Generic Age Discuss

[Atrion]

I have had an overnight to think on this.

Relto is a sort of generic age where you use pages in your Relto book to switch features on and off.

And what about size do we work on something large like Mintaka something halfway like Ahonnay or Relto or The Cleft? Maybe even 3 different sizes.

We know the horizon flats work for the Desert and Ahonnay but somewhere big like Mintaka will give any budding age builder more space to build a new age.

This Might sound like overkill but if someone were to be making these generic starter age then why not create 3 generic ages. All 3 would be the same other than each one would be a different size, a personal sized one (Relto) a medium sized age, and a large age (Minkata).

[J'Kla]

I like the sound of that but I think if we concentrate efforts on one first re-sizing could be it's own little tutorial and if we run with medium the tutorial could describe sizing up and down. just in case you missed it we now have a wish list wiki page. (see previous post for link)

[Jojon]

Hmm, I've been thinking a little about the be-or-not-be of an init-script.

My reasoning goes that from a pedagogical standpoint it could be counter-productive and that it might be better for the learning (albeit slower), to provide the Blend'nea truly blank and then have the tutorial take the user into relevant sections, to do her/his customisation manually.
The only concern I have with this approach, is that it may become too much to take in, all at one time and that the pupil will therefore just follow the instructions blindly, as a checklist, without truly understanding.
Perhaps this could be countered by structuring the tutorial in such a way that it encourages the user to take her/his time and be prepared to leave certain things be, for the time being, with assurance we'll get there eventually?

Maybe we should try picking the minds of out two professional teachers; Ametist and Metabasalt.. :7


Looking at the wiki article, a few thoughts crop up.

Ground surface: Just how complex meshes are we talking about? Maybe an option of simple planes, subdivided (but still flat) planes and fractal/random landscapes, perhaps? Just a disc-shaped island in the middle of an ocean?
Textures? Strata?

Hmm, the rest can be summed up in a single point, I guess:

I am a bit concerned the thing (with a set of texturing/object options) could make it too easy to resort to cookie-cutter-and-paste building, if you see what I mean. Maybe I'm unfairly disparaging the possible desire of people to do things that way, but I'd really prefer to see people infuse their ages with their own imagination and see truly diverse ages.

Some objects and textures should truly be stock stuff - equipment used by the various guilds, mainly.
Others should, maybe and all in my opinion of dubious value, be more like placeholders, with an attached enocuragement that the users make them their own.


Just a few thoughts...


(And still /me have not reached for Blender to lend a hand - empty barrels make the most noise. :7)


EDIT: Tried to straighten out a few of the most crooked wordings a bit.

[J'Kla]

OK. Jojon your view is accepted in the light that you admit you lack teaching experience. This is as I suggest a discussion document.

I appreciate your attempt to bring in professional teacher help and would be insulted but you were not to know that I trained as an adult instructor. I have spent years teaching teenagers and abandoned a Masters degree due to ill health. As I say you were not privy to this information.

I can't object to any input from Ametist and Metabasalt sound professional feedback is about the best you can run with. Although I would hope that we could avoid the use of words like "pedagogical" as terms like this are in my opinion best kept for the academic world.

I have also climbed the learning curve that is the "Blender Uru Assault Course" and the parts I am suggesting are in effect primitives. Consider Lego as a learning tool your suggestion would have children designing the building blocks or suggesting that given kits for pre designed models would prevent all children (that should be Lego users as not all are children) exploring the possibilities of the blocks they end up with given the fusion of 2 or more kits.

The ground surface I was considering was one that looked like an upturned plate so that we would have given a range of water depths a mesh ready to deform rather than use direct from the box.

I have of late been pondering a cut or deformation in this plate to give the effect of a tidal estuary or an alternative could be a tutorial that leads to this and another tutorial that results in a tidal cave that is if we can produce the effect of tides then a cave that is open to access dependent on the state of the tides.

This project may never progress beyond discussion although I sincerely hope it does.

[Metabasalt1]

Thank you for inviting ametist and me into this discussion. Last Summer, I suggested devising templates and sharing blender files, especially for noob writers.
The wiki on GoW is excellent, but seeing actual blender files with the alcscript is very helpful in generating ages, and understanding how to write ages. I think it is also somewhat a matter of personal preference. Some writers just want to crank out an age, whereas others want to understand more of the art of writing an age from scratch.

[Atrion]

Some writers just want to crank out an age, whereas others want to understand more of the art of writing an age from scratch.

But also remember some people who would like to start an age from scratch might like to see how a basic age is set up in blender, learning how to make there own by examining this generic age.

[J'Kla]

We have room for both schools. Just because the quick fix is there you don't have to use it.

By the same count a blend of a fully functioning generic age can be used as a testing tool to see if its your blend file that's not working or something wrong with your writing setup.

It's also worth noting there may be potential blender users amongst Uru fandom that may be interested in designing a chair or a table but not an entire age

[Jojon]

Ok, J'Kla, I did indeed not know about your experience as an educator.
I briefly considered apologising for not not assuming you didn't (triple negation, yay!), but frankly there are so many lines of work in the world, I think that more or less assuming the opposite would be no better, really, even though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Myst fanbase contains a higher than average concentration of teacher type people than those of other games.
Also: I guess maybe the word "pedagogical" packs a little bit less punch where I come from... :7

The upside down plate island you mentioned, is funnily enough exactly what I had in mind as well. :7

Somebody mentioned ages as works of reference for age building specifics and I'd lke to mention that a few of the more knowledgeable members of this forum have indeed built such case studies for inclusion with their wiki tutorials - well worth checking out!

Ah Lego - I remember when there were just the basic blocks, before the kits and their instructions. :7

As for tides; I am pretty sure we can animate a simple waveset, right now, just moving it up and down.
What may be problematic, is that we can currently not animate the meshes, which would mean that we'd be stuck with fixed depth-rages (..since we cant move the waveset mesh relative to its object coordsys origin) and any foam can not follow the water edges properly. These concerns should have little importance in cases where there is steep geography.

EDIT: Actually: if one of the devs read this; is the water level really tied to the object centre in Plasma, or is that just a pyprp convention?

Maybe it would be helpful have something tangible and evaluate options hands-on, rather than just in theory? I've slapped together a blend file with just a basic skydome, a waveset and some earth crust with a wart in the middle, for an island. Maybe this could be a place to try things discussed and maybe a starting point: what needs to be added, changed, etc...

http://w1.352.telia.com/~u35208964/Generic_age.rar

Note that the sequence prefix used is unregistered!
(There are ready-exported prp's in the export directory)

[Paradox]

As for tides; I am pretty sure we can animate a simple waveset, right now, just moving it up and down.
What may be problematic, is that we can currently not animate the meshes, which would mean that we'd be stuck with fixed depth-rages (..since we cant move the waveset mesh relative to its object coordsys origin) and any foam can not follow the water edges properly. These concerns should have little importance in cases where there is steep geography.

EDIT: Actually: if one of the devs read this; is the water level really tied to the object centre in Plasma, or is that just a pyprp convention?

The object centre is just a PyPRP convention. What actually happens in Plasma is that the water height is stored in both the drawable spans, and the waveset object, and the mesh is flattened along the Z-axis to that height.

However, Blender didn't give us a nice way to specify that, so we went with the object centre as the height of the water.

If you're looking to do tides and other cool stuff, you will probably need Python. A good place to start looking is in Kemo, where you can see how Cyan made the waveset change when it started raining.

[J'Kla]

I had a quick look at the blend for that generic age and it looks spot on I suggest we register a sequence prefix for it so we are all looking at the same one I haven't squirted it into cc yet but I had a RL intervention to deal with nothing serious.

First impression is cool and peachy just what I was thinking on I don't know what the scale is like guess Ill see when I get round to viewing in CC.