Guild of Writers

Actually I only referred to the Central auth server by Cyan, not to the FCAL's. On reading back I saw that I never made that clear...

Trylon wrote:Sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone - the discussion on the MOUL forums just started to feel too much like meetings at my work.
(At my work we rarely have productive meetings or ones where you don't feel tired afterward)

The difference is that at work meetings are usually more productive than on the MOUL forums. (or at the very least they are a little more organized)

Speaking of meetings, I remember watching a series of short videos with John Cleese called "Meetings, Bloody Meetings". They were quite entertaining and showed how meetings can be misused.

Seems like now would be a good time for planning the activation of the inter-guild FCAL committee.

David Tierce

Well, that depends on whether or not the FCAl is still necessary now....
Depending on the nature of the open sourcing Cyan is doing, it won't be necessary, or will be very necessary.

Personally I expect the need for FCAL's to be gone, though the FCAL license did concern itself mostly with canon and continuity, which may still continue.

On a Guild-Common shard, something similar to an FCAL agreement (concerning continuity and use of legal textures) might be a good idea to protect from legal implications of some sorts, but I'm no expert on that item ...

Some of it depends on whether or not Cyan will open up their uru models and textures too, or if that will still be considered proprietary....

In the original announcement they don't speak of opening their assets (only the code); and I'd be surprised if they do.
Although it'd be very useful if they released at least one Age to use as a learning platform for the Plasma toolset.

Until we get more info from Cyan the question of the FCAL will be up in the air. As it stands right now, it's still the same thing: you want to create art with Cyan products, you email leagal@Cyan.com and request a FCAL, which they give you when they get around to it (the next day, or half a year later).

As far as the FCAL project goes, it can still be implimented, since it simple was meant to be something to help both Cyan and Age creators. As Cyan was insisting on FCAL's but didn't have the time to dole them out. The whole process was meant to help stream line things, concerning itself mostly with: Age functionality, stability, copyright, and "No-No's" like flying genitalia.

However, at this point, who knows? Cyan could come back and say "FCAL? You don't need no stiiiinking FCAL!" or they could say "Yep, you all still need to do that, here's why, and here's how it will read now."
And of course they could come up with a whole new way they want it done: It could be as easy as a website set up where you fill in the blanks, and it's emailed to you automatically, with a record copy kept at Cyan.

Again, no one knows at this point.

And of course, with individual shards, how would one enforce it? Only Cyan can enforce anything for that matter.

So this is just one of those many questions.

I got a different question: Sequence numbers for Fan Ages. Right now we ask people to register at the ULM to get a unique one so it doesn't conflict with other Fan Ages. But with MOOSE, OSMOUL, whatever you wanna call it, the ULM will most likely spiral down.
So would the GoW come up with a different way to obtain a new, unique sequence number?

Aloys wrote:In the original announcement they don't speak of opening their assets (only the code); and I'd be surprised if they do.
Although it'd be very useful if they released at least one Age to use as a learning platform for the Plasma toolset.

Here's my thinking on this. People want to fix the KI, fix the Nexus, they want to streamline it and make it more efficient (addition of scroll bars for the age player list, etc). The problem with this is simple: It can't be done without the Cyan Models.

It's possible. It's just too much work. So without those models you're not going to get improvements on the KI like people want, or on the Nexus. Unless they completely redesign the thing from the ground up. And even then thats only for whatever shard/server is running it. I see this whole thing as in the end, there's going to be multiple clients. Thats what happens when you put out your source code into the ether. People are going to have different views on how to do stuff, so they're going to make different engine upgrades etc. Either way though, any drastic changes, to the KI, Nexus, whatever, can't be done without the 3DSMax model files. Unless of course you want to build everything in blender, and libPlasma, and then import it with PRPExplorer. In which case. Good luck, it's painstaking work just to get a few buttons in there. OR You rebuild your own KI. I know a lot of people have wanted to see the Choru KI make a return. Now its possible, they just have to do it themselves.

andylegate wrote:I got a different question: Sequence numbers for Fan Ages. Right now we ask people to register at the ULM to get a unique one so it doesn't conflict with other Fan Ages. But with MOOSE, OSMOUL, whatever you wanna call it, the ULM will most likely spiral down.
So would the GoW come up with a different way to obtain a new, unique sequence number?

Why change it? You'll still need the ULM and or Drizzle for offline use anyway.

Personally, I expect/hope that at least some core models/ages (avatar, closet age, ki, nexus? etc) which can be considered part of the engine will be included in the release.
I 'm not holing out any expectations for the real ages.

andylegate wrote:I got a different question: Sequence numbers for Fan Ages. Right now we ask people to register at the ULM to get a unique one so it doesn't conflict with other Fan Ages. But with MOOSE, OSMOUL, whatever you wanna call it, the ULM will most likely spiral down.

I would consider that a good thing - ulm wasn't really designed for heavy use (hence all the problems we have with it atm)