Graphics Mods for Uru?

[Yali]

I was looking for graphics mods like ENB or SweetFX that could be used with Uru to enhance the visuals like adding bloom, HDR and SMAA. Is there anything out there that could work with Uru considering how old Plasma is?

Would it be simpler to add these things to plasma instead?

[Deledrius]

There's no need to add side-loaded hacks when the engine can be improved directly. Either way, the missing thing here is someone with the time and knowledge to work on it. That, and some of those features (like HDR and proper bloom) may not work quite right (or provide much benefit) without modifications to the Age data since the lighting model in Plasma is very simplistic and most "lights" don't exist by the time the engine is in play.

If someone wants to add these features, we'd love to work with them to get that code implemented!

[Sirius]

Aha ! Got the same idea a while ago.

ENB and SweetFX both use DirectX9, while Uru renders using DirectX8. So, in order to use them, first you need the ENB convertor to "force" Uru to render using DirectX9 (available on the ENB's website).
That's enough to load the game using the ENB or SweetFX. However, once you decide to leave the Relto, the game instantly crashes Same if you want to dynamically load a page using PtPageInNode(). Any attempt to load stuff will fail if you use the convertor...

That said, I had several compatibility issues between nVidia optimus and ENB. One could say optimus has compatibility issues with everything (not just wrappers, it even breaks unmodded games). So maybe the crash is caused by optimus, I didn't think of it at the time.

While on the Relto I could see HDR and bloom work even on Plasma (no need for real-time lighting or anything). However, as Deledrius said, they don't always look fine (for instance, books are very hard to read). In a lot of cases, Cyan pre-baked things like ambient occlusion, or hand-placed sunshafts and blooming around windows, which actually fake things pretty well.
Using graphic mods would still be a huge improvement, but require a lot of tweaking to look fine (especially for Fan-Ages).

There's no need to add side-loaded hacks when the engine can be improved directly

Unfortunately, that's untrue for Complete Chronicles where most Fan-Ages are available. and it's not likely to be included in Gehn overnight

It's true however some effects (like parallax mapping or sunshafts) would require direct modification of Cyan's Ages... Not the easiest thing here.



Either way, in my humble opinion, sometimes it's best to have no HDR or blooming, rather than having ugly looking overbloom and DoF, stupid 4-seconds-long eye adaptation, and such. Some more recent game like RealMyst ME or Skyrim proved me sometimes it's best to COMPLETELY avoid these.

On the other hand, if setup correctly, these effects can really make the difference. I think the best example is Morrowind, which is actually older than Uru... Yet if you have a look at these screenshots with Morrowind's graphic extender, it looks like the game is just a few years old.

[Yali]

Yup, I'm another Morrowind player and I use MGE3. I have to say that Cyan has always had a knack for good looking games despite the retro tech. The original Myst looked great in 1993 and still does. Sure, its not realistic, but is artsy and pretty. Same goes for Uru which although lower tech, looks stylistically beautiful for an old game. They seem to really know how to get the most out of textures and lighting at Cyan. The same cannot be said for RMME which with Unity looks positively cold. Morrowind despite its crappy engine (gamebryo) seems to look good with a billion mods that make it much more vibrant. Uru has a lot of vibrancy already. I think what it needs are better effects like with its water shader, the lighting and possibly higher res textures.

[Deledrius]

There's no need to add side-loaded hacks when the engine can be improved directly

Unfortunately, that's untrue for Complete Chronicles where most Fan-Ages are available. and it's not likely to be included in Gehn overnight

I was hoping you'd answer this one. If anyone's messed with this and had success it would be you.

I agree about Uru:CC. I hadn't thought about it, but you're right that it'll be the only way to mod that version of the engine (which has a lot of nice parts that haven't all been back-ported to the open source variant yet). In an ideal world we continue trying to make the open source engine the best version and able to play the complete offline game. Sadly, that's not reality yet.

[Yali]

I tried both sweet fx and ENB with the converter on both Uru and Myst V and the screen was black although sound worked. I was told in Ae'Gura that it might be good to bring this up at the big meeting on Saturday. We could ask if anyone has skill and is interested in helping out script some effects for plasma like bloom and HDR and such. It might help to ask.

[Sirius]

I was hoping you'd answer this one. If anyone's messed with this and had success it would be you.

Just wanted to say I feel honored ! Thanks.
But no, unfortunately, I had no success with it...
I tried again with various hacks, but I doubt the issue is related to nVidia. It looks like it's simply an incompatibility between the converter and Uru (if that's the case, it's hardly possible to find a workaround).

In an ideal world we continue trying to make the open source engine the best version and able to play the complete offline game. Sadly, that's not reality yet.

Yes, that unfortunately true... But having the possibility to modify the engine is still better than nothing, at least for smaller improvements like the ones included in Gehn (sharper textures, correct widescreen ratio, and such).

We could ask if anyone has skill and is interested in helping out script some effects for plasma like bloom and HDR and such. It might help to ask.

That would be an idea, and sounds feasible for (at least) the open-source engine.

[Deledrius]

We could ask if anyone has skill and is interested in helping out script some effects for plasma like bloom and HDR and such. It might help to ask.

That would be an idea, and sounds feasible for (at least) the open-source engine.

We're always looking for fresh eyeballs and new developers. The project has not been very active lately, and new energy would be really appreciated.

[Yali]

Would you guys ever consider recruiting myst fans from other modding communities like http://www.darkcreations.org even better http://www.polycount.com has an excellent selection of modellers and texture artists. If we want our content to rival Cyan's then maybe we should look outside the small Uru community. There are Myst fans everywhere. Hell, look at Starry Expanse!

About Plasma, I didn't get a chance to bring it up this past Saturday. They were on a tight schedule and there wasn't room to start interjecting. Maybe if we posted on the MOUL forums or went around to the other shards' forums? I think Plasma is a great engine, just dated. It could use some better lighting and water shaders along with BLOOM and HDR.

Any thoughts?

[Deledrius]

I'm not sure how we'd go about effectively recruiting people. It's such a niche hobby at this point -- working on anything Myst-related -- let alone this old engine. We've got a Getting Started page for new contributors which makes it pretty simple, at least, but finding talent so far has always been through people who stumble on us. Unfortunately all of the really big interest from Cyan's initial announcement on places like Slashdot had long since died by the time the source was released years later. We did try making a page on OpenHatch for the engine a few years ago, but that site seems to be a ghost town.

It's hard to find people interested in working on an open source project but who are unaware of it.