Descent

[Aloys]

Oooookay.
So, soon (hopefully) we will be able to do whatever we want of MOUl and we all know what that means: Descent!
Going from the Cleft to D'ni seamlessly; through the volcano, through the Shaft, the Tunnels, the Lava Room, the South Gate etc and finally to the Cavern. The life long Myst/Uru community come true.

It is way too early to talk about this yet, as we lack many crucial informations, some of which may simply make this project impossible, but even if it doesn't happen, we'll still have some fun with it.. (Even RAWA's current guidelines would prevent it, but let's ignore that fact for now and have some fun daydreaming and brainstorming)

So: Descent.

What would it take to do it?
Would it be even possible at all technically speaking? (It would be one *big* Age...).
What should be included? (while we do have a good deal of info about it we are also lacking some, and a good amount of design work would be needed).
And how should it be done? (obviously a single person can't do this, so we'd need a whole team and some serious organization).

Obviously our best starting point for this is Aitrus' map from BoT ( here). However I was looking for some numbers to get a more precise idea of the amount of work (length of the whole journey, travelling time etc) and couldn't find any. All I can remember is that the whole journey took several days to Atrus, and that the Shaft itself is 3 about miles high. Maybe with that single number and the map we could extrapolate a rough idea of the whole journey length?. (why isn't D'ni available in Google Maps seriously?..)

What are some of your idea/comments about this?
That would, by far, be the biggest project of all, but also the most exciting..

[Trylon]

I think that this would be a project the cartographers could be a serious help with.
It's a great idea though.

[Aloys]

Something I forgot to mention: the legal aspect. A good deal of the existing Descend content (Shaft etc) is part of Myst5 not Uru, and even if it would be part of Uru we couldn't distribute it freely. So we cannot (and should not) include (or worse: modify) existing content. And that means not changing the existing EoA Shaft puzzles. Although that's not the most important right now.
Back to the brainstorming.

I think that this would be a project the cartographers could be a serious help with.

I always thought that the GoC's work should come after Ages are done. Cartographying is something you do when a place already exists, else it's called designing. Obviously everyone is free (and welcome) to help design Ages, but I just think that shouldn't fall under the official banner of the GoC.
But that's more of a semantical discussion than anything.

[Tweek]

I posted my thoughts about the opening area of uru a while back here;

http://grey-skies.net/games/concept-uru-live-beginning

Some food for thought maybe.

I have been thinking for some time about the descent section.

[GPNMilano]

Something I forgot to mention: the legal aspect. A good deal of the existing Descend content (Shaft etc) is part of Myst5 not Uru, and even if it would be part of Uru we couldn't distribute it freely. So we cannot (and should not) include (or worse: modify) existing content. And that means not changing the existing EoA Shaft puzzles. Although that's not the most important right now.
Back to the brainstorming.

Heh Aloys, if you hadn't mentioned this it would already be nearly done.

In my offline version I took Descent from Myst V, merging it with the Cleft. Then I chopped off Tiana's cave and the caldera from Descent, and left it in the Cleft. While removing those two PRPs entirely from Descent's converted Myst V files.

Put up a blockade of rubble in both new prp files, and exported them. One for Descent, one for the Cleft. And in the Cleft version there's a bahro stone, amidst the rubble of the collapsed tunnel/cave that links you to DescentMystV, unto the other side of the rubble.

All that was left was to create the lavaflow, tunnels and south gate PRPs for Descent. I started on the south gate but then put it aside. I wanted to have a "ferry ride" from the southgate, where you can see the city in the distance, and the ferry would be a subworld that once you started, animated and brought you to the city where you'd "fake link" after passing under the arch, and when you were done loading, would arrive at the ferry terminal link in point.

I honestly don't see the problem, from a legal standpoint, of using the Myst V content as a starting point. Kveer from MOUL was just a converted version of the Myst V version. I'm pretty sure the rights to the Myst V content passed this year back to Cyan. It's just a matter of sitting down and asking them "can we do this if we use our copies of Myst V" it would just mean breaking your EULA. Drizzle can convert the Myst V ages to POTS, and also ADD new prps to these files. Little work and it would be entirely possible to do this without distributing a single Myst V file.

[Aloys]

I know about your project, technically speaking it's great. And I'll try to follow your method whenever I have enough free time (I still haven't gotten around to convert all the EoA Ages..).

I honestly don't see the problem, from a legal standpoint, of using the Myst V content as a starting point.

We can't distribute those Prps, so that means we either need to write a very long tutorial or we must create a complex patcher.. (I even seem to recall you mentionned it previously).

As for the content creation part, the real problem is the whole 'Tunnels' section. They are several miles long and makes for 90% of the whole Descent. And if we want to have the whole Descent we need them. That is what is really problematic as we'd have to create everything from scratch. A quick look at Aitrus' map gives us an idea of the huge amount of work..

I'm one of those people who would really love to make the whole trip and wouldn't mind spend a whole day in the game to reach D'ni on foot (or even several days.)
When I was in College I had a friend who was a big player of Flight Simulator. One monday morning he showed up looking really tired, so I asked him what was wrong.. And he told me that he had spent the *whole* night at his computer 'flying' from Paris to New York over the Atlantic ocean in real time with a friend as a co-pilot. The whole night, twelve hours of virtual flight. Sitting in front of his computer staring at clouds and an endless blue plane of sea, checking his flight instruments, measuring the wind, checking his radar and maps, working with his co-pilot over the internet.. That day many people who heard the story found that a big waste of time and not a very fun thing to do; personally I found that quite fascinating. And I'm sure spending a whole day exploring the maze of those D'ni tunnels and caves would be a very exciting thing to do as well. (possibly even more exciting in some aspects)

[Tweek]

I honestly don't see the problem, from a legal standpoint, of using the Myst V content as a starting point. Kveer from MOUL was just a converted version of the Myst V version. I'm pretty sure the rights to the Myst V content passed this year back to Cyan. It's just a matter of sitting down and asking them "can we do this if we use our copies of Myst V" it would just mean breaking your EULA. Drizzle can convert the Myst V ages to POTS, and also ADD new prps to these files. Little work and it would be entirely possible to do this without distributing a single Myst V file.

There is a legal issue here, K'veer was in MOUL because it had already been made for Uru Live back in the day, it was in a kind of loop hole so to speak. Contrary to popular belief Myst V did not pass back to Cyan this year, the 2008 thing was about licensing of the Myst franchise IIRC.

Myst V is a different kettle of fish.

Doing it without distrubuting a single Myst V file would be a better path to take if you were going to do it anyway. However I'm with Aloys on the fact that I'd like to walk the entire trip down, even if it took a few days to do so.

[Aloys]

Yesterday to get away a bit from the chaos at the MOUL forum I quickly put together a small model using the Aitrus map to study the scale of the whole thing.. This isn't easy to do as the map is more of an 'artistic' representation than a precise blueprint. In particular there is no indication of scale.. (although I guess the lines emanating from Aegura use the GZ coordinates, but I'm not too proficient with those )

The cylinder in the upper right is the Great Shaft, I used the UruCC version as a reference (I haven't yet imported the EoA version), and the volcano comes from the Cleft. As you can see there is a serious scale issue, the Shaft is too small, same thing for the volcano. To check I imported the City in there, and it's around 10 times too big; so I guess my whole scene is at least 10 times to small. (The problem is think comes from the fact that I use the UruCC Shaft as a scale reference but I heard it's much too small compared to the EoA version, that throw my whole scale away.. -- that and the fact that the map may not be to scale in the first place). So it's a bit of a mess but a usefull tool nonetheless.
If anyone is interested I put the Blender scene here (doesn't contain any actual Uru Cyan assets)

[Nadnerb]

Very nice mockup.

As for the question of accuracy, the map conflicts with the MystV layout, but speaking technically, MystV is theoretically non-canon. (Due to being a "myst" game and all, rather than Uru, which Cyan has opted to consider the Last Word On Nearly Everything)

[Jojon]

Neat-o!

I take it we wouldn't have access to Aitrus' notebook? Just to make the journey a bit more interesting, I mean... :7