Night Time

[andylegate]

I'm having fun learning how to use the new plugin. Here's some screen shots of my Training Age Camp Bravo at night. This will be the Maintainer's 2nd Training Age, then I'll be making a 3rd completely different and from scratch of course.

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and

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[D'Lanor]

That looks amazing!

It would be interesting to combine your day and night versions of Camp Bravo into one age. Then you could load the appropriate page depending on the time of day (or another variable).

The dry and rainy cleft work this way. They are both in the same age but only one of the pages loads. There is a flag in the *.age file that tells the game not to load certain pages. These pages have a ,1 at the end. For the Cleft it looks like this:

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Page=Cleft,1,1
Page=Desert,0,1
Page=tmnaDesert,35,1


And then Cyan uses Python to determine which page to load. The relevant code snippet:

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        pages = []
        if loadTomahna:
            pages += ['Cleft',
             'tmnaDesert']
        else:
            pages += ['Desert',
             'Cleft']
        PtPageInNode(pages)


How they determine the loadTomahna variable is not important here, but this is the general principle to load (or unload with PtPageOutNode) pages on the fly.

Just tossing an idea around here (which perhaps should be in the programmers section...).

[andylegate]

Cool though! I actually love that idea, having 2 pages in a book, instead of seperate Ages.....

[Marcello]

Sounds like a trick to write a tutorial about! Will come in handy in many situations. Is this how Kemo works? With the rain and clouds and all?

[Chacal]

No, Kemo is dynamic, it changes while you are in the Age, not when you load it.
Clouds and rain are probably moving or rotating textures, I haven't looked yet.

[Nadnerb]

Is Minkata done this way as well, or does it use a different type of page swapping mechanism?

[D'Lanor]

Yes, Minkata is done this way. In a single player age like the Cleft this is not very hard to do. In multiplayer ages additional routines must be implemented to sync things between players.

I think I could set this up so that it works like Minkata. Triggered by a clickable perhaps. A time check would also work but the transition will always be abrupt when not done at age loading, even when masked with a fade to black.

[andylegate]

What would be neat is the time change, like in Eder Gira, sun rising, setting, moon rising and setting.

But......Camp Bravo Day time is missing the lamp posts...hehehe........So that would look kinda funny.

[Erik]

Perhaps you could also generate a random number each time you link that determines whether the Age is loaded in daylight or night time... That would only be possible in single-player form, if it is possible at all. (Or the scripts needs to check whether there is someone in the Age already and use the time that person is using, but I guess that's too advanced for what we know of Age Building now)

[Paradox]

Is Minkata done this way as well, or does it use a different type of page swapping mechanism?

Minkata uses Relevancy Regions much the same way as the city. When the toggle is clicked, it switches the relevancy regions.

The Cleft is unique because it will never have more than one player, so you don't have to worry about the locations of other players and can actually just load a separate .prp file and be done with it.
Minkata could have 15 other players running around in various locations. The trick is that it only changes what is rendered, not unloading or loading any new pages, so positions are saved.