by matthornb » Sun Jun 14, 2009 6:23 pm
Well, Breldur is really quite impressive. You've raised the bar for Uru age designers.
I love that it's so detailed; it looks great and your skills as a 3d artist are obvious.
Breldur is one of the few Uru fan ages that looks like it could've been made by Cyan.
But not only is it detailed, it's big. I love seeing big worlds in Uru, not just little ones. I think we could definitely have a new wave of age designs that surpass Cyan's original work (in some respects) as there's no reason we couldn't push for higher polygon counts, used efficiently, and higher-resolution textures to make worlds that feel more real than those that came before.
Uru is a game that's now six years old. I don't see why we couldn't push for graphics detail twice the amount we've traditionally seen in Cyan's Uru ages, as well as a much larger area per age. Ahra Pahts proved that Uru could dynamically load areas of a world, so blend that technique with higher polycounts and what do you have? Well, you have the possibility of Riven, or an age of similar size and detail, in Uru. The problem, of course, is that it takes an enormous amount of work to do something like that, but it's not impossible.
In any case, enough time has passed that I imagine most Myst fans have higher system specs than they need to play Uru, and will be able to handle worlds that are a bit larger or more detailed than the ones in Uru Prime. That's exactly what Breldur is. It's a larger-than-usual Uru world. And that's fantastic.
In any case, I want to make content for Uru. I did some technical tests and they were a resounding success; in a month or so you may see my first contribution to the UCC UCC (Uru: Complete Chronicles User Created Content) movement, i.e. the temple environment I've posted early images of elsewhere.
After that I've been thinking about doing a couple of new ages, small but good quality. One is like a crystalline/ice lattice suspended in a multicolored atmosphere (no glowing crystals, don't worry)
The other is an overgrown jungle age. I think a place densely crammed with foliage, like Myst 4's Haven, has been sorely lacking in Uru. We have Eders, yes, but they're all essentially planned, manicured gardens instead of wild jungles. The only wild jungle we have is Negilahn, and you can't actually walk around in it. So I'd like to make a crazy overgrown jungle with loads of weird growing things.
When will these be done? I don't know. I'm still also working on a whole range of movies, games, etc, so things tend to go a bit slow on any one project.
BTW, do any of you know what the rules are for Uru texture resolution? Is it multiples of 2 (512X512, 256X512, 512X1024, etc) or are the texture resolutions in Plasma more flexible? Also, what's the highest texture resolution that Uru can handle without having problems, and is this limit set by the engine or does it vary from computer to computer? If, for instance, I wanted to make an extensive terrain for an entire age, and map a single texture onto it, would Uru accept 2048X2048 or even 4096X4096 on that object or would this cause problems?
Anyway, great stuff, and it gives me more hope for Uru's future. There was a Genesis project going a while ago, and part of its goal was to make a world that truly shows how great a fan-run Uru can be. Well, Genesis isn't around now, but Breldur is, and Breldur looks like it may become the proof-of-concept that Genesis only aspired to be.
So great job! We'll be eagerly anticipating the finished version.
