Guild of Writers

And I thought the first complain would be the ugly palm tree billboard on top of the cliff...

Don't be too hard on yourself, billboard textures of that kind are actually not that easy to make.. What really bugged me is the parts where the texture is obviously mirrored (not sure if that is the texture or the UV mapping)

they require either real-time shadow casting (which is slow and ugly),

Well that was slow back when Uru was 1st released, but these days it's not so much of a problem. (Unless you haven't upgraded your computer in the last 10 years ). They are still pretty ugly though, at compared to other current games.

swimming avatars don't follow the movement of waves, unfortunately,

I remember thinking about that one day and coming to the conclusion that with a lot of work it might be possible to replicate the waveset code & settings in python and use that to offset the avatar's position (or the swimming plane?). But that's mostly an uninformed guess on my part.

Yeah, as I said, visuals weren't the goal at first. It took me the best part of two days to put together the interface, and two more days to build the area. This is actually fast work, but I didn't do much else during these days...

Well that's pretty decent for a first Age done in 4 days.

Yeah!!! I found it!!! ... This is a neat feature, I'd say classy even, and of course fun ... Wow!!! ...

I wonder why I didn't see it before ... maybe it's too late and too hot here lol ... Awesome stuff, however, thank you, Sirius ...

Any chance we could get some KI images? I don't have URU currently installed on my new computer, but I'd love to see the age. I've been waiting for Sirius to showcase his writing skills he's been building in the background for a long time.

Aloys wrote:Don't be too hard on yourself, billboard textures of that kind are actually not that easy to make.. What really bugged me is the parts where the texture is obviously mirrored (not sure if that is the texture or the UV mapping)

Good catch. I mirrored it in the UV because it's completely un-tileable. The height of the trees is uneven, and the tallest tree is cut by the edge of the image. Mirroring makes it feel a bit more natural.

Aloys wrote:Well that was slow back when Uru was 1st released, but these days it's not so much of a problem. (Unless you haven't upgraded your computer in the last 10 years ). They are still pretty ugly though, at compared to other current games.

Well, the way PyPRP was doing things, it's still slow and the greatest source of lag in Fan-Ages (even when a single object casts shadows).
But maybe that's because PyPRP wasn't generating the SpaceTree optimization thing, which Korman does - so maybe we can get away with using it more often (Gira uses it for some objects, and I can't notice any lag in the Age). Still, it's definitely not the same shadowing you see in modern games, which can shade the canopy of a forest scene in real-time.
Oh, and the reason shadows are so ugly... is that Cyan never configured the smoothing properly (maybe for performance reasons).

As for replicating the waveset code in Python: unfortunately, I doubt it would work. The code is too complex and too random, it would never be in sync with the visuals

janaba wrote:Yeah!!! I found it!!! ... This is a neat feature, I'd say classy even, and of course fun ... Wow!!! ...

Glad you like it !

cskid13 wrote:Any chance we could get some KI images? I don't have URU currently installed on my new computer, but I'd love to see the age. I've been waiting for Sirius to showcase his writing skills he's been building in the background for a long time.

Wow, thanks ! I'll see about uploading some pictures somewhere...
Edit: here !

Great gallery, Sirius, and you've even posted 'the feature' ...

I have taken some pictures too and just uploaded a few of them, and I have now additionally added 'the feature' pictures, though without visible alterations ... Enjoy ...

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under water






the 'turtle stone'






and ... 'the feature'






Looks great, Sirius! I look forward to reinstalling URU so I can visit it myself.

The age is available on DI now, and will be on UAM soon. Let's see if your special feature works on Shards...

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Speaking of which, the moment I touched the "Height" control, the water disappeared and was never seen again.

That's awesome! Is this download for PotS or MOULa?
Ah, I see a sum file. I suppose the creaky PotS it is! You should do a double-export so we can play it on the better engine.

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Great demonstration here, and I love the live waveset editor. I had forgotten about those python bindings, so it was surprising to see it work. I accidentally made a tsunami...

Sirius wrote:As for replicating the waveset code in Python: unfortunately, I doubt it would work. The code is too complex and too random, it would never be in sync with the visuals

I suspect the best way to do this is to allow the swim region code to connect with the waveset code, but I dread looking at the parts of the engine responsible for this. Still, it could be done (and really needs to be, since ideally people should be using wavesets for most water -- including swimmable).

Mod Note: added spoiler tag

Maybe we could drop the spoiler tags at this point in the topic ? It will make writing easier for everyone

Diafero wrote:The age is available on DI now, and will be on UAM soon. Let's see if your special feature works on Shards...

Cool, thanks ! It should work without problem, I don't think anything is synced (which means modifications to the wavesets won't be visible by other persons, though that's no big deal).

Anyway, I fixed the issue with most transparent textures, indeed I just forgot about the passindex. But there are still some artefacts on some leaves (even with high alpha testing), and I can't get rid of it
I tried -again- to remove partially transparent pixels in Gimp, but it had no effect. It only affects the leaves, everything else is fine.

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That's still much better than it was before, and much less noticeable too.

Deledrius wrote:Ah, I see a sum file. I suppose the creaky PotS it is! You should do a double-export so we can play it on the better engine.

Can't, the whole interface is a tweaked version of the PotS KI, and the PRP containing sound emitters was made in PyPRP. But maybe it could simply be ran through Transfusion ?
(I'm so used to testing on PotS, I completely forgot about a MOUL version, sorry)

Deledrius wrote:I suspect the best way to do this is to allow the swim region code to connect with the waveset code, but I dread looking at the parts of the engine responsible for this

Especially if we take into account the fact that waves should create local swim currents, pushing the avatar towards the shore...
For now, I think I'll keep the bigger waves for non-swimmable water bodies...

I wonder, though, isn't there already a way to have collisions block kickables but not avatars ? (I know regions can make the difference between the two, but I'm not sure if colliders can) Would be fun if we could have a floating beach ball - or at least prevent it from rolling underwater.

Deledrius wrote:I accidentally made a tsunami...

Didn't we all ?

Oh, and for those who may have missed it - this is my guide to understanding wavesets, which I did a while ago.
It also contains links to three videos of other water settings I experimented with (I added a third recently) - the tsunamis you can create in Denkasen aren't that impressive compared to what you can actually do with a bit of tinkering...

Sirius wrote:Maybe we could drop the spoiler tags at this point in the topic ? It will make writing easier for everyone

I didn't even think to add them to mine since it was already being discussed... whoops.

Sirius wrote:

Deledrius wrote:Ah, I see a sum file. I suppose the creaky PotS it is! You should do a double-export so we can play it on the better engine.

Can't, the whole interface is a tweaked version of the PotS KI, and the PRP containing sound emitters was made in PyPRP. But maybe it could simply be ran through Transfusion ?
(I'm so used to testing on PotS, I completely forgot about a MOUL version, sorry)

Heh, I'm the opposite. I rely heavily on the developer console we have in MOULa to debug Age building (and the better flymode and independent camera mode), and the fact that we can launch the engine directly into the Age I'm testing makes it so much nicer! The KI hacks might not work the same though, since the KI was made drastically different between games. OTOH you can probably more easily make a custom interface (like the Jalak one), but that's not as convenient for quick prototyping as using something that exists and co-opting it as you did.

Sirius wrote:

Deledrius wrote:I suspect the best way to do this is to allow the swim region code to connect with the waveset code, but I dread looking at the parts of the engine responsible for this

Especially if we take into account the fact that waves should create local swim currents, pushing the avatar towards the shore...
For now, I think I'll keep the bigger waves for non-swimmable water bodies...

I wonder, though, isn't there already a way to have collisions block kickables but not avatars ? (I know regions can make the difference between the two, but I'm not sure if colliders can) Would be fun if we could have a floating beach ball - or at least prevent it from rolling underwater.

Collisions can be for Avatars, Kickables, or both, AFAIK. Also, I just recalled that Paradox mentioned Waveset Buoys before, and lo: plWaveSet7.h#L214 a Waveset can have a list of SceneObjects that are buoys. This should yield some interesting experiments, should you wish to undertake it...