What do you want from the developers moving forward?

[Whilyam]

All can say is this: A long awaited gesture has been made. Now is the time to start painting those grey hats white.

That being said, I really wish Cyan had thrown in the content with the OS deal. Surely they must know there is still a stalemate situation.

There's no stalemate isue at hand really. It'd been nice if Cyan had thrown in the content with the OS. However, what they have given to open source is the engine and plugin code. What this means is that, if we wish to stay compatible, what we can do is update both. This will allow Cyan to also have access to a plugin that will allow them to export new versions of their content when the engine requires it. It'd be like any other age creator who will need to rexport their stuff when changes in the engine breaks prp compatibility. What this ulitmately would come down to is the above querie by Aloys about wether or not we should update the plugin. If it means staying compatible with Cyan's artistic content, then we'll have to so that Cyan will be able to update their stuff.

Do you really think Cyan will bother to re-export their content? If you can get an iron-clad guarantee of that, then there's no issue. Otherwise, I would bet everything I have that Cyan will not be able to do the job.
EDIT: I should add that failure of Cyan to re-export their content means the game vaporizes since no one would be able to enter Relto or any other Cyan area.

[GPNMilano]

Do you really think Cyan will bother to re-export their content? If you can get an iron-clad guarantee of that, then there's no issue. Otherwise, I would bet everything I have that Cyan will not be able to do the job.
EDIT: I should add that failure of Cyan to re-export their content means the game vaporizes since no one would be able to enter Relto or any other Cyan area.

Right, which is why I think they will. ReExporting the content, especially if they have a plugin that can do it, requires no efforts. It's a one step process that they use to export. A single Key pressed by one person can do the job. They simply press it, walk away for an hour for a coffee, come back it's done and they load the contents of their directory onto the data server.

[Whilyam]

We're going to have to disagree, then. I think Cyan will not be able to take the time on a regular basis. Additionally, we need access to content if we want to really overhaul broken elements of the game like the KI.

[GPNMilano]

We're going to have to disagree, then. I think Cyan will not be able to take the time on a regular basis. Additionally, we need access to content if we want to really overhaul broken elements of the game like the KI.

Well we already have the KI. That was released awhile ago.

[D'Lanor]

Good point Chloe. I had not looked at it that way.

So supposing that Cyan re-exports their ages, then any shard can pull the content from Cyan's data server. That would be good.

With that in mind I return to the question at hand: How do we want to move forward? By getting get fan ages onto a shards! IMO this should be a priority. Obviously some of Cyan's content will have to be changed to be able to link to a fan age. There has already been a discussion about a writers' Nexus project. How about taking that discussion to Cyan?

Edit: And can the CWE client access multiple data servers with different content spread out over them? If not this will have to be implemented.

[Whilyam]

We're going to have to disagree, then. I think Cyan will not be able to take the time on a regular basis. Additionally, we need access to content if we want to really overhaul broken elements of the game like the KI.

Well we already have the KI. That was released awhile ago.

That was, from what I understand, a small part of the total code. Also, it did not include a license to the art assets (which we will need to modify in order to properly revamp the KI).

Also, what makes you think Cyan will re-export their content? I would think what it more likely is that Cyan will essentially say "source released, you're on your own."

[Aloys]

I would count on Cyan having the time to re-export their content (or even part of it like Relto). But who knows? At any rate, unless we are 100% sure about it that's definitely something we should not rely on.
The fact that we cannot modifiy any content is indeed a problem because that essentially lock us out of Relto, the Nexus, and the Ki. While it would be totally possible to work without them it'd be a damn shame... We could create a new Personal Age and/or a new Nexus and compile a Client that uses those instead of Relto. But again that would be a pity..

Question: if we *add* something to an Age rather than modifiy it, say we add a page and a PRP, we still need to modifiy the .AGE and .SUM files; would that fit into the current license scheme or not?

[GPNMilano]

We're going to have to disagree, then. I think Cyan will not be able to take the time on a regular basis. Additionally, we need access to content if we want to really overhaul broken elements of the game like the KI.

Well we already have the KI. That was released awhile ago.

That was, from what I understand, a small part of the total code. Also, it did not include a license to the art assets (which we will need to modify in order to properly revamp the KI).

Also, what makes you think Cyan will re-export their content? I would think what it more likely is that Cyan will essentially say "source released, you're on your own."

The KI release was everything needed to update the KI itself. You're right in that it had no liscense attached to it. The reason i believe they will re-export their content is their desire to be able to provide a means for the general public (the majority of who will continue to use the MOULa servers) access to the fan content, as evidenced in their announcment:

The path forward from here seems fairly obvious and very exciting - with amazing parallels to the D'ni universe itself. As new writers arise with new books, the books are tested and documented - and books that are approved by some new kind of maintainers guild will (hopefully) find their way to the MOULA server where the public can enjoy new worlds once again.

Again, it's just My opinion, but I think it's safe to assume, that in the spirit of open source they will be updating their own stuff on periodic time tables in conjuncture with us. Maybe at a slower pace, but I don't think they'll just let their server and client stagnate with no updates to it while others are miles ahead in terms of progress.

[Branan]

I addressed some of these things in IRC, but I'll cover them here now:

Regarding getting code to Cyan: In my discussions with Chogon, that's not something Cyan has a plan for doing anytime soon. Critical fixes can be emailed to him, but beyond that there's not any process. Additionally, Cyan didn't release several chunks of code that we really need if we are going to make major changes in a way that Cyan can accept them. For those two reasons, I'm comfortable breaking away from Cyan compatibility.

We will of course make sure that a conversion tool is available, so all of you will continue to be able to use MOULagain ages in your GoW-CWE clients and servers. I thought this went without saying

Regarding the Max plugin: It's an absolute disaster, and no one in the group of devs that I've wrangled so far has any interest in working with it. The afforementioned conversion tool will allow you to still use the current binary plugin in Max 7, though. If there are any developers that are interested in working on the Max plugin, I encourage you to come forward. We will have information about how to work with the GoW devs already on the CWE development team on Monday, at approximately noon US Pacific time (We're spending our weekend getting this stuff ready).

[N. Sigismund]

I think I might well be the only solely 3ds Max-using developer here. I have never used Blender to do anything beyond peeking at Cyan ages to figure out modelling stuff. The chap who made Vothol Gallery might actually be another, actually...

Anyway, I suppose it's my duty to stick up for Max. As it stands it's superior to Blender and PyPRP. It's the industry standard and it's the platform most used (alongside Maya) in the 3d art community. I might get flak for this - but limiting the community to using Blender is going to turn off exactly the sort of people who would make the best graphical content. Go look at Polycount.com and see how many of the developers there use Blender. It's UDK, Max and Maya all the way down. So there has to be a focus on a wide variety of platforms. It wouldn't make sense to only focus on development of the CWE for Linux boxes, eschewing Windows in the process, and so it makes no sense to only focus on Blender for development purposes.

Now, regarding Cyan. Let's get this down now.

I'm not for doing tiny modifications to the files and sending them off to Mark as the focus. That's silly. I've already said that I want better physics, lighting and mapping. But what I'm very worried about is that if the development teams simply go "right then - all our focus is on developing new stuff that can only currently work independent of MOUL" then you end up with a code team that does not actually do any work towards building a game. You're just building shells of houses without any idea of where the bedrooms are going to be. To bring in D'Lanor's excellent point - if the teams here did not care about Cyan content, they would have all sugared off to other clients by now. Some people already did - they work in Second Life and by all accounts they're having lots of fun.

I can't speak for other content developers. But Llantern is not supposed to exist as a level you load up inside an engine. It's supposed to be something laying around in a house on D'ni, or at least as part of a game.

When I speak in defence of compatibility, I'm not defending Cyan. If Cyan wanted to develop Uru or something else in the CWE, then they could do exactly what I would do - go get the tools, get experience with the new tools and Bob's your uncle. They can do whatever the heck they like. What I'm defending is the fact that we're in the business of pretending we're explorers of D'ni, and the content we create is supposed to make the gameplay experience of other explorers of D'ni more filling and fun.

Once again - I encourage everyone to learn from the example of the Freespace 2 Source Code Project. Given similar rights to ourselves, they completely revamped the entire core game, and largely thanks to the fact that they supported the FS2 community and kept an eye on the game, new projects sprang up both to add more content into the Freespace universe and new games, such as the Battlestar Galactica fan game. That's the right way. It took them a damn long time but that's the right way. Fans of the original game hang around because new content, graphical and otherwise, is added to their game. New developers become interested in the engine because they see what it can do via the original game. The developers have a game to aim their sights at.

The goal has to be making a game. Spending months making an engine is all well and good, but without content it's a tech demo.

I will say this though - if fans want to, er, forcibly upgrade the Cyan content to the new engine formats, then that's absolutely fine in my books. But I object to being proud of doing it because you think the reason you don't have the license to do it above board is BS.

I'll leave this post with this question - if CWE ceases to be about Uru or MOUL or Myst, what draw is there for me developing for CWE rather than the UDK?

EDIT:

Might as well do a TL;DR. There is no point spending time developing CWE if it's not for the community, and the community centres around MOUL.