Guild of Writers

The history option falls victim to the fan licence but an alternate non D'ni dig would be sound.

I have an outline and story for a completely different non violent shard based game that would benefit from licensing the plasma engine from Cyan, but they gave me a flat and quick NO when I asked about it. Apparently they just are not interested in licensing the engine even for something outside the Myst universe. It is their ball and they don't want anyone else playing with it.

Technically anything that is more than MO:UL or more than UntilUru is MO:RE so I believe the discussion belongs here (that's an opinion not a ruling).

Alcugs may be flaky/buggy in places and come with it's own set of problems but it is probably closer than any other start point. Until Cyan come out of the woodwork and give us some information it's not going to do any harm to kick the idea around to see where it leaks.

A couple points:

As Lontahv says, Alcugs uses a clean Auth server, *not* a cracked one.

Alcugs allows for instanced Ages, as well as global Ages.

It also isn't all that buggy (unless you start getting 15 people in an Age). The recent versions are more robust than UntilUru in many ways, and of course, since it's open source, it's not the dead-end (in terms of bug-fixes) that the UntilUru server is.

Edit: I would to respond to Nalates post about seeing Cyan's motives as the Millers instead of a nebulous corporation. To be clear, Robyn quit Cyan due to "irreconcilable differences", so Cyan's motives can hardly be the Millers. Furthermore, Cyan *is* a corporation (hence to name change from Cyan to Cyan Worlds Inc.), though it is a private corporation, and Rand Miller is the CEO. But how does that entail that they act better than a (I take it you mean publicly traded) corporation? I've seen some publically traded corporations behave better than post-Riven Cyan, so I don't personally take much stock in that. I can't recall any interviews where I felt Rand Miller was being really honest (rather than in PR mode), but I've seen plenty of interviews where Robyn Miller was honest almost to a fault! (One of many examples here: http://www.gameplaylist.org/?p=19)

I think you will find Tony Fryman is the CEO but that's just a bit of pedantry.

Oops, yes you're quite correct. Rand Miller is the president.

Is there any specific permission required from Cyan to run an Alcugs shard as it's open source?

A limitation of 15 is tragic for a full shard but it's not really an issue if all we are doing is looking at testing multi user puzzles.

Also the 15 limit is way better than the one limit we have at the moment.

What is the situation on running a UU shard on a home network (ie a couple of PC's and a Linux box on a switch (router) network inside a firewall) i.e. non public access? Has anyone tried this?

J'Kla wrote:Is there any specific permission required from Cyan to run an Alcugs shard as it's open source?

It makes no difference as the server still serves Cyan data files. The moment you put up any kind of shard you're pretty much forgetting about Cyan and going your own road.

J'Kla wrote:What is the situation on running a UU shard on a home network (ie a couple of PC's and a Linux box on a switch (router) network inside a firewall) i.e. non public access? Has anyone tried this?

There is no difference between a home network or the internet. It's all services available on TCP/IP. You can run all servers (auth, lobby, data) on the same box or even in VMs if you want. Several people have done that, as it is pretty much the only way you can test Ages before putting them out on a public shard.

Sorry to run on about this are you saying Cyan would want to block Alcugs as an option.

And what about using alcugs to run an alternative storyline i.e. non Myst universe?

Chacal wrote:

J'Kla wrote:Is there any specific permission required from Cyan to run an Alcugs shard as it's open source?

It makes no difference as the server still serves Cyan data files. The moment you put up any kind of shard you're pretty much forgetting about Cyan and going your own road.
[quote]

The idea is to not run Cyan data files. This guild has enough maps build that you don't need to run Cyan files, anyway. As far as Cyan is concerned, until we start renting out houses (If that's what everyone else decides to do), there's nothing they can do about it anyway. We're just a bunch of fans who refuse to let go. Whether it's D'ni or not, whether it's Myst or not, it all falls under the fair use policy anyway. And yes, you can run any setting you want on it, if you choose to, especially if it's your own setting.

Once you start charging though, that's when your ducks have to be in a row. As for the server itself, that depends on what liscence it's distributed under. Let me check. Okay. You'll have to read through the license to see if it allows you to charge for services on the server. Luckily, there's a copy of the license that comes with the server files.

Either way, I don't think Cyan is going to bother with it unless you are making money off of it anyway. Just getting it set up for a few people shouldn't be a problem.

For noob clarification purposes, what's the client-side plan here?

ddb174 wrote:The recent versions [of Alcugs] are more robust than UntilUru in many ways, and of course, since it's open source, it's not the dead-end (in terms of bug-fixes) that the UntilUru server is.

Then what is the issue if it is open source and has nothing to do with Cyan? Is it just about content served? Data formats? Protocols? What would be Cyan's proprietary objection(s)?