Fan Content

Calumon · **Joined:** Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:38 pm **Posts:** 1667

AdamJohnso wrote:

I was a little too aggressive with my course schedule this semester, and now I'm paying the [ultimate] price (read: there goes the GPA).

Ah, School-work. The dreaded enemy of all decent folk in the world. Always fussing and meddling where it doesn't belong. :/

matthornb · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2012 11:37 pm

Entrance to library areas, WIP:

A lot still to do and I'm falling a bit behind my planned schedule.

The way I'm now designing the library areas is pretty elaborate and taking a while.
Lots of detailing I'm still trying to add, there and elsewhere.

Lots of bits that aren't completed yet.

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Wed Oct 31, 2012 11:42 pm

Very nice, Matt. Your talent, patience and dedication is showing.

janaba1 · **Posted:** Thu Nov 01, 2012 12:06 am

Agreed ... it's getting real cozy in there now, great job, matthornb ...

Marten · **Posted:** Thu Nov 01, 2012 12:28 am

Not to diminish the positive messages here -

Kaelis listed some problems that are real, and those issues won't go away simply because others can point at some successful projects. Those don't really refute all of what Kaelis said. But rather than take his concerns as discouragement, let me restate them as challenges.

- Let's understand exactly why work on exporters is stalled and what needs to happen to move it forward. Can someone explain what it would take for the community to change its collective mind about 3dsmax, however unlikely it may seem? And if that really is not going to happen, what does need to happen, and how can we as a community encourage and support the necessary efforts? Are we facing resource problems (people who want to work on the issue) or are there other bottlenecks? Difficulty in producing content in a MOULa-compatible file format is a serious issue. These lovely pictures of projects are just lovely pictures if they can't be imported into the game.

- Although I'm not certain anyone really implied that the GoW is an army of minions looking for someone to point them to the next thing to build, Kaelis is right that the GoW isn't that. Bringing an idea to fruition requires more effort from a visionary individual than just selling people on a great idea. A person who has social connections within the GoW is more likely to succeed in forming a collaboration. A person who joins the GoW and makes the effort to learn some building techniques on their own, and treat the GoW regulars as mentors rather than hired grunts, will enjoy much greater success. And this ties into the point about there being a lack of new Tweeks, Whils, and Rustees. This is how new ones come into being. This is how it has to be. So those of you with grand ideas - your greatest challenge is to be humble and learn. (See footnote.)

- As for community members who are hostile to new content - well, it's good to be reminded that they are there. The community should be strategic in minimizing the impact of naysayers on the rest of us. Let's remember not to feed trolls. As fan content comes into being, if there are people who come to these forums to rant about it, I'm sure the forum rules will evolve if needed to deal with it.

Bottom line - I do think excitement needs to be tempered, but that doesn't mean the energy behind that excitement should be dissipated. It should be channeled to knock down the barriers, so we can turn it back into excitement again.

Footnote: http://rel.to would not exist today if I simply had the idea, and had sought others to build it from scratch and take care of everything. I had to learn a few things and prototype an early version of it to communicate the concept across to others. And when I needed or wanted changes, I learned enough to make those changes myself rather than having to go back to Erik and Tweek every time. I could never have brought rel.to to life without the help of others... but it also could not have been born without my own investment and my willingness to learn from those who helped build it.

Calumon · **Joined:** Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:38 pm **Posts:** 1667

Quote:

Bottom line - I do think excitement needs to be tempered, but that doesn't mean the energy behind that excitement should be dissipated. It should be channeled to knock down the barriers, so we can turn it back into excitement again.

Yeah, we need to funnel all this excitement into productive energy! :)

Karkadann · **Posted:** Thu Nov 01, 2012 7:01 am

I keep on trying to put all the pictures together in my head with the style Matt used in the D'ni Temple to try and imagine what it looks like, and all I can think of is WOW

DLordofTime · **Posted:** Thu Nov 01, 2012 9:59 am

Marten wrote:

Bottom line - I do think excitement needs to be tempered, but that doesn't mean the energy behind that excitement should be dissipated. It should be channeled to knock down the barriers, so we can turn it back into excitement again.

What about the barriers in Ae'gura?

janaba1 · **Posted:** Thu Nov 01, 2012 12:41 pm

Marten wrote:

Not to diminish the positive messages here -
Kaelis listed some problems that are real, and those issues won't go away simply because others
can point at some successful projects. Those don't really refute all of what Kaelis said. But rather
than take his concerns as discouragement, let me restate them as challenges. ...

This is not diminishing the positive message here at all, in the contrary, this is
funneling the energies and enthusiasm in the right resp. in a more effective direction
with just realizing and taking things resp. facts as they are and seeing emerging hurdles
or discrepancies as welcomed opportunities and challenges to be dealt with successfully ...

Great post, Marten ...

matthornb · **Posted:** Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:54 pm

Very true, Marten.

I know that the Blender plugins for CWE age creation [korman] are on the backburner for the rest of this semester, and more than likely won't be done soon.

I also know that there's a 'bottleneck' insofar as only a few people here, including Karkadann, currently have the ability to output ages through 3ds max 7/8.

That said, I have every intention of assisting with Karkadann's ages - including 'Relativity'... and have been setting up a collaboration during the past several months. In fact, one of the things that is slowing Sevkor down for the next few days, is shifting focus to working on Relativity models and textures, something that I started and agreed to do, but mostly put off for the last month due to development of Sevkor.

And yes, I know Relativity is currently a Blender project and can't be output for CWE shards until 'korman' is completed. Still, I did agree to work on it and will be sure to make some progress on it every so often!

The value of this connection is obvious; our strengths are complementary. I can handle modelling/texturing, and he can actually output that content into a form that can be used on CWE shards. I've also chatted with another person, a musician in the fanbase, about the potential for several musical compositions in Sevkor.

It could still all fall apart - I know these connections are tenuous - but I am hoping that we can somehow pull together and make something great happen.

Yes, there are real problems and real bottlenecks for Uru age creators right now. I do think, however, that these problems can be solved over time.

NightHawk64345 · **Joined:** Sun Jan 31, 2010 3:28 am **Posts:** 56

Holy cow! It's been a while since the last time I checked these forums, and while I expected to see some changes, I did not expect this! I am so excited because Myst Online used to be one of my favorite games until I ran out of stuff to do. Now that you guys are working on adding fan content, I can't wait to get back into MO:ULa, and I also can't wait to make my own ages too (or at least as soon as someone creates plugins for XSI that is)!

edit: I'm curious now, what kind of stuff would be possible with fan content? Could we create private relto pages that completely change relto as well as private ages created just for our private libraries? Slightly off topic question, are there any plans to bring Myst Online to Steam after fan content is added?

HarveyMidnight · **Joined:** Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:59 pm **Posts:** 432

matthornb wrote:

I've also chatted with another person, a musician in the fanbase, about the potential for several musical compositions in Sevkor.

Well, geez.. that never even occurred to me! I have absolutely no formal music training-- aside from trombone in the marching band-- but I am self-taught on the guitar, and have been toying with mixing some electronic music here & there.. I imagine I could compose the occasional song for someone's Age... if you don't mind something amateur & fairly experimental.

Annabelle · **Posted:** Sun Nov 04, 2012 7:21 am

DLordofTime wrote:

Marten wrote:

Bottom line - I do think excitement needs to be tempered, but that doesn't mean the energy behind that excitement should be dissipated. It should be channeled to knock down the barriers, so we can turn it back into excitement again.

What about the barriers in Ae'gura?

The excitement is to climb over them not to knock them down

Jmp12 · **Joined:** Sun Feb 04, 2007 8:16 pm **Posts:** 99

NightHawk64345 wrote:

Holy cow! It's been a while since the last time I checked these forums, and while I expected to see some changes, I did not expect this! I am so excited because Myst Online used to be one of my favorite games until I ran out of stuff to do. Now that you guys are working on adding fan content, I can't wait to get back into MO:ULa, and I also can't wait to make my own ages too (or at least as soon as someone creates plugins for XSI that is)!

edit: I'm curious now, what kind of stuff would be possible with fan content? Could we create private relto pages that completely change relto as well as private ages created just for our private libraries? Slightly off topic question, are there any plans to bring Myst Online to Steam after fan content is added?

I don't have a quote on hand, but it seems like at some point RAWA said fans would not be able to add in new relto pages or to use "yeesha magic" in their ages. We can create new self-contained D'ni areas, but not change any of the ages that already exist.

That said, I think the quote I'm remembering is over a year old, so who knows...

...Ok here's what I was thinking of.

[quote=RAWA]The Writers do not have Yeesha's special, innate abilities. They have to live within the limitations of the traditional D'ni Writers. [/quote]

http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15890

Someone asks about relto pages, but I didn't see anywhere where RAWA said one way or the other. And the post is from 2008. Which is amazing. It's hard to believe.

HarveyMidnight wrote:

matthornb wrote:

I've also chatted with another person, a musician in the fanbase, about the potential for several musical compositions in Sevkor.

Well, geez.. that never even occurred to me! I have absolutely no formal music training-- aside from trombone in the marching band-- but I am self-taught on the guitar, and have been toying with mixing some electronic music here & there.. I imagine I could compose the occasional song for someone's Age... if you don't mind something amateur & fairly experimental.

See, here we go!

The more things get off the ground, the more people we'll have joining in, if they see an opportunity. Things are picking up steam.

Well, maybe I just have too little caution in my optimism. But this thread makes it sound like things are picking up steam, and will continue to.

Also, at Matt, I for one am fine with waiting a bit longer for the sake of having a cooler age to explore.

Nev'yn · **Posted:** Thu Nov 08, 2012 4:07 am

@Marten: (/me saltues) Good to see you're still lurking about here and there....

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