ULM alternative?

[Grogyan]

I had a look through the files, and it looks like we could do offline marker games, as well as an alternative to ULM, which is still ULM.

As much as I want to support this, Lontahv is correct, and like anything else through Cyan, you NEED their ok to distro any modified files.
Considering that MORE will never come, unless by some miracle something amazing happens like UbiSoft taking the reins again (unlikely), and also because the sheer number of people that already and growing, knowing the innerds of Plasma,(in some cases I think the fans know more about the engine than the developers), its still protected IP

Now that you have, send them an email to legal@cyan.com, and temporarily remove the link to the download or block it temporarily.
Edit: or just leave the link there and just notify Cyan at the same email as above, cause I still believe we should of had the offline marker games in MOUL and prologue

Its just another mistake Cyan did in a long line, would've been so much simpler and easier for them to use a ready made game engine, like Unreal and just build upon that, uses bumpmaps for water, but can do real time fluids processing if needed (or wanted)

[GPNMilano]

I will reiterate again. This isn't like with the MOUL files. If Average Joe couldn't just download the patch for Until Uru and install the files themselves, I'd agree, its wrong. But they can. I could post a link right now to a mirror site for the Until uru Patches thats been around since before GameTap, that I found just by doing a google search for "Until Uru Complete Chronicles Patch" Cyan hasn't asked that the Until Uru Patches be taken down. ubisoft hasn't either. If the patches weren't still up, I'd agree that its wrong to distribute the files. But they are, so I do not see the harm in distributing files, that any user can get for free, online, and that takes less then 10 minutes to generate with a patch. Especially when those files are the only ones that user needs and to get them, through using the patch, would turn their install of Uru into wasted space, which they would then have to delete off the harddrive, or replace with another version of CC.

[Chacal]

I agree with GPNMilano on this.

And I can only say this again: I wish we would leave the policing to Cyan legal.

[Lontahv]

GPN, if you haven't bought UruCC you can't get these "free files" that you're talking about the UU patcher handing out.

The point is that we're HANDING data out for free. People don't need a CC install to get these files (like they do with the UU patch). I would find no problem with this is Diafero had gone to the small trouble of making this a patcher that checked the checksums of the UruCC files to make sure you had the install before PATCHING the files.

In this zip-patch these are WHOLE files. 0% of these files are your game you bought (when you use the UU patch it patches the files you bought).

This is why Ubi doesn't hand out PoTS and To D'ni in zip files. You need to have ABM to get the Ahnonay files in PoTS.

[GPNMilano]

GPN, if you haven't bought UruCC you can't get these "free files" that you're talking about the UU patcher handing out.

The point is that we're HANDING data out for free. People don't need a CC install to get these files (like they do with the UU patch). I would find no problem with this is Diafero had gone to the small trouble of making this a patcher that checked the checksums of the UruCC files to make sure you had the install before PATCHING the files.

In this zip-patch these are WHOLE files. 0% of these files are your game you bought (when you use the UU patch it patches the files you bought).

This is why Ubi doesn't hand out PoTS and To D'ni in zip files. You need to have ABM to get the Ahnonay files in PoTS.

Except that the Until Uru patches are for both AMB and CC, and both are available. And this KI doesn't require CC to work, it is just as easily able to work with the until uru version of AMB. Not to mention the fact that if you haven't bought UruCC or AMB then you don't have Uru even on your computer and these files would be meaningless to those people as it is.

[Paradox]

GPN, if you haven't bought UruCC you can't get these "free files" that you're talking about the UU patcher handing out.

The point is that we're HANDING data out for free. People don't need a CC install to get these files (like they do with the UU patch). I would find no problem with this is Diafero had gone to the small trouble of making this a patcher that checked the checksums of the UruCC files to make sure you had the install before PATCHING the files.

In this zip-patch these are WHOLE files. 0% of these files are your game you bought (when you use the UU patch it patches the files you bought).

This is why Ubi doesn't hand out PoTS and To D'ni in zip files. You need to have ABM to get the Ahnonay files in PoTS.

Except that the Until Uru patches are for both AMB and CC, and both are available. And this KI doesn't require CC to work, it is just as easily able to work with the until uru version of AMB. Not to mention the fact that if you haven't bought UruCC or AMB then you don't have Uru even on your computer and these files would be meaningless to those people as it is.

I agree with the general gist here... the files are useless if you don't have the game, and if you do, then you can easily get the files for yourself.

[ddb174]

I was originally going to address these particular issues, talking about how there's no purchasable product being given away (thus no losses incurred), it's useless without the purchased product, etc. But instead, I thought I would try to address what I view as a failure to understand some larger issues. It certainly isn't "breaking the law big-time" as the nuance there is that copyright infringement is a criminal offense, which it isn't. But that's distracting from the larger issue: if corporate interests were to hold more sway, and it were to become a criminal offense, could you still see the matter clearly?

I do know that it is a prevalent implicit belief that what is legal is moral, and what is illegal is immoral. Here we see an example of someone advocating the second part, that what is illegal is immoral. But how does someone ever come to trust the law to make moral decisions for them? I know some people believe that this is due to ignorance of how and why law is made; they refer to it as the sausage principle: that to maintain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch their making. But I think there is another, more important reason for this. That ultimately, such considerations are taxing on the mind and there is comfort in having someone else determine your morality on your behalf, which results in having a lot of people reinforce your adopted views; components of what some people call groupthink.

Original works (either thoughtful or aesthetic) have, of course, existed for a long time, and it would be a mistake to believe that Myst is somehow of a greater caliber than these. And yet, even in the absence of laws regarding the duplication and making of derivative works, there was restraint on what people would do. Namely, plagiarism was frowned upon; attribution was smiled upon. Indeed, if someone were to copy your work and distribute it, giving credit where due, you would have been pleased; this was just what you wanted! But this is in heavy contrast to modern laws, which care little about attribution, and lots about control. And this change is easily pinpointable: it occurred when the motive was no longer sharing, information dispersal, and attribution and instead became about monetising it.

Make no mistake, copyright laws inhibit altruistic behavior in exchange for the monetary gains of those who requested it. The people uploading content typically feel that they are doing good works, and that the world is better for it. They do not pretend to have originated the content. Far from the picture painted of copyright infringers being immoral, they are indeed usually acting altruistically. (Though, of course, some are not; compare the motives of aXXo to ThePirateBay.) And instead, it is the copyright holders who attempt to suppress altruistic behavior and limit the freedoms of the downstream recipients. The motives are obvious, and you should instead be casting your watchful eye at them.

What about all the screenshots and videos people have made of Uru? Do you not believe these are derivative works, and that they are copyright infringing? Or what about the patchers we use for the software you believe is okay? Have you not noticed how the filesize is almost identical to the original, despite being called a "patcher"? Do you believe you have the copyright to the image of the Uru avatar you use on websites? These are only a small part of the many ways virtually everyone infringes copyright everyday. Empathy would lead one to image such a situation: what if you had spent many, many hours producing a video of your favourite moments from Moul, and tried to share this video (which is now bound to your emotions) with everyone. And what if someone (quite correctly) insisted that it infringed Cyan's copyright, and petitioned the mods to remove it. I find it easy to empathise with both sides, but I only find that the one is immoral.

[ardent red]

Just a thought: as Chacal said before, this is a legal- not a moral- issue. Sure, how we define legal, and whether that should be separated from correct or moral, is an important philosophical issue. However, in this case, the definition of copyright is not what we're worried about. If you don't like what this KI patch represents, then fine: don't download it. Cyan Legal, not well meaning fans, call the shots with Cyan IP. Until Cyan intervene, we should either download it if we are OK with it, or leave it (and inform Cyan of the KI patch) instead of debating endlessly. Just my two cents on the issue.

[diafero]

Wow, I didn't expect such a huge amount of reactions

First of all - yes, I'm aware that I distribute Cyan copyrighted content with that KI. I did not do it as a patcher as (a) I don't know how to easily do that and (b) people would have to do a complete 2nd install of ABM, then run the UU patcher over it and then let the patcher do it's work. I would be very inconvenient, and just move the copyright problems from me away to the UU patcher download. As some of you already pointed out, the files are completely useless if you do not already have TPOTS. I'm not yet sure if I should ask Cyan Legal about this - how many of the Uru tools we use day-to-day (like UruPython, UruFun, PlasmaShop, Drizzle and so on) have actually been allowed by them?

I will try to do some documentation about how to add your own links to Relto and Nexus and your own panels, but I don't yet know when I will find the time to do so (I actually thought the syntax ix quite easy to understand ). You can still use ULM to download your ages, but you will have to add new ones manually. There is no way to let Uru automatically download the files as long as you are playing offline.

Regarding the issues some of you mentioned (in the thread or via PM):
I had no problems with the up arrow key. Do you still have that issue, Justintime, and can anyone else reproduce it?
I will test linking while editing a marker mission, but if there are stackdumps, it's most likely a client bug and I can't do much about it.
I will try to add a message like "You successfully completed the XXX marker mission" after you collected the last marker - the way it is now is like it was in UU, because that is where all the code comes from.
Does anyone else have to KI commands in Rezeero? I will not be able to try it myself today.

And before I forget it: There is also a "/avatar <new avatar type"> KI command I forgot in the KI command list. You can use to to turn yourself into Yeesha, Dr. Watson and others (typing an invalid name, like "/avatar bla", will show you a list a of available avatar types).
In order to collect the links to KveerMystV, Direbo and the other new ages in your Relto, you will have to link there once. AFAIK, the only way to do that currently is Andy's Nexus. We are working on other ways to do that, too... but seeing how many people already complained about the some files I already distribute, I'm sure that would result in an even bigger wave of complaints.

[Lontahv]

UruPython, UruFun, PlasmaShop, Drizzle have no Cyan copywritten material in them. They were codeded fully by their creators (though they sometimes use libs but they _follow_ the license on the libs).

I'm worried that this will be tied to the GoW and we will become a fully illegal entity and this will hurt legitimate, careful to stay legal, tools and their creators. Almost all of the tools have rock solid licenses that couldn't be disputed.

Code it all yourself (and not opt out for the easy way) and I'll look at this as a tool in the class of the others being used here.

Really, I'm not as down on this as much as I sound. I just can't approve it. Therefore, I'll try to avoid posting about it unless I have something positive to say. I have made my point.