Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

If you feel like you're up to the challenge of building your own Ages in Blender or 3ds Max, this is the place for you!

Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby Korovev » Fri Mar 10, 2017 6:25 am

dendwaler wrote:I don't need URU to give me that feeling back.

Thus justifying Cyan’s policy. Why should they hand over their I.P. to people who might at some point abandon it? Better keep full control on a storyline and environment they might or might not, one day, have the resources to further develop properly.
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby dendwaler » Fri Mar 10, 2017 6:37 am

Thus justifying Cyan’s policy. Why should they hand over their I.P. to people who might at some point abandon it? Better keep full control on a storyline and environment they might or might not, one day, have the resources to further develop properly.


yes i fully agree with that.

even more because its nearly impossible to do it as good as they did, and possibly still will do it, if they continue the saga.

Compare it with painters as Rembrandt or great composers. You can try to copy their style, but it won't be as good be valued as what they did.
Those who develop their own style are always in advantage and it even might be easier to stay close to your own abilities.
Those wonderfull Worlds are called " Ages" , because that is what it takes to build one.



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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby Sirius » Fri Mar 10, 2017 11:44 am

Christian Walther wrote:And I would even answer this question [...] by “Yes, because we had fun doing it.” That’s all that matters.

That's a very good point.
Although the question was not "Was it worth it", but "Is it worth it". But now that I think about it my previous post doesn't really express my idea correctly. What I mean by it is actually, will I do it again during the next years, considering Uru's current state ?
The answer is no. Plasma is not worth it. Only Cyan and the Intangibles are bound to Plasma. We don't get new content from either of them, and the way things are going on we won't for a long while.
Why is Plasma not worth it ? Because creating a Uru clone on another engine is actually a lot less work than was required to hack Plasma to be able to put fan-Ages on it in the first place. Comparatively, it's also harder to build new content on Plasma, and the result will always be inferior to what you can achieve with another engine.
Sure, starting from scratch is a step backward. But what's a step back when Plasma is already miles behind modern engines anyway ?
Besides, like Dendwaler said, you don't even need it to be Uru. You need it to have the Uru feel, so players feel at home in it (and since we're in a "home" metaphor, I might as well add switching engines is like moving to a new, bigger, better home, while keeping most of the original furniture).

(Note: all this is obviously just an opinion, it's just annoying to start every sentence with "I think".)

Korovev wrote:Thus justifying Cyan’s policy. Why should they hand over their I.P. to people who might at some point abandon it? Better keep full control on a storyline and environment they might or might not, one day, have the resources to further develop properly.

I never said they should. As for us abandoning it, weeeell, we're still here after all these years, soooo...
Either way, speaking of abandoning things.... Where have they been for the last few years ?
(just trolling, don't take it personally :) )
But I also agree with you and Dendwaler. I don't want anyone else than Cyan doing Cyan's work. Meaning I want the "official" Ages and storyline to be Cyan's.
Does that mean I'll spit on anything that comes from someone else ? No. That's the whole purpose of fan-Ages: use Cyan's framework (both in terms of game engine AND storyline AND gameplay) to create something new, that isn't quite Cyan, but is a whole world of its own, worthy of attention. I'll welcome any Myst-based fiction, even though I might not read it to the end.
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby Yali » Fri Mar 10, 2017 4:39 pm

Sirius, you summed up exactly my motivations for Project Devokan (Currently titled Ages). Like you said, it should "feel" like Uru yet leave the official canon for Cyan. This was my intention all along with Devokan and moving to Unreal. Reboot the Myst MMO with an improved Cavern and entirely new Ages and story.

I put up a Concepts section on the official Devokan site today. We're currently putting together our game proposal for Cyan (Since it uses the Myst and Uru IP.)

Also designed a new logo today and took out the "Myst" for trademark reasons (until Cyan says it's ok.)

AGES_Logo_small.png
New logo
AGES_Logo_small.png (29.84 KiB) Viewed 6787 times


Here's the official site: Devokan

I'd personally like to see the Myst and Uru community collaborate via Unreal. Unreal is a lot more intuitive than Plasma and the results are 1000 times more satisfactory. My small room took me just a few days to do (and I'm a beginner) and it looks near-Riven quality, whereas plugins for Plasma still have trouble meeting 2003 Uru standards since we're retrofitting Cyan's engine.

Also I want to see new stories set in the Myst universe with new characters and new Ages, not a continuation of Uru circa 2007 with the Bahro and Yeesha. With Devokan, recognizing the fan work of Tweek and others in creating expanded stories and new Age ideas and lore I want to design a new game around fan content and fan stories. I think this is something often overlooked that you can really maximize with tools such as Unreal.
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby zeke365 » Sun Mar 12, 2017 7:21 am

Personally, I would wait on the proposal for few reasons, Ages live is in premature state and a lot of fan projects have come and gone as I have seen and not easy work from what I can tell. I think you should first have your team built then started scratching away and have playable demo to show Cyan your work if you do plan to proposal, this way you have some proof of your work and not just a premature proposal. Something big to help Cyan understand your vision and whether they would allow you to do this or now. Here a couple of questions that I thought of that Cyan might ask you.

1.What makes this project different than the others and explain the differences.

2.How does this not infringe on Cyan IP or cannon and what separates it from it?

3.Why should Cyan allow you to create this project when so many fan projects have come and gone in the past?

4.How will you keep members active in the project without people leaving the project behind?

5.Do you have blueprints or layout of how the game works as well gameplay footage to show for?

6.How long of production will you need to make this vision come reality?

7.When is your end date of when you want to release it?

Second if you can get the intangebles, dirt, and openuru on board with your idea then you should be to go. This just something to think of before you go directly to Cyan and propose it.
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby Sirius » Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:50 pm

Wew ! So, work started on both Elodea and the Cathedral ! :D
Here is a smallish preview - mostly lighting experiments, it's still very far away from what it will look like in the end...
Show Spoiler


I barely scratched the surface though. Actually, most of my time is spent in Blender adjusting face normals and smoothing so meshes interact with light better. And cursing whenever I come across a double sided material :lol: (these look really bad in modern engines).
But the result is worth it. Those pictures use only dynamic lighting and shadows, nothing was baked yet (no fancy shaders either). It will look even better after making normalmaps, setting up material reflectivity correctly, and finally running Unity's automated baking.
The trees and grass in Elodea come from Unity's standard assets. I'll probably replace them with something more fitting of Elodea later. Unity make it incredibly easy to add those. You basically "paint" trees and grass onto the terrain :)

What else... Well, I'm pretty sure I'll add a day/night cycle to Elodea (possibly different weathers as well).
The Cathedral won't require a day/night cycle (wouldn't look good anyway), but with all the chandelier, candelabras and brasiers everywhere it should look stunning enough.
Oh, and I still have some of my partially finished Ages on my hard drive - might finish one and add it to the final game once the other two are nearing completion.
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby dendwaler » Fri Mar 24, 2017 10:46 am

Very nice for a first trial.!
I had troubles in the sideways of the cathedral with the many different spotlights there.
In Unreal the dynamic lights with overlap are limited to 4, but you can trick it with a lot of tweaking.
Anyway, its fun to do , but always far more work then you expect at first sight. :D
Those wonderfull Worlds are called " Ages" , because that is what it takes to build one.



Watch my latest Video Or even better..... watch the Cathedral's Complete Walkthrough made by Suleika!
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby Sirius » Sat Mar 25, 2017 10:27 am

denDwaler wrote:In Unreal the dynamic lights with overlap are limited to 4, but you can trick it with a lot of tweaking.

Yes, that light limit is standard for most graphic cards, because multiple lights are very expensive to compute - I hit the same limit very quickly with Unity.
However, there is a very easy way around it which doesn't involve modifying meshes: switch the render path to Deferred Shading (as opposed to the default Forward Shading).
The difference between Forward and Deferred is mostly boring under-the-hood technical programming. What's important is that Deferred shading can have as many lights as you want, however it does not support partial transparency (like stained glasses or translucent leaves), which will render wrong.
So, how to get the best of both worlds ? Well, in my case it's simple. I build the level in Deferred, which allows me to preview lighting correctly (like you see in those pictures). Then I let Unity bake the lighting - since the lights are baked into textures, those lights are no longer dynamic, and no longer count towards the 4 lights limits. Which means you can now switch back to Forward shading (which repairs transparency), and only the avatar or dynamic objects will be limited to 4 lights.

... But this doesn't apply to dynamic meshes, which require even more workarounds. It's a very complex topic !

Anyway, glad you like the result so far ! :D
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby Dulcamara » Sun Mar 26, 2017 2:51 am

Anyway, glad you like the result so far ! :D


I have no idea of Unity, but yes, I like the result. :-)
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Re: Poll: Fan Ages on another engine

Postby Deledrius » Sun Mar 26, 2017 9:12 am

Sirius wrote:So, how to get the best of both worlds ? Well, in my case it's simple. I build the level in Deferred, which allows me to preview lighting correctly (like you see in those pictures). Then I let Unity bake the lighting - since the lights are baked into textures, those lights are no longer dynamic, and no longer count towards the 4 lights limits. Which means you can now switch back to Forward shading (which repairs transparency), and only the avatar or dynamic objects will be limited to 4 lights.

... But this doesn't apply to dynamic meshes, which require even more workarounds. It's a very complex topic !

That's basically the same process which both PlasmaMax and Korman follow automatically. :)
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