Guild of Writers

Oh. I understand now.

Haaaa right, I remember that now! *shudders*
Could it have been done for network/physics optimizations? I remember the old Uru physics article on Gamasutra mentionning something about that. (can't find the link anymore)

Tweek wrote:Most of the things I'd change I posted here a while ago: http://uru.grey-skies.net/

thats more cosmetic than codewise though.

I envisioned the beginning of the game to be a little different. I still foresee a lot of problems with the Cleft in multiplayer, even with your suggestions of turning off the windmill after x amount of time. People trying to run two messages off of the imager especially is going to be a nightmare.

I would start the game with all explorers entering the caldera from the beginning. They can wander all around Riltagamin first if they so choose, but the Cleft itself either has no operable levers or interfaces, or is blocked off completely. (I would prefer the first of those.)

In the first eder tomahn, explorers learn from either a notebook or a looping imager message about the physical path into D'ni and the journey with Yeesha. They also get the KI here.

Everyone goes down the hall, to a door that only permits explorers with KI's to enter. This leads to the first ventilation fan room. Here can be found the gateway to the Great Shaft, as well as a Bahro stone leading to the private entrance to the Cleft. Explorers who go through the gate get the "D'ni apartment" upgrade on their KI's, and can explore the tunnels (possibly with some interruptions with Nexus links so that it doesn't take too long). Explorers who use the Bahro stone enter the Cleft as it is in Uru CC and play as normal.

Half-life 2 like physics would be nice ie. lots of physical objects that actually work like they should. Some inverse kinematics connected to physics would be nice for the avatars. However, I can't think of a use for it now except portraying your graphic squashing in a set of super-sized gears.

Even though an advance in physics would make Uru better in some ways the game really only needs a simple physics engine:

if (floor->posZ >= player->posZ) { stop_falling(); }

This is something Ti'ana would've dreamed for, that is, before she fell to her death in the void below Myst Island.

Actually good physics would also need to translate floor motion to avatar motion (instead of those weird subworlds), preferably with some form of friction.

And I'd prefer at least having "Friction" and motion- and mass-dependent forces.
I'd be okay with using impulse (Nm) as in (F*s = m*v) instead of pure Forces (Newton) as a hack if it made things easier on the cpu.
Then again, don't most vidcards support PhysX nowadays? Might just be simplest to use that.

Aloys wrote:Haaaa right, I remember that now! *shudders*
Could it have been done for network/physics optimizations? I remember the old Uru physics article on Gamasutra mentionning something about that. (can't find the link anymore)

My guess is that it had something to do with the animations which Uru always runs at 30 fps. That was never an issue for Havok, but maybe PhysX has some kind of problem keeping the physics in synch with the visuals.

Paradox wrote:

Aloys wrote:2) Widescreen support - Please. Please pelase please please. It's probably less than a day of work and it will litterally change my life (ok, maybe not).

MOUL already had widescreen support. Personally I'd like to see a system that is flexible enough to handle windows of any size at any aspect ratio.'

It had 16:10 support but not the newer 16:9 standard. And even the brand new Magiquest open beta which clearly uses the MOUL engine still doesn't have it.

However, in MOUL you could edit your ini file and set any resolution you wanted and it would work fine (unless you blew up your monitor with an unsupported resolution ). So the flexibility is already there. It is probably just an interface limitation.

Trylon wrote:Actually good physics would also need to translate floor motion to avatar motion (instead of those weird subworlds), preferably with some form of friction.

That was done in Jalak with a new class... plRidingAnimatedPhysicalDetector

D'Lanor wrote:MOUL already had widescreen support. Personally I'd like to see a system that is flexible enough to handle windows of any size at any aspect ratio.'

It had 16:10 support but not the newer 16:9 standard. And even the brand new Magiquest open beta which clearly uses the MOUL engine still doesn't have it.

However, in MOUL you could edit your ini file and set any resolution you wanted and it would work fine (unless you blew up your monitor with an unsupported resolution ). So the flexibility is already there. It is probably just an interface limitation.[/quote]
This works in MQO, too, by the way.

Paradox wrote:

Trylon wrote:Actually good physics would also need to translate floor motion to avatar motion (instead of those weird subworlds), preferably with some form of friction.

That was done in Jalak with a new class... plRidingAnimatedPhysicalDetector

Whatever that class does, Jalak works in POTS about as good (bad?) as it did in MOUL, so it helped nothing. Yeah, you can move upwards, but you quickly fall through the pillars. Besides, if it's done properly in the physics engine, I don't see why there's a new class required for it?

Get rid of the python downloading process at each loggin. This one is soooo frustrating and an useless load on the servers.

PS:(yes, I am currently stuck in that process in Moulagain )