Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby GPNMilano » Fri May 28, 2010 5:24 pm

Will post detailed stuff later as to specific answers to questions. But in a round about way:

Vehicles in Uru:

As others have pointed out, the stuff for Vehicles (the basics anyway) are entirely there. the Zandoni mobile is just the only thing in Uru that takes advantage of them. More than likely they were a left over from when we would have used boats to get to the city back in DIRT. OR someone at Cyan was just bored one week and put in vehicle support as an easter egg that few would know about. I'm going with the first option as the second would just be a pain.

Answer: Can we do make them?

Sure, I don't see why not. All the stuff for them is there in the Plugin I'm sure. The plugin specifically designs stuff for the MOUL version of Plasma. We know that version has the Zandoni (kind of). So it's probably feasible to get this working. Actually there's a model of mine sitting in 3ds Max's scene folder waiting for the Plasma Plugin to do it's stuff with it. So if you're wandering in a future fan age and see a DeLorean just chilling in a cave somewhere covered in dust...yeah that's my car feel free to take it for a drive. Just try not to go up to 88 with it. Trust me you'd be in for trouble.

Avatar System:


I agree this needs some serious work. Updated stuff would be nice. As you pointed out, the problem comes with the Client itself. The avatars are directly tied to it so there's no way to put a playable avatar into the system and make it work without adding that avatar to the client. My Chloe Rhodes avatar will sit in 3ds Max till this is doable.

The KI

This one isn't that hard to update as you'd think. You can add stuff to the KI with relative ease IF you know what you're doing. You just need to adjust the python script and know what everything does. Theoretically, right now, we could completely overhaul the KI from the ground up if there was a team willing to do so. That's why Cyan gave us the max file. We don't need access to the client to update the KI. It's controlled by python scripts, we just need to know what to send to the client (which is also in those scripts) to make it all work.

Graphic Stuff

Plasma already has Bump Map support. It's just not used in many ages. But it exists in the engine and you can create it with the 3ds Max plugin. Just not with PyPRP. But it's there, and it works. Check out the hand rails on the stairs in the Eder sometime. Those are bump mapped.
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby JulyForToday » Fri May 28, 2010 7:16 pm

Nadnerb wrote:Personally, I think Plasma is rather well organized, internally, and would be relatively simple to extend, given actual source.


Well, your opinion is more valuable than mine. I admit I'm not the most knowledgeable about the matter.

I see very little reason to try to rebuild the engine from scratch using another framework like ogre that imposes it's own assumptions about how games should work.


If working with plasma is as simple a prospect as you suggest, then I would agree that their may be little reason in my entire proposal. Although I fail to see how Ogre really imposes much, since it is designed to be purely a rendering engine, and not a game engine. If you could elaborate on what downsides you think there are to Ogre's setup, please do. The only problems I could see would be converting mesh and material assets, and a converter for both of those would be possible. We can already get them into blender (for the most part), so getting them into ogre wouldn't be impossible. Keeping the scripting working would be the major concern, and if we used Uru's existing scripting framework and combined it with a new system, then the scripting for the ages could still work.

The result of such a venture would probably be a mass of hacks designed to get the existing content (and that's where the real value is, at the moment, as dustin noted) to work under the new framework, when the content been designed specifically to operate in the existing framework, to the point that the structure of stored objects in the files implies very strongly the methods that plasma employs to use them. As far as we know, we will never get the original max source files for the uru content, so we won't be able to "recompile" it to work with some brand new engine, so I don't see how this could work out well.


Again, I don't know how much stuff in those mysterious PRP files are actually organized. I don't know how the scripting is set-up or what depends on what. I assume that the resources in there are actually separate things. Meshes are meshes, and scripts are scripts, and never the twain shall meet. Sure I can imagine there would be a lot of stuff in there with the coding that points to object A, or Mesh B, or Texture C. And I could see how a lot of that could break if you tried using something other than prp maybe. If prp isn't something you mind (for those of you coders out there), maybe it's possible to use it in a new system, and would avoid breaking everything. Just store the meshes and materials in the prp's in ogre's format. Or maybe again, I'm just tralking crazy.. ;-)

As for the lack of "pluggable" content in Plasma...


That is one of the big concerns I would say, as far as creating a more dynamic gameworld. Again, you'd know more than me as far as what is possible with Plasma. But what kind of options do we have when working with it, say for something like AI scripting.

...design principles that work well for things like first person shooters do not really apply to Uru.
.

I agree to a certain point. FPS's definitely have a different focus. And we don't necessarily want Myst Mayhem here. And I agree that having the same damn buttons everywhere would be aggravating (heck I'm a little irked that the lever in Teledahn is used in Kadish). But you can't deny that FPS's are dynamic (because they need to be) and that maybe Uru could benefit from that, and that it could be less rigid. And some of that prefabricated entity framework stuff could help in a lot of ways. I mean, why are kickables set up inside places like the hood? Or the barriers in the city? Why isn't there some kind of global prp file for stuff like that, and we just load whatever we need, whenever we need it? That's what one of those FPS systems would do, they just do it a lot (as you pointed out). But from what you've described, then shouldn't it be possible to drop a city barrier right into Relto? Or anything else from any other PRP in the game? (assuming your messing with the scripting) Or am I getting it wrong?

And for user content, some of that could be really useful. There will always be people creating user content that is of lower quality, that may reuse such assets ad nauseum. There is likely little of redeeming quality in such examples that something as simple as a unique button would be able to fix. But it might help having a library that could quickly allow prototyped ages to be built, and then those projects that are serious about creating polished ages could take it the step further and customize those generic elements.
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby Aloys » Fri May 28, 2010 7:55 pm

Again, 'entities' are more a problem with the tools than with the engine. The Max plugin tool is easier to use than PyPRP in that regard, but it's still far from 'really' easy. Take for instance GUIs, if I want to display a simple static image (a map or a note) I have around 10 minutes of work ahead of me; that's just insane.. Same thing if I want to add a simple door with a button. It is all a matter of tools here, there could totally be a component in Max called 'simple static GUI' that has litterally one field (the path to the picture), and same thing for a door, or a journal, a Book, etc.
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby Goofy » Wed Jun 16, 2010 7:47 pm

Hmmmm I think that most hope that any update for the server and client would at the very least still allow them to run the game on their computers and not need a super computer to run it.

To be honest some of the things that people here suggest(or wish list) kinda scare me. The way they are described. Just makes me nervous. Just makes me think that the URU that was will die again, because it will change so much we won't recognize it.

Unfortunately I will have to do what most will be doing and wait and see what happens.
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby Lontahv » Wed Jun 16, 2010 8:36 pm

Goofy wrote:To be honest some of the things that people here suggest(or wish list) kinda scare me. The way they are described. Just makes me nervous. Just makes me think that the URU that was will die again, because it will change so much we won't recognize it.



I think the Uru that was is already long dead. MOULa feels like a zombie version of Uru, and not really a second coming. :|
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby Aloys » Thu Jun 17, 2010 2:59 pm

Were you expecting anything else? :( It was clear that Cyan was not able to put out new content, and unfortunately the actual Client/Server sources are sort of slow to come.
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby Whilyam » Fri Jun 18, 2010 6:39 am

What sort of things are needed for a team to start working on a total KI redesign? Is it purely energy/interest?
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby Lontahv » Fri Jun 18, 2010 2:37 pm

It would be possible to work on a complete KI-redesign right now. However, it would be very hard, or rather near impossible, when we aren't able to test anything. Drizzling a KI we export with Cyan's plugin is near worthless because KI devices are meant to be multiplayer.
Last edited by Lontahv on Fri Jun 18, 2010 2:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: added an "is" to make the post make more sense
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby Paradox » Fri Jun 18, 2010 7:09 pm

Whilyam wrote:What sort of things are needed for a team to start working on a total KI redesign? Is it purely energy/interest?


For adding proper functional scrolling, we need to change engine code. We can only do that when the source is released.
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Re: Top 5 things you want to do when OS Uru lands.

Postby kaelisebonrai » Mon Jun 21, 2010 12:16 am

Lontahv wrote:It would be possible to work on a complete KI-redesign right now. However, it would be very hard, or rather near impossible, when we aren't able to test anything. Drizzling a KI we export with Cyan's plugin is near worthless because KI devices are meant to be multiplayer.


Well, there are, after all, alcugs shards, but, I see your point.

Note, however, we only have the source data, and no license, which is a bit of an issue, as well. (the "KI Source", I mean)
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