Guild of Writers

~ OMG and Ahra Pahts update; impossible!

Here is a long overdue update on the Age. Two good news:

1) First I have litterally spend all of the week-end preparing all the shells that I still hadn't taken care of. (and there was a lot of them..) I have to say a big 'thank you' to Robert who helped me a lot with this. They are almost all ready, and I will start sending them tomorrow. If you had registered for a shell and you still hadn't gotten it it will be here soon.

2) The elusive version 1 has made a lot of progress. There's been a long and difficult transition to update the Age and make it compatible with all the recent changes in PyPRP but it's finally done (and you have no idea how reliefed I am. )
Also, a good part of the new content is ready. In fact I had most of it ready long ago before PyPRP 1.0 appeared, but the quality wasn't great because I really tried to 'get rid' of that Age, so I rushed it and it just didn't look good. So when PyPRP 1.0 came and I realized I was going to have so much trouble to make the Age compatible, I decided to scrap everything and start almost from scratch. Except for the shells, there hasn't been a single object that wasn't changed in some way.. It was a difficult decision because I really wanted to start working on other Ages, but in the end it is worth it. The Age has changed a lot but I'm quite happy with it now.. It's not complete yet but most of it is done; at this point I'm mostly fixing bugs and adding details..
The only big question that's left is about optimization. Robert and Paradox (among others) have done a wonderfull job with PyPRP recently, adding a number of features that could help a lot with the loading times and the general performance in thisAge. Right now on my version it is really awful; so I would love to include some of that; but that will take a bit of time.. I think it will be worth it though.

So: starting tomorrow shells will be sent out. And starting next week I will start posting some screenshots of the finished areas of the city (some areas will be polished enough that I can show them). But before that...


Rapid Shell Development contest

Because all the shells will be available and the new version is coming, I think it would be a good occasion to have some fun and to do a new Age development contest; this time with shells. The RAD contest was a big success and it'd be fun to do that again using the same rules (and maybe improving them where it is possible). Of course I'd like to release v1 at some point before the contest deadline, but it's hard to give a precise estimate for when it'll be ready.. Just to be safe I'll give it another three weeks; so if we do that contest the deadline should be after the second week of next month.

Does this sound interesting ?

w00t!

Awesome! I was wondering if you could resend a copy of Shell 237 for me, since I've pretty much given it up for lost. (on my old hard drive) If I feel inspired, I might make a new version of the interior for the RSD contest. (good idea. )

I could judge. Again.

This is of course if Aloys wants a group of judges.

~Lontahv

Fantastic, Aloys!

I think a shell contest is a great idea. It will help to populate the city in time for the 1.0 release.

This time around, I recommend agreeing upon a specific version (e.g. revision number) of the PyPRP plugin prior to the contest. During the last RAD contest, animated textures were added, and there was an uproar - it would be good to avoid that this time.

Noooo, you can't release Pahts without wavesets! Just kidding but wavesets would look good and since the channel geometry is simple they can be basic planes, so they would not suffer from the invisibility effect.

/me jumps up and down excitedly at his desk attracting the attention of his coworkers who already think he's touched in the head.

Lontahv wrote:I could judge. Again.
This is of course if Aloys wants a group of judges.

As I said the rules we had last time worked fine for the most part, so we could probably used them again. And that includ keeping several judges again.
I don't remember the details too well, but I do remember some discusions about the judging process last time and how it could be improved. We'll have to look into the RAD threads.

Robert wrote:This time around, I recommend agreeing upon a specific version (e.g. revision number) of the PyPRP plugin prior to the contest. During the last RAD contest, animated textures were added, and there was an uproar - it would be good to avoid that this time.

Interesting point. 1.3.1 seems like a good candidate, but wavesets aren't part of it and some people might want to use them.. I don't know. Anyway we'll have to decide that before the contest officially starts. Speaking of which, it should only officially start when we have agreed on all the details.

I don't know, I think it might be best to try to make a new release specifically for the contest... 1.3.1 really isn't even what I would consider "stable", and as a result, just about everyone is using either an older version, or the nightly build.

However, personally, I don't think there should be any restriction on tools used, it should simply be whatever each writer feels comfortable with. No sense making everyone use the same version when it would be a disadvantage for some people to upgrade to that version because they're more comfortable with an older one, and a disadvantage for others, because they'd have to downgrade and avoid using features they'd grown accustomed to. The contest should simply be about writers working and making the best out of what is available to them.

If you want to contact me or alert me to a topic I need to please PM me. I am not a huge forum trawler.

Thanks.

~Lontahv