Submitting changes to Cyan

jadawin12 · **Joined:** Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:17 pm **Posts:** 270

Been following this some more, I feel I may be ready for some more input. Hopefully it is helpful. First off people want a neutral spot. I understand this, and this is noble. But As someone who has been in the GoW for around two years and someone who also works in OpenURU my stance is that OpenURU is the logical source. It's purpose is to provide resources for Open Source patches seem to be a logical step for that. Now does that mean I don't want my bretheren the Writers involved, no way. We have a alot of brilliant people who I would say are needed for this project. So as long as we have a place to call OpenURU out on funny buisness (which I supremely doubt would occur) we should be cool.

Now for the testbed. I've heard rumors that during the Dark Times when Uru was thought to be lost forever there were a few rogue servers out there that you could be invited to play in, and Cyan knew about them but as long as they were not blatently obvious everything was kosher. Well why not ask one of these rogue severs to host the URU Testbed Shard. I mean wouldn't it be smart to test the patches in an actual URU environment? As for who gets to beta test, why not fill out applications, everyone who applies gets a shot after you test it out and give your opinion you go to the bottom of the list so everyone gets a try before you get another one.

Well I hope this helps...

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2010 5:33 pm

jadawin12 wrote:

...people want a neutral spot. <snip> my stance is that OpenURU is the logical source. It's purpose is to provide resources for Open Source patches seem to be a logical step for that.

Well why not ask one of these rogue severs to host the URU Testbed Shard.

Both of these are good ideas. However, they don't mesh due to the fact that OpenUru doesn't allow discussion of illegal activities. But, perhaps Cyan would be willing to authorize a legal shard now specifically for testing. I would recommend taking that discussion to OpenUru and see what can be done.

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

Eat_My_Shortz wrote:

Whilyam -- I agree we need somewhat objective criteria for evaluating patches. I don't agree that they should be your criteria. Again, Cyan's guidelines will do fine.

How? Explain how Cyan's guidelines would work when viewed against the community's history. I can save you time and say they won't. As one of the former Liaison candidates, I can explain in great detail the mind-numbing stupidity this community shows when given the chance. The violation of their own interests.

Quote:

Off topic, stop abusing the word "strawman" to describe our examples of what you are proposing. You have said "anything legal and stable should be accepted." I said "why not have a flight simulator" and DarK said "why not have a 2 hour Pi calculation before linking to Relto." And you said "Instead of admitting your strawman, you still think it's okay to use it as an argumentative crutch." Yes, yes I do. Because all the examples that people are throwing at you fit into your criteria. A straw man is something which is not representative of your argument, but these are -- it's not hard to find ridiculous proposals which fit your criteria because your criteria is pathetically weak. If your response to them is, "pff, well obviously we couldn't allow a 2 hour wait time. That would be silly." That is NOT a valid response given that you are saying there should be no subjectivity involved, only whether the patches correspond to the letter of your criteria. Either a) your criteria is wrong, and it must be changed to rule out our "silly strawmen". Or b) you are allowing yourself to use subjectivity in judging our ideas, and therefore you can't say it's a clear-cut decision.

Please read.
The 2-hour wait time violates the ToS because it:

Quote:

...interferes with another user's use and enjoyment
of the Service or any other individual's use and enjoyment of the Service...

Now for your other issues.

Quote:

- Ki feature which lets me immediately spawn into any player's Age instance by name (without an invite).

Violation of the ToS: "* Any content or use that tries to gain unauthorized access to the Service" AND
"* Any content or use that harasses or advocates harassment of another person;"
Of course, admins can already do this, but that's another issue.

Quote:

- A new journal in the city written by Atrus detailing how he in fact enslaved the Bahro to build the devices on his many Ages.

Potential violation of the ToS: "* Any content that infringes upon or violates any third party's rights, including
but not limited to, intellectual property rights..."

Quote:

- An imager in the city which streams random YouTube videos to anybody who walks past.

No violation: Unless that streaming slows down the game (which I believe it would) in which case it would fall under the interfering with enjoyment bit of the ToS.

Quote:

All of these features are extremely distruptive to other player's play experience and/or their perception of the existing Cyan story. They are allowed by your rules because they don't crash the game or break the law (and thus they are not "straw men"), but they are vigorously prohibited by RAWA's rules.

All of these issues either are violations of the Terms of Service and thus not allowed or potential violations. Also, there's the third rule I proposed "Is it optional?". That rule would ban all of these since they are not optional (but the ToS violations on most of these would end those).

Quote:

I don't know why people are saying "nobody cares about canon". (See the "do you care about canon" thread.)

And with that, you lost any credibility you might have had. You actually cited a poll on a forum as evidence.

Quote:

But I'm sure that nearly every single Myst player (both here, and in other forums) would draw the line much more conservatively than you.

And you continue the tradition of the paranoid trying to make it sound like they're the majority.

Quote:

I dread a day, a year or two from now, when I link into the city to see people in flying cars overhead, running around the city firing laser blasts at each other, transforming into Bahro, and if I open up my Ki screen I see the front page of Yahoo with scrolling news updates.

And you shamelessly exploit people's fears with outlandish nonsense that would not be allowed under my three rules (I kept optional out of my recaps because the motto is "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité." However, it could work as: legality, stability, optionality. "légalité, stabilité, optionalité"

Quote:

Cyan never asked us to come up with criteria. Cyan asked us to come up with a process for getting patches into Uru. RAWA/Cyan have already given us criteria. It has served the Guild of Writers (which I believe you are in) well. They apply to game patches just as much (if not moreso) than fan Ages.

The process includes the criteria. Also, RAWA's criteria were 1: meant for Ages only. 2: temporary.

Quote:

Lastly, Whil, you are still conflating core game features with add-ons/mods. I agree that an add-on system is desirable. Once it's in place, I don't give a hoot what add-ons you come up with, as long as they are not installed by default, AND they do not impact my gameplay experience (i.e., I can't tell if you have them switched on or not; i.e., a mod which lets you fly around the city is a no-no). Add-ons are fine. Please let's limit this debate to deciding what goes into the core game engine -- i.e., things that all players will be experiencing without any customization.

That is the core game feature that needs to be implemented. Add-on system, then everything else. Also, for the flying, a simple solution would be to have people who activate flying go invisible.

DarK · **Joined:** Sun May 21, 2006 11:51 am **Posts:** 510

The ToS are for the agreement of "playing the game".

We need a ToS for "development of the game" because there is a large content of the "player ToS" that strictly prohibits what we are discussing

Quote:

Use of the Client Application and Game Content. You may not use the Client
Application or Game Content other than in connection with your use of the
Service in accordance with this Agreement. Without limiting the foregoing,
you may not

(i) modify, create derivative works from, adapt or translate any part of the
Client Application or Game Content;

(ii), reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble any part of the Client
Application or Game Content;

(iii) offer for sale, sell, distribute, re-distribute, assign, rent, lease,
sublicense or otherwise transfer any part of the Client Application or Game
Content;

(iv) duplicate, reproduce or copy any part of the Client Application
or Game Content; (v) insert or allow the insertion of any virus, Trojan
horse or other disabling or disrupting item of code; (vi) use the Client
Application or Game Content for any commercial purpose; or

(vii) otherwise use the Client Application or Game Content in a manner not
expressly authorized under this Agreement.

So, we need cyan to tell us specifically what is acceptable.

A direct hit at your argument? or am I still dancing around your strawman?

Simone · **Joined:** Tue Feb 23, 2010 10:43 am **Posts:** 282

Most people who discuss how to improve Uru mention issues and modifications, that are much more fundamental than Firefox-style KI add-ons, and that are actually relevant to Uru as adventure game and fantasy world. The "bling" will not attract more players anyway, nor will it keep all of us from drifting away sooner or later; a better game could.

Going back to trying to answer to the OP... I agree with many here that the flexibility of the community "hierarchies" (which are actually for the most part non-existent), and the variety and amount of expertise among explorers, can guarantee enough reliability in any kind of "peer review" we can envision. However: the "coders" and the Writers will have of course a fundamental role, and their opinion should be highly regarded, but the average explorer who knows nothing about python should have the right to contribute to the decision process as well, IMHO.

Mac_Fife · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2010 8:05 pm

[mod hat on]Just a note that we're keeping an eye on this thread to make sure it stays on topic and is productive, rather becoming an extended debate about whether one person's opinion is more correct that another's.[/mod hat off]

A couple of observations:

jadawin12 wrote:

[...] and Cyan knew about them but as long as they were not blatently obvious everything was kosher. Well why not ask one of these rogue severs to host the URU Testbed Shard. I mean wouldn't it be smart to test the patches in an actual URU environment?

I don't think the fact that Cyan elected not to pursue these "rogue shards" legally means they were acceptable. I rather suspect that it more a case that the potential benefits of doing so simply wouldn't justify the cost (especially since in some cases they'd be dealing with international law). Now it's just my opinion, but I suspect that Cyan would see offering the "rogue shard" operators the chance to host a legitimate test shard as a tacit approval of the actions taken by those people. I just don't see that happening.

I agree that patches, at least those that most directly affect the player experience such as changes to the UI or gameplay, need to be tested "live", and that's what I see as the biggest hurdle here. Even if, as is being proposed in a number of the posts here, you have some objective system to screen down to a short list of candidate proposals, (and I'm thinking about KI updates here, since that's topical) you will still end up with several competing offerings, which need to be compared by the "playing public" and that will be largely a subjective assessment. If they're client side only, and don't affect the vault, then it's possible that you might be able to offer players a choice of compatible client (e.g. "Classic", "Option1", "Option2", etc.): Over time the most popular one will become the client of choice. But there are a lot of situations where that couldn't work, and a test platform will be required and how that is then provisioned seems to be a big question.

DarK wrote:

We need a ToS for "development of the game" because there is a large content of the "player ToS" that strictly prohibits what we are discussing

I would expect that to come in the form of the licences (which we haven't really seen yet). I had expected the licences to be the first thing to be released, but I guess it's something that needs a bit more thought. The present forum rules are also getting in the way a bit here, but these are under review, and you can expect a revision soon that will make things easier/clearer, at least in respect of MOUL.

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

DarK wrote:

The ToS are for the agreement of "playing the game".
We need a ToS for "development of the game" because there is a large content of the "player ToS" that strictly prohibits what we are discussing...
So, we need cyan to tell us specifically what is acceptable.
A direct hit at your argument? or am I still dancing around your strawman?

What? Seriously, what in the world are you talking about? Are you trying to distort my ideas into "we don't need a ToS"? I'm not even going to respond to such a stupid tactic.
Also WE need to tell CYAN what we want on MOULa. You are making more work for Cyan because you are frightened about what the community will decide if you let people think for themselves and give them options.

DarK · **Joined:** Sun May 21, 2006 11:51 am **Posts:** 510

Whilyam wrote:

DarK wrote:

The ToS are for the agreement of "playing the game".
We need a ToS for "development of the game" because there is a large content of the "player ToS" that strictly prohibits what we are discussing...
So, we need cyan to tell us specifically what is acceptable.
A direct hit at your argument? or am I still dancing around your strawman?

What? Seriously, what in the world are you talking about? Are you trying to distort my ideas into "we don't need a ToS"? I'm not even going to respond to such a stupid tactic.
Also WE need to tell CYAN what we want on MOULa. You are making more work for Cyan because you are frightened about what the community will decide if you let people think for themselves and give them options.

I highly expect to be moderated for this ... and I would not mind some additional moderation with regards to your previous posts either, the vast majority of it is off topic.

There are no tactics here, and I am not distorting anything ...

The ToS would work, if it was changed by cyan to reflect the fact that players now have the ability to submit code.

In its current state it fails to provide us the ability to change code.

WE need - is a WE want, you can't dictate terms to cyan when they are saying "submit code to us"

They get the last say ... simple as that ...

I would also go on to say that its cyan thats frightened about what the community wants to put in the game, not me ...that should be 100% clear to you given the request on the OP of this thread.

In an ideal world, cyan would release the code into a repo, and have done with it ... the natural flow of things would create a survial of the fittest fork, we would then submit off that

Check out the first page, read some of my posts and you will find something you might not expect.

http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 978#335978

Ironically I was all for your version of everything goes, and just leaving cyan to take the patches when they saw fit.

However my opinion started to change as you started trolling this thread with the idea that someone was taking away the first ammendment or something.

If we can't stick on topic on a thread, what is chance do we of actually getting somewhere in development ...

Then you start twisting my words that I want to take away the ToS? ... I mean serriously ... do you get off on trolling or something.

Nalates · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2010 9:24 pm

Many are concerned about what people will put in Uru if left to their own devices.

After a couple of years in SL and watching the Uru community there, I just don't see it as a problem. The fans like Uru and the look and feel of the game. Even with the complete freedom of SL and OS Myst style builds are very much in keeping with Myst traditions. No one, at least that I have seen, has gone wild. They have voluntarily omitted most of the stuff people here fear.

It's true there are talking, fire breathing dragons in SL. But the Myst fans aren't exactly putting out brim stone feeders to attract them...

It's F.E.A.R. - false expectations appearing real... Cyan is likely to maintain their version of the game no matter what the fans do. So, those that want a predominantly Cyan controlled experience will have that. Those more daring an adventurous will visit other shards.

I think the community has already decided how the recommendation process will work. Those that do stuff will have a say. The doer's may or may not listen to the majority of the fans. Sort of like Cyan (prime doer) has always done.

Those at the core of various groups (all that I know of) are doers and have generally listened to fans. They have not adopted all the suggestions people have offered so that has caused a vocal minority to flame on about unfairness and mistreatment of their cause. But I do not see where any age builder, and I assume it will be the same for programmers, has been denied help or the ability to add an age to the collection of fan ages. I see no evidence to lead one to think otherwise.

Until Cyan gives us licenses or at least the text of them, I think we are on hold. What is there we can tell Cyan other than may be we'll have fans vote on patches... and we'll have the UN submit the results to Cyan to assure fairness?

Without a testing server I guess we vote on who has the best pretty-print, user interface mock ups, and presentation... Anyone watch the cooking channel?

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

DarK wrote:

WE need - is a WE want, you can't dictate terms to cyan when they are saying "submit code to us"

Yes, you can. That is what they are asking us to do: Work out a process to give us (Cyan) code to put into MOULa.

Quote:

I would also go on to say that its cyan thats frightened about what the community wants to put in the game, not me ...that should be 100% clear to you given the request on the OP of this thread.

Cyan actually seems quite open-minded about user content, which is why I am much less critical than others I've heard from. Recent communication from them has raised some doubts on that front (to be addressed later) but overall I see them as much less fanatical and conservative than you and other fans are about what Uru is. I don't see nonsense like "Canon is god" or "throw people out" coming from Cyan. They (and Rand, when speaking to him in Uru directly) seem far more interested in the adventure of user-content. The paranoids seem ready to mess their pants at the slightest hint of add-on/age-developer freedom.

Quote:

Ironically I was all for your version of everything goes, and just leaving cyan to take the patches when they saw fit.
However my opinion started to change as you started trolling this thread with the idea that I was taking away the first ammendment or something.

Your loss, I guess. Subjective criteria will have a chilling effect on people's creativity. That is a fact of life. Whether people choose to ignore that is not my problem.

Quote:

Then you start twisting my words that I want to take away the ToS? ... I mean serriously ... do you get off on trolling or something.

You need to read what I actually posed. You twisted my words to say that I wanted the ToS removed when it is, in reality, one of the core areas people would look at for an objective evaluation of whether a piece of code was "legal." If you cannot comprehend the language the discussion is in, please do not start attacking people who do.

andylegate · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2010 10:03 pm

This thread has gotten very hard to read with the blow by blow argument that is going on.

I am finding of interest the posts containing people's thoughts on where to discuss patches and code changes, the best places out there to maintain the patches and code changes that are being worked on.

Criteria of how to decide what get's submitted to Cyan (don't say "Everything" as Chogon was quite clear that they can't handle "Everything"), seems to be the point in which some rather lengthy argument is going on, or was. Now it seems to have progressed further than that.

Might I make a suggestion that those involved in the argument simply agree to disagree? You ideas and thoughts are here, but it's starting to look as the thread will be shut down by the mods soon if it continues.

And I'd bet Mark would be a bit irritated that he has to start a new thread all over again to reply to some of the ideas.

Just a suggestion.

DarK · **Joined:** Sun May 21, 2006 11:51 am **Posts:** 510

I'm done, I am fed up of this idiot getting his kicks from speaking for me ...

Whil you need to stop ... because I will not be the last person to call you an idiot. goats are not the only thing that matter!

You are not the only one who can write incoherent drivel as well you know ...

http://overlordtomala.blogspot.com/sear ... K%20season

That did not go down too well with me, but least of all I don't yet understand if you are involved ... make my day!

jadawin12 · **Joined:** Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:17 pm **Posts:** 270

Mac_Fife wrote:

the fact that Cyan elected not to pursue these "rogue shards" legally means they were acceptable. I rather suspect that it more a case that the potential benefits of doing so simply wouldn't justify the cost (especially since in some cases they'd be dealing with international law). Now it's just my opinion, but I suspect that Cyan would see offering the "rogue shard" operators the chance to host a legitimate test shard as a tacit approval of the actions taken by those people. I just don't see that happening.

I suppose that a good point. I was just looking at the situation of 'it's a resource, use it' not really thinking about the possible legal implications, and that it would be 'rewarding' wrongdoers so to speak. *shrugs* c'est la vie.

Eat_My_Shortz · **Joined:** Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:03 pm **Posts:** 96

Okay, Whil. I didn't realise when you said "legal" you had the TOS in mind (I realise you did said that in the first place). In that case, things make a lot more sense. Once you start using phrases like "interferes with another user's use and enjoyment of the service" that puts me a lot more at ease.

But there is still a lot of subjectivity in judging the TOS (and, as DarK pointed out, the TOS was written for users, not for people who can change the code. We need a different set of guidelines for code changes.)

Whilyam wrote:

Eat_My_Shortz wrote:

- An imager in the city which streams random YouTube videos to anybody who walks past.

No violation: Unless that streaming slows down the game (which I believe it would) in which case it would fall under the interfering with enjoyment bit of the ToS.

OK let's look at this one more closely. You're saying that having the imager showing random YouTube videos, is not per se an issue, unless it slows down the game? So let's assume that I managed to find a way to show YouTube videos without slowing down the game. How many people would be happy walking through the city (at perfectly normal speed), with an imager every 30 feet showing a dog chasing a sprinkler, or a Star Wars parody? Don't you think that this impacts on the aesthetic of the game?

I'm not saying one way or the other... I just want to have a discussion, rather than your approach which is "does it violate the letter of the TOS or not? No discussion."

Whilyam wrote:

All of these issues either are violations of the Terms of Service and thus not allowed or potential violations. Also, there's the third rule I proposed "Is it optional?". That rule would ban all of these since they are not optional (but the ToS violations on most of these would end those).

WHOA. ... hold on. You're making up a new rule now?? Your stance the whole time has been "legality and stability, and NO OTHER CONDITIONS" and now there is a third condition? You've stated previously "we need optional add-ons", but have never mentioned optional as a rule. You said there were no more rules other than legality and stability allowed.

Now that we have a better understanding of your proposal, Whil, ironically I think now your rules are too restrictive. I think that anything which is "legal, stable and optional" should be allowed. But we need scope for wider changes as well. You can't say "all changes must be optional" because that means developers can't do any changes to the (default) UI or gameplay at all. That limits Uru development solely to adding new optional features.

I think a lot of people in this thread are viewing the changes we're talking about as a set of independent, optional add-ons, like Facebook or new Ages, or new custom KI extensions. Those are all good, but they are honestly much easier changes than what I'm talking about (because they can be switched on and off on a per-user basis, without affecting others).

What I am interested in (and many other people) is making significant changes to the way the game works. There are suggestions like "start in the Cleft, not Relto" and "make the Cleft multiplayer", and "redesign the instancing system" (other examples). Please don't debate these suggestions here -- they're just examples. The point is that these changes, once made, will not be optional. And they will change the game. That doesn't mean we shouldn't make them. It means that we shouldn't be making them lightly. They need to be discussed and designed and have mock implementations proposed, and tested on test shards, and finally accepted if they're good enough.

So, let's say that I propose a patch which makes you start in the Cleft instead of Relto. It's implemented and it works, I just need to get it accepted. Should it be accepted into the trunk? It's legal -- check. It's stable -- check. It's not optional. Maybe you could say it "affects users gameplay experience", but ... well, yes it does -- it's a gameplay change. So I think that either of the following options would be terrible:
- Reject it outright, on some technicality ("violates TOS because it affects people's enjoyment of the game"). Bad because something which a lot of people want was rejected without any discussion.
- Accept it outright, because it passes all the conditions. Bad because something which causes a major gameplay change was accepted without any discussion.
The only solution is that we, as a community, figure out what the best start to this game would be, and come to a consensus.

Whilyam wrote:

Eat_My_Shortz wrote:

Lastly, Whil, you are still conflating core game features with add-ons/mods. I agree that an add-on system is desirable. Once it's in place, I don't give a hoot what add-ons you come up with, as long as they are not installed by default, AND they do not impact my gameplay experience (i.e., I can't tell if you have them switched on or not; i.e., a mod which lets you fly around the city is a no-no). Add-ons are fine. Please let's limit this debate to deciding what goes into the core game engine -- i.e., things that all players will be experiencing without any customization.

That is the core game feature that needs to be implemented. Add-on system, then everything else.

No, no ... you are still conflating core game features with add-ons/mods.
- The add-on infrastructure is a core game feature,
- The add-ons themselves (custom KIs, private fly mode, etc) are the add-ons.

I agree that the add-on infrastructure is a core feature that needs to be implemented. But we aren't debating the merits of the add-on infrastructure. All of your points address specific optional add-ons. I'm saying -- great. Good. Have your optional add-ons. Please limit this debate to the changes that will actually be implemented in the game itself -- i.e., the changes to be submitted to Cyan, the topic of this thread.

Eat_My_Shortz · **Joined:** Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:03 pm **Posts:** 96

Whilyam wrote:

Subjective criteria will have a chilling effect on people's creativity.

I find this amusing, since creativity is universally linked with subjectivity (whereas more "rigid" pursuits such as math and law are linked with objectivity).

Would you run an art gallery where you accept every painting that uses solid brush strokes in an oil-based medium (I mean every painting, not just the good ones), and reject everything else? Most art galleries display art that is judged by how pleasing it is to look at, and that is an extremely subjective measure.

Submitting changes to Cyan

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