Only today have I read the news about the Plasma engine and 3D Max Plugin now being open sourced. Great news indeed!
I must admit that I haven't read the whole thread but just a few pages. Still I want to contribute my thoughts and suggestions.
1) The thread refers to "the developers". Are there official numbers of how many members of the GoW currently work on developing the CWE?
2) I'm very euphoric about the release of the 3D Max Plugin's source because I use 3D Max as my main modeling program. Sadly I can undertand that I'm part of a minority. A simple comparison of the post counts in the Blender and 3D Max sub-forums show that Blender has the far bigger user base which is understable because Blender is a free program and the development of PyPRP has come a long way.
3) Nevertheless I'd love to see the following improvements/fixes for the 3D Max Plugin:
-Making the plugin compatible with newer versions of 3D Max. This must be the top priority because it's the only way to get a larger number of people to use the plugin.
-Proper documentation for some features of the plugin that are useless right now because we don't know how to use them properly (we don't know the inner working of the plugin), e.g. Illumination Baking or Water/Reflections.
-Adding support for sceletal and/or procedural animations. Right now every animation has to be baked into keyframes which is a very tedious process.
Of course I would also love new features as requested by other members, e.g. support for bump and normal maps and a new dynamic lighting system but I understand that this is very unlikely to happen as most focus is on the development of PyPRP
4) I just want to mention that many users here might be able to get a free version of 3D Studio Max because Autodesk has an extensive educational program. Teachers of all kinds of schools as well as students can register and download free versions of the program. I have made use of this service.
To sum things up I'm very happy about the OSing of Myst Online's tools. However, I fear that most of the future developments will focus on CWE and PyPRP and leave me behind because I love working with 3D Max and would love creating ages for URU but I cannot see myself switching to Blender.
Mod Note: Split from this thread.