Guild of Writers

This new version is a major update, as it fixes all bugs from previous version and features the shells in their final form (safe for the textures). Which means sign up process can start soon.

Disclaimer
Please do NOT post about this version on other forums.
Two small textures I am using are from Uru (the Relto water and one of the Hood ‘lamps’ on the shell walls) and cannot be distributed publicly (through the Prps). I know all of you here have legit versions of Uru so it isn’t much of an issue. I’ll soon get rid of those and post a public version. Tomorrow I hope; time to re-export the whole Age with new textures (this Age is huge and takes a looong time to export)

That said, on to the goodies:

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v0.6 - Release notes:

Fixes from previous version:

• All textures now show up correctly (yay)
• Shells size has been very slightly reduced
• All streets and canals are in place
• Hub is textured (this is not the latest version though)
• Shells are all assigned to their respective pages numbers
• Collisions issues fixed, you can now walk everywhere
• Missing canals in blue district added.

Still missing:

• All textures are still placeholders.
• Still no footsteps sounds
• Rivers aren’t ‘swimmable’ yet
• Largest courtyards are still placeholders (new thread about this to follow)
• Probably other things I can’t think of right now.

New stuff:

• Twilight sky added. (Might change/be removed if we agree on another environment – looks nice though.)
• New lampposts added in streets (in Blue district for now, in other districts soon)
• Large lampposts have been redone
• High walls have been added to separate districts
• A couple of the smaller courtyards in blue district have been customized.
• Water is now transparent
• Many other little things I can’t think of right now.

Final Notes:
- Linking point still isn’t in the hub; J’anim is working on the hub, it’ll be updated in the next version.
- Of all districts the Blue on has received the most attention so far (some courtyards customized, new lampposts in the streets etc) that’s why the linking point is here for this version.
- As this isn't the 'final' version yet I haven't done any extensive testing, so there may still be a couple bugs and quirks here and there..
- Screenshots to follow soon

Installation:
If you are installing the Age for the first time you will need to register the Age in UruAgeManager with the following settings: filename: pahts / spawnpoint: linkinpointdefault

>> Download: Pahts07.zip (22mb)

I hope you will enjoy this new version; an number of horus have been pourred in it. As I said it is a major improvement over the previous one, and I am now getting close to final version.

Of course you can have a two pages long release note you always forget something :rolleyes:

Technical note:
Right now the shelves don't have their textures inside their respective Prps as they are supposed to be. They all share the same textures from the Pahts_district_textures.prp. This was done for two reasons:
1) This cuts down a lot on the weight of the download. (150 identical shells Prps with each 2.1 mega of textures = 300megs... One single prp of texture = much better )
2) Performance ingame is much better as Uru only loads 5 textures.

If they were all in their respectives shell Prp, eventhough the textures are all identicals they'd be different files and thus they'd all be loaded in Uru.
I've tried it just to test and it takes forever to load (750 textures...) and performance isn't great; even bad (and I have a good computer by Uru's standards). The problem is that right now the way the plugin export things, everything (or almost) is loaded at first link-in and most of it is rendered all the time in Uru whether you can actually see it or not.
Now, of course one day all shells will be different and will have different textures and we will fall again on the above situation. But this day is still probably far away and hopefully we'll have better tools by then and will optimize things a bit. (I can't wait for this day to come though.. B) )
For now this configuration works well; at least on my computer.

Could you tell me how it runs on yours?

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Also, lol: