Updated Uru graphics

[The stranger]

Hey,

I'm not a writer in any way but I'm very interested at ways to mod Uru and all. Lately I was going over some old Uru forum posts (like back from the time Uru was just released) and some comments at Youtube Myst videos. I found a very sad thing: many people said Uru 3D graphics and CG characters ruined the Myst series.

Now, we all know Uru isn't Myst but a Myst spinoff, but I think that it should have been only a story spinoff (and because it's multiplayer, of course). I love the realtime but it's indeed sad it took a lot of the realistic graphics away. We can tell them "it's dynamic" 10000000000 times but in the end what matters is the first impression- graphics, and appearently they weren't good enough for a lot of Myst fans.

So here's my point: was there ever an attempt to mod Uru graphics? until we update Uru to a higher plasma version (that could be nice... ), maybe it's possible to do certain other effects, like better reflection everywhere it's needed (like in MOUL, but MOUL had it only in like 2-3 places, other reflections were the strange smearing thing), or motion blur, or beaming sunglare (like the "beaming sunglare" mod for TES oblivion, which makes... well, a beaming sunglare, which wasn't there originally. It's really cool).

Was it ever done?

Thanks,
Thestranger.

[Daniel K]

I wonder if it would be possible to simply try something like a high resolution texture package? From what Ive seen better textures can really help an old looking game out.

[The stranger]

Yeah, Uru's textures themselfs were good, no need to change them. But I wish we could make an "optimized" textures pack, where the textures stay the same, but they are a lot cleaner and spread better on the models (in places like gahreesen or teledahn it was fine, but the rock around ae'gura and the tree textures of kadish tolesa were smeared sometimes).

[Tweek]

Thats not down to the texture, that's down to how the texture was applied to the model.

[ardent red]

(Before I begin: this is my understanding of the way Plasma and the GoW are related, so certain things could be wrong.)
The updates you're thinking about (except the texture one, that's another problem altogether) involve modification of Plasma- that's the game engine that runs Uru. The GoW don't really change what's in Plasma during age creation. In fact, I don't think the powers that be actually *could* change it, even if they wanted to... age creation has nothing to do with Plasma, really- the export script was reverse engineered from the ages we have available.

Furthermore, if someone did change Plasma they wouldn't be able to redistribute it, since it's Cyan's property. This also applies to the retexturing issues: even though new textures would've been stuck on the models, the models and content in the age still belong to Cyan, and thus cannot be redistributed without their permission.

You have some good ideas, though- perhaps they can be implemented in Open Uru?

[Marcello]

What would help I think (but I don't know if this is possible) is if we could use more shader effects, like highlight, depth of field, etc. This would make UrU much more realistic.

[The stranger]

Yes, the Myst games were always about being most realistic and these stuff. As I said before Uru is still just a spinoff, but that one link I want to keep with Myst.

Actually, if we could make beaming sunglare, or motion blur, or better shadows, I don't know why Cyan Worlds wouldn't let us do that. I always thought the GoW and Cyan Worlds need to work together on several places, especially when Cyan Worlds can't. I can see no harm in that, but I'm not very good at seeing things, so you decide.

And if they let us, than I hope these chages can be done to openUru. That would be a lot better than changing the old Uru ABM or CC.

[Paradox]

We should be able to change anything we want in Open Uru. (such as adding an OpenGL Pipeline...)

[Tsar Hoikas]

We should be able to change anything we want in Open Uru. (such as adding an OpenGL Pipeline...)

But first we need the dope. (The code... Le sigh.)

[Marcello]

Yeah, and it's been awfully quiet on the Cyan front. At least as far as I know.