Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2015 10:41 am Posts: 82
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TheScar(.fr) wrote: Does it means that we will be allowed to, for example, modify something in the Nexus or the Relto? Yes, but only if Cyan likes the changes. It's likely Cyan will refuse a lot of modifications to their own Ages if they don't think it fits with the spirit of the game. They have their own vision of how their own Ages should look like, after all. They will probably agree to small modifications that have no big impact on the game and can correctly blend in (I think that's the most important word here) with the rest of their work. Bugfixes, or adding new links in the Nexus are usually no issue. Creating new Relto pages, for instance, would be more problematic.
In my opinion it's better for fans to make completely new content in a completely new Age, instead of modifying Cyan's own Ages. Cyan is more likely to agree to completely new content that don't risk breaking the lore or the spirit of the original Age. This is the same advice they gave when it comes to creating new Ages in general: make your own lore, avoid messing up with Cyan's own.
From a technical point of view, Cyan can't give the fans the original 3D models for their Ages, because that would be releasing a lot of their hard work into the wild (which could result in "model theft", as in: whole Ages ported to other games, which is not desirable). A few groups of fans like the Intangibles can have access to some of the original files, because they have a written contract with Cyan concerning the use of those files, and are deemed safe people. However, since Cyan agrees to some modifications of their Ages by other people (=us), they allow us to use reverse engineering tools to
Quote: convert the 'compiled' assets [...] into something that can be used to be modified This makes things a bit trickier, but is mostly to deter people from stealing their work.
Oh, and some more technical info about modifying existing Ages... (Some of it is speculation on my part, I haven't read all about the subject - take it with a grain of salt...)
As you might also notice, the previous quote doesn't specify a limit as to what is acceptable when using the reverse engineering tools. This doesn't say, for instance, if you're allowed to reuse Cyan's models and textures into your own Ages, or only when modifying existing Ages. Another problem if we go into the technical details, is that modifying PRPs means Cyan can no longer re-generate those from THEIR source files - of course there are workarounds, but PRPs don't lend themselves really well to "modding" in general. I'm not sure if anything official has been said about that, but I guess this will be handled on a case-by-case basis given how rare this situation is.
This might seem like a rather big deal, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Very few people actually know how to modify existing Ages, and I'm fairly confident they can get together should this become an issue. Most of those people I guess are in the Intangible team, so they should have an easier time contacting Cyan if needed. As for model and texture reuse, the best advice is to avoid it when possible, and use common sense or ask on the forums if in doubt.
It's a bit hard giving a complete explanation without making things a bit complicated, so don't hesitate to ask if I just confused you more 
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