Minkata and fan ages

[4runner]

Will Cyan allow Minkata to test fan ages. There are some that have been made to work on Moula. It would be nice for Cyan to finally let this test shard to do so and eventually move them to Moula. If this has been discussed before, forgive me.

[JWPlatt]

It has, and we will.

I would add that because CWE is open source, thanks to Cyan, and fan content is produced by fans, there is really no issue about whether Cyan would allow it. The only issue is having fan content to test for MOULa and the initial learning curve on how to install it to MOSS on Foundry, our build system.

[4runner]

Thanks for the answer. I hope more ages are converted so that they will be available for Moula.

[Karkadann]

Is their a list of the specifics of whats expected from a fan made age for MOULa so we can make the necessary updates to our existing ages or perhaps start a new one with these specifics in mind for those of us out of the loop?

[JWPlatt]

Do you mean things like features that Cyan requires in each age such as a response to /look, or things we need to test ages on Minkata? For the former, I don't know of a required feature list. For the latter, I think that's something rarified was going to handle as a discovery process along the way as needed.

[Mac_Fife]

The immediate interpretation I had of Karkadann's question was that of what Cyan might expect in the way of "deliverables" for a fan contributed age. A particular question there might be whether Cyan would expect 3ds Max files (and at a specific version). If that is the line of thought, then while 3ds Max 7 files might be the preferred option, I understand that Cyan recognize the difficulty there and had indicated that they could probably take the compiled PRPs, opening the door to Blender generated work.

[JWPlatt]

Right. I would assume PRPs - in the MOULa format. Chogon said he would look into modifying the MOULa build system to accept PRPs. Because, really, it seems to be the only way to be inclusive of everyone, keep interest among fan content developers with the widest possible array of tools, and promote fan content along an easier or more affordable path.

[Karkadann]

What about quality such as textures, lighting, puzzles, mesh, ext ext, many of us are individual age writers and some of us are self taught with no professional experience in 3d graphics.
I understand the quality has to be at a level that fits in with the quality of the existing ages unfortunately the tutorials on how to use many of the features within the Cyan plugins is rather limited. I can only assume their is much more you can do with them however the info on the plugins Cyan has suppled does not go into detail and it makes producing an high quality age rather frustrating when some of it is hit and miss as far as figuring out how everything works. The tutorials on some aspects of the plugins we have are very helpful but at the same time I feel their is more we can do with the plugins that would be a big help in producing a high quality age for Moula that is missing.

We have the basics for the plugins but some of us may want to do more and cant find the info needed. I wonder is their any way to get more info on the Cyan plugins

[Mac_Fife]

OK, I understand where you're coming from. Sadly, I think Chogon probably passed on all the "documentation" that was available when he first released the plugin binaries. I guess the artists likely requested a feature, the devs implemented it and the usage was passed on by word of mouth. You can get away with that when you're a relatively close knit team and there would have been no thought at the time of passing the tools on to "outsiders".

The best documentation I know of is Andy Legate's tutorials, but I'm sure you've already exhausted those.

[JWPlatt]

For those following along, Cyan's internal 3ds Max plugin documentation, such as it is, can be found for download on our wiki under "3ds Max Plugin (Binary & Documentation)":

http://wiki.openuru.org/index.php?title ... n_(Cyan%29