Trying To Stay Awake, And Watch The Road....

Ever go on a long trip where you have to drive a lot?

Ever been driving for a long time, and especially if the road pretty much stays straight with not too much deviation, find yourself trying to drift off to sleep, only to snap awake?

That's pretty much how Uru and MOUL has been for me, especially lately........

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE making Ages. There's just something that's really cool about making an idea in your head come alive in three dimensions, textures and actions on your computer.

Hell, I've even made an "Age" that's my house and land. I can go in and make changes to it, and export to look around. So I know what a room is going to look like BEFORE I paint it, or put in that new piece of furniture, or cut that tree down.......

However, that spark that I once had a long time ago, the one that keeps in involved in the community, that pushes me to make something not just so I see it, but to share it with the community, the spark that was there to help keep me active......it's just not there anymore.

Oh I'm still active in some ways: I keep the lights on at the Maintainers Guild and throw out an inspection of a Fan Age or two when I can. If I see a question over at the Writers Guild, I try to answer it. If people ask me how to do something with Age Creation, I try to help them as best as I can.

But I don't log on to MOUL:a anymore, except for the All Guilds meetings once a month. Why bother? There's nothing new there really, and most of the people I used to socialize with on there are either off doing other things, or have left the community completely.

People might point to the two new "Hoods" that are now Cyan sanctioned that is for "Hackers" to play and have fun with, and for others to link in and experience it. But that's not really new. It's pretty much all been done already back in the Until Uru days, and presently on various shards. The only "New" thing about it, is it's on Cyan's MOUL:a server, and Cyan approved it.

Big deal. Sorry, but that was something that required the LEAST amount of effort from Cyan. The fact that they have "recognized" that people can move the Arch around, and turn the sky purple, with old AdminKI tools, and a few other things, does not impress me very much. Modding existing content, never has actually.

Now if they had started to accept and add new player content......THAT would have impressed the hell out of me, and re-ignited the spark I once had. Even if it's just stain glass windows again. That would be an even better sign to me.

I've had extensive discussions with RAWA and Chogon about getting player content added to MOUL:a. The two biggest hurdles that they worried about was:

1) How to decided who's stuff get's added. 2) How to add the stuff so that it does not get dropped if they do a new rebuild (re-exporting MOUL:a).

I gave them the answer to the second problem. Making sure the Fan Content does not disappear is easy and not that time consuming at all. I spelled it out for them, exactly how to do it, step by step.

I don't have an answer to the first problem however. Oh I mean I can think of MANY ways to over come that first problem, but unfortunately the "golden" answer is to let Cyan themselves decided what get's added and what does not. Except they don't have the time and resources for it. Because of that, they'd have to depend upon "outside" help. "Outside" help would be us the fans, and that opens up a HUGE can of worms.

Our community is very diverse. So diverse that it's almost impossible to find common ground for different groups. There seems to be only one thing that's common: love of Uru. And that's it. That is the ONLY thing that you can get all groups to agree upon.

Anything else, and there will always be splits and divisions. People screaming about how it's not fair that one group of fans gets special "attention" from Cyan (just look at all the examples we've had in the past, and even recently with the new "Hacker Hoods").

So I don't have an answer to that, other than to open source MOUL and for Cyan to just let go of it.

Open Source is a concern for me in some ways. If it ever happens, there will be chaos. Seriously. You are going to have groups that do different things. Different groups that claim that they are the "Main" branch for Open Source (They are! Don't listen to those other groups, they don't know what they are talking about! Join Us! NOW!). Groups that claim their ways are the ONLY ways.

One would think that by having so many divisions of the pie, that every group would be happy. Each group get's their piece of it. There will be PLENTY of different things for different people......

Meh.

We already have that now. It's called Shards. We even have different ways to make Ages now. You no longer HAVE to use Blender and the PyPRP plugin. If you have Max 7 or 8, you can use Cyan's Plugins to make Ages. We have people creating a "Open Sourced" version of the MOUL client right now, called PlasmaClient.

We already have all of this.....but no one is really that happy still.

Some people really think that if Cyan ever does release MOUL as Open Source, that it will solve everything. Everyone will be happy. Like it's some sort of "cure all".

I don't. I see a community just as divided as ever, if not even more so. I see groups that will be "Okay, this is us, this is what we are doing. All the rest of you out there, get in line with us, because WE are the ones that know what we are doing. Follow us! What? What was that? An idea or suggestion? No, sorry, not taking any of those. We are an exclusive group that will control everything thing. We just want you to follow along and keep in line is all."

There will be even more complaints, arguments, heated debates, flaming (actually, we have all of that now).

Yah.....Open Source scares the Hee Bee Jeebies out of me. It doesn't make that spark want to start up again.

I've been doing a lot of work in Max with things for the last few months. Most of it is still fun to do.

But for entertainment, socialization......I don't use Uru for that anymore. I pretty much hang out on Eve Online with my corp. Cool thing about Eve. Someone pisses me off on the forums, I can hunt their rear ends down online in the Game and kill them. Blow up their ships. Drain their in game wallets of ISK. Take over their area of space.......yah, Eve is good for that.

What it's also good for is socializing and exploring. Thousands and Thousands of places I still have not even been to yet. All my friends that I can not only type chat with online, but I can load up Team Speak 3, and talk and hear them all day and night long. Evess over in England. Jamey over in Australia. Mike, Fury, Lex, Loche, all of them. We can plan ops, help each other out with game tips and help. Talk about what a lousy day we had at work. Hell. Even my wife has gone back to playing Eve. heheh.

So I'm still opening up Max once in a while. I peak into the forums to see if I can't help someone who has a question. I reserve a morning each week to try and get a Fan Age inspection out of the way.

But the truth is, I find myself spending more and more time closing down Max, or my web browser from the Uru forums, and opening up Eve Online, or playing a off line game on my computer, or doing more house work.

Yes. House Work. I'm finding doing our laundry, cleaning and cooking more exciting and fun that Uru.

That's sad.

But at least when I'm doing my laundry, I don't have some loud mouthed, opinionated, judgemental, I'm Always Right, jerks to deal with. I don't have any people whining or complaining. And I don't have the people whom I'm doing the laundry for ignoring me either.

Actually, they tend to be very happy that I'm doing the laundry, heh.

So that road I'm driving down that is called Uru? Yah, I keep drifting off to sleep.

Guess it's just about time to find the next exit, and get off this road.