Myst Offline: Complete Chronicles

[Justintime9]

Wow, I'm glad to see what progress is being made!

[GPNMilano]

Chapter 3: Revisiting Relto.

Other than a few texture problems, (Namely with the stones that for now must remain motionless) Relto is finished. I still have to write the alcscript for all the objects, and point them to the new pages so that they can be incorporated into the yeesha book. So for now they remain permanent additions to Relto.

[Nek'rahm]

Yay!

Now wait, I hate to ask but...

Will the Calendar sparks be accessible? The fireworks would be nice, but it isn't a necessity.

[Dave'O]

that looks awsome, so when can we expect guides?

[Tweek]

I'm interested to know if you had looked at converting the MOUL avatars to Tpots as well?

Fantastic work, I'm always blown away at how talented people are in the modding community.

[GPNMilano]

Nek'rahm. Currently No. The sparks used a PLLayerAnimation for their sprites. So far I haven't been able to get the animations properly introduced into the PRPs. Importing the files into Blender just gives a empty image for the animation. And importing the LayerAnimations via PRPExploer just gives error messages when I try and tie the object to the animation. The fireworks were part layer animation part particle system.

Dave: I'm gonna write the tutorial for the basic stuff this weekend, with the more complex things (like yeesha pages, and programing stuff) after that.

Tweek: I converted the Avatars, but they're pretty much useless till I can dig deeper into them to see what things were changed between them and the PoTS avatars. I've been using ChangeAvatar to test them out, but it hasn't been a high priority for me. But I want to get them changed over. Something about tooling around the ages as a bahro excites me.

[Tweek]

But I want to get them changed over. Something about tooling around the ages as a bahro excites me.

Exactly, that is why I asked

[Whilyam]

Count me in for that as well

I was actually hoping that, one day, Cyan could implement Bahro as another "race" you could play.

[GPNMilano]

Okay, here's the problem with converting the avatars. Drizzle converts the ages, almost perfectly. It screws up the physicals for regions, exclusively cameras and ladders. But other than that its almost flawless conversion.

Avatars on the other hand are tricky. A normal custom avatar, unmoddified, has this structure:

2WayWinAudible 0x0053
AGModifier 0x006C
AliasModifier 0x002A
ArmatureEffectsMgr 0x0095
AudioInterface 0x0011
ClothingBase 0x00B7
Clothing Outfit 0x00B6
CoordinateInterface 0x0015
DrawableSpans 0x004C
DrawInterface 0x0016
Layer 0x0006
LayerLinkAnimation 0x008E
Material 0x0007
MipMap 0x0004
Physical 0x003F
PrintShape 0x00EC
SceneNode 0x0000
SceneObject 0x0001
ShadowCaster 0x00D4
SimulationInterface 0x001C

Now, the converted MOUL ones, well here's what they look like:

AGModifier 0x006C
AudioInterface 0x0011
CoordinateInterface 0x0015
DrawableSpans 0x004C
DrawInterface 0x0016
Layer 0x0006
Material 0x0007
MipMap 0x004
SceneNode 0x0000
SceneObject 0x0001
ShadowCaster 0x00D4

They're missing

2WayWinAudible 0x0053
AliasModifier 0x002A
ArmatureEffectsMgr 0x0095
ClothingBase 0x00B7
Clothing Outfit 0x00B6
LayerLinkAnimation 0x008E
Physical 0x003F
PrintShape 0x00EC
SimulationInterface 0x001C

So, basically, if you could fool the engine into thinking that it was aokay, you'd have no animation linking, you'd fall through the ground as soon as you got somewhere. And quite possibly you'd be naked.

This is assuming the layout of the files is the same in MOUL as it was in Until Uru/Pots. Since PRPExploer can't open the MOUL files (at least in the public build) I can't tell if its the same or not. PRPTool opens them, but has missing layers for the unconverted files. So I'm guessing they're there, but PRPTool just doesn't know what they are.

[Tweek]

Count me in for that as well

I was actually hoping that, one day, Cyan could implement Bahro as another "race" you could play.

Yeah I had some thoughts a while ago about something like that, when a new race is discovered on an Age then the possibility of them becoming playable would arise. Would be a large undertaking though, I'll have to add that to my series of Uru blog posts.