Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 8:45 pm
Posts: 21
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AdamJohnso wrote: Stucuk wrote: i have never insulted PyPRP Stucuk wrote: im willing to bet that any existing community tools won't have all the bells and whistles that Cyans 3ds max one has. You will find that people do not like it when work that they have dedicated several years to is insulted--even in the slightest way. You should really watch your mouth. The collective mouth of this forum could very easily drive away the handful of people who are actually managing to do anything with the code. Just a suggestion.
I don't see an insult in the quoted text AdamJohnso, unless you're unsure of the future of PyPRP and open source in general. If all it takes to kill development is a few factual facts about how your development is a bit behind the times because you haven't finished with it yet(imagine that, it being in development and not being finished), perhaps you never had the drive to work on the project in the first place.
Reading the above quotes, I see a few cold hard facts about a software that's probably got a long way to go or a lot of changing to do before it can be comparable to the "offical" plugin, true.
I also see a challenge to the existing PyPRP developers, that challenge is to shoot for the sky!
Cyan's own plugin is dead in the water as far as new features and development(from Cyan anyway). It's also the "offical" way to make ages, thus being limited by having to be "standard".
PyPRP, from what I understand, is not, on both counts. Thus, clearly, PyPRP has the potential to be "outside the box", and do what Cyan's plugin does but even better. The only question I see is...will it? With access to Cyan's source code for their own plugin, I'd have to say the answer to that is simply up to those working on the plugin to decide, through their own actions.
I'd like to add that personally, I don't have time to help out, nor the resources/knowledge to do much, nor do I even really know much about what PyPRP does besides being an open source alternative plugin to making ages for "Uru Stuff". So I'm really just babbling off the top of my head and am in no way an expert. I lurk here quite a bit though.
But from a purely outside standing point, unless something major is causing the PyPRP to fall apart at the seams, I'd think since it's actively in development instead of being dropped out into the field it simply needs some time to grow into something even better then what Cyan did. Possibly, PyPRP as a plugin could even automate lots of functions that arn't automated in the Cyan plugin, or even offer some features of the Uru engine that Cyan didn't have time to implement in their 3dsMAX plugin. (I don't have a clue what features those would be, remember I'm talking mostly generic and as a normal person, not a code head.)
I'd also like to add that while what Stucuk said above may be harsh, it's a welcome glimpse into how the more normal, non codeheads around here think. To us, we see what is there, not the work done to get there. So of course everyone outside of the programming loop will, for now, say that PyPRP cannot possibly stand up to Cyan's plugin. But that's because PyPRP simply isn't finished yet, not because your own work hours and persons are somehow inferior to what Cyan did/was.
My 2 cents, hopefully to stop this from getting ugly.
EDIT: Back on topic:
"what is it we are going to change that would interest people in logging in every day?"
The thing that kept me logging in each day during the proluge way back when was simple, and yet complicated. The story.
Let me elaborate a bit before you all tear that apart with the usual arguments on Cyan story, cannons, and other things that explode or injure people.
I say "Story", not in reference to Cyan's, but in reference to the whole IC type of play on the server.
I say "simple" because it only required a few RP players and a few hours a day to create something happening in the Story. Things like a character from the story making an appearence and simply strolling through the city, on their way to check on something, and answering a few questions from passerbys that happened to be in the area. Or I log on and a friend tells me "Hey, did you hear that Person X was in the City checking on Object Z again? Wonder what they are up to?"
Sometimes the "simple" was in the form of a new book, linking to someone's office, providing some insight into where the characters have been living in the world or what they've been doing in their more "private" lives. One of the main draws for me was not the "Age Z just got a whole new area, time to explore it, WOOT!", but simply the smaller updates or even RPed story with no updates needed.
I say "Complicated", because this requires two things that are very much lacking in the Open Source type of Uru.
First, there needs to be orginized storytelling going on. Note that I say storytelling, not age discovering. If a story or characters are interesting enough, no one will mind that the entire storyline is told in the City and one particular, already explored age where someone keeps a journal sparcely updated under a rock. One major aspect of this is the Role Playing, because by Role Playing a character, you do two things. You let the players influence that character IC, letting them help you play and direct your story. And you create dynamic gameplay sessions without needing new content except for a purpose of that character and someone to play them live, on stage.
Secondly, there needs to be updates. It doesn't matter how big or complicated the updates are, because sustaining the game on "Oh, new areas and puzzles" is NOT going to work, no matter how fast you develop them. Why do we need the updates then, you ask? Because they draw people into the Story. New people, that can be part of the Story as much as anyone else. They may pop in for a look at the update(say, oh look, a new journal was updated with a page), and then overhear some discussion between players about the event that they missed out on a week ago. In turn, they hear of the event, and become another spreader of the Story. As more people realize how dynamic the storyline is, and how much they can influence the story by participating or even just telling others their points of view, more players will be inclined to play the game. Oh yes, and importantly, these updates MUST be RANDOM, or based on Story, NOT on "It's time for the monthly update of doom". If people don't know what will be updated when, but do know something, somewhere, somehow will probably be revealed in the story sometime, they will be more inclined to log in and ask around to see if anything changed or if the story progressed further.
The entire reason I don't play regularly is because no one is telling any stories. The entire problem with Uru, as it is now, is that OOC, once you solve the puzzles in the game, there's nothing but a chat room left. A graphically rich chat room, but just that. Obveously, this is because Cyan is no longer telling their story. But, Cyan has left us a pretty big prebuilt stage, and a lot of props to use.
Everyone is so concerned with new features and updates that they are forgetting the very reason all these features, updates, and Uru exists in the first place, and that is to tell stories. For me, that's what kept Uru addicting, not as a "Better MMO", but as a unique RPing experience that was welcoming, spontanious, and open to explore at any time I had the extra time to do so.
For an example of just how strong this Story element is, just look where we are now. People still sign up for Uru, they still log in to uncover the incomplete story Cyan told a long time ago through talking to others and experiencing the worlds the acts once took stage on. It's insane how long this game is still around, and it's all due to the heavy storytelling that once was happening in the game.
Development of features, gameplay, and so on is well and good, but without the key ingredent of Story, there is nothing for the players to immerse themselves in in the long term.
Unfortunetly, ultimately developers can only make telling stories easier for the storytellers. They can make tools(talking both IC with in game ages and OOC with the plugins), but without a storyteller connecting those tools to something that dynamically, continually, evolves as people play with the actors/sets/props, any new features are going to be simply extra fluff on an already dead game.
Or worse, change Uru into another plain old MMO, forcing it to compete with other MMOs for the general audience and in turn losing what made it so special in the first place. That is, that Uru was a 1000 times better at interactive story telling then anything else I've ever played. It fits a theme, sticks with it, immerses the players in it, and then (with a storyteller, mind you), never stops introducing new people or new thoughts of those people to the player in a never ending, building on the old, gameplay.
The day Uru becomes another "popular MMO" with grinding/ranking, monthly or scheduled predictable updates not tied to storyline time, and random levels designed just to be puzzles is, in my humble opinion, the day the Uru I have come to know and love dies.
Last edited by darkgriffin on Wed May 18, 2011 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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