Page 1 of 2

The Wall

PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 4:06 pm
by Justintime9
Does anyone know why Cyan never openedThe Wall in MOUL? It seemed like there was a period where they were grasping at straws to find new stuff for explorers to do when, all along they had this AWESOME game in Gahreesen. The whole fortress is centered around the game and in fact doesn't even make sense without The Wall. I understand there were glitches. Back in the Shards before MOUL it crashed and glitched a bit, but it was still playable. Was it so hard that they just gave up on fixing it?

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 9:55 pm
by Paradox
It's likely to be a combination of things. The replacement of Havok physics with PhysX probably contributed, but they also completely rewrote the networking code in MOUL and added some additional support for different types of games (Heek, Marker Games, Blue Spiral, Wall, and Tic-Tac-Toe). Somewhere around the switch to episodic content, they also made major changes to the avatar movement system to add new types of brains, and removed the older code from UU and PotS that supported wall climbing.

The wall code was never finished for MOUL, and required some significant rewrites in order to be playable on MOULa-shards like The Open Cave.

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 11:47 pm
by Sirius
Offline-KI/Deep Island's Wall, on the other hand, is still using old (patched) Until Uru python scripts, and doesn't require the engine-level climbing "brain" nor game manager. And as far as I know it's bug free, compared to UU.
Because of this I don't understand why they bothered writing a Game Manager for the Wall... But on PotS, modifying the engine was never a possibility so maybe I'm biased towards using what is already there :P

It's also worth noting that while the concept of the Wall game was fun, some people thought it was pretty boring to play. I can understand that, although without any new content to explore it's still a nice addition IMHO.

Tic-tac-toe was never added anywhere in the actual game, though. I wonder where it was supposed to be played and what it looked like. "Where" might be behind the locked door in lower Bevin, since it's supposed to lead to a "game room" which was never added. It's quite clear Cyan had a lot on their plate and were struggling to fix everything...

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 2:33 am
by Deledrius
Sirius wrote:It's also worth noting that while the concept of the Wall game was fun, some people thought it was pretty boring to play. I can understand that, although without any new content to explore it's still a nice addition IMHO.

I think it's one of those things that works really well in a specific context, but like Jalak, is pretty dull on its own merits.

Sirius wrote:"Where" might be behind the locked door in lower Bevin, since it's supposed to lead to a "game room" which was never added. It's quite clear Cyan had a lot on their plate and were struggling to fix everything...

I'm quite certain of this. Between the teaser image on the old launcher which showed the "Pub" room with 'heek games in the alcoves (and the rockwork lining up with the rockwork above in the "Bevin" we have), and the fact that the mesh for this room fits perfectly in this space and lines up with the door way. I know this last fact because I have quite literally modified my local 'hood to have this game room swiped from the pub, and found that it fits in and lines up with the door and under the fountain above. There are also a couple of old Huevo images which suggest this may be correct as well. Ah, but this is perhaps going off-topic...

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 6:42 am
by Tweek
Are you referring to this image?

Image

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 6:58 am
by Tsar Hoikas
TTT was a testbed for the "new" game manager and was hardcoded into the internal client console. It (and the entire game manager) has been removed from modern CWE codebases,

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:21 am
by Sirius
Deledrius wrote:I'm quite certain of this. Between the teaser image on the old launcher which showed the "Pub" room with 'heek games in the alcoves (and the rockwork lining up with the rockwork above in the "Bevin" we have), and the fact that the mesh for this room fits perfectly in this space and lines up with the door way. I know this last fact because I have quite literally modified my local 'hood to have this game room swiped from the pub, and found that it fits in and lines up with the door and under the fountain above.

Wow, nice find ! So what later became the template for guild pubs was likely the hood game room ? Makes sense, with the picture Tweek dug up. This room also feels more like an arcade than an actual official guild pub where you could have a drink.
Gonna check this out in Blender, and add it to my long list of Uru development trivia...

Tsar Hoikas wrote:TTT was a testbed for the "new" game manager and was hardcoded into the internal client console. It (and the entire game manager) has been removed from modern CWE codebases,

Ah, so it wasn't supposed to be playable by normal explorers ? I have to admit playing TTT in an MMO felt a bit stupid to me, but then we do have RPS with Ayhoheek...

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 12:49 pm
by Justintime9
Some interesting thoughts here. It must really come down to how much Cyan had on their plate.

It's also worth noting that while the concept of the Wall game was fun, some people thought it was pretty boring to play. I can understand that, although without any new content to explore it's still a nice addition IMHO.


I would argue The Wall is more fun than getting points for dropping pellets or collecting useless rotating donuts in Relto. We went through the trouble of beating Mintaka and garden ages and literally all we got was useless rotating donuts. Was that supposed to be used for something later, like the bahro totems in ABM?

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 5:50 pm
by Chuckles58
I have a more fun version of Tic-Tac-Toe, called "Moving Tic-Tac-Toe". It is the focus of the Concept for my (most likely never to be built) age called TehTahTook, which besides having an island similar to the Olympic National Park, is to have a playable "Moving Tic-Tac-Toe" game near the link in point. Powering the game is supposed to be the initial purpose of exploring the island.

The idea is there are three colors on the usual 3x3 board, with Red at 1,5,9, Green at 2,6,7 and Blue at 3,4,8. Each player takes turn placing their pieces (limited to three), and then are required to move a piece each turn, until one player has all three pieces on one particular color. It is a game my father taught me when I was a wee lad. I am excited by the prospect of Korman making the process of building the age a bit faster. Eventually I will try to enlist the help of a talented person to help with the game. The nice thing about this game, is there is no cat, no tie games.

I enjoyed my few experiences with The Wall in Until Uru. It would be great to see it activated for MOULa someday.

Re: The Wall

PostPosted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 11:07 pm
by Deledrius
Tweek wrote:Are you referring to this image?

Show Spoiler


That's the one.

Tsar Hoikas wrote:TTT was a testbed for the "new" game manager and was hardcoded into the internal client console. It (and the entire game manager) has been removed from modern CWE codebases,

Sirius wrote:Ah, so it wasn't supposed to be playable by normal explorers ? I have to admit playing TTT in an MMO felt a bit stupid to me, but then we do have RPS with Ayhoheek...

Exactly. It wouldn't have surprise me if they had added it as a table game at some point during MO:UL, especially when they were pressed for replayable content.

Justintime9 wrote:I would argue The Wall is more fun than getting points for dropping pellets or collecting useless rotating donuts in Relto. We went through the trouble of beating Mintaka and garden ages and literally all we got was useless rotating donuts. Was that supposed to be used for something later, like the bahro totems in ABM?

Yeah, like I said, it depends on the context in which you play it. Fans would probably have invented something in the absence of Cyan providing some. As for the rings, I kinda assumed they would have eventually, but I've never found any proof of it and later events suggest it's possible they were going to lead nowhere. The sparklies, however, I have my suspicions... ;)