Graphics Quality

Cyan has always been known for their high quality graphics. The UGE is known for state-of-the-art awesome graphics and effects. Obviously Cyan is going to concentrate on the quality of their content and give up development of a game engine. They will leave the engine development to Unreal. I expect Cyan artists to build some absolutely awesome content for Obduction.

When fans look at the graphics in Uru and the graphics in Obduction, I expect the difference to be striking. Will this shift which game fans want to develop content for? I suspect so. I think this will throw somewhat of a wet blanket on development for Uru.

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Uru Live Trailer – 2012

There will be a core of the Uru faithful that continue to develop for Uru. But, the learning curve for new age builders is going to be very difficult. The learning curve for those learning Unreal is going to be much easier. Not so much because one system is easier than the other, but because so many other people are interested in Unreal, including Cyan. There will be a larger audience and more new tutorials for Unreal. There will be more people to help you out when you hit an Unreal problem. That is not going to be the case with Plasma.

Take a look at the MMO’s being made with the Unreal Engine: Unreal Showcase.

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Tera Rising – Unreal Engine  – 2013

I’m not sure how obvious the differences are to non-game developer fans. The trailers reveal game quality but to some degree the portrayal of quality is a matter of how well the trailer is made. I looked for trailers I think portray both Plasma and Unreal well.

Environment

Once one has learned to use a development environment that easily produces awesome results, it is going to be very hard to get motivated about using a lesser development environment.

Using the Unreal development environment it is very easy to develop for desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones. With Plasma one can develop for the Windows desktop environment. There is no easy way to move Plasma work to other devices. I consider this strong disincentive for Plasma.

I believe the result will be fewer content creators will be willing to work to build content for Uru Live.

The Politics and the Social Side

The politics surrounding Uru Live are horrible. It has been for years. A contingent of fans has been at odds with Cyan Worlds and fans since about 2004. That has divided fans and created problems for Cyan Worlds.

The fan division is even evident in the pathway to getting content into the official Cyan Servers.

To understand the politics we can take a look at Second Life for analogies. In SL we have griefers. Those are the SL users that delight in making things miserable for others. In some cases they have imagined grievances against Linden Lab, in other cases they’re bullies, and other cases that have social issues, and in some cases they just aren’t that bright and follow a group’s propaganda. Whatever the case they’re socially maladjusted.

Talking with Lindens we often hear them lament the time they spend fixing exploits. It’s time they could spend developing and improving the game. But, because of griefer activity they have no choice but to spend the time blocking exploits.

In the case of Cyan there was no choice about whether to spend the time fixing exploits. Cyan just did not have the time. The result was somewhat a program of appeasement. Cyan simply could not afford to fight a war with their griefers. For what I’ll call ‘straight’ fans this created some serious problems.

Cyan to some degree tried to control their griefers with a nuclear option. In this case the nuclear option is closing the official Cyan Servers. If certain limits were ever passed, the servers would be shut down. For some griefers that was a goal, shut Uru down. However, as that has played out the servers have stayed open.

But like the children of an inattentive parent the Uru griefers push the limits. Cyan does not have the time/manpower to moderate/police the game. Griefers have somewhat free rain.The result is numerous fans simply stay out of the game. For those fans the single player Obduction is going to be very attractive.

As the Uru griefers are generally considered to control the GOW the Uru age builders have to deal with that group of people. That’s the group that’s doing a lot to build the plug-ins for 3DS, improve the client side, and add features to the server side of Uru Live. So, to a significant degree the fan community has had little choice but to deal with the Uru griefers.

By adopting the Unreal Game Engine that dependency on Uru griefers goes away.

This isn’t to say there aren’t good people involved in Uru development, there are. But, there are significant problems.

So What Happens to Uru?

What I’ve written portrays a rather bleak picture for Uru. But, it doesn’t have to be all that bad. Consider.

In 2009 and 2010 there was discussion of moving Uru Live to a new platform. Several of us considered the possibility of rebuilding Uru Live in Second Life. It was obvious that Uru Live could not simply be ported to Second Life. It would have to be built from scratch.

At the time we did not have mesh. Duplicating some of the areas of Uru with sculpties was very difficult and less than ideal. Exact replicas were impossible. Now we have mesh and exact replicas are possible.

Those opposed to the idea pointed out how difficult rebuilding in SL was going to be. They said it would take years. To some degree they were right. But, it is also taking years for ‘official’ building to be completed.

People built duplicates of Uru in Second Life. Some of the builds were rather impressive. Most of that effort has now moved to OpenSim worlds.

For a time a small group of us were building Uru like ages in Second Life, OpenSim, and Unreal. We had some builds in all three places. Dealing with the scripts to open and close doors and start engines and things was not all that difficult. Objects were built in 3DS or Blender.

We now know that Uru Live can be moved to Unreal. That won’t be an easy move. The last five years have shown there are people willing to put in the effort to accomplish those difficult tasks. Some have actually done proof of concept moves to Unreal and presented them to Cyan.

So, the one obstacle to moving Uru Live to Unreal is: Cyan Worlds. In their preliminary license for using their content from Uru Live they restricted its use to the Plasma Game Engine. No other platform was allowed. Uru Live cannot currently legally be moved to Unreal. But it is possible and there are people that will be willing to do the work. (I’ve been out of the licensing loop so things may have changed. But, AFAIK they haven’t.) And some parts of Uru were moved to Unreal by fans, thus the proof of concept.

Such a move from Plasma to Unreal is not going to be an ‘easy port’. It would be rebuilding a game that looks like Uru Live in Unreal. But, I doubt we will see Cyan changing the license to allow that. But, may be.

Summary

My opinion now is that Obduction is going to be hard on Uru Live. I’m confident the core fans of Uru Live will remain fans. I do doubt that new age builders for Uru Live will be coming into the community. I expect new age builders to want to use Unreal. I don’t see any easy path to get from Unreal to Plasma or vice-versa.

Someone might make a translator to go from Unreal to Plasma. But there’s so much new and fun stuff in Unreal that isn’t and is unlikely to ever be supported by Plasma such transfer is likely to be very frustrating. I don’t see that as a productive path.

As Cyan builds Obduction and Uru Live fans move to Obduction in 2015 effort and time spent on Uru Live is likely to decrease. In the interim all but a few hard-core age builders are likely to look at Unreal as a preferred target for their efforts effectively reducing development for Uru Live.

Cyan may reach a point where they allow fans to build and contribute content to Obstruction. This would be much easier for Cyan as they are the SOLE owners of the Obduction content. That is not the case with Uru Live content. Other companies have some degree of license to Uru Live content. Licensing would be much simpler and completely in Cyan’s hands.

Uru Live will retain a core set of fans and even some Plasma developers. I expect Cyan and their fan age builders to have less time for Uru Live. As slow as Uru Live has moved over the last 5+ years, I expect Uru development to slow that development even more in the coming months.

Uru Live’s fate may well be tied up in whether Cyan will license the content and allow it to move to the Unreal platform.