Guild of Writers

Sirius wrote:At some point I'll probably make a topic dedicated to this importer, with a more recent version of the script and instructions on how to use it.

Thanks much for this, Sirius!
If I may make a request: it'd be very helpful to be able to import individual .prps rather than certain complete .ages!

TGMChrist wrote:Where I put the TMP_Textures?

Sorry - like Emor said, you should create it in the folder you import Ages from. For instance, if you're importing Uru/dat/city.age, this folder would be Uru/dat/TMP_Textures/

Emor D'ni Lap wrote:If I may make a request: it'd be very helpful to be able to import individual .prps rather than certain complete .ages!

Agreed. This might break cross-PRP references though, which is why I usually avoid it. But I'll probably add the option later on, since it's rather convenient.

Deledrius wrote:That's awesome! Why not host it on GitHub?

Hmm, several reasons, actually.
But to make it short, having it on Github makes me feel like I have to limit myself to "do things right" (by which I mean fix issues and merge pull requests ASAP, maintain a consistent coding style, work on it regularly, etc). I have a few Myst projects I'm working on and less motivation to work on them than I used to, so I'm avoiding anything that might feel like a chore and make me lose interest or focus in either one.
(Second reason is that I'm not fond of Github's privacy policy, and had to deal with one of their moderators who was a complete lunatic. Pity, since Github is still the "only best choice" to host code. Ah well...)
That doesn't mean I won't ever put the code on Github, but personally I don't feel like it's really necessary yet.

Anyway. Right now I'm working on the Unity PRP reader. At some point I'll probably switch projects again and resume working several hours a day on the importer like crazy. I'll see about adding stuff and writing a small howto at that time.

(in the meantime, I'm wondering if anyone will figure out why I called it "zero length zenith" )

Sirius wrote:

Emor D'ni Lap wrote:If I may make a request: it'd be very helpful to be able to import individual .prps rather than certain complete .ages!

Agreed. This might break cross-PRP references though, which is why I usually avoid it. But I'll probably add the option later on, since it's rather convenient.

If and when you do get around to this - and writing the tutorial you mentioned - would it be possible to offer some tips as to how we can avoid stepping in a big pile of cross-PRP reference-breaking?

(in the meantime, I'm wondering if anyone will figure out why I called it "zero length zenith" )

Please tell us it doesn't have anything to do with Minecraft?

Emor D'ni Lap wrote:If and when you do get around to this - and writing the tutorial you mentioned - would it be possible to offer some tips as to how we can avoid stepping in a big pile of cross-PRP reference-breaking?

I'll just make sure the importer always loads the full Age even if it's importing only a single PRP - since PRP loading is done by HSPlasma it should be quite fast. That should take care of materials and textures, which are the biggest problems. Parenting is another issue, but I don't remember cross-PRP parenting happening in any of Cyan's Ages, so we should be good.

Emor D'ni Lap wrote:Please tell us it doesn't have anything to do with Minecraft?

That I can't. But it's a Mystcraft reference, so still slightly on-topic, right ?
I considered finding a D'ni name but thought it would be stepping on Korman's toes for a much less used tool. I'm not really a big Minecraft player, but I did play Mystcraft for a while with friends - right when I started writing the importer. Mystcraft has decently fun Book writing mechanics, so I won't apologize However I can guarantee the importer will always do its best to avoid putting cubes everywhere when that's possible.

About cross-PRP references, I always wondered, how do you refer to a texture or material from a different PRP?
Let's say using Korman.

Uninformed guess: don't think too much about it, Korman will figure it out on its own. If it encounters a reference to an already-exported object, it will use the correct reference for this object; if the object doesn't exist yet, it will create it.
(My importer does something similar when importing materials, but I don't actually know how Korman does it to tell the truth)

Definitely don't try this with PyPRP though