I'm proud to give you a new yet somewhat experimental version of Drizzle !
This version is intended for the offline game for now. As of now, it is not compatible with DI or other Shards. Please use Drizzle31.1 if you intend to convert Ages for Deep Island.
Without further ado, here is the list of new features.
- Show Spoiler
- Converted Myst V Ages are now playable. While all the narrative stuff from Myst V is missing, nearly all puzzles are playable. Crowthistle Ages benefit from a few minor improvements too.
- Ability to change your Uru to 16/9 ! This will force Uru to render in widescreen most of the time. Beware, though: you'll need to let Drizzle edit a LOT of your game files. But once that's done, you can finally enjoy Uru with a much wider field of view spanning the full width of your widescreen monitor.
Note that you still need to hack your resolution in your graphics settings for it to work (instructions here).
Please use the "Uru widescreen" tab for this
- ability to increase view (pitch) angle, so you can look straight up or down (see this thread for more infos).
As a side-effect, it also increases vertical sensitivity, so it might feel a bit odd at first, but you get used to it.
It's also located in the "Uru widescreen" tab. - Jalak widgets now behave correctly ! No warping at insane speed in the arena ! Decreased lag in the interface !
(You need to convert MOUL Ages again to use this.) - new tab: Fan-Age Tools ! which includes a bunch of features destined to increasing both performances and visual quality in Ages (not compatible with Shards). Also allows you to fix bumpy collisions.
It may be a bit tricky to use, so a list of all the features is available here. - moar command-line options available for geeky people
One command you may find interesting: -exactcollisions
This basically adds a physical object for each visual one in a few seconds. This means you can walk virtually anywhere in an Age without falling through. You only need flymode to go through Cyan's original colliders.
Can be interesting for people who like wandering on the rooftops in Ae'Gura in an Assassin's Creed-like fashion. Also, if you like epic balancing over an endless abyss, I'd suggest having a look at Ahnonay's vortex/fourth sphere. The trip from the balcony to the sphere is worth a shot.
I'm not responsible for misplaced collisions, though - the algorithm is quite dumb when it comes to transparent objects like sprites.
Other features like UAM are left mostly unchanged.
Here is the download link.
NOTE ! The ZIP also includes files you must place in your Uru folder for the new Myst V stuff.
And for those interested, here are the sources for both Drizzle and the fixed Myst V scripts.
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- Rambling Show Spoiler
A few words about this release:
With Dustin gone, I wanted to pick up Drizzle development, mostly to share some cool tweaks I found over the time, and had no way to share due to their complexity. This is exactly what this release is.
However, my interest in Uru has been declining lately, therefore I wanted to wrap up this new version of Drizzle before I got completely bored and forgot to do so. Also, I accidentally deleted most of my Uru folder the other day, and lack the physical CDs to reinstall it for now. As a consequence, I didn't fully test everything in the Myst V conversion - meaning you might run across some (hopefully) minor bugs. Should still be fairly stable, though. The only missing feature right now is a missing clue in Noloben, which shouldn't prevent you from exploring the Age.
This is also why the Myst V stuff isn't yet included in Deep Island (or the OKI for that matter). I didn't have time to test things online, and I'm not really sure I want to debug potential issues that may arise online. So: if you want to play online, stick to Drizzle 30 or 31, and don't mess with the installation folder.
That said, all my modifications to Myst V Ages are intended to work for both offline and online - some puzzles behave differently online to encourage cooperation. So if the offline version proves to be bug-free, maybe we can ask Diafero if he's willing to try putting this version online (with the risk that it's untested).
On a more personal note, I just can't find the motivation to work on Uru-related content anymore. Why ? Well, for various reasons. People like AndyLegate or Janaba leaving. Idiots on the MOUL forum. Cyan's lack of cooperation (I don't blame them, but it saddens me). The cavern being always empty. Plasma's limits. Fan-Ages which are nice but almost never live up to Cyan's quality. Lack of new content. No graphic mods for Uru. Plasma crashing one time out of three on my PC. PyPRP's slowness.
Even building with Korman became a pain. The plugin is great, and simplifies a lot of things, but this means losing flexibility on some points. I can't even export my Canyon Age without post-editing the sky so the fancy multitexturing it uses isn't broken. This just drives me nuts.
This is why I'm wrapping up Drizzle, so all this work isn't wasted. And from now on, I won't work on any tweaks for Uru anymore - no agebuilding, no scripting, nothing. I'm sick of Plasma, I haven't played Uru or Myst for years (despite messing with the engine during all this time). This alone wouldn't bother me if anything at all happened in the Uru community, but right now I'm fed up of waiting for something to happen from the fans, Cyan or the Intangibles.
I'm not leaving completely - I really enjoy reading what you guys have to say. But count me out for anything related to Age building or scripting.
"And now I realize that I have only looked on D'ni as bones. My rebuilding was only an attempt to reassemble the dried dead bones into a dried dead skeleton - no more alive, but arranged to poorly mimic what once was alive. I somehow thought that those dried bones would live again and become the storyteller -- telling me the things I long to know.
I still long to know; I still feel a calling. I am meant to be part of D'ni, somehow. I am drawn here because it holds an answer for me. But now I understand that I need more than a dead story from a pile of bones. I need a storyteller who lives."
Well, I do love this dried skeleton - enough that I don't want to leave it completely. But it's been a while since I last tried to fix it up, and I don't want to do it anymore. At least not until it attempts to talk to me again.
/drama mode off
Thanks a lot for finishing this up to the point where it is usable!
).