Yep time to give the Mod's a nervous twitch.
PyPrp's Shortcomings
First and best disadvantage; It's a hack, all the wicked cool work is done by plasma. The reason that I am saying this is because I have high hopes for the Cyan sources offering a better way of doing things then are currently available. Dustin elsewhere made mention that learning blender from a blender site and making a Age in blender from that information is "Dangerous" because you could apply techniques in blender that are not compatible with pyprp.
Quote:
It's a little dangerous to learn through sites intended for Blender, as there are many things you can do that won't export. So, people would end up making something, then realise that it won't export, and depending on what they did, they may have to trash all their current work. As Nalates says, you should go to the Guild of Writers.
This brings me to the #2 shortcoming that has haunted Pyprp since day one; Blender is a afterthought.
Blender offers fully developed systems for creating things like the kemo fireflies, avatar animations, and creating things as wide and varied as puzzles and vehicles. What all of this basically has in common is that it creates something not currently a part of Uru:CC. There is the odd work around to be sure for some individual tasks but by and large you will never see a avatar animation or a puzzle or anything else not of the same "Type" as one already present in Uru:CC. This is something I have always found frustrating that reaching towards the standard tools in Blender seems less important then reaching towards scripts and python.
The Cyan Tool
Okay here are some deductions about the mythic Cyan tool.....
Animations!!!!!
The number one thing that Cyan going open source with plasma means for the common explorer is that it would give the roadmap for making Blender Animation files compatible with Plasma. Funny little creatures can be made, doors can open in new ways, and more then the standard switch/button/lever can move on a machine.
Movies!!!!
Blender has some issues with playing movies in it's own game engine, but Plasma supports it so it should be possible.
The KI!!!
It can be fixed. Even if the KI source is not released having the engine available it is very possible to code a replacement GUI for it that smooths over the worst behavior.
Now for the bad I think is a safe guess for Cyan's toys, Some assembly will be required. A stock server should be feasible within hours of release but to take advantage of Cyan's information will be weeks if not months for each item pyprp could never manage without lots of python working around the issues.
I invite the mods to nuke if they must, but I would rather hope this tempts a discussion or two. but which ever.