New Age under construction : "Tsaew"

[Aloys]

The recent release of the new export plugin prompts me to look at some of my old Ages projects that were 'dormant' (cough) and resurrect one of them. As a matter of circumstances I find myself on vacation these next couple weeks (these days being the summer and all) and I was looking for a project to work on..

Let me introduce: Tsaew. Aka: The Smallest Age Ever Written. (yes, I'm terrible at names). Quick bit of background on this project: it started in 2008, as I was working on Ahra Paths, aka: The Largest Age Ever Written. I was exhausted from working on such a huge project, and I thought doing the exact opposite would be fun. Long story short, that Age grew up and eventually connected to other Age ideas I had lying around at the time, and over the course of a couple months I had a storyline spanning 4 solid Ages, enough to build a small new add-on for Uru. Some of these, including this one, actually saw quite a bit of work go into them. But since it turned so big the whole thing ended up more or less collapsing under its own weight (as these projects tend to do). And while I touched some of that now and then over the years it mostly layed dormant. Time to change that.

Here is a screenshot from the Blender scene as it currently stands:



Not a big place heh? You can see an avatar in the foregroud, where the linkin point is, to get a proper sense of scale. It may not be large but there's actually quite a bit going on here. Part of the idea with this Age was to see how much stuff I could cram in the smallest area possible..

What kind of work is left to do on it?

• The puzzle design is done,
• the modeling is essentially done (safe for a big tree and a few trinkets),
• the texturing is basically not done,
• same for the lighting. But this being a small Age that won't be too time-consuming.
• The real difficulty will be coding the puzzles and the eventual integration. Back then that was the main reason I stopped developping Ages.
• The third person camera work will also be tricky in such a small place, but that could be fun.
• Also all the puzzles and various interactive bits were developped with existing avatar animations in mind.
• The shader work, err.. I have no idea what's the current status of tools on that. One thing at a time. (it's probably an area where using 3dsMax and Cyan's plugin would be a big help, but for me Blender it will be)

Over the next couple weeks I'll use this Age to try the new plugin, and if it is indeed as simple to use as it looks (or at least simpler than good ol' Alcscript) I'll work to complete this Age and release it. That would mean the story would end on a big cliffhanger however; as it is part of a larger storyline. Not much I can do about that though.. Sort of developping the other Ages. One thing at a time.

First things first: getting a first basic Age working in Uru.. I was sure I had registered a sequence prefix for that Age back then (on the old Alcugs Wiki...), but poking around it appears I did not. Meh. Guess I'll use one of my other Age's prefix.. That is safe right? >_>

[Doobes]

Welcome back, Aloys! I've been helping Hoikas and crew test Korman from the start, and it's a lot more user-friendly than PyPRP, particularly the node system that replaces AlcScript. There's still a few key things that it needs, but it's very impressive so far.

I wrote up a wiki tutorial detailing a few key things when bringing an Age from PyPRP to Korman (and from Blender 2.49b to 2.74). You can find that here: https://www.guildofwriters.org/wiki/Korman:Updating_From_PyPRP

Hope that helps you along. The Age looks fantastic, by the way.

[Sirius]

I don't have much to say, except that it looks very nice ! Indeed, it's small, but I like how it spans vertically...
Puzzles shouldn't be a big challenge with Korman, hopefully. Lighting should be relatively easy too.
(BTW, what do you mean, by "shader work" ? Wavesets ? Or MOUL's grass shader, maybe ?)

[Aloys]

Thanks for the nice comments.

I've been helping Hoikas and crew test Korman from the start, and it's a lot more user-friendly than PyPRP, particularly the node system that replaces AlcScript. There's still a few key things that it needs, but it's very impressive so far.

I wrote up a wiki tutorial detailing a few key things when bringing an Age from PyPRP to Korman (and from Blender 2.49b to 2.74). You can find that here: https://www.guildofwriters.org/wiki/Kor ... From_PyPRP

Yes, I've started reading that yesterday; things have made some serious progress since PyPRP. And btw thanks for the documentation! That will save me (and everyone else) a lot of time.

(BTW, what do you mean, by "shader work" ? Wavesets ? Or MOUL's grass shader, maybe ?)

I will need animated shaders for the water (not actual wavesets though) and the clouds.. It's nothing too complex, but I'm not sure yet how I will make those: I haven't done that in a long time..

[Sirius]

I will need animated shaders for the water (not actual wavesets though) and the clouds.. It's nothing too complex, but I'm not sure yet how I will make those: I haven't done that in a long time..

Well, AFAIK right now the "best way" is the PyPRP way... Animate a texture on the mesh's surface, or use wavesets for water.
For fancier effects (mostly water), we could use particles, mesh deformation and bink (movie) textures, but they aren't supported yet. I guess they will be available eventually.
As for custom vertex or pixel shaders, well... I've yet to see anyone use custom shaders in his Age (I think they are available somehow, since it's an option in the layer properties, but I don't think anyone ever managed to use it).
But at least for your sea, I'm sure wavesets would totally look fine once properly configured... I've done a lot of toying with wavesets, and got some outstanding results. Check here if that interests you...

[Tsar Hoikas]

Custom shaders are impossible in Uru, unfortunately. The shader option in layers are for shader bytecode that has been precompiled into the engine.

[Sirius]

Ah, it's a shame. Would have been cool to be able to write custom shaders for some Ages (not that I know how to write even a simple shader, mind you).
Still, this means adding shaders to the engine would be possible for MOUL-based Shards ? It's better than nothing, I guess.

[Aloys]

Actually, being limited to a specific feature set is also a good thing as it makes sure that shaders for our Ages have a similar look to that of Cyan Ages.
As for what I require: nothing fancy; similar scrolling texture water and clouds as we have in most of Cyan's Ages. I do remember doing some of that in PyPRP.. But is that doable yet in Korman? I see texture animation referenced on the wiki, but I don't see anything yet about alpha transparency, stencils, layers, or other features that were part of PyPRP. I guess that hasn't been ported yet to Korman? or is it just not documented yet?

[Tsar Hoikas]

A ton of stuff is still undocumented. I know stencils are working though. Alpha transparency should be working however--you'll want to make sure that you use pass index to sort things properly though because Korman doesn't expose high alpha testing yet.

[Doobes]

similar scrolling texture water and clouds as we have in most of Cyan's Ages. I do remember doing some of that in PyPRP.. But is that doable yet in Korman?

Yep. While there's been trouble controlling the texture animation through responders to this point, autostarted/looped texture animations work just fine. You can animate the position and opacity of the texture.

I see texture animation referenced on the wiki, but I don't see anything yet about alpha transparency, stencils, layers, or other features that were part of PyPRP. I guess that hasn't been ported yet to Korman? or is it just not documented yet?

I've wanted to write up a tutorial on stencils, but I've been having troubles with 2.74's version of texture painting. Unless I'm missing something, they've made it far more complicated than it should be. Once I get that figured out, I'll probably start a Korman stencil tutorial.