Minkata Shard Update Thursday December 12, 2013

[Tai'lahr]

I think if we start down the slippery slope of judging fan content based on whether we like it or not, or feel it has a place in what we think the game should or should not be. Then yes. I fear that. And I think I have good reason too. This testing is not about whether or not you think it has a place in Cyan's shard or not based on your opinions of it being family-friendly or not. Thats not for you to decide Tai. You're testing isn't about judging content based on whether or not it has a place in Cyan's shard or not. You're testing is to see "Is it copyrighted. Are there glitches anywhere in it. Are there bugs that need to be addressed." and then report those so that they can be fixed. Ultimately commenting on your opinion of it having a place in MOULa is beyond the scope of this testing. You don't have a say in that. That's between the artist and the shard owner. Somehow the discussion of testing of the clothing already became a discussion on a single item in a package of fan content. Leaving aside that there's only one technical glitch with that piece of clothing. I mean that slippery slope, it just happened. And it was the first bit of fan content and the discussion was already attempted to be pushed in that direction. Do you not see that?

I never said it was for me to decide; as a matter-of-fact, I even stated that "Cyan's going to make their own decision no matter what anyone thinks." I was just voicing my opinion.

[GPNMilano]

I never said it was for me to decide; as a matter-of-fact, I even stated that "Cyan's going to make their own decision no matter what anyone thinks." I was just voicing my opinion.

I'm not trying to silence your opinion Tai. Please try to understand that when said "you" i meant the collective "you' as in anyone that tests the clothing. I'm sorry I should have reworded my response differently, since I was responding to your post, I can see why you'd feel that I was directly attacking you as one individual, and for that I profusely apologize. I truly didn't mean you as in only you.

[Luna]

Why would a short tanktop not be family friendly? Is a beach not family friendly either?

I don't know, maybe it's because the culture here on these things is different, but I don't understand.

[janaba]

Bam, Amen, Luna ..., though I wouldn't count a moral stance being related to culture, but that is sth else ...

Hey, everyone, and I thought this was all exciting and fun, but it seems to have evolved into sth more serious ... but no, not for me, I don't take that ball lol ...

Maybe another more subtle issue emerged out of this, which would be the fact that whoever wants to offer sth (any creative/personal project/piece of art/invention/whatsoever) to be evaluated and of course in the best-case senario appreciated should better be open to whatever opinions, even the worst, but of course, and that's the continuous exercise in life and here, in no way let anyone ever diminish that project's or even one's own worth and value ... Phew ... haha, yeah, we all have to go through this again and again ... As for this special case, Chloe, and Tai'lahr said this already, do not overestimate the 1%, not here and not in RL lol, they're not as powerful as they seem ...

Besides that I'd like to state again that I appreciate your contributions and creations to Uru, Chloe, you know Uru and its matrix inside out and are constantly passionately contributing your part to get the best out of it as everybody knows who's following the GoW forums, thank you for that ...

As for what I've stated in my first post for the Obduction shirt looking a bit egg-shaped, but shiny and beautiful, which might esp. be more an issue of Uru not being ready to display the widescreen format correctly, and for the beret, which produces some holes to the hairstyle when moving the head as that hairdo itself doesn't have those many holes, I'll post the pictures I've taken below for you to see what I mean ... As I've said already, the 'new shirt' is lovely and sweet and you're right that it'll be nice to have this for new fan ages, and it's ideal for an Ahnonay bath or for the desert etc. ...

The Obduction shirt, in the options to the right it is a correct circle ...

Spoiler

... and the beret, the first view looks fine and the other two are the views I meant to show

Spoiler

[GPNMilano]

As for what I've stated in my first post for the Obduction shirt looking a bit egg-shaped, but shiny and beautiful, which might esp. be more an issue of Uru not being ready to display the widescreen format correctly, and for the beret, which produces some holes to the hairstyle when moving the head as that hairdo itself doesn't have those many holes, I'll post the pictures I've taken below for you to see what I mean ... As I've said already, the 'new shirt' is lovely and sweet and you're right that it'll be nice to have this for new fan ages, and it's ideal for an Ahnonay bath or for the desert etc. ...

Yeah I'm afraid actual discussion of the important part of the testing got lost in the heated discussion of personal views that really shouldn't have gone into the direction that it did.

You're right that it does look oval shaped. I'm not sure if this is incorrect UV mapping or stretching due to the morphing. (Morphing is what controlled by the weight slider so that the avatar can change skinny/fat.) I can fix this by making the icon smaller, as it was in my early pictures of in on the MOULa forums. And the beret does indeed seem to have holes in it, it should be two sided but I believe setting this flag in the globalavatars might affect the rest of the clothing. So I may have to go in and see if I can't fix it manually with the objects. The result however, because of the nature of the how the textures are dynamically loaded and their placement and size onto the base palette, means that the style of the hair will have to be that of short cropped like the rest of the hats we have in Uru are. There's a reason the hair styles underneath the majority of the hats are all the same, and this is that reason. With the beret I was trying to see if we could make it so that it's not always the same haircut. Which to me just looks rather silly on the female avies. I can fix the hole in picture 2 with some modeling. The rest of them are due to the texture itself of the hair. Unfortunately the resolution of the textures must remain locked at what is required for placement on the base palette. In this case I think it's 256x256. I'm going to try some tests this afternoon and try remaking the texture to see if I can't fix the holes in the hair itself. and if everyone's ok with it, reducing the size of the Obduction logo so that it doesn't get stretched. If I can, I'll talk to rarified and company and see if they have the time to try and push another update this week with the fixes for testing.

Edit: ::in The Professor's voice:: Good news everyone!

I was able to remake the texture for the hair, and it did indeed correct all the issues with the hair that people had. The hat itself does need a bit of remodeling, which is rather easy to do!

[JWPlatt]

Regarding the size of the Obduction logo, Chogon commented to me that at first he was worried that the image was too large, but in-game it would have to be that large for anyone to recognize it. It sounds like you have some leeway, but it should be recognizable at a reasonable distance.

[Hoikas]

Texture images can almost never be too large... It's all about how you map them

[Mac_Fife]

This testing is not about whether or not you think it has a place in Cyan's shard or not based on your opinions of it being family-friendly or not. Thats not for you to decide Tai. You're testing isn't about judging content based on whether or not it has a place in Cyan's shard or not. You're testing is to see "Is it copyrighted. Are there glitches anywhere in it. Are there bugs that need to be addressed." and then report those so that they can be fixed. Ultimately commenting on your opinion of it having a place in MOULa is beyond the scope of this testing. You don't have a say in that. That's between the artist and the shard owner.

I'm going to claim a position that's slightly at odds with both this and with JW's earlier post. Slightly, not massively.

While I agree that the "testing" should address the things GPNMilano cites, I do still think that the tester, as a potential consumer, is at liberty to state an opinion on whether something has the quality of being good or bad, or fitting for MOULa (or wherever), as there could be, say, cultural issues in question that the artist might never have been aware of. But it should remain just that -- an opinion. What must be avoided is trying to win an argument over whose opinion is "right" because that's a long, dark alley with no end. State your opinion and move on. The shard owner will decide.

Unlike JW, I don't really favour privately petitioning the shard owner (e.g. Cyan) with these opinions, at least not exclusively by private means. It tends to be only the strongly opinionated person who will have sufficient incentive to do that and I suspect that would tend to give an impression that is biased towards the more negative viewpoints.

Enough of the soapboxing...
The Obduction logo works OK on lighter coloured shirts. I'm not so crazy about it on darker backgrounds because there's a light toned fringing around the circumference that just doesn't look right to me. It's not enough for me to say "must be fixed", though.

[JWPlatt]

What I'd like to avoid is the open letter effect where folks are preaching to Cyan or shard owners by proxy and hoping Cyan reads the posts. It can be fruitless and just causes commotion and enmity where none was necessary because no decision is going to be made by us or on the forums. It's wasted motion. It's more likely that direct and personal communication will be more effective. It's also more likely that direct and personal communication will be more civil and polite because open forums invite posturing to "win" the discussion of controversial issues. I like "robust" discussions, but after ADM and Liaisons and the like, and after putting a few more years behind me, I'd rather see folks remain objective and tolerant. If that can be done on the forums, that's great. But if it diverts attention from getting things done that happen all too slowly anyway, it's just a big waste of time - and not so great. Banging at the artists won't matter much anyway because the ultimate gatekeeper is the shard owner. In an open environment the art is going to happen. Community pressure at the shard level is what will keep it decent and acceptable for that community.

[GPNMilano]

Texture images can almost never be too large... It's all about how you map them

Not when it comes to the avatars. Depending on the item of clothing a certain texture size is required. No bigger, no smaller. The Avatar documentation details how everything works, and why the textures need to be the size they do. If you try and use a different size texture then what's required for the layout, the plugin will error out and tell you that the image is too small or big.