Latest version - (v.0.8.9.5 - Dec. 12 2007)

[Szark]

Nice to hear from you Dot and thank you.
Take care
Szark

[walts]

WOW!

I just found this thread and downloaded the age files. It is fantastic!
Overall I'm amazed at how far the user-created ages have come in two years, the last time I looked at any of them.
You folks are fantastic! If only I had 1/10 the creativity I see here.

Keep up the excellent work, and let me know if I can help in any way (I'm pretty good at testing / bug reporting)

Walt

[Corvus]

Hi, Walt!

You should join the Guild of Maintainers. We do age testing and bug reporting for fan ages. Look here: http://www.guildofmaintainers.org/

[Egon]

- Everything in the large courtyards (the large triangular spaces at the center of each district) is temporary. These courtyards haven't been built yet, they are being planned.

Just curious:
Did You came up with some ideas for courtyards?
If no, then how about this: make it community made also.

I thinking about making them park ares with sculptures made by people form the community.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Paradox came up with a great alternative courtyard for the blue district. But in order to use it, the geometry from the original courtyard needs to be moved into a separate page (so that it can be replaced). This is what would need to be done with each courtyard, and the process is not trivial.

[Aloys]

- Everything in the large courtyards (the large triangular spaces at the center of each district) is temporary. These courtyards haven't been built yet, they are being planned.

Just curious:
Did You came up with some ideas for courtyards?
If no, then how about this: make it community made also.

I thinking about making them park ares with sculptures made by people form the community.

This has always been the idea; to have people participate in the courtyards juste like with the shells. But that didn't happen for mostly three reasons:
1) There was a lot focus on the shells and the courtyards just fell behind.
2) I feared we would face the same optimization issues that we were facing with the shells. (This is still a problem, but with some work that can be taken care of.)
3) To have people participate in this would require of bit of organisation, and at the very least a sign-up page and a map (just like for the shells)
(obviously there were also other reasons like: lack of time, lack of organization, and sheer laziness. )
I had modelled (but not fully textured) several of the courtyards and I had ideas for a number of others, but there are 18 courtyards in the Age (not counting the 3 large ones); and around 40 'shells' courtyard; so there's plenty of space for people to participate..

the geometry from the original courtyard needs to be moved into a separate page (so that it can be replaced). This is what would need to be done with each courtyard, and the process is not trivial.

As a matter of fact this is something I already did. (I actually did it a while ago.. during my latest rush of work on AP circa early last year) I just didn't get around to publish the Blender files. I'm pretty sure this was done before the Age was fully converted to Alcscript; so I don't know how useable the files would be. But at the very least the geometry and textures are still good and that would be enough for a start.

There's quite a bit of work that needs to be done on the Age on my side, and that would be a good start.. This week end I'll swift through my archives and unearth those courtyard Blend files.

[Paradox]

If people would like, I can also post my versions of the .blend files somewhere (along with the accompanying 15000 or so lines of AlcScript).

Mentioning a few things here:
- I rebuilt a few parts of the Blue courtyard
- I added a sun cycle, and some dynamic lighting on the city walls
- Waveset canals and a waveset lake
- I started with the Blue district, and reconstructed the other parts of the city from an import. The other districts are missing! (except for one part of the white district)

My blend files are most likely incompatible with any PyPRP other than my contrib branch; and they are incompatible with the existing city files (they do not use a paging scheme, but rather visRegions and Occluders to hopefully remove the need for loading and uploading pages, which causes major freezes and occasionally game crashes).

[Aloys]

I found the courtyard files; it turns that I had not assigned pages numbers yet. :s However I had them separated in distinct files which may help.
The files for the Age start to become a little numerous; namely they are :
- Each of the 3 large courtyards in its own file
- Small courtyards are separated (one file for each district)
- The street of each 4 districts (streets) have their own files
- The rest of the Age (the sky, the sun, and the district walls) are on a single same file
- and the Shells are obviously in their separate files.
That's a lot of pieces and a lot of pages.
Properly separating all those files and pages assignations should be done before I proceed to anything else.. It should be determined what it best for visregions and/or page swapping. It's been discussed before, but that was already a while ago and my memory is a little blurry.
I'll start a wiki page to list all that properly to make sure we are on the same page (pun intended). I should already have done that way back.

To share all those files it might be a good idea to have a central file repository that anyone can upload; what do you think? (I have enough space on my server so I could arrange something)

- I rebuilt a few parts of the Blue courtyard

I really would like to do that one, but seeing the snail pace at which I progress I can't really blame you. For the record here is what my version currently look like: linky.

- Waveset canals and a waveset lake
- I started with the Blue district, and reconstructed the other parts of the city from an import. The other districts are missing! (except for one part of the white district)

The wavesets looks really nice (must have been an bit of a nightmare for you to add them).

- I added a sun cycle, and some dynamic lighting on the city walls

I did see some lighting on the screen you sent me a couple weeks ago, and it looked cool. You have added a dynamic sun cycle as well?
One thing though: can we assign the sun light to already released shells?

[Paradox]

Actually, if that's all you've done with the blue courtyard, then our versions should match up fairly nicely. Only thing different in mine is a skating rink at the bottom of the "hole"

As for assigning the sun to shells, right now I have it specifically excluded from all shells so that the builders have complete control. I was thinking of making a .blend file with just the sun lamp and the animation, and then releasing it so that each shell could import it if they wished.

The .blend file for the city (district walls, wavesets, spawn points, sun light, softvolumes, etc) can be downloaded from https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B1n-usiKgkEaNmY5MDM5MjItZTQ1YS00MjY2LWI4MDUtNGUzYzVlZjNiMjkz

[Aloys]

Actually, if that's all you've done with the blue courtyard, then our versions should match up fairly nicely. Only thing different in mine is a skating rink at the bottom of the "hole"

Heh Somebody once suggested that once we replace all the 'ice' with actual water in the Age we keep one of the smaller blue courtyards as a frozen lake, that would be fun.

I was thinking of making a .blend file with just the sun lamp and the animation, and then releasing it so that each shell could import it if they wished.

That's a very good idea.

The .blend file for the city (district walls, wavesets, spawn points, sun light, softvolumes, etc) can be downloaded from https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B1n-us ... VlZjNiMjkz

I don't need my brain to hurt tonight; I'll give it a look tomorrow.