Second version (0.6)

[Zrax]

Yeah, that was kinda my thought with the lamps . Also, see my edit (just an idea, meant for discussion not for "gimme it now" )

[Ailaera]

There is supposed to be bridges. Don't know why that got left out.

[Aloys]

The bridges got left out for this version simply because I haven't had time to do them so far. They are definitely in the plans for the next version though.
Also it's water not ice. Because we won't be able to swim in the water (at least at first) and because I had no bridges in place I put in some collisions on the water so it's easier to cross. But it makes it looks a bit like ice, I agree. I also comes from the fact the right now we can't animate textures and still water doesn't really looks like water.
Please don't release it on a volcano server (or any other server for that matter) because as I said this version uses Cyan assets(textures) which can't be released publicly.
Also despite all the nice comments IMHO it isn't worth releasing yet; there are still bugs, collision issues, missing bridges, the Hub isn't perfectly integrated etc.. If you don't mind I think it'd be better to wait for another version, maybe in a week or two. I think we'd better release a polished Age. Just my opinion.

[Zrax]

Also it's water not ice.

Yeah, I know... That's why I put it in quotes -- I was just stating what it looked like

Please don't release it on a volcano server (or any other server for that matter)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply I was releasing it... We don't release anything without the permission of the creator(s) ever anyway. What I was saying was that I wanted to work on a special book that was separate from the normal Volcano bookshelf book specifically for Ahra Pahts. Since you don't need the age for the book to work, I figured I could work on that if you guys wanted. If you don't however, that's just fine too

[Aloys]

About the ice thing. Maybe we could actually use this; just maybe. Right now we can't animate textures and our water is going to remain still; in fact the more I think of it the less I'm sure doing water in there was a good idea since we can't really pull it off.. :unsure:
So, the idea is: what if it is indeed ice. At least in the beginning. We could find some environmental or mechanical explanation, after all the Age hasn't been maintained since the fall of D'ni right? That would solve the 'swimming' issue, and that would look better than this static water IMHO.
And later on when we can actually animate textures we can make an update and say the water has started to unfreeze. And later again if when can swim online we can update it again; it would become part of the ongoing restoration.
Or as ShadowDude suggested we could just lower the level of the water to the minimum so we can walk in it.

I'm not sure I like the idea of having ice in the Age, it would make it kinda cold.

Just throwing ideas.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Well, unusual water in ages has been done before (think Riven). So, we can say that the water in Ahra Pahts has an exceptionally high freezing point. Part of the restoration is to heat the canals to get the water flowing again. (Meanwhile, the PRP engineers scramble frantically to decode texture animations )

[Tsar Hoikas]

[Aloys]

Do you guys have something like a list where you sort out your tasks by priority? It looks like you've got an awful lot of stuff to do.. Lately most posts I see by you or Paradox are one liners that start with plSomething
Right now you are busy reworking the plugin but after that do you have precise plans? I'm sure we can come up with a nice requests list of sorts.

[Tsar Hoikas]

Paradox set up a to-do list which I renamed "Adam's Nag List". Here it is as of right this very second.

Adam's Nag List:
plGBufferGroup(~49%) - (The *bigger* geometry class inside the big geometry class)
plDrawableSpans (50%) - (The big geometry class)
plLayerAnimation (N/A%) - (Animated textures)
plPythonFileMod (67%) - (Python Hooking in the plugin)

Paradox also told me I should think about plViewFaceModifier which would allow those special lamps you added in blender to work correctly. That is at N/A%

N/A% means that I am missing nesecary classes.

[Paradox]

Are we ready to do signup for shells yet?

We should get a list going before everything is finished so that we can fix any possible problems that may arise from the signup numbers.

(As in: we have ~400 shells, we have a handful of people on this forum who know Blender well enough to do something halfway decent in their shell {Blender is a hard program to use})