There is a lot of wisdom expressed in here, and I'm greatful for that. And ultimately I am confident that Uru in the hands of the fans will succeed or fail when the explorer community "votes with their feet." And I think, at the heart of it, this is what Whilyam believes. But....
I'm a storyteller, not a programmer. And Uru is a story. It is also a program. But -- and this is key -- the people who have stuck with Uru through multiple incarnations, multiple concellations, and multiple re-births, have not done so because they admire the programming. From what I understand there are game engines out there that are much more sophisticated and advanced, and have much more potential from a coding standpoint. The people who have stuck with Uru have done so because of Community, Story, and a deep sense of Loyalty to both.
Now having said that, I am aware that the vast majority of fan-created content that will be proposed will not really ever even touch on established canon, because it will be NEW Ages, written by contemporary exporers who have learned the Art and Written their own worlds totally independant of anything ever done in the past by the D'ni. And nobody that I know of is even suggesting that any such content should be permitted to contain material that conflicts with canon. But in here we're talking about making changes to the very foundation of the Uru experience, the engine itself. And while I have no immediate issues with new emotes and faster Nexus loads and so forth, it is because none of those things affect canon.
But people started talking about adding features to the KI. I'm sorry, but a lot of explorers like to play IC as much as possible, and Uru is one of the best games out there for letting this happen -- the design of the interface and the nature of the storyline make suspending one's disbelief close to effortless. But if you disregard canon as any kind of criteria for how changes are made to that interface, you're likely to shatter that fourth wall and the whole house of cards will soon follow.
While you're working on changing the core build, are you planning to make changes to the layout of the Cleft, too? I wouldn't think so -- it would never occur to me that you would -- but if not, then why not? If not that, then why do you feel justified in re-inventing established D'ni artifacts WITHOUT ANY IC EXPLANATION? As I pointed out, maybe it could be that such changes are possible as contemporary modifications to the lattice and the KI dispensor hardware. It just means you have to actually take canon into account and acknowledge that some body of individuals needs to be able to determine if canon is violated or not.
Whilyam, the only things I really object to are your statement that canon should not be considered at all, and the supposition you use to justify it that only a tiny minority of exporers care about canon. My opinion is ... you're just wrong. Nothing personal.
Look, I might be dead wrong about this, but this whole argument smells like you don't want anything to interfere with you're ability to muck about with an entire open-source game engine. But it's that whole "this job would be great if it weren't for the darn customers" concept. If you want to use the core open-source Uru game engine as a foundation to build a game/universe to your exacting specifications, I hope you get the chance. I would love to see the results, or talk to you about some ideas of my own. But if you want to tinker with Uru, you sort of have to play by the rules of Uru ... or it ceases to be Uru. Star Trek with light sabres isn't Star Trek anymore. It might be better. But it isn't Star Trek. And people who like Star Trek aren't, for the most part, looking for "better" if it stops being Star Trek.
I know that facing this reality is scary, since it means that your efforts are going to actually get judged by other people who might find a reason and posess the authority to reject them. But if you're not prepared to face that, then perhaps a different outlet for your creativity would suit you better. One with a smaller audience.
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Montgomery - Maintainer Grand Master of Inspections (ret.)
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