Escher's Relativity is doable

[Wamduskasapa]

Before:
Calena enters the Age with her backpack full of crafting materials, tools, and seed for trees and plants.

After:
Calena worked the whole night until after sunrise, looks at her work, thinks about how much she could put for this on the invoice, and wonders where the hell she lost her backpack and the jacket.

Invoice? You mean we can charge for this!!!??? What's our hourly rate? I'm thinking something in the neighborhood of $ .02 USD per day. If we're lucky, someone might send us a donation .

Before: Calena's grandson prepares our avatar to go 'splorin. That means exploring in 9YO American speak. We enter the house carrying a backpack with all the necessities of life - candy bars, juice boxes, flash light, pocket knife and towelettes. We had no idea what we were getting into. It looked like a simple abandoned house when we first linked in. Then we stepped on this "thing". Next thing we know, the whole place is turning upside down and inside out! Grandson got sick and threw up in the grass. Being too afraid to step back on that "thing", we inched forward carefully. We were making progress when grandma accidentally stepped on another one of those contraption things and disappeared from sight. Grandma picks herself up off the floor and starts running in a frantic attempt to find grandson. She finally spots him on the other side of the house, then immediately panics when she realizes he appears to be walking straight up a wall!

"Grandson! Get off that wall, you're going to hurt yourself!" Grandson spots grandma and yells, "Hey, how are you hanging upside down like that? Can I do that too?" "No! Stay there and DON'T MOVE. I'll rescue you." Grandma rushes off to the rescue and falls off a ledge winding back up on her Relto. Grandson in the meantime is doing handstands and trying to figure out how to attach himself to the ceiling.

By the time grandma finds her way back to the house, grandson has realized that grandma is too old and senile to ever find him in this magical place, so he hides in the little house he found to enjoy his lunch of candy bars and juice. Then he decides it's time to play hide and seek. He had a great time leading grandma on a wild goose chase all throughout the magical house till he heard grandma say the dreaded words, "I'm going to tell your papa if you don't get back here!" Grandson reluctantly joins Grandma and they leave the house, though not before grandson tells grandma that when he grows up he's going to build a house just like this to live in .

After: Calena looks at her handiwork and decides the new landmarks are good. Now she can tell where the heck she is in this crazy house and the next time that kid takes me on a wild goose chase . . . .

Souds more like a storyboard for a Pixar of Dreamworks Movie

[dendwaler]

Its not completely ready yet, but i made the sofa!

[janaba]

Cool ...

[Calena]

Nice work denDwaler! Hmm . . . what would be fun is putting sit regions on that sofa. If it was going someplace normal I could easily do that myself. It's going into one of the giant subworlds Tach built, so I'm not certain whether or not it's possible for me to do. I'm discovering these aren't your average subworlds. Tach put some serious coding into this age. I do have an excellent plan though. Guess who's getting this blend file when I'm done with it . I'll send Karkadann all the game files, but it might be best if Tach inspected the .blend file before re-release anyhow.

The Penrose Stairs are in. I can set up the stair camera myself since it's in a normal area. I'm wondering where the camera region should be? I was originally thinking a rather large square around the stairs, but when I was in the age flying around it, the thought occured to me that it might work best if the camera region is limited to the stairs themselves. Then the camera wouldn't switch till the explorers started climbing the stairs. Any input here is appreciated.

The snow is in too. It came out quite nice I think. It actually looks like you're in snow . The different seasons turned out to be a good idea. Score one for Sirius!

Karkadann, if you want to put a book GUI in, I'll need the wording, any special graphic you want on the cover, font choice if you have one and especially where would you like me to put it?

[dendwaler]

Ok its finished now. i added the Ao Map.
Here is a view from the back side.



And i attached the Blendfile for Blender 2.49B.
When i did it right , the textures are packed into the file.

[tachzusamm]

Nice work, denDwaler, it looks good.

You missed to include some textures though.

Code: Select all

Image "Ao_Sofa.jpg.001" E:\Relativity\Textures\Ao_Sofa.jpg
Image "bekleding.jpg" bekleding.jpg
Image "sofa.jpg" e:\Relativity\Textures\sofa.jpg


Plus, I guess (not sure) you are still working with textures spreaded all over your different harddisks and different drive letters - as you did with Turtle Island.
This may work well for yourself, but when sharing objects, it would be kind if you could put all textures in a common folder. This folder is best named "textures" and should be located one folder below the blend file. Otherwise each user trying to open your package has to create exactly the same folders and drive letters you used to get the object right.
I think it's easier at your side to reassign texture locations than it is for those who try to re-use the file because the folders are not matching.

To pack all textures in a single folder:
a) File => External data => Pack into .blend file
b) Save the file as <project>_localpack.blend (maybe you can omit this step)
c) Re-open that file (omit too if you omitted b)
d) File => External data => Unpack into files... , choose "Use files in current directory" (this will create a sub-folder named "textures" and will pack all files into this folder, plus it will adjust all pathes in the objects)
e) File => External data => Make all paths relative
f) File => External data => Pack into .blend file (again, this times it uses the updated texture locations)
g) Save the file as <project>_texpack.blend

Keep in mind that this procedure is not an option for those who want to re-use your file, unless they create the exact folders. This is because "Make all paths relative" does not work with different drive letters.
Although it *should* work in theory, I had no luck with it in the past, so it would be really kind if you could do this before uploading the files. It makes it easier to import it.

[dendwaler]

Hi Tach,
back in business! good!

No,the files are better organised then it was in those days.

I have them all in a folder textures one higher in the treestructure then the Blendfile.
So basicly one can move the texture folder around because they have relative stettings.
You said that it could be a problem with different drives, but it is not.
You have to set the in the folder options the folder and drive number of the blend file, then the texture are relative to that one folder higher.


In the last file i forgot to pack 1 texture because it was inside a second material.

I changed it, should be ok now.
Besides that i packed it together with the texture folder inside the next file.

[Karkadann]

You might wanna try a camera region just a little bigger then the Penrose stairs, and see how that works.
With the Book GUI, heres what I had in mind,

Show Spoiler

feel free to do any editing you think is needed its just a quick list

Designer, Concept Art and Inspiration
M. C. Escher

Models and Texture
Dendwaler
Tachzusamm
Karkadann
Calena
Rhee
Corvus

Coding and Programming
Calena
Tachzusamm
Sirius
D'Lanor
Diafero

Music and Sound Effects
Fabioguar
Tachzusamm

Special Thanks To
Janaba
Deledrius
Aloys
The Myst Community
Cyan

I wanna make sure I didn't leave any one out

as far as the Graphic on the cover and the Font, what ever you think looks good

In the mean time, I found an interesting video on Escher's water fall
Its a bit of a spoiler, or perhaps more concept art who knows

Show Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyVXUYTJ1I4

[Sirius]

Can't wait to sit on this nice sofa ! And wander around this new version of Relativity, of course.

In the mean time, I found an interesting video on Escher's water fall
Its a bit of a spoiler, or perhaps more concept art who knows

Show Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyVXUYTJ1I4

I came across a website showing another way to fake it...

[Calena]

Still working . The sofa is in. I'm not certain why denDwaler sent the wall and AO textures along, though that was a very nice thing to do. The sofa is in a room with three windows and a door, so I had to bake the lighting to fit the scene. I did change the walls to mimic the plaster look, but grey wasn't a good option in the room. The sofa looks good!

I also re-built the Penrose Triangle and the stairs. I'm still busy taking care of details, but the very good news is that most of the lighting is done. Next up is the book and the little bit of other coding I still have to do. Lord willing, I'll have this ready to send to Tach and Karkadann in another week.

Karkadann, I love that you named Escher himself as the concept artist . That is very fitting.