Ahra Pahts Historical Museum

[Labrynian Rebel]

Hello, I have no experiance in programming, but I am still following these "fan made ages" with great gusto, and Ahra Pahts is probably the most interesting one out there. Unfortunantly I will probably never be able to contribute, but I would like to suggest an idea I had to all of you awesome world creators here. I was thinking of having one of the "shells" be an "Ahra Pahts Historical Museum" in which would be a gallery of pictures of Ahra Pahts in it's various stages of construction, maybe even have a slideshow going with screenshots from above and get to literally see the city be built before your very eyes! You can also have maps, small scale models of buildings, and even a tourist shop with tons of Ahra Pahts souveniers (you can have a small sign at the cash register saying "Out to Lunch" so unfortuantly no one can actually buy anything )

So if someone wants to do this idea, go right ahead, and no, I don't need any royalties if this ever comes to frutation I just want it to exist, thanks for taking 30 seconds of your time to read this.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

I know this is necroposting, but I felt bad that Labyrnian's suggestion was never acknowledged.

IIRC, the lower portion of the Hub (which will be located in the center of the city) will contain archival information about Ahra Pahts.

[Aloys]

That's actually a pretty good idea. There is enough room in the Hub for such a thing.
There are plenty of screenshots from the first versions of the Age; and in case of need we still have all the actual assets ready to be exported again.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Do we happen to have any of the original sketches that Dustin made way back in early '06 on the Age Builders site (before it got hacked)? That would be the earliest version I can remember.

I also remember when you first turned the sketches into 3-D models and showed the screenshots. That was an exciting point in the development of the age - that such a large-scale idea could actually be feasible. I couldn't imagine how long it must have taken you to produce the prototype - and I'm still amazed at the amount of work you've put into the city.

There were also sketches from The Enlightened about what the world around the city would look like, involving sky-high trees. Very creative stuff.

On the guildofwriters.com main page, there occasionally appears a sketch of the Hub. Who did that one: J'anim Paedet?

[Aloys]

Yes I still have all of those. I'll see if I can find them in my archives.
I'm pretty sure the Hub area sketch was done by TE too.

I also remember when you first turned the sketches into 3-D models and showed the screenshots. That was an exciting point in the development of the age - that such a large-scale idea could actually be feasible. I couldn't imagine how long it must have taken you to produce the prototype - and I'm still amazed at the amount of work you've put into the city.

Those were exciting times. When the idea appeared on the AgeBuilder forum I thought it was a little too ambitious, but at the same time it was just too exciting too pass. I hadn't done serious 3D work in a while, and it certainly teached me a lot about Blender. During part of those months I was out of a job and I indeed spent a lot of time on that Age.. (oddly enough, I will find myself in the same situation in the next few weeks, and I again plan to spend a lot of time on AP.. I should really find a different way to have the time to work on that Age. )

[ddb174]

Ah, that brings back memories^^ I've probably got the sketches buried deep in my files somewhere :P

[Aloys]

I've digged a bit through my online archives, so here is a quick trip down memory lane... Starting from the first days of the Age on the AgeBuilder.org forums in early 2006
Warning: this is a picture-heavy post, I apologive for slow connections.

Here are Dustin's first fractal pictures that started it all:



And the first plans I did out of those - there were around 600 shells...




TheEnlightened's famous drawing for the Hub that J'anim later turned into an actual 3D building.


And his sketches for the environment. At that point we discussed having giant trees and other vegetal ideas. It was quite alien but it was fun. IIRC we eventually forgot that because it was too difficult to do and a potential framerate/memory killer.



And those shots are from when I tried to convince everyone that redoing the whole city to have square shells was a good idea.
(I still think it would have been a good idea: it would be easier for people to build structures in it. Although it doesn't have as much personnality as our current triangular city )



And here are some of the very first screeshots of the Blender scene I published. Those files are from March 3 2006.
They are from the third build of the Age. (Although if I remember correctly I started from scratch more that 3 times.)h



This is the very first ingame screenshot. That was from version 4, the first succesfully exported version. In the early days of PyPRP..


Version 5 - The first textures and the first version of the Hub.


Version 6 - We were not decided yet about the sky: day? night? Also, notice that we still had water instead of ice at that point.



Version 7 - Major milestone: that's when the shells where released. This was the last step before moving to version 8, which is what we have now (at least in terms of assets).



Misc. - Testing out various sizes for the shells using Relto as a reference. Notice the textures and the rocks in the distance: Cyan assets used as placeholders.


That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the trip.
If some of you feel curious I have a bunch of other unsorted pictures in this folder.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

This is fantastic! What a treasure trove of images you've recovered, Aloys! And thanks for the descriptions of each picture - it helps to know the context.

Although I remember the other images, for some reason I don't recall the square shells - fascinating! What a difference that would have made if we went in that direction.

So, if we were to incorporate these images into the age, what would be the best way: a journal in the lower portion of the hub, or an imager? And which of the many available pictures would we put in? It would be great to have them all, but if they're incorporated as textures, that would be a huge PRP file. If we use an imager, we can get around this because it would dynamically load them from disk; but we would have to create a special directory to hold them. Plus, an imager has no accompanying text, so you would just see a barrage of pictures with no explanation.

[ddb174]

Awesome! Thanks for finding all these! I hope that starry sky with the haze on the horizon, finds its way into someone's future Age ;)