Discussion about MODing MOULa (Split from GoW Bevin)

[BAD]

So uh...... Agreeing to disagree is not happening?

[kaelisebonrai]

@BAD: Probably not, we're both as stubborn and hard-headed as each other. =P *wink*

EDIT: oh, and a little secret >.>

I'm personally entertained by this, to be honest. A good "discussion" is a good way to learn things. I learn more about some people's stances, and other technical details, even, and they learn about other's stances, and other technical/artistic details. There's a fairly two-way exchange of information here, maybe not always pleasant, but, you get that. I thought the snipe at my content was a bit much, though. But, you get that. Mind you, Chloe may've felt that way when I brought up the fact some of her own things are very much MODs, and not necessarily the way Cyan intended. I personally don't care and made sure to mention that I love the mods, and applaud them. So it was so much as an attack at the content itself. Just the claim it was any way different to what I've done.

[GPNMilano]

And by that extension, some of your own content will need to be. As you mentioned to me in the Great Tree Pub in MOULagain, Dorehn uses the hood courtyard. I don't claim to know if you've gotten permission for that model, and if you said you had, I would likely believe you, while some.. others.. who shall remain unnamed, I wouldn't...

Let me clarify this. Dorehn's courtyard is based upon Kirel's and Bevin's courtyard. The fountain, the upper and lower areas are exclusively based upon that design. But the models were done by me as I needed to remake them to fit with the rest of the area. I then textured it to what Cyan had for their hoods using their textures with a few exceptions to add that personal touch. The lamps and the railings for example. It doesn't use the hood courtyard, but certainly uses the general design of the courtyard. The idea being that when you step into it for the first time it seems familiar, but once you start venturing off you realize how different it really is.

I didn't mean to make it seem like I was taking a jab at your work Kaelis. I was using your work simply as an example. I like your pub office, don't get me wrong, but it just looks too much like Kahlo's pub. When I link there it just feels like the Kahlo pub before the fall of D'ni is all. This isn't a bad thing, but I don't believe Cyan will approve of it.

[Tweek]

Cyan were treating Releeshahn like they did D'ni back in the day, you know of it, you'd see glimpses of it but you'd never get to go there.

From an IC perspective, getting to Releeshahn was for the worthy, as illustrated by Watson's visits to Releeshahn after he freed the Bahro.

The likely hood of us going to Releeshahn in Uru was slim to nil.

Lore-abiding != Cyan's vision, some people seem to get them confused (speaking in the greater community not just here).

I'd say you could count the amount of people who do get Cyan's (and are community members) vision on one hand, and these people would be those who have heavily researched Uru and have obtained information and what not that most people have never heard about.

I'm of the opinion that if you're building in Uru, stay true to Uru, if you want to build whatever, then it needs to be standalone from Uru hell call the game Plasma after the engine.

But I am one of those people who feel that if you're adding to Uru, you need to step up both in terms of lore-abiding, and aesthetics, not a popular views but there we go.

[kaelisebonrai]

I agree, mostly, Tweek.

I have no real intention to alter D'ni in massive ways. And when I and if I do add something to D'ni I sincerely intend to follow lore, /and/ aesthetics.

The kaelis pub office was always intended to be very much like Kahlo pub, as I see no reason for another structure like that to not exist anywhere else in D'ni. Hell, we have roughly 8 versions of the pub in j'taeri. ( let me see.. messengers, greeters, writers, maintainers, cartographers, great tree, watcher's-variant, the game-pub/heek-pub-variant..) My IC story indicates that I cleaned it up heavily, and iirc, it was not as damaged.

EDIT: Thanks Chloe for the clarifications. =) My apologies. =)

EDIT2: By the by, the whole topic regarding D'ni Architecture I put up, a while back.. Was because of two reasons... I wanted to model D'ni architecture in 3d, for Uru, and, I also wanted to do a physical model, as in, a miniature, of parts of D'ni. I take changes to existing content seriously, as I hope we /all/ do. But, this should be by choice, and by respect, not by artificial rules set in place by some higher power.

[Trylon]

I'm of the opinion that if you're building in Uru, stay true to Uru, if you want to build whatever, then it needs to be standalone from Uru hell call the game Plasma after the engine.
But I am one of those people who feel that if you're adding to Uru, you need to step up both in terms of lore-abiding, and aesthetics, not a popular views but there we go.

I agree with this. Once the OSS Uru is out there, anyone can probably use the game engine for anything. (Take Magiquest as a current example) But one should only call it Uru if it fits within the spirit of Uru. If it stays true to uru. And if one builds for the "canon shard", one should submit to whatever procedure the canon shard operators (Cyan) have in mind.

[Aloys]

People like Chacal want to complete the Cavern, or other other incomplete parts of D'ni, but we are facing two fundamental problems:
1) Cyan have planned a *lot* for D'ni. And doing something that they haven't planned or that isn't conflicting with what's planned is next to impossible.
2) We have no idea whether Cyan will one day be able to work on Uru again and complete those areas themselves. Looking at the past 4 years it seems that odds are very very low and this is why people want to take the matter into their hands.

Thanks Aloys for expressing my thought in a clearer way.

Note that I have posted here long ago my ideas for a solution to this problem, in the form of 4 models for integrating fan-created content into MOUL. I'm more than willing to go with this kind of cooperation with Cyan (thus agreeing entirely with GPNMilano) but I'm also running out of patience, as Aloys mentions.

If we want to maintain a good level of IC-ness there aren't too many paths available, and the models you described cover most of the bases. The big question that needs to be answered is Cyan's implication in all this. (As well as the DRC's.). It appears that the DRC will be totally out of the picture as far as Ages approval is concerned so it will all be Guilds.
Also I think it would be interesting to be able to separate the IC/OOC aspects of this. For instance you might want IC to release a 'rogue' Age that hasn't gone through the IC Guilds; although it might still have gone through the OOC Guilds for approval and publication.. Although that's probably out of the scope of this already complex thread.

[ddb174]

If you take a look at the Ages that have a lot of puzzles in them, you'll find that the authors typically really don't *want* them to take place in the D'ni universe. (Just an interesting observation.) I'm personally of the view that canon is horribly broken (purposefully by Cyan), and I'm just not interested in it anymore, as one can never be sure of anything: Rawa can/will just deny it later. After all, us little people only ever get to see the flawed "games" that the "truth" is loosely based on :P

[Chacal]

If we want to maintain a good level of IC-ness there aren't too many paths available, and the models you described cover most of the bases. The big question that needs to be answered is Cyan's implication in all this. (As well as the DRC's.). It appears that the DRC will be totally out of the picture as far as Ages approval is concerned so it will all be Guilds.

True. In the post I linked to, you have to scroll down for a revised version of the 4 models, where I use [DRC] for whatever IC body, if any, that appears to be in charge of opening new Ages to explorers and [committee] for whatever OOC body, if any, that makes the decision of accepting user-created Ages for the Shard.

It may very well be that we have to take those roles over if Cyan cannot provide the resources. Which is why we definitely need the server code for a test environment.

[Whilyam]

A more productive use of your time, instead of railing against Cyan or hoping ideologies "blow up in their faces," might be to contact Cyan once the plugins are out and ask to work with them to expand the Guild Pubs.

With that said, as the new UU showed, the community can do whatever it wants as long as it's underground. If people's ideas are not at least heard, someone will do what they want on another shard. That's why it's so important for Cyan to work with the fans and for the fans to work with Cyan.