Cleaning Up Instancing

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Mac_Fife
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by Mac_Fife »

Yes, I'd agree. The forums are good for debating the initial ideas, exploring the weaknesses in proposals, getting alternative views, etc., but once you get up to 12 pages of discussion it's a bit hard to remember who is proposing what :D (well, it is for my old brain). Distilling the result of this debate into a wiki page for each proposal would probably help to expose the differences and commonalities for new readers.

Having said that, I'd still be inclined to continue any further general debate on instancing on this thread for continuity, rather than using the wiki "discussion" pages: Keep those for specific comment on the articles.
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JWPlatt
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by JWPlatt »

Yeah, that. :)
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Grogyan
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by Grogyan »

Sorry I havn't added anymore to the wiki page, been working on other projects

(This bump is also a test for myself for something)
Christian Walther
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by Christian Walther »

I like Marten's proposal very much, and despite my doubts whether we will be able to implement something like this, I've recently spent some thought on how such instance-sharing parties would be formed. Starting from the idea of physically handing out copies of your personal bookmark, I've come up with some ideas, that as a side effect also allow an explorer to be a member of several parties at the same time.

Because I'm a visual thinker and have trouble describing such concepts in linear text, I didn't do this on a wiki page but made a rough picture (click for full size):

Image
Grogyan
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by Grogyan »

Sorry, I havn't been here much lately, thats why my wiki page still doesn't have much on it
75th Trombone
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by 75th Trombone »

Awesome graphic, Christian. However, I don't think that implementation is very intuitive. The big bundle immediately appears to represent the different members of Christian's party. The separation and border on the top bookmark make it look like party leader, to which the other bookmarks are subject.

I haven't read all there is to read about the different instancing proposals, but I gather that this idea is meant in part to solve the problem of parties getting separated. It seems to me that a better way to do that is to use the current Relto bookshelf flip-up tabs, and then add the bookmark system (or something) to people's Relto books.

That's the problem with the old system, right? If you go to my Relto, use my Garrison linking book, and then panic link out of Garrison, you're stuck and can't get back to my instance without me leaving and re-sharing you into my Relto again.

Well, how about this: When I share my Relto book with you, as soon as you get to my Relto you see your open Relto book with a bookmark (or something) that has my name on it. Now, whenever you panic link or use your Relto book manually, you go to MY Relto instead of yours.

In my Relto book, on the left page next to the linking panel, I see a list of everyone who will currently link to my Relto. I can remove people from the list at will (and those people can remove themselves at will, too).

This gets all the instancing stuff into the Relto book, perfectly separating Yeesha magic from D'ni tech.
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by Christian Walther »

You have a point there, SFT. Would labeling the bookmarks not just with the owner's name, but with "Christian's Ages", "Marten's Ages" etc. alleviate that potential for misunderstanding? Or maybe some other way of emphasizing that the bookmarks do not represent people, but act as keys providing access to certain sets of age instances (hence the comparison of the bookmark bundle to a keychain).

I might have to add that I'm not presenting my proposal as how I think things should work or any other kind of preference. I have no strong opinion on this matter. I'm not even primarily after feedback. These ideas just came to me, and I thought it would be a shame to let them go unused, so I published them in the hope that they will serve as welcome input to someone's thought process, much as other people's ideas (in this case, mainly Marten's) have stimulated my own thought process.

One of the motivations for this proposal was my conviction that we need the possibility to be a member of several groups at the same time, groups that have the same semantics as the neighborhood does presently (just without the associated place), i.e. every member sees all other members under that group ("symmetric", as I have previously called it, as opposed to the buddy list, which is "asymmetric"). Within Marten's proposal, a party would be such a group, but you can only be a member of one party at a time. Adding the multi-group-membership requirement to that would mean that you can be a member of multiple groups, but at most one of them can be a party. In other words, there would be two different kinds of groups: parties and non-parties. I was trying to reconcile these two ideas so that there would only be a need for one kind of group (the party). (Actually, there is still the neighborhood as a distinct kind. Perhaps it could somehow be integrated into the unification as well.)
realXCV
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by realXCV »

75th Trombone wrote:Well, how about this: When I share my Relto book with you, as soon as you get to my Relto you see your open Relto book with a bookmark (or something) that has my name on it. Now, whenever you panic link or use your Relto book manually, you go to MY Relto instead of yours.
Does it mean that you can't go to you own Relto without asking the age owner ?
75th Trombone
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by 75th Trombone »

realXCV wrote:Does it mean that you can't go to you own Relto without asking the age owner ?
No. the Relto Book interface lets you choose whose Relto to go to, among your own and anyone whose party you're in. Here's a (very, very) rough mockup of my interface (click for big version):

Image

I think that's significantly more intuitive than the bookmark bundle, not least because it has explanatory headings. The caption beneath the linking panel is a drop-down menu that lets you choose whose Relto to link to. The way you add someone to your party is simply to share your Relto book with them. When they get to your Relto, they see their open Relto book with the new name in the right column highlighted (or something) to let them know they were just added to a party.

The biggest problem I see with this is that we're putting a clicky-clicky user interface on a piece of paper. But these are Yeesha-Magicked pieces of paper, and this book already has clickable glowing pages and a clickable "share book" caption, so I don't think we're really breaking character that much.
75th Trombone
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Re: Cleaning Up Instancing

Post by 75th Trombone »

You could even maybe stretch the caption-beneath-linking-panel concept to other Linking Books. For instance, that would solve the Kemo/Gira problem by showing the player whose garden they're linking to.

Of course, this will put Yeesha magic on D'ni/DRC books. But the entire concept of instancing is Yeesha magic, so why shouldn't Yeesha's instancing magic have an effect on even DRC Books in those instances?
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