What is Cyan up to?

[Deledrius]

Based on Plasma ?
You mean, this would be running on an upgraded Plasma engine ? With new distortion, sunshafts, bloom etc shaders ?
Plasma is years behind the current engines. I doubt Cyan has the resources to upgrade Plasma.
They used Unity (IIRC) for the iPad version of the game. I rather think they are using another game engine again.

Cyan abandoned Plasma after MagiQuest. Part of that abandonment was gifting the MOULa-branch to us. They've shown no interest in using it for any future projects, and to my knowledge everything they've done since MQO has been done with off-the-shelf engines.

It might be debatable whether this is a good long-term strategy (there are definitely pros and cons), but in recent years they haven't made anything that would benefit from Plasma anyway.

[Karkadann]

all these wonderfully talented people, talents in all aspects of whats needed, and yet the one talent that seems to be far and few between is the talent to work with people outside of your own klicks

[tachzusamm]

If I understood Sirius correctly, he meant Cyan does not have enough people to update plasma or develop a new game engine. You need programmers (really experienced programmers) for that.

Both "The 5 Cores" and "XING - The Land Beyond" are using UDK / the Unreal 3 engine. Those people do not have to develop a game engine, they "simply" use an existing (and well tested) one. This can't be compared.

[Sirius]

You can't tell me they don't have enough people to do anything new. I've seen enough Indy companies with less developers which made great games. For example the game "Magicka" was (in the beginning) created by 5 swedish students. Another example is "The Five Cores". I don't know exactly how much people did this, but I think it was less than 15. And this game looks a hundred times better than the screenshots I saw on Cyans website.

True enough. I recall the Cyan team that made Myst and Riven was relatively small too.
I've always thought with games and computers, the two major limits are your motivation and your available time (although manpower and money always help). Look at what Andy did when converting Plasma Age to Unreal. The result was unfinished, but promising.
Xing developers might fall in that category of people who can do anything because they really want it, and they have the time.

Maybe you are right Sirius but I don't own a PS2 console, I saw their library and I have no attraction toward any of their games.

I fully understand that people might not play games on these consoles. Especially coming from the Myst community. In my case, people tend to consider me an alien when I tell them I hate killing games like CoD, and that I prefer playing Myst

It's just a way to compare the current "level" of fan-Ages. This console was out in 2000, and most games on it have features like dynamic lighting, a much better sound system, better physics, etc, than in most fan-Ages. Some even used shaders to simulate motion blur. So in a way, you could say our most recent fan-Ages are something like 13 years late graphically

Of course that's not really accurate, 'cause depending of the computer, you can display much more polygons than a PS2 could, and at a higher resolution.
There is also the problem of tools. Most fan-Ages are ugly because it's really hard to setup something nice with PyPRP. Also, PyPRP lacks proper documentation. For instance, most Ages use the default black fog, which is highly irrealistic. In some others, the sky is invisible because it's beyond the max draw distance (as in Iceworld). Both of these settings are the most easy to configure, but people simply don't know it's possible :/



What bothers me in those big Ages is that you have to run around for hours. Usually that's no trouble, but when graphics are ugly it's simply boring. Add a few broken mechanisms, such as a misplaced panic link region... a swim region from which you can't exit... an invisible click region... and I simply won't want to play it.

And yet, people who create such Ages are skilled. Just look at Dulcamara's Elodea ! Exploring it online with other players is fun.
That's a type of gameplay that is in almost no other games: explore with friends a huge area, and solve puzzles together. Even Cyan never managed to make an Age of such size.
Modern games can use huge open worlds, but these games are always 9% exploring, 1% thinking, and 90% fighting.

all these wonderfully talented people, talents in all aspects of whats needed, and yet the one talent that seems to be far and few between is the talent to work with people outside of your own klicks

Now you've got a point. We have coders, modelers, texture artists, designers. Few, but we have. But almost no one's working with anyone.
Some skilled people even prefer to setup their own Shard, and forget about the community...

[Karkadann]

all these wonderfully talented people, talents in all aspects of whats needed, and yet the one talent that seems to be far and few between is the talent to work with people outside of your own klicks

Now you've got a point. We have coders, modelers, texture artists, designers. Few, but we have. But almost no one's working with anyone.
Some skilled people even prefer to setup their own Shard, and forget about the community...

we could change this if we really wanted to.

[Calena]

If I understood Sirius correctly, he meant Cyan does not have enough people to update plasma or develop a new game engine. You need programmers (really experienced programmers) for that.

Both "The 5 Cores" and "XING - The Land Beyond" are using UDK / the Unreal 3 engine. Those people do not have to develop a game engine, they "simply" use an existing (and well tested) one. This can't be compared.

Tach is right. They can't be compared. The Myst series was never in the modern class of "casual" gaming. The games all had professional composers, orchestral music, NPC's and cut scenes incorporating real actors, etc. To add even more, building something like this in an online MMO that switches between 1st person and 3rd person view is a major step up in complexity. Three people (that used a Kickstarter for funding and probably are working full-time on the game) still can't compare to the resources needed to compete in the world of big time game publishers. I've seen most of the new games published recently in the GTA vein and Cyan doesn't have the resources to be even remotely competitive there.

And yet . . . I've seen both my son and my grandson stop dead in their tracks dumbfounded by what they discovered in some "lousy" fan ages. My grandson begs his papa to play in URU when he has all the modern high-tech expensive games at his fingertips. We do need to be very honest about our flaws and shortcomings, but focusing on them to the point of loosing site of what our strengths are would be a mistake.

Plasma may be old and more difficult to work in than Unity or Unreal, but we have a pre-built fully functional MMO engine. Try finding that available somewhere else, for free no less! We also have a built-in audience along with a fan base that has been waiting years for new content. And even though I'm fully on board with creating the best possible graphics we can, there's more to success than just great graphics. We're also kidding ourselves if we believe great graphics are strictly a product of the game engine. Great graphics are produced by great artists, the software is only a means to an end. I can build something ugly in Unity or Unreal just as easily as I can in Plasma .

all these wonderfully talented people, talents in all aspects of whats needed, and yet the one talent that seems to be far and few between is the talent to work with people outside of your own klicks

Now you've got a point. We have coders, modelers, texture artists, designers. Few, but we have. But almost no one's working with anyone.
Some skilled people even prefer to setup their own Shard, and forget about the community...

I'm just as guilty as anyone else when it comes to picking and choosing who I want to work with. I do feel compelled to point out though that quite a few of us collaborated on the "Relativity" build out last spring and from my point of view, we did so successfully . It isn't impossible, but it isn't simple either. People leave projects when they are being paid good money for their work because the working environment makes them miserable. We all do this for nothing more than enjoyment to begin with. All it takes is one or two bad experiences working with others for us to decide we'd prefer to work on our own. I still think this is our biggest hurdle. We haven't been able to develop a talented team that is committed to working and playing well together in the sandbox; not just during production, but afterwards as well.

[Deledrius]

all these wonderfully talented people, talents in all aspects of whats needed, and yet the one talent that seems to be far and few between is the talent to work with people outside of your own cliques

Now you've got a point. We have coders, modelers, texture artists, designers. Few, but we have. But almost no one's working with anyone.
Some skilled people even prefer to setup their own Shard, and forget about the community...

we could change this if we really wanted to.

Maybe, maybe not. Not everyone works well with everyone else. Otherwise the world would never know war. One other thing that may need reiteration: Myst fans probably over-represent solitary workers, just by the nature of the franchise alone. I also think the number of fan Ages that are the result of collaboration is frequently underestimated.

The most consistent working-together I've personally seen are with those who come in to chat in the IRC channel. We get to know each other, we chat, we know what everyone is capable of, and people come and go in different tasks. Fora are really lousy at that, IMO. They're too hit-and-run. They're much better for semi-permanent info though. But if you want to get to know people and work together with them, nothing beats actual live chat. I'm not actively involved in working on Uru stuff anymore for reason I stated elsewhere last year, but I still participate in IRC because I enjoy the friends I made in there, and from time to time I still chip in to help with things because of that.

I think it's perhaps overestimated how many artists in all those fields are still around; there is a small but active number presently. I see a lot of talent around here, but it takes time and motivation too, and those are much rarer. Quality and quantity are important. The code fixes made to the Plasma engine and dirtsand in the last several years may largely have been made by a relatively small core group, but a lot of very important work has been done by a significant number individuals who contributed perhaps only a few separate chunks of code.

It's much harder to get that sort of collaborative workflow going when it comes to Age building, as the team making Ages like Relativity can no doubt confirm. Binary assets just don't (currently) work as smoothly as text does in this regard. Tools like github don't really exist for something as specific as what Uru fan Ages need. Whatever you try right now is gonna be rough, and it's going to take good communication.


All my rambling comes to this: Yes, Age-building needs larger teams working together, but the workflow and tools needed to make that less trouble than it's worth don't exist in this arena.

[janaba]

You can't tell me they don't have enough people to do anything new. I've seen enough Indy companies with less developers which made great games. For example the game "Magicka" was (in the beginning) created by 5 swedish students. Another example is "The Five Cores". I don't know exactly how much people did this, but I think it was less than 15. And this game looks a hundred times better than the screenshots I saw on Cyans website.

True enough. I recall the Cyan team that made Myst and Riven was relatively small too.
I've always thought with games and computers, the two major limits are your motivation and your available time (although manpower and money always help). Look at what Andy did when converting Plasma Age to Unreal. The result was unfinished, but promising.
Xing developers might fall in that category of people who can do anything because they really want it, and they have the time.

Exactly ... and I absolutely agree on your comment for Dulcamara's age and the modern huge fighting games ...

all these wonderfully talented people, talents in all aspects of whats needed, and yet the one talent that seems to be far and few between is the talent to work with people outside of your own klicks

Now you've got a point. We have coders, modelers, texture artists, designers. Few, but we have. But almost no one's working with anyone.
Some skilled people even prefer to setup their own Shard, and forget about the community...

Agreed, but maybe the incentive and motivation isn't just there or got lost over the years of ups and downs and not much communication and cooperation from Cyan for maybe here and there, more or less justifiable or understandable reasons, dunno ...

If I understood Sirius correctly, he meant Cyan does not have enough people to update plasma or develop a new game engine. You need programmers (really experienced programmers) for that.
Both "The 5 Cores" and "XING - The Land Beyond" are using UDK / the Unreal 3 engine. Those people do not have to develop a game engine, they "simply" use an existing (and well tested) one. This can't be compared.

So, what you're saying could also be translated into, if Cyan insists on having 'their own game engine' despite not being capable to build a proper one adapted to modern standards, then they have to live with the consequences, which might also be quite ineffective and require more extra efforts to create something ...

As for the Unreal 3 engine, it seems that to unlock its full potential the game author's fantasy resp. the sky the seems to be the limit, and it is certainly not 'that easy' nonetheless ... Those above mentioned Xing people are working almost day and night on improving and enhancing the engine's capacity and potential and thus the game's quality, but I understand of course that with this ideal basis, with the proper tools/scripts etc. integrated it might be more easily achievable than when starting from scratch with a game engine without a game anywhere near in sight ...

Edit: I'd like to add Calena's statements as for MMO capability, which is absolutely correct and puts a completely different light on the subject, and I don't know if this would be at all possible with those with Unreal or so created games to be implemented ... As for the graphic's quality, esp. this Xing game is full of complex environment strucures, almost photo-realistic as in real life and with awesome puzzles integrated and everything an explorer is yearning for ...

[Deledrius]

all these wonderfully talented people, talents in all aspects of whats needed, and yet the one talent that seems to be far and few between is the talent to work with people outside of your own klicks

Now you've got a point. We have coders, modelers, texture artists, designers. Few, but we have. But almost no one's working with anyone.
Some skilled people even prefer to setup their own Shard, and forget about the community...

Agreed, but maybe the incentive and motivation isn't just there or got lost over the years of ups and downs and not much communication and cooperation from Cyan for maybe here and there, more or less justifiable or understandable reasons, dunno ...

Cyan actively worked against attempts to create a positive environment for fan contributions for quite some time during a vital period of the community's development. That poison, once released, continues to run through Uru and many parts of the community to this day in ways both subtle and profound.

[Nev'yn]

If I might interject something, but perhaps someday a person may come forth to volunteer to host a location existing textures and objects can be stored for developers?

I've noticed for instance, the kahlo pub tables/chairs have been recreated by no less than four Age developers that I know of, and the D'ni Hood imagers by three. Some sort of repository might go a long way to speeding Age development.

Sorry to poke my head into the discussion, but it is a thought that has been in the back of my mind for a while...
...If this has already be considered/approved/rejected in other times/places my apologies for the rehashing of already trod ground.