So, essentially - all cores could carry with them a copy of their originally-spawned design. Your proposed various tiers of repair and copy permissions, would simply leverage that pre-stored information. That does sound slightly complicated, but then, not really any more complicated than figuring out logic, or rails; players would just need good visibility of what has which permissions, and the shipyard interface does seem like a good way to do that.
What's most interesting about your proposal, is that there's no necessary tethering to blueprints, and therefore is something that players would configure for their ships, on only their chosen servers. No impacts to CC, and no actual changes to the contents of uploaded/downloaded blueprints. This sounds to me like that would adequately address concerns raised by others earlier in this thread.
Moving away from the whole blueprint fearmongering from earlier...now I understand how your proposal could be far more easily merged with the OP, and even done so without a great deal of added programming complexity:
- A new feature is added to ALL player-created entities: storage of the entire entity's design, at the moment it was spawned, in a player-inaccessible storage repository (e.g. ship core). This would practically be no different, that the current concept of a player creating a design from their ship, and then storing that design in a cargo block on their ship...except that this proposal makes the adjustments of:
- Design storage is automated, and players shall not access this stored item.
- There are game-engine enforced rules around whom is permitted to update or copy the stored design.
- Now, let's change the proposed "AllowCopy" attribute, from a boolean to an int, and call it "modifierPermit"
- modifierPermit would contain a numerical value representing:
- 0: Automatically store read/write copy of design as this entity was originally spawned, allow shipyards to overwrite/update this design if the player uses a shipyard interface to make the request. No limits to blueprint or design creation (e.g. how all player-created entities exist today. with the added design storage feature).
- 1: Automatically store read/write copy of design as this entity was originally spawned, and allow shipyards to overwrite/update this design if the player uses a shipyard interface to make the request. Deny creation of a portable design or blueprint.
- 2: Automatically store read-only copy of design as this entity was originally spawned, and allow shipyards to repair to this design only. Deny creation of a portable design or blueprint.
To address a reasonable concern raised by some whom want to broadly share their designs/works as an in-game 3D model, or demonstration of their skills, but also don't want to release unhinged duplication privileges:
- The preference would be that those more sensitive players simply encourage others to visit X server, and view the designs there.
To address requests for providing a downloadable, but read-only, copy of ship designs, even via CC:
- The preference would be that players are encouraged to use the existing "Export as 3d model" feature.
...and that's where my gut says we should stop.
I have mixed-feelings about the following, but let's keep brainstorming with the idea for a moment:
To address a reasonable concern raised by some whom want to facilicate downloadable, distribuitable, copies of their design, while still imposing some control over how those designs are used on other servers, in SP, etc...
- Provide a means of, at the time when "save blueprint to local" is executed, for players to choose which of the three attributes are stored in the downloadable blueprint.
- Display an attribute on each CC page, which clearly communicates the permission level for a relevant blueprint:
- Original author wishes to share without restriction.
- Original author wants to provide a framework from which you could build a better, faster, stronger, deadlier ship. Here's a design that you can save changes to!
- Original author wants to share their pristine artwork, and asks that you respect their request to not mutilate its pristine beauty (well...except for cannonball holes...).
Further, earlier in this thread we touched upon the idea of the game engine cryptographically signing blueprints, as a means of identifying the original builder, and further, of significantly easing the process around detecting modified blueprints. So while we keep in mind that this particular addition adds some programing and procedural complexity, it may not see the light of day anytime soon....let's wrap the idea in now:
- Utilize one of many optional PGP/GPG libraries for Java.
- At the time a player selects "save blueprint to local" the resulting packaged file is PGP-signed.
- At the time a player loads a saved blueprint from local, the package's PGP signature is validated, to ensure that the blueprint is pristine, as originally downloaded.
- As for accommodating tools such as SMEdit: that's where the value of a PGP keyserver comes in.
- We ask that developers of popular tools, such as Bobby Bighoof , to integrate supporting routines that would respect a player's original wishes.
- Anyone can still download from CC, and if the original author permitted, may also copy/change the design.
- Upon saving a new copy of the blueprint, it is then signed with a key assigned to the person making modifications.
