Revision as of 00:30, 16 April 2011

At the forum options are being discussed to create a new Nexus for Fan Ages (called "Writer's Nexus", "Community Nexus", or "Restoration Nexus", shortened to "WNexus").

Realizations

There seem to be differing opinions on how the end result should be:

• Most Popular Idea

Create a new Nexus, with our own GUI, and leave the old on as it is (so we are restricted to Python modifications)

This would prevent us from having to modify a Cyan age, and it would give us more freedom on how to design the Nexus (and maybe add imagers for update notifications, or similar).

A suggested separation was to list D'ni ages (Cyan- or fan-made) in Cyan's Nexus, including the hoods. The remaining fan-ages would be listed in the Community/Writer's Nexus. So, this would also result in less work on the custom GUI (just a bunch of age lists, no hood management). Invites could be available on both or just one Nexus - for example to keep Cyan's Nexus strictly D'ni-bound.

• Alternate Idea

Replace the GUI in Cyan's existing Nexus

This would mean we do not have to add a new book to Relto, or maintain two GUIs, or explain why there are two Nexi with two interfaces.

Age Appearence

The Age will mostly be a GoW themed Nexus. Carl Palmner has created some beta floor textures. There will be two imagers, one with user content, another with admin content. There may also be a blackboard with Age list updates.

GUI

We will mostly use Tweek's proposed GUI.

Due to the mass of fan-ages, the Nexus needs support for categorization or tags. Over at the Age Categories list, Egon and Nathan2055 have proposed categories to sort the Ages under. The GUI needs to be able to deal with a dynamic set of categories (it's unrealistic to edit it each time we add a category). Chloe posted some drafts in the thread, and kaelis made suggestions for a Nexus pedestal for a custom Nexus (to make it clear where a link should be registered).

Some decision needs to be made about whether and how to distinguish links showing up automatically from those collected later, and in which category they show up.

Python scripting

Nobody was opposed to using the Offline KI xLinkMgr as backend for the displayed information. The data it has available needs to be extended to support age categories, which should not be hard. Fan-ages also need to be able to be hidden in Nexus at the start (easy) and to be registered later on by a Nexus terminal, to collect the reward. A player's collected fan-ages could easily be saved in a chronicle (age name and link-in point for each collected link). With the current design, each age can only have one link showing up automatically in Nexus (the default link-in point). It is also not possible to set per link-in point tags/categories.

Helping out

At this stage, you can help with this project by posting at the forum thread.