I had decided that it was time for me to take a break for a while. Get some fresh air so to speak. Go do something else for awhile.
There seem to be a panic among some people here who thought I was leaving for good (don't be silly, Myst is in my blood. Kinda hard to ignore that!) and I'm very honored to have people think that I contribute enough here that leaving would be harmful to the community.
Still, if you need a break, you need a break. Or so I thought.
Apparently I didn't need a break. What I needed was a uplifting kick in the rear and some inspiration.
I got both of those yesterday.
The uplifting kick in the pants I got from Cyan, when they emailed me my FCA. They care enough to give me one. Or at least Cyan's lawyers care (hehehehehe
). In anycase, seeing that FCA in my inbox was like suddenly getting about 50 cups of very strong black coffee in me.The inspiration part was last night on MOUL. I have not been on MOUL in weeks and weeks. Just didn't see the point. I had even canceled my account (but left my wifes alone since she was a greeter). So I used her account to log on. When I got to my hood (UO Hood) I wasn't even able to say hi because so many people were screaming my name in greeting! I felt like Norm from the TV Show Cheers when ever he walked into the bar.
I had tons of PM's from people asking me questions about Camp Bravo and Zephyr Cove. Many of which I tried to answer, but man they kept coming in too fast.
Finally I decided to go visit places that we don't have in Uru:CC simply so I could see them and say goodbye to them.
When I linked in to Jalak. I stood there in the sun, atop the columns. Slowly turning around, I remembered the scorn at which I greeted this Age with. How mad I was that this was our new content for the episode???
I then felt really, REALLY guilty.
Having spent many months now as a Writer........I realized what kind of hard work went into making a place like Jalak.
Gone is my innocence of how Ages are made. Even with their own tools, making something like Jalak had to take quite a bit of effort and hard work. A LOT of debugging had to go into it to make the KI interface and making the columns move and shapes drop from the sky.
How many Cyan employees did it take? I don't know. But I'm sure that at least one of them was doing the same thing that I had done when I was trying to get clickable sounds to work: banging their head against the monitor wanting to scream in frustration.
I'm sure they get that a lot themselves.
And THEY have all the source codes! hehe.
But now I was standing there looking. And it dawned on me that any of us, if determined enough can make something that at least looks like Jalak. In the space of just a few minutes of standing there looking, a picture in Blender was already forming in my head. How the meshes for the stands would look, how to make it look like there was a surrounding jungle scenery, how to make the distant landscape, and the lighting.
Again, I'll never look at Ages the same way as I used to. Now I look at them with the eye of a designer.
After Jalak I went to K'veer, the public instance because all my friends were begging me to come see the Bahro that was there. So for the first (and last) time on MOUL I got to see a Bahro up close. But after a while I wanted to be alone and so linked to the Hood instance of K'veer.
Such a sad sounding place. The haunting music, until you get into the round room. The music there is a bit more uplifting. But I kept walking around, looking.
At the end, Chacal was down by the great window, I was still sitting up in the round room. Watching the lights sway back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Thinking the whole time on a way to do that with the tools that we have. Sad that I wouldn't be able to visit this place anymore.......
Then, seconds before the Net 5 at 12:01 am, my eyes went wide as I realized that I can load up Myst V any time I want too!
Then MOUL shut down.
This morning I loaded up Myst V. It put me in Noloben as that was one of my last saves. I walked over to the waters edge and looked around. You can see the waveset that they used for the water there. I looked down at the edge of the water. They have white ripples, but they animated them better here than in places in Uru. The ripples look more like foam, and they have the texture moving back and forth, like waves washing up. I know we can't animate our textures like that yet, at least not that I know of, but soon maybe. Yes, maybe soon.
I turned and walked towards the cliffs where the cave is, when I froze. I stopped and looked around at the sky. The clouds are moving.......how did they...??
The sky texture is rotating. Very, very slowly, but enough so that it looks like the clouds are moving. We can do that right now with the tools we have, but we have to make a texture that doesn't include a sun glare to pull it off. But it IS possible.
So I moved on, walked up to one of the frond plants sticking up out of the sand. Huh. That's what I thought. Here we have plants that Cyan just stuck in the ground. Even part of the leaves are burried halfway. So, yah, even Cyan doesn't get everything perfect either. But it looks good enough, and that's the point. You get it to look good enough so people can enjoy it. Not make it so perfect that nobody can find flaws with your Age. There are flaws all over Uru and Myst V, if you look hard enough.
So that was it for me. That was all I needed. And so I opened up Zephyr Cove in Blender and went back to work this morning. I scrapped my new cave. I'm making a new one. One that blends in better. One that will look better. The tools are there. I can do it. Nothing is stopping me from doing it, except me.
So what does all this mean? Means I've got my light back. I've found my inspiration again.
Game Tap may be able to flick a switch and turn of MOUL.
But Game Tap, nor anyone else in the world, can stop me from making Ages for people to enjoy or have fun with. That's a promise.
can't wait to see an updated version of Zephyer Cove 
