Adrael and The DRA Office

[Wamduskasapa]

An excellent age, very well crafted and rendered but I can see some minor problems.

Colour coded puzzles are fine but what about the thousands of people that are colour blind. For them your first two puzzles are impossible. Ok let us assume that they are not colour blind, and that they have solved the first puzzle and have found the lever to open the door. They are confronted with another lever and another colour puzzle with no idea nor no clue as to what the solution could be (except for an untranslatable ? Dni ? phrase). It may be a good idea to give the KI the ability to read and translate the Dni script. IE if we see a Dni script, it is clickable and by doing so brings up the in-game translation of what the words or phrase are suppose to mean.

It is possible to cheat to get around this puzzle. By just standing in front of the puzzle you can /jump 160, walk over a few paces and /jump -20 and WAH-LAH we are standing in front of the first tree station where all we have to do is register the KI.

BUT there is a problem when you use this cheat, when you go to climb the final Ladder you will be linked back to your Relto. To get around this you must solve all puzzles. At least that is what I beleave...

EDIT On the UAM Shard while in Adrael the /jump command has been disabled to prevent this cheat....

Suggestion You might want to disable the /spawn command also

[ddb174]

There are a few Ages where some cheat commands are disabled. That's actually a part of the Offline-KI, and those are only Ages where the author asked Diafero for it; most fan Ages can use those commands fine online. (Personally, I find that /jump is where half the fun of an Age lies, after you've solved it without cheating :D)

[diafero]

/spwan should be disabled, too (at least if Dustin uses an unmodified Offline KI). As Dustin explained, D'Lanor asked me to disable those commands (other ages like Sonavio or Oolbahnneea also have them disabled).

[N. Sigismund]

I've not had a chance to explore the age much yet - not actually located any of the puzzles either, but there are certainly some things I like and dislike:

Like:
The room with the television-type thing. I'm not going to spoil it but the first of the three is one of the best things I've seen from a fan age!
The modelling is actually very good.

Dislike/What I think needs improving:
Lighting. For examples of good lighting, check Baron's Office and Nexus. Poor lighting is a very, very common problem with fan ages - matte lighting with not a great deal of thought put into areas of comparative light and darkness. In the book room, the very edges of the floor and the top of the ceiling exhibit a little of what I'd love to see more. Lighting makes a place believable. In the television room, there was no obvious source of light, yet the room was somehow filled with completely matte lighting.
The backstory... is not possible to mesh with the backstory we have from Cyan's games.
There are a few bits and bobs which also need improvement, but that's QA stuff. The above two are my two main concerns simply wandering around the first area.

[Chacal]

Nooooooo! I'm on my way to Berlin with my 7-years-old, 14" laptop.
I won't be able to see those Ages until Oct 12!

[Egon]

Today I did a brief tour around those ages and I must say I'm impressed. It truly shines that those Ages where made by more than one person (who is in Adrael team?)

Like:
The room with the television-type thing. I'm not going to spoil it but the first of the three is one of the best things I've seen from a fan age!
The modelling is actually very good.

I'm also not going to spoil it. Let just say I wanted to bow and cry in front of this pure awesomeness

more on the subject... Show Spoiler

I assume that lanching a movie is just simple execution of some Plasma python function. Putting it inside age file, now thats an issue. I once tried to make my own animated panel, but the way I coded movie in Bink, maid URU crash. I assume authors of Adrael know now how to properly encode movies, and how to use them in URU. So any chances on tutorial on how to do it?

Dislike/What I think needs improving:
Lighting. For examples of good lighting, check Baron's Office and Nexus. Poor lighting is a very, very common problem with fan ages - matte lighting with not a great deal of thought put into areas of comparative light and darkness.

So I wasn't only one to notice it. Actually it made me sad that so much effort was putted to this Ages (which shines though that thing mention above and quite a lot of good quality textures) and still there are a lot of places which looks "washy".

[Rabenschwinge]

I really like this age! There are some really impressive puzzles (I only was able to solve the first one - the next one eludes me )

Show Spoiler

The details make the age so entertaining for me: the fossils, the journals - and finally we are able to see one of the D'ni mining machines! (I examined that machine from every angle possible.)

And of course, the videos mentioned - great stuff!

Another thing I really, really liked: that tree. I know, it´s just a small detail, but this tree at the dried river, it is one of the most natural and inspiring plants I´ve seen yet in a fan age.

[D'Lanor]

Today I did a brief tour around those ages and I must say I'm impressed. It truly shines that those Ages where made by more than one person (who is in Adrael team?)

You'll find a list of contributors in the release notes (which will also tell you that being in a team is not all that it is cracked up to be). Those notes also say this is a BETA which should explain the unfinished look, but please keep your comments coming.

Dislike/What I think needs improving:
Lighting. For examples of good lighting, check Baron's Office and Nexus. Poor lighting is a very, very common problem with fan ages - matte lighting with not a great deal of thought put into areas of comparative light and darkness.

So I wasn't only one to notice it. Actually it made me sad that so much effort was putted to this Ages (which shines though that thing mention above and quite a lot of good quality textures) and still there are a lot of places which looks "washy".

The reason for the washy look is that for most materials Plasma's real time shading has been disabled (Shadeless button in Blender). All shading has been hand painted since this looks way better, offers more control and does not waste system resources. Unfortunately this also takes a lot of time. So anything that looks washy probably has not had its paint job yet.

[diafero]

I managed to finish the age this evening and can only confirm its pure awesomeness. Unfortunately I had it completed way too quickly . Is there any hope that the other areas in Adrael that are (seemingly) not yet "used" (but promise a lot) will be more incorporated?

Thanks a lot again for publishing this great age! I can't find enough words to properly describe it. The tree mentioned above indeed stunned me several times, as wellas the look through the tube on the birdge and the tree.

I found some issues which I will list below:

"" Show Spoiler

- viewing a video muted my sound but did not re-enable it properly
- opening the door at the bottom of the well (with the Cleft animation) happened twice - after the avatar completed the animation, it spawned back and did it again. Someone else was in the age with me at that time.
- using the bookmark in the office, the book switched the page back to the linking panel before closing and completing the link

[D'Lanor]

I found some issues which I will list below:

"" Show Spoiler

- viewing a video muted my sound but did not re-enable it properly
- opening the door at the bottom of the well (with the Cleft animation) happened twice - after the avatar completed the animation, it spawned back and did it again. Someone else was in the age with me at that time.
- using the bookmark in the office, the book switched the page back to the linking panel before closing and completing the link

Show Spoiler

- Not for me or any of our testers. Unless someone else has the same issue under Windows I'm going to blame it on Linux.
- I used xAgeSDLBoolRespond for this. The problem is that in this file Cyan should have disabled netpropagation for the responders in OnSDLNotify. Since all clients already receive the SDL change they should NOT re-trigger other clients here. Usually this will go unnoticed. You will only notice this when one of the clients has a huge latency and re-triggers you after the animations have finished for you.
- This is intentional because the book is lying open on that page. So that is always the page which others see you touch. If we had used a bookshelf like Relto it would not have mattered but in this case a workaround was required. So what happens IC is that this bookmark system works by adding a displacement to the main linking panel.