Guidelines for Official Story/Age Creation

Teedyo · **Posted:** Sun Jul 13, 2008 4:23 am

Jennifer_P wrote:

Quote:

5 - Writers must not use the intellectual property of others.

A quick question on this...

Does this rule effectively mean, "Writers must not use the intellectual property of other under any circumstances, even if the holders of the intellectual property have licensed their property for commercial use by the public"?

There are, for example, many texture websites in which the textures themselves are still copyrighted by their creators, but the textures are nevertheless licensed to be used for commercial purposes by anyone. Here's a snippet from CGTextures that shows a pretty typical license agreement: http://www.cgtextures.com/

Quote:

Intellectual Property

All materials including the organization and presentation of these materials on the CGTextures website are the property of CGTextures or it's Contributors and are protected by intellectual property laws. Some images contain graphic materials like wallpaper patterns, logos, names or signs. The use of these kind of images is at your own discretion. The rights for the photo lie with CGTextures and the photo has been taken in a public space, but using the pattern/logo/name in your work might not be allowed.

Conditions of Use

Use of the Textures is only allowed under one or more of the following conditions:
- Private or commercial use
- Use in 2D or 3D computer graphics, movies and printed media
- Incorporation in computer games, 3D models
- Selling 3D models bundled with modified versions of the textures, when the texture is customized for the 3D model

These sorts of restrictions often apply to materials such as sounds, free models, etc., and many at the GoW have been relying on these sorts of licenses to create their Ages. Which means that so far the GoW has already used lots of "the intellectual property of others" in the strictest sense...but is this alright, as long as the intellectual property was licensed by the copyright holder to be used by the GoW? Does the wording of #5 really mean, "Writers must not use the intellectual property of others, unless they have permission."?

My thoughts on this are the same as I've posted over at the GoW: don't use 3rd party work. Let me suggest (A) why.

Two common practices for 'fan created content' that companies take are 'grant of copyright' and 'unlimited license'.
If grant of copyright is used; it's pretty obvious that 3rd party work cannot be used. Person(s) B cannot take person(s) A's copyright and grant it to person(s) C. I don't think(hope) Cyan will go this route.?

Unlimited license works basically the same way but the creator retains copyright and grants unlimited license for use by the Game Owner. In an of itself; this also disallows for the use of 3rd party work since it would mean that the intermediary is granting license that he/she has no right to. The way around this would be to get explicit written permission(license) for each and every 3rd party texture being used. If I were in Cyan's shoes; I would certainly require this just to cover my 4th point of contact. If the 3rd party in question(say cgtextures) granted unlimited license(which they don't); I would still keep a registered copy of that license handy.

Of course, the IANAL disclaimer applies. It may be possible for Cyan legal to review the licenses of some notable asset caches that would be compatible with MORE through the work of fan creations. Unfortunately, more work for them.

JKla · **Posted:** Sun Jul 13, 2008 8:10 am

All textures within fan the fan created ages start somewhere and must be either a graphic construct or a photograph from the natural world be that wood, rock, animal skin whatever.

It would be useful to build up a library of these for our own community to use under something like a Gnu licence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

This would eventually lead to a new common look and feel to the new ages something I would hope Cyan could contribute to so that if we were to create an area to represent say another hood type area nominally elsewhere in the cavern it would still have the appearance of being "Of Ae'gura".

This has got to have an element of give and take but I am sure once a basic library is started and a methodology established for the creation of new textures established we will find talented community members who will contribute for the good of the community.

It would also be nice if age creators included a concealed hot spot that credited community members who had work included not unlike the Easter egg that was visible in the desert scope.

[edit]
Somebody started a thread over at GoW discussing the technicalities of a Texture Server

http://www.guildofwriters.com/phpbb/vie ... a&start=30

[/edit]

tachzusamm · **Posted:** Sun Jul 13, 2008 1:49 pm

Thank you, J'kla, for bringing this up here too. Good to see someone else has similar ideas.

The main thread with a description of my intention and plans starts here:
http://www.guildofwriters.com/phpbb/vie ... =10&t=1970

I hope this does not conflict with the goal:

RAWA wrote:

5 - Writers must not use the intellectual property of others.

I mean, it should be possible or allowed to use material contributed by others if the are okay with it.
Especially for Music and Textures, this would be of great help if photographers or musicians would like to attend, but have no intentions to write a complete age.

(If this was already mentioned, sorry - I did not read the whole thread)

EDIT: Oh, I think it was already asked here:
http://www.mystonline.com/forums/viewto ... 471#264471
and one answer here (I don't want to quote the whole post):
http://www.mystonline.com/forums/viewto ... 753#264753

Agreed - and that's why I tried to introduce a special exchange server just for our community instead of simply using other sources like CGTextures. Again, this is intended to be a platform for interchanging material especcially created for this purpose that is, to be used in user ages.
(Although my first intention was to supply textures, there were requests to include sounds and objects [small models, like plants, lamps], and I feel okay with this. There was also a request to include ages, but I'm not sure about that - I think this could be a problem. Maybe we could just include some information about ages [who is the author, does it have easter eggs/music/story/puzzles, some screenshots], but not the files.)

Tesseract · **Posted:** Sun Jul 13, 2008 1:57 pm

tachzusamm wrote:

I hope this does not conflict with the goal:

RAWA wrote:

5 - Writers must not use the intellectual property of others.

I mean, it should be possible or allowed to use material contributed by others if the are okay with it.
Especially for Music and Textures, this would be of great help if photographers or musicians would like to attend, but have no intentions to write a complete age.)

I assume that rule has an implicit "without appropriate permission" on the end. Otherwise it would be impossible for multiple people to contribute to an Age.

Kero · **Posted:** Sun Jul 13, 2008 6:47 pm

Fax Paladin wrote:

OK, so my immediate goal is for a couple of my characters -- one a writer, the other a private investigator -- to have one- or two-room offices that would notionally be somewhere in Ae'gura or in a neighborhood. My understanding, then, is that it would have to be accessible only by direct link, not by door from Bevin or Ae'gura (but if it were part of a completely new neighborhood -- or part of, say, Ahra Pahts -- that would work).

Would this be a correct understanding?

From what I've read of RAWA's original post and his subsiquent "explanations" Fax Paladan I would say you are correct. The main point for the requirement is to keep you from stepping on Cyan's toes and - vice-versa - Cyan from stepping on your's, by not having any way for the "explorers" to pin-point your exact location. Oh - and by "completely new neighborhood" I hope you understand that those are the fan hosted/run - on seperate servers - neighborhood instances that Chogon talkes about. Cause I don't think they were talking about the "new" neighborhoods that pop up on Cyan's server when new avis join.

Nalates · **Posted:** Sun Jul 13, 2008 7:02 pm

I was just wondering around the GoMa forum and found they have already started a texture collection for FCAL use. Its on Flicker or some public site and they have the ID&PW for those that want access to the textures.

Seems simple and straight forward.

Jamey · **Posted:** Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:07 pm

Just curious, are we allowed to make our own custom made cloths for our fan-made ages (with the same powers as the shell and journey cloths) or is that a no-no?

Gadren · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 12:35 am **Posts:** 747

Jamey wrote:

Just curious, are we allowed to make our own custom made cloths for our fan-made ages (with the same powers as the shell and journey cloths) or is that a no-no?

Since those cloths subvert the normal D'ni rules of Linking (for example, they bypassed the Gahreesen security of spinning buildings upsetting Link-in points), I would say no.

Montgomery · **Posted:** Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:12 pm

Erik wrote:

If someone "finds" an Age the D'ni have visited, there should be a Maintainer's mark somewhere (unless it was an illicit Age), and of course it would look best if that Mark was the same as in the other D'ni Ages.

Yes and no. In the past, any Ages available to the explorers was first approved by the DRC (with the exception of those provided by Yeesha and the Bahro). In MORE, the DRC will not (probably) be doing this; the modern Guild of Maintainers will.

UCC Ages submitted to MORE may or may not have original Maintainers marks, depending entirely on the storyline of the artist (not all D'ni Ages available to the explorers had visible original Maintainers mark, even though they presumably existed). For UCC Ages in MORE there will likely be a new, modern Maintainers mark designed by the modern Maintainers, and it will (I porpose) appear in every approved UCC Age, regardless of it's "origin."

Calam · **Posted:** Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:10 pm

I think a stamp on the book would be more visible and less complicated...

JKla · **Posted:** Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:11 pm

Gadren wrote:

Jamey wrote:

Just curious, are we allowed to make our own custom made cloths for our fan-made ages (with the same powers as the shell and journey cloths) or is that a no-no?

Since those cloths subvert the normal D'ni rules of Linking (for example, they bypassed the Gahreesen security of spinning buildings upsetting Link-in points), I would say no.

This assumes all journey cloths are able to bypass the Gahreesen security but clearly only the ones on Gahreesen are able to do this since this is the only place this security exists.

Let us presume Yeesha started with some lesser tapestry and altered it to her needs as long as the cloths were on some static body then there would be no issue.

Maybe the Gahreesen security was not as good as it was perceived since the whole security spins on the fact that you cant link to a moving object but you use an ordinary linking book to link to the first building that is in itself moving.

Now you can argue that you link to the pivot point but there is just such a pivot point at the top of the second building. and we presume that these buildings are on planets that are moving around different suns and are in star systems that revolve around the axis of other galaxies.

Yeesha states that only she could have written Relto and only she could bring rain to the desert these are implicit Yeesha defined specifications but there is nothing do specify that she was the originator of the materials found in the journeys.

Now RAWA and Cyan may contradict this as is their right to do so but denying the existence of others to establish a quest neigh a request prevents a large element of non violent participation that was key to the enjoyment of the original game.

In order to comply with this ability we must assume that there was a progenitor that Yeesha adapted and that these are possibly some product of the Bahro I would hope that Cyan would be open to some sort of discussion to this end and that we don't just rely on Gadren's judgement I for one belive that this is a Cyan decision and I defer to their judgement.

With apologies to Gadren and anyone who agrees with that statement.

zander_nyrond · **Posted:** Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:30 pm

Are we confusing Journey Cloths and Bahro Stones here?

JKla · **Posted:** Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:44 pm

Both apply actually as you can use a stone to get from Teledhan to the rotating prison cell.

Calam · **Posted:** Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:08 pm

All that seems kind of irrelevant to me in light of the fact that we have to follow the regular linking rules.

The rules say you can't link into a moving point in 3-dimensional space (within limits of course, seeing that all planets are moving). There is apparently a certain speed when the link to a location is broken. End of story.

JWPlatt · **Posted:** Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:59 am

I'm just curious:

For how many of you are these discussions theoretical or hypothetical exercises, and for how many are these practical questions of a tangible work in progress? Maybe just mention it in your On-Topic post rather than devoting a post to answering this question.

Guidelines for Official Story/Age Creation

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