Guild of Writers

I've been reading over at the Live forums that Live has a new physics engine. How much is that going to hurt us later?

I don't know about Live. But a new Physics engine is going to render UAM obsolete in a few months. Unless we come up with a way to make dual copies. One for UAM and one for Live. Of course Cyan may come along and say we can't distribute fan ages in UAM. Something I would be very highly against. As that excludes those with Dialup.

That new engine is indeed probably gonna be an issue, it may means that the way some things work in our Ages wouldn't work anymore and would make Uru crash. So we would have to change parts of our Ages.

But that may not be the biggest problem, Cyan has said that there will be changes in the Uru files, and most likely the plugin won't work at all anymore. And, at least for a time, we wouldn't be able to create Ages again. So, our programmer wizards would need some time to adapt it. Also, because Cyan will release their own tools they might ask us not to work on the plug-in anymore (if only for legal reasons).

About UAM. Whatver way Cyan choose to handle the custom Ages I'm pretty sure that doesn't involve UAM; as sad as it is. There are legal and strategic reasons for this. This is sad but I'd be really surprised if they go with it. Also, they already have everything they need technically to include custom Ages in Uru, they don't need UAM.

I've given this some thought lately and it seems pretty clear that most of what we do here these days: the Ages, the tools etc.. will go to waste at a point or another. That is pretty clear to me.

Does that mean we should give up? Certainly not. Because not all of what we do will go to waste; we may need some time to catch up on the new situation but we'll get there eventually. Also whatever Cyan has in mind this won't happen before several months, most likely not before october or so..

And finally I think we have to show Cyan our involvement in these custom Ages. The more work we can provide the more they will be motivated to support custom Ages in Uru Live.

Well, Cyan has said that they do want fan ages in Uru Live. (See Greydragon's post here: Link), so that is good news.

We may have to redo some scripting later on, but I think the models of the ages will still be able to be used in any new version of the game.

Actually, from what I can see, Uru Live will be using the same physics engine that Myst V used (ODE). So... there might be problems with kickables, but everything else should be fine.

Even if the format does change, as long as you have the original .blend file, you can always re-export it with the new format.

ODE? IIRC it's an open source engine right? That'd be good news.

What I'm relly worried about is if they change the format of the files. That wouldn't be the first time.

I agree with Paradox- as long as whatever Cyan does or the tools that they release are compatible with .blend files, then we shouldn't have to completely redo our ages - just make any necessary changes.

The reason Kirsten is opposed to it is cause that Live will exclude dialup users, due to the limits of dialup more then anything. This project was started for the benefit of everyone, dialup users included. And with the new physics engine it is possible that dialup users will not be able to participate in Live at all.

Yes -- believe me, I'm none-to-happy with Live's new requirements. The thing that gets me is that I would get broadband, but it just isn't offered in my area anymore. I imagine this is the case for quite a few people in the world, even now. That's what I like about UAM -- the fact that it lacks the internet requirements that most online distribution methods have.

There is two possibilities. The first being these ages not be included in Live. Or two that there is two versions of the ages. One for UAM and one for Live. This would of course mean someone will need to make the changes to the age as necessary for incorporation in Live. Not a small task.

Myself and Kirsten wants to contact Cyan and talk to them on this.