inspecting ages for copyrighted material. Perhaps any age submitted to the GoMa that uses Cyan's textures should be accompanied by a list of these textures - to avoid getting rejected.

And this probably extends to the FCAL panel as well.

Chogon's letter doesn't specify individual images, so I don't see why age creators should. If Chogon said "you can use images x, y, and z" then this would make sense, but it doesn't. It's a blanket "you may use them with the plasma engine" statement. The only requirement should be that you include that you received permission to use Cyan's images.

[teedyo]

I just realized that Chogon's letter means that the Maintainers will need to make an exception while inspecting ages for copyrighted material. Perhaps any age submitted to the GoMa that uses Cyan's textures should be accompanied by a list of these textures - to avoid getting rejected.

And this probably extends to the FCAL panel as well.

Chogon's letter doesn't specify individual images, so I don't see why age creators should. If Chogon said "you can use images x, y, and z" then this would make sense, but it doesn't. It's a blanket "you may use them with the plasma engine" statement. The only requirement should be that you include that you received permission to use Cyan's images.

Because it wasn't a blanket statement. The question was about cavern textures as was the reply. If you have indication to the contrary; perhaps you could post it?

[GPNMilano]

I just realized that Chogon's letter means that the Maintainers will need to make an exception while inspecting ages for copyrighted material. Perhaps any age submitted to the GoMa that uses Cyan's textures should be accompanied by a list of these textures - to avoid getting rejected.

And this probably extends to the FCAL panel as well.

Chogon's letter doesn't specify individual images, so I don't see why age creators should. If Chogon said "you can use images x, y, and z" then this would make sense, but it doesn't. It's a blanket "you may use them with the plasma engine" statement. The only requirement should be that you include that you received permission to use Cyan's images.

Because it wasn't a blanket statement. The question was about cavern textures as was the reply. If you have indication to the contrary; perhaps you could post it?

Every age in Uru, uses textures from the cavern, these include hood, city, silo and watcher textures. not to mention the gz, and descent. All of which are considered "cavern" textures, as they are all part of the cavern. Take gira for example. It includes 8 textures from descent, (both the myst v version, and the uru combined) 6 textures from Kirel, 7 from the city, not to mention the global textures for linking panels. Gira, in total, has exactly 38 textures that are unique to it. Of those textures, some appear in other ages, [img]Including[/img] the cavern. So one cannot assume that those textures are off limits, because they appear in gira as well as areas of the cavern.

If one is in doubt however one only needs to apply for the usage of cyan textures and sounds through their website. They review those requests once every quarter, and the request to use them is for both commercial, and non-commercial products, as well as fan created content (which is not just for ages. Chogon's statement was in reference to Cyan assets, those include textures, meshes and sounds, and global python scripts, these are inclusive to being used in Uru only though, hence the "Plasma engine" statement.