05.02.08 -- Possible future?

[Aloys]

05.02.08 -- Possible future?

~ You make projects, start working, and then the sky falls on your head..

I noticed that while I've been very busy with Age creation (especially with Ahra Pahts) my last entry in this journal was written over a year ago. It talked about how I worked on something to get away from my work on Ahra Pahts, and amusingly today I come to write about that same topic. ...Or rather I was going to write about this. But then some bomb was dropped yesterday and many plans had to be thrown out the window...

This is actually what prompts me to write today. To try and show some of the potential that may or may not ever see the light of day, depending on what happens in the next few weeks... I had written most of this text a while ago already, but the recent events make me think now is the right time to post it.

(This will be one of those never-ending self-centered blog-like posts. And it won't even include a single screenshot. You are warned, read at your own risks.)

I've been working on and off for two years on Ahra Pahts and I haven't had the time to actually complete any other Age... But I do have other Ages in mind of course, and actually have done some work on some of them. (nothing worth showing at this point though, especially because it would be full of spoilers). Those Ages are not vague projects or simple ideas, they are solid projects, real Ages, that I intended to complete after Ahra Pahts; most of them already have some precise maps and a backstory. This post exposes some of those projects, to show some of the potential and the dedication that some people put in their work, in their Uru Ages, and how much that could contribute to that game. I have an over-arching story going on for most of these Ages, although it's nothing too evolved, it is just here to make it all feel more cohesive and more real.

Ahra Pahts is my first complete Age (although it's not totally complete yet), and it's not of the greatest quality in my opinion; it is decent by most standards, but it could be better. It is a huge Age and I can't give it as much polish as I could for smaller Ages. So I can only let you imagine what the final quality of these other Ages could be. But then again it's not only about the quality, but also about the work and the dedication that can go in those Ages and how they could contribute to Uru. All of which might, or might not, go to waste starting April 4.

On to the Ages...


- Islet
I actually posted about that project in my previous journal entry from last year ( link ). I haven't touched it since, but I grew to like that small Age more and more. Although the story might have to be changed (it included some D'ni elements) the Age as a whole is worth creating.

- 'Hood'
This is actually the very first serious Age I worked on in late 2005 when the first tools were released. As the name imply this is a D'ni neighbourhood-like place. I litterally fell in love at first sight with Bevin when I saw it; it represented so many things I loved that I knew the second we would be able to craft Ages I would start working on a hood; so I did. Actually it was meant to be an actual D'ni hood, until I started understanding that real D'ni Ages wouldn't be a good idea. So it became a simple 'Hood-like' place, similar kind of architecture, in the middle of a large cavern, complete with a glowing lake.
While it is a hood and it is essentially a meeting place it is also focused on games and various fun activities. It even has several heek tables. (I'm not sure I'll be able to keep those though..) The layout for this place has been started from scratch several times, and I think I pretty much have it done now. It's not very big; it's a hood (barely larger than the actual D'ni hoods) but it'll still require significant amounts of time to create. Because there won't be any real 'spoilers' for this Age I might develop it 'publicly'; which I probably won't do for my other Ages. I did it for Ahra because it made sense, but I'd rather see people completely discover the other Ages..

- Terrasses
This Age is.. it wasn't even an Age at first. Long story short, it's something that started as an improvised abstract drawing very long ago, even before I knew what Myst was, and as such I didn't consider that place to be an 'Age'. Although it essentially is: it's a self-contained place in the middle of nowhere.. yeah that looks like an Age. It's probably my most personal Age, it's a very strange place I guess, maybe even cold; but I'm not objective. At any rate I started working on it and actually almost completed the modelling several years ago but then my hard drive died and I lost all the files. I'm glad I still have the original drawing. As the name suggest it's essentially a set of man-made intertwined stone surfaces floating in the middle of nowhere (that might not sound too exciting, I know, but it is a personal project..)

- Skydome
It's one of those projects that are born by accident. Over a year ago while testing various stuff for Uru I accidentally discovered a wonderfull gameplay trick, that I knew had to be turned into a full-blown Age. Which is difficult because I have plenty of gameplay ideas for the Age but no story or even visuals. Actually I have a 'backstory' (which is essentially dictated by the gameplay) but nothing more yet. Still, this gameplay has so much potential and is something so unusual and fun I really have to do something out of it. At some point I thought I should just do a mini-Age out of it (maybe even a Shell in Ahra Pahts) where we could just enjoy this gameplay for fun. But I realized this fun had to be deserved. So if I complete it one of these days let me tell you that there will be some devious puzzles before you can get to the fun part of the Age... In fact of all the Ages I have here, it is one of the few that looked like a 'complete' Age (backstory, visuals, puzzles) right from the start; and not a simple empty place to wander in. Which makes me want even more to complete it. But to succeed it will need to have a big and complex layout (something around the size of Garrison), and the help of a skilled (and patient) programmer. That'll be a long and difficult project.. (Now I only hope no-one finds that trick and do an Age out of it or that will totally defeat the surprise.) This Age features lots of caverns, tunnels, pipes, gas, mechanical puzzles; and will take place underground. I can't wait to have six months ahead of me and a whole team to develop it. wait...

- Didanka
This is what is sometimes called a home Age, or a personnal Age (but that term is now synonym with Relto). It's also one of those projects that hang around for years, I worked on it on and off but it never seemed to go anywhere.. It ended up being more of a concept than an actual solid project. Recently I finally found the proper design direction to take for this Age, and sketches and plans have started pourring like there was no tomorrow. This Age will be a cold, wet, sunny mess. It will feature lots of rocks, wind, water, clifs, and a very peculiar underground architecture mingling insides and outsides, and natural versus man-made.. Also because it is a home Age and a long running-project it will be central to the over-arching story of these Ages.

- The Waterhole Age
For this Age I focused on story over visuals. I focused so much on story that there are no visuals at all; this Age belong to the text-only category. It started as a writing excercise and ended being a 16 pages long journal that I did over a week or so. It's essentially complete, only need to adjust a few details of the story to make sure it's in line with the other Ages. The story of this particular Age is essentially about beginnings and failures, it revolves around a surface explorer who take his first steps in Writing, and write one of his first Ages. Given this is only a journal, it will have to go in one of the other Ages.


That's 5 Ages, ranging from small to quite large, and a journal-only Age. That's a lot of work ahead, but it's not like I intend to have those ready for next month, and more important, I had no idea Uru was going to stop all of a sudden. So, what will happen? Well that's a question for Cyan. If Uru continues in a form or another (Until Uru?) my work will most likely continue, if not, then I don't know. Scrapping litterally years of work and hope would sure seem like a huge waste, but it's too early to decide anything.

Like everyone at this point I'm waiting to hear from Cyan.

[pappou]

Thanks, Aloys, for letting me see a bit of your thinking processes. I, who know you the least and who am so far from real age building, can now pick out from your five agelets something of what makes Ahra Pahts tick.

For me all things grow out of the soil -- not just our vegetables and geosynclines, but culture and individual peculiarities. Thus, all things are revealed, to some extent, in the 'plan' – or more correctly, the 'ground plan section'. It is in this light that i have wondered about your fractal geometry as the foundation to Ahra Pahts (i mentioned this just bit somewhere in the recent past).

So, if you ever decide that it might amuse you, i would like to hear more of your thinking on fractals as the basis for everything which will happen in Ahra Pahts. [Do you use them in any other ages?]

[Aloys]

Amusingly, having Ahra Pahts based off a fractal was not my idea. (It was someone named Dustin who left long ago). But I appproved the idea because it totally made sense for that Age, so I started working from that. Unfortunately, soon I started regretting that idea because while it has a certain beauty to it, and it was usefull to have the city structure set up quickly, it makes the city a little too repetitive and too perfect looking. If this is a place people are supposed to live in it needs to evolve a bit away from that 'perfect' fractal basis and find a way of its on. What I find interesting in Ahra is that it has this regular, almost perfect structure, but it will only serve as a basis for other things (shells) that will evolve in totally unpredictable ways.. I find that association of regularity and unpredictability quite fascinating.
What I like about fractals, as you mention, is that you can grow something big and deeply complex out of a small seed. While I don't plan to use fractals as a visual aid for any of my other Ages, I guess I could say I tend to create some of them using a thinking process very akin to fractals.
One of the other Ages I mention (Terrasses) is a good example of that. It is a series of more or less geometric shapes floating in space. What is interesting is the process I used to create it. Long ago I did an abstract drawing, I drew a series of geometric shapes overlapping and selectively erased some of them to end up with something more complex. (similar to the process used for the Narayan symbols in M3:Exile) I then started writing an IC story (that may end up in a journal) which sort of describes the process the Writer used to literrally grow this Age out of living stones who expands and intersects in specific spots to reproduce those geometric shapes. Which is sort of similar to how fractals grow and evolve using precise mathematical rules.

[pappou]

It is in keeping with your story of age making (above) that you mention the writing aspect in the context of the fractal plan. What i mean is that all along you have maintained the necessity to keep track of the 'big picture', as they say.

One of my best friends, one of the really good architectural designers in America, was drawn to using fractals several years ago. I know exactly why. Professional designers consume so much material that they become gourmands for new ideas – then, unhappily, they often drift into gluttony. I'm not sure how far in this direction my friend traveled, but when one is in that stage of idea consumption, gluttony is never very far away. I knew another architectural designer with SOM who, years ago, became a fractal freak when his batteries began to dry up. Unhappily, it did not help him that much.

The reason I mention this is because writers go through the same process. Ideas are happened upon from without. They go to great lengths to capture small details and large concepts, because there is always that fear that they may dry up. Every writer comes up against it; it is called the 'writing block', but what it means is that they are not making contact with those inceptions from which stories grow.

Musicians are subject to it; painters are beset by the need for an emergent idea (but painters work so hard on an idea – painting it this way, changing it that, on and on, that one decent idea lasts a long time. Even table fork designers must seek the nascent notion for a new pattern from without.

It is in this light – this need for the new notion – that i have spoken on this forum of the development of the ground plan. I knew for my own work that when my good friend launched into fractals, that that would not help me. I looked at his fractals, enjoyed them at first, and then i grew to despise them for their predictability; it were as if they, the fractal 'designs', had to camouflage their predictability under all that roughage.

I am happy to hear that fractals are not a way of life with you.