Guild of Writers

Lots of odd things in there. The reason I was looking in the first place was to try and figure out exactly what Zandi was reading, but when I checked the Cleft files I couldn't find his book. Several things interested me, however:

1) Zandi's character texture was in the folder, with several areas left with the overlay that the Cyan texturers must have used to place the assets that the UV mapper would use. One area has the large word BACKPACK typed over it, with a low-res backpack behind. More curiously, there are two texture areas for Zandi's face, one with gray hair and one with black...
2) D'nitos make me chuckle, as did the fact Zandi's hat was clearly Myst merchandise!
3) A genius way of adding extra detail to textures. Overlay the texture with a detail map which has a pattern on it, then make sure that pattern is tiled. Makes the image look far higher resolution.
4) The bird's texture is clearly nenoted as "Dcnt", unlike the "Clft" of the rest of the images in that folder. If that bird was in prior to the PotS, that would strongly indicate that "Decent" - the tunnel to D'ni from Myst V, was having resources allocated to it by the Cyan staff prior to the release of Uru.
5) Cyan really could have made a better job of texturing. I'd happily contribute to a "high res" mod for Uru:CC. (If Cyan ever develop another game, they should for the sake of everyone scrap Plasma and go to a stronger engine...)

However, I was unable to locate Zandi's book. I can't remember the name of the program I used to extract the CC images, but the names of the folders is stuff like "Cleft_District_Textures". Anyone have any ideas where the book is to be found?

N. Sigismund wrote: 5) Cyan really could have made a better job of texturing. I'd happily contribute to a "high res" mod for Uru:CC. (If Cyan ever develop another game, they should for the sake of everyone scrap Plasma and go to a stronger engine...)

A good game modeler uses the smallest possible texture which still makes the model look decent. Small models? Far away models? Use tiny textures!
A 3D artist who only renders still pictures can use large textures but a game modeler must take performance into account. That has nothing to do with Plasma. It is true for any game engine. Such is the nature of real time rendering.

N. Sigismund wrote: However, I was unable to locate Zandi's book. I can't remember the name of the program I used to extract the CC images, but the names of the folders is stuff like "Cleft_District_Textures". Anyone have any ideas where the book is to be found?

The book is in the Zandi avatar file.

I do understand that. The game was made in 2004 when a 256mb graphics card was high end, after all. These days, though, you can afford to throw around substantially higher resolution textures, and all sorts of maps on top of those textures. And shaders.

Found the book. Clever how the Zandi in game hides the "Forword by Dr Richard Watson" bit.

N. Sigismund wrote:I do understand that. The game was made in 2004 when a 256mb graphics card was high end, after all. These days, though, you can afford to throw around substantially higher resolution textures, and all sorts of maps on top of those textures. And shaders.

And that is where most age builders are wrong. This is exactly why most fan ages are unplayable on today's low end systems by the time they reach the same level of content as an average Cyan age.

Many people use laptops for gaming these days. While I have a fast desktop pc I often try out fan ages on my laptop which has a ATI mobility Radeon HD 2600. Those are pretty good graphics for a laptop and while Uru itself perform great, nearly every fan age causes it to lag badly.

Remember the words of Goethe: "It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself."

2004 graphics, however, are not going to get people excited enough to play Uru, and to get the game to a more playable standard is the whole reason I'm making Pontypridd and Llantern.

Optimization is going to be the key, of course. Not too many RT lights, no-render-past-this-point walls and whatnot. But that's work for post-completion of the age.

Criticizing resource hogging fan ages is a pet peeve of mine so I am not going to let you get away with this. Even in the age building team I am in I have to fight against it all the time.

Bad performance is not going to get the casual players, which Uru seems to attract mainly, excited either. You are barking up the wrong tree / target audience. There is nothing wrong with Cyan's graphics. No fan age can match them anyway unless they are either very small or horrible resource hogs. It's your choice what you do with your own ages, but if plan to to ruin Cyan's ages by making them resource hogs you better think twice (not that I think such modifications would be possible under the future "open source" license).

D'Lanor wrote:Criticizing resource hogging fan ages is a pet peeve of mine so I am not going to let you get away with this. Even in the age building team I am in I have to fight against it all the time.

Bad performance is not going to get the casual players, which Uru seems to attract mainly, excited either. You are barking up the wrong tree / target audience. There is nothing wrong with Cyan's graphics. No fan age can match them anyway unless they are either very small or horrible resource hogs. It's your choice what you do with your own ages, but if plan to to ruin Cyan's ages by making them resource hogs you better think twice (not that I think such modifications would be possible under the future "open source" license).

Please also remember how exactly the textures Cyan made are used. Cyan's plugin takes a picture and scales it down upon export, so that the actual picture they used could be larger than the one in the texture.prp. This is something our plugin doesn't do. Also, Cyan used vertex compression to compress the acutal models down even more. Again, something PyPRP does not do (though it can, there's just a bug somewhere that causes the edges to be drawn IIRC.

On a side note. I don't like the whole "No Fan age can match them unless they are either very small or horrible resource hogs" I think it is entirely possible, even with our current plugin, to create ages that not only match Cyan's in quality, but also can be resource "light" in terms of performance.

Yes, I agree that is it possible. That is not the point though. It is the willingness to do so that is lacking with most writers as the OP clearly demonstrates.

Bad performance is not going to get the casual players, which Uru seems to attract mainly, excited either. You are barking up the wrong tree / target audience.

Rubbish graphics won't sell the game to "casual gamers" either. Not that Uru attracts "casual gamers" in the Farmville sense. Or anyone other than Myst fans, for that matter. High resolution reworks have been done by mod communities before (go check the Freespace 2 modding community, they implemented an entirely new graphics system!) for games like Morrowind and Oblivion, for example. I know for the latter they really add to the quality of the gameplay experience, as they improve immersion.

I'm relatively sure that high quality graphics = immersion = good thing is a staple of Cyan games, something that age writers should be seeking to replicate and perfect as they take over the mantle from Cyan. And if we relegate ourselves to 2003 quality graphics the game will never come out of the stagnation it is currently stuck in.

There is nothing wrong with Cyan's graphics.

They're ancient. That's a huge problem, especially looking forward.

No fan age can match them anyway unless they are either very small or horrible resource hogs.

Then what the heck are we doing here? If we can never hope to create ages on a par or better than Cyan could when developing Uru all those years ago, what on earth is the point of developing ages? The ages have to be really good to help fix the innate flaws that Uru has, to make people boot up Uru and log in. Deliberately setting our sights low - optimise now, quality later - is putting the cart before the horse and is the wrong outlook to take on improving Uru.

Suit yourself. Why do I even care about advising people who choose to ignore the basics of game modeling? I guess you missed the numerous "OMG, what just happened to my age? It has gone all laggy!" posts on this forum. Maybe you'll change your mind when that happens to you.