Revision as of 16:36, 11 March 2011

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

Realizations

There seem to be two opinions on how the end result should look like:

• 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.
• 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.

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.

GUI

Tweek talks about a GUI at his blog.

Due to the mass of fan-ages, the Nexus needs support for categorization or tags. Over at the Age Categories list, Egon and nathan 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.