Discussion on setting up an Inter-Guild server bank

trylon · **Joined:** Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:35 pm **Posts:** 72

Eleri wrote:

Dr Britcom Mom wrote:

Quote:

Uru being open-source means anyone can do pretty much whatever they want without Cyan's approval.

I think ddfreyne sums it up pretty nicely.

And some of us get the screaming heebie geebies from the thought.

Well, it's a bit scary, but then again, so can a first date be.
And just like a first date, you can't predict the outcome based on initial fears .... and the outcome may even surprise you.

VixBlu · **Posted:** Mon Dec 15, 2008 1:45 pm

trylon wrote:

(...^)
Well, it's a bit scary, but then again, so can a first date be.
And just like a first date, you can't predict the outcome based on initial fears .... and the outcome may even surprise you.

some have fears in advance, some have butterflies in advance

(I'm just excited, it's a nice scary thing, very interesting times)

Eleri · **Posted:** Mon Dec 15, 2008 4:30 pm

trylon wrote:

Eleri wrote:

Dr Britcom Mom wrote:

Quote:

Uru being open-source means anyone can do pretty much whatever they want without Cyan's approval.

I think ddfreyne sums it up pretty nicely.

And some of us get the screaming heebie geebies from the thought.

Well, it's a bit scary, but then again, so can a first date be.
And just like a first date, you can't predict the outcome based on initial fears .... and the outcome may even surprise you.

Rather than pull a whole conversation over here, I'll just point at it.

My concerns have nothing to do with 'limiting people's fun', but with the already contentious nature of the conversations happening when we have no facts, just assumptions about how things are going to work, how the system will be structured... We're diving into this with only the knowledge that there's going to be Open Source materials, and already people are making value judgements about the different potentialities. That bugs me.

My other worry is that without some sort of roadmap, some idea of how to steer this ship, we'll end up aground. And that when/if Cyan takes the helm again, we'd have to abandon all the hard work that's been done.

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

These conversations appear to be a lot less contentious than some we've had! There's this nifty energy going on, even if people don't agree and are speculating. I've never seen the forums so lively and interesting. I think, after all the speculation and confusion, things will settle down nicely.

Eleri, If I could characterize your concern (and please tell me if I got it wrong) - it's around story. You want (is this right?), some flavor of an official story continuance, done by fans, with approval from cyan. The fan created story becomes part of the official story canon. I think you want one shard that has the official story.

I don't think your concerns are of a technical nature, but that the shards will go off in different directions and the game world will change, and there won't be one continuing official story.

On that, I rather agree with you. Unless Cyan plays a bigger role than I think they can do - story is left up to us, and it gets fragmented.

If Cyan could afford to play a big oversight role, then I think they would have done "MORE" - the version of Uru where there was one official shard, and ages got approved by them, and someone in their shop was looking out for canon mismatches. Now, I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that the whole situation has changed.

I'm OK with that, because, well, I think that's how it's going to be. I'd be concerned if some fans got to be the arbitrator of official story approval. That would annoy me. Once it's not Cyan's story, I rather think it will be all of our stories.

For all that - I think there will be places in the Uru worlds that are super true to Cyan's story, because, that's what a lot of people do with fan fiction.

Eleri · **Posted:** Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:04 pm

mszv wrote:

Eleri, If I could characterize your concern (and please tell me if I got it wrong) - it's around story. You want (is this right?), some flavor of an official story continuance, done by fans, with approval from cyan. The fan created story becomes part of the official story canon. I think you want one shard that has the official story.

Not really, well, ok, I would want that, if I thought it was realistic to ask...but like you said, if it was possible, we'd have MORE. I expect that when/if Cyan comes along with MORE, they'll handle official story. Fan story'll happen in Uru however it happens.

My concern is with cohesion of community. By the end of UU, everything had split into isolated groups, paths rarely crossed, tempers flared, and when MOUL happened, re-integrating everyone into one space was...ermm...complicated.

So, already, with only the announcement of Open Source, we've got people saying This Is How It Will Work, our way is the Right Way, etc. We know almost nothing about what Cyan plans, and the community is already fracturing.

What I would hope for, is a roadmap. Or, at least a *Map*, that shows the different routes, how they work, etc. And I would hope that that Map comes from AFTER we know more from Cyan. Previously, we were waiting for Cyan to give us the roadmap, now it's our turn to make that roadmap, and the more detail on a map, the easier it is to decide which route you're going to take.

I do not want RULES that everyone must follow to build Ages, run servers, Or Else. That would be silly, and counter productive.

I do think some of what was already being discussed pre-announcement should stay on the drawing board. Have the GoW helping people access and use the tools, hooking up teams of people to work together... Have the GoM testing and poking at Ages to make sure they're not going to break anyone's system, slap the "GoM Seal Of Approval" on things so you know it's technically safe. Have the GoMe making sure there's an easy line of communication happening between the varied groups, and providing safe space for discussion to happen.

Little things that might be better clarified, than just going by word of mouth. Like we have kids playing, is there a way to know something is a more adult-oriented space before you stumble across it? Like Here There Be AdminKI like functions, so if that's not your cup of tea, you know before someone warps you to the top of the Arch?

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

OK - I think I get it, thanks.

I'm more concerned about the code being compatible across different shards. It looks like that is a technical thing that Chogon is looking into.
http://www.mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16711

On the other issues - my thought is that we'll have a good number of shards going along with some sort of voluntary structure - working with the guilds, that sort of thing. There will be some shards going their own way, or working with a different group of people. That's my thought on how it will end up working.

I think that's OK. I can't see how we are all going to stay together, because we never have before. It's going to have to be voluntary cooperation, based on, how does Zardoz put it - persuasion. I think that people will gravitate to things that work

Alahmnat · **Posted:** Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:55 pm

mszv wrote:

If Cyan could afford to play a big oversight role, then I think they would have done "MORE" - the version of Uru where there was one official shard, and ages got approved by them, and someone in their shop was looking out for canon mismatches. Now, I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that the whole situation has changed.

Strictly speaking, as far as I could tell the plan for MORE was for Cyan to basically be in charge of running the primary server, with the GoW/GoMa doing reviews of submitted Ages for stability, and the GoA checking for canon mismatches... if it passed those reviews, it would be added to the game. All that's ultimately changed in that regard is that now anyone can run a shard, so a canon shard can be supplemented by potentially non-canon-compliant fanfic works on other shards. Whether a canon shard actually manifests is another question entirely, and all comes down to whether Cyan lets the Guilds go ahead with the MORE roadmap's outline of canon-supplementary content approval on a given shard (obviously we couldn't and won't enforce these rules everywhere, just where they're permitted by the shard owners).

Eleri · **Posted:** Mon Dec 15, 2008 11:21 pm

What I'd love to see is one log in that gets me into Uru, and the MOUL content...and then I get to decide what's on my Relto shelves, from an utterly canon storytelling age, to the wild west and being purple skinned. From a casual social hangout pub, to an age with a burlesque dance floor. My choice. Other people's reltos would look utterly different from mine. But we could all still gather by the tent in Tokotah for dancing if we felt like it.

If this is technically possible, that we can have a place that can be home to ALL, and allow for wildly divergent ideas... why not to it? Why not start off connected, and then let people break off if they want, rather than planning on starting out with a dozen different unconnected places, all with their own MOUL ages.

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Mon Dec 15, 2008 11:33 pm

The Way I Think It Will Work (to borrow your phrase) - based on a networked environment and open-source code base (repository)...

We will need a central hub of some sort, since everyone starts with the same URU client. This may also be the portal onto the separate shards (defined as a server cluster). Each shard has to have a [email protected] gateway - and a wireless router is going to be a Godsend in this environment.
Once you get onto that shard, you'll see the common URU client enhanced by whatever the shard owner / group has created or chosen to use from the Open Source Code Repository.

Eleri wrote:

But we could all still gather by the tent in Tokotah for dancing if we felt like it.

You're still seeing this as one implementation, Eleri.

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

Eleri,
As far as I can tell, your version seems to imply that there is one shard, one instance of Uru, one implementation. I think it's going to be more the UU model. I didn't think there was going to be one underlying database that kept a record of where we were in each age. I thought that each shard would be its own thing.

That's what I was thinking. All you open source folks - did I get it right or wrong?

Samsbase · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:32 am

less is more in this case. with less projects with more people working on one major project we will be able to fix and create way way way more than otherwise.

Please can we have one main server which is Canon enforced and strictly content controlled (ie. nothing non-D'ni).

Remember this is not second life lets not make it so, ages are that, "Ages" not sandboxes.

RW. · **Joined:** Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:03 am **Posts:** 213

I really don't think this is an Open Source or not issue. Really, Rusty has I think a more appropriate idea of what it may look like. And from what I am reading from the Chogon and Cyanists posts, it does not seem to me the software is able at this time to support a worldwide distributed architecture, that is as one large, super powerful, shard. Even if it did, not all servers would be required to connect to and participate in the shard . And then there are issues of network bandwidth interconnecting all the servers into the distributed architecture, to work truly effectively and efficiently for large numbers of users ( I mean into the several hundreds), it would I think require some gige pipes between the various server assets.

If this could be achieved though, with designated servers each supporting some specific 'age' with a central server acting as the 'nexus' so to speak, well, maybe.

Regardless, not all servers must participate in this distributed architecture and not really need to participate for authentication purposes. A server can stand alone, isolated and be fully functional with whatever ages and modifications the admin has decided to implement.

Emor D'ni Lap · **Joined:** Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:15 am **Posts:** 587

mszv wrote:

I think it's going to be more the UU model
.....I thought that each shard would be its own thing.
.... - did I get it right or wrong?

Depends. (see my recap of the info we're basing all this on)

There's the multiple-servers-appearing-as-one-shard model it seems Cyan would prefer , and then there will be the inevitable (as Chogon has termed them) "rogue" shard operators who will be independent from anything and anyone. And probably some of those independent operators will cluster together in various manners. It's even possible that Cyan's central hub will eventually link to some of the more reputable independent operators after some time.

But until Cyan releases its code and the terms of the open-source agreement, any discussion of how servers will be distributed under Cyan's preferred model is speculation. The only thing I think we can be certain of is that some will run with the code and do whatever they want with it.

mszv · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 5:28 am **Posts:** 2266

Thanks, I read that, carefully. Ok - distributed system - I understand.

So - for this to work - all the interconnecting servers have to share a database, as far as I can tell. As you go from age to age, your progress has to be maintained - your links in the nexus, what you have, that sort of thing. And the network has to be managed. It's one world, one application, implemented on a bunch of hardware, and there's the network component.

I'm just not seeing how this could work, practically, for something that is fan run. It seems like you'd need a decent amount of coordination, control, management and agreement going on, no one is getting paid, and it's on fan hardware and software. Who's going to make sure the shard (consisting of a bunch of parts) stays up, and that all performance and other kinds of issues are resolved - Cyan? I though they were getting out of the Uru business, or they'd have given us MORE. That seems like a lot to take on.

The "running a bunch of shards" scenario seems more doable.

Eleri · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:17 am

Rusty_Russell wrote:

Eleri wrote:

But we could all still gather by the tent in Tokotah for dancing if we felt like it.

You're still seeing this as one implementation, Eleri.

And you're still seeing it as multiple. I have yet to see anything that insists it must be one way or the other.

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