by DataPhreak » Fri Dec 05, 2008 9:26 pm
Forgive me if I am off track here, but I think I have an idea that might provide some resolution to all sides of the problem.
Okay, we have a couple of items that could potentially work as clients/servers. If we make all ages user run/hosted, the users who host the ages aquire all legal implications of what they host. Therefore, someone makes an age with Cyan textures, they take the blame, not the developer/central server host. Of course, we can have the "Classics," central server hosted ages with all orginal content.
Now, let's look at a new direction that I don't think anyone has considered. Instead of placing the setting in the present, where our avatars represent ourselves, lets set it in the past, before any backstory has been written, just after the council was formed, right at the beginning of D'ni, as a roleplaying environment. Of course, the city itself will have to be rewritten/rebuilt, and won't look like anything that Cyan/Ubi have put out (Wink wink nudge). So long as we don't use any textures, or any of their code, all content, including IP such as storyline, becomes fanfic, and copywrite, well, everyone.
Then! Oh, then! Then we rent out houses, for a small monetary fee IRL, of course, and give it all to Cyan to keep them in business. Of course, this last bit would have to be worked out with Cyan, and a small, minimal fee would be necessary to host the server, but it would all be non-profit. This way, paying members would have a permenant location where they can post their ages, and allow others to access them while they are online, and non paying members can post theirs in the public library. The same public library that the poor families who did not have ages of their own went to enjoy that aspect of D'ni life.
The only thing necessary beyond the basis of whatever engine you guys are working on, is the ability to add simple objects to a map permenantly in real time, I.E. Ages, and the ability to give other players admin rights over certain objects, I.E. Doors, in order to lock homes that they purchase.
And, what's more, is we, or more respectfully, you guys, could start your own Council, run by the founding members. Just think about it. We get full rights to an open source, free server, paid for by the players, and does not violate the IP rights of Cyan. (As long as it remains non-profit, we, err... you, can claim that it is solely for learning purposes, which means you can even use, theoretically, IP property under the "Fair Use Act". Now I would not recommend using copywrite materials from Cyans game, but it should cover any unnoticed copywrite glitches should Cyan decide to un-shutup.)
Just a thought.
-Data
This way we could kinda have DIRT without D in D'ni. I feel I could grow used to not linking. Uru's over-use of linking has kind of made it less special than it was in Riven and Myst. The sound: WOWAWOWOA is heard and Lontahv *fades out*. 