Help decide what should Cyan release next

[Robert The Rebuilder]

I was reading the various discussions regarding what people wanted to see next coming from Cyan, now that they've reopened the caverns to the community. Like others here, I wondered whether we could affect their decisions in some way. So, I emailed Mark DeForest with the question, and I received the following reply:

We are definitely not adverse to getting input and recommendations from all the different groups in the Uru community. And as you can very well guess, there is a wide range opinions by the fans and a few of the ideas are in direct opposition of each other. So, it is obvious we won't please everyone. But we've already laid out where we want to end up. But considering where we are, we will start with very small steps (albeit the first step was *much* bigger than we had anticipated!).

We (Cyan) have not exactly figured out what that next step is. Frankly, I not sure we have completed the first step yet. Getting MOUL servers up and people back in the cavern was most of that first step, but we do have to make sure that it will run for the most part, on its own. I feel like we are all standing around what we just erected with our hands out, ready to catch something before it falls. So, we do have to let the dust settle a little before the next step (and we do have the launch of MagiQuest Online coming up very quickly!)

IMHO, the next goal should be to get one or more of the fan created content on the MOULagain servers. To me, that would show the most promising thing about the entire project. So, the first step of that goal would be to get the 3ds max plugin binaries out there and then work with the user-creation community to find and covert a fan created age. But that is just the world according to Mark.

BTW, currently the 3ds max plugin is for an ancient version of max, which the first step of that first step would be to convert those plugins to the latest (or near latest) version of 3ds max.

Thanks,
Mark

To summarize:

- They are willing to put our ages on their servers, at least for now.
- The next candidate for release is the updated plugin binaries.

EDIT: Mark sent a follow-up message, saying that they're going with the binary release because they need to work on them anyway for MQOnline (see post). Here's the tally, FWIW:

For plugin binaries:

Jishin
Chacal

For plugin source:

kaelisebonrai
dendwaler
diafero
rivenwanderer
Aloys
GPNMilano
I.Brattin
Whilyam
D'Lanor
RedSoxFan
Nadnerb
Paradox
Marcello
Trylon

[kaelisebonrai]

If the options are plugin binaries, or plugin source...

Definitely plugin *SOURCE*.

To even suggest releasing only binaries is /insane/. What good would that do anyone?

So, for me... Definitely..

Plugin Source

EDIT: to clarify, I know you're not the one suggesting it, Robert. =P Its just insane that Cyan even considered that a good "option".

[Shoggoth]

To even suggest releasing only binaries is /insane/. What good would that do anyone?

Well, um...we'd have the plugin, for starters...

[kaelisebonrai]

We have a perfectly fine plugin right now.
If you want /everyone/ who wants to release ages for MOUL to buy 3dsmax (which is exceptionally /expensive/) you're insane.

Hell, we even have limited capacity to convert our ages exported by the existing plugin to to a MOULagain-compatible (ish) format.

If they really wanted to support age creation, it should be the plugin source. Users who have and/or can afford 3dsmax legally, can go ahead and compile the source, or have someone else do it for them. and the others who will use other modeling tools, can use the source to produce new plugins, and improve old ones.

EDIT: altered "anyone" to "Everyone" for clarity.

[Trylon]

Plugin source, definitely. We can't very well use the binaries, since most of us don't have MAX anyway.
In that respect I'd say "don't bother updating that plugin, just release the source as-is" (Saves them the trouble, and we have quicker results)

[dendwaler]

In my opinion the only one who can use an updated version of the 3D max plug-in is,.... Cyan!

My choise is the plug in source for the ancient 3Dmax version, no doubt .

This has to be rebuild anyway for use in Blender (2.5? )

No-one can affort a legal version of the current 3D max, just for fun.
And when building in a team, its complete impossible to buy 3D max for the whole team.
I think every team member needs to have the same set of tools.
(Besides that, most of us do have experience in Blender now and have not in 3Dmax.)

When you want develop new open sourced ages , every used tool for building it, should be an open source tool.

[diafero]

We had to fight with these closed-source binary UU Plasma server blobs for so long, I don't want to repeat that. The Alcugs servers show how much can be done to improve the overall game experience with an open-source server, even if the client stays closed-source. Binaries are not really useful, they quickly get outdated, are almost impossible to fix and don't help at all in improving our tools.
So, I definitely vote for the sources, and while I would of course prefer the server sources, the plugin sources would be a good start. However, if I recall correctly, wasn't the plugin basically a full-blown Plasma library first putting all that 3DS MAX data into an Uru-PRP-structure in memory, and then dumping it to a file? As in, wouldn't the plugin already contain a huge lot of the server's and client's source?

[rivenwanderer]

Given the cost and popularity in the community of Blender vs. 3dsmax, definitely the plugin source.

On pure speculation, I'd guess that the blender plugin that we already have could simply use the knowledge from Cyan's plugin source to fill in any gaps in functionality, at least as a first step, and fairly quickly be at a stage where Cyan would be satisfied with the exported ages (compatibility-wise).

[Aloys]

Mark's reply is not surprising, he's always be very supportive of our work, but as he says "that is just the world according to Mark."

Source, that's obvious. And preferably 'As is', so it can be released more easily. (unless they think they can update it to Max latest's version quickly; they have more expertise than us here).

[GPNMilano]

Um. Sources of course.