Rethinking our goals

[Jojon]

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Took me a week to successfully get a single plain into uru, and I'll be damned if I spend months building an age and then send it off to some yahoo in France to work out the rest for me.
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Ok, that was a bit "unfortunately" worded. So you're not a team worker - that's ok; that applies to many of the rest of us, as well.


I am having great problems parsing your posts, I'm afraid. A am unable to see where you delineate between frameworks of story and technology, engine and tools...

First: Cyan HAS released their toolset for agebuilding to us. It is only the executeables and it is built for specific versions of 3D Studio Max, but it is out there and being used by quite a few builders.
They have not yet given us any way to share ages on their own running MOUL.

Many of us use the community-built pyPRP export tool for Blender. I am sorry that you find it limiting and cumbersome, as well as Plasma itself. Believe me; we all do, but do not make the mistake of thinking there are no limitations elsewhere.

You are perfectly free and encouraged to design and build ages using any technology available to you and discuss it on these forums (...although the tsar has final say on that, given that he's the volunteer who runs the forum). There are people doing "traditional" prerendered ages, as well as a rather healthy crowd over at second life.
If you can- and wish to build an age using the more- or less helpful tools associated with engines such as Cry, Unreal, or Source; go for it.

If you wish to supplant the entire existing Uru online framework, you may find yourself in a position of having to take great part in producing the replacement and convincing people to switch.

[ZURI]

I can't get anything accomplished on my ages for beating my head up against pyprp for hours on end. Took me a week to successfully get a single plain into uru, and I'll be damned if I spend months building an age and then send it off to some yahoo in France to work out the rest for me.]

That's pretty cold bnewton81. Are you saying you don't believe in international cooperation? I'm from the States, and if it weren't for friends all over the world - I wouldn't have made progress like I have. I can look at Age Writing the same as I look at Myst itself. Sometime's it's not the goal, but the journey that's important. It's not all about making ages, but also making friends (and sometimes enemies).

Plasma is a gorgeous game engine. The visuals are spectacular. All that will prevent you from making stunning ages is you...

[D'Lanor]

For a long time it was believed that Cyan Max plugin was the holy grail for easy age building. Then Cyan released it. And was age building suddenly as easy as pushing a button? Nope. Sure, for most people the graphical interface is easier than PyPRP's scripting, but it is still very complicated to create an age with the Max plugin.
Why? Because Plasma is a game engine with a huge load of features that can be configured and tweaked in any way the user desires. Personally I wouldn't trade a versatile engine like that for something simple and easy with a limited set of features.

[Pavitra]

Pavitra, Thank you. You summed up my thoughts nicely for me. I fully agree with you when it comes to the "feel" of uru (the nexus, linking books, etc.). But why are these things only possible through plasma? plasma is nothing but a set of math formulas. Most 3d designers could easily copy every aspect of uru into any of a number of other engines.

It's not about the technology. It's about integration into the existing game.

Not that I'm considering copyright infringement. Cyan would have a heart attack.

If you're not willing to rip Cyan assets into another engine, then that leaves modding.

No, I'm just saying who knows if the D'ni were the only ppl making linking books? Maybe early in their history they broke into sects and there are many such races doing the same.

Sure, you can make stuff in any medium that integrates into the Uru canon. The hard part, as I said, is integrating it into the Uru interface. Walk into the Relto hut, take down a book from the shelf, link.

I'm just wondering if we should wait and later incorporate uru into our design instead of converse.

That's certainly an option.

In general, you can have any two of the following:

• Tight integration with the existing game interface.
• Not stealing Cyan assets.
• Not using Plasma.

It's your choice.

[bnewton81]

Ok, Fist off: have any of you looked for a copy of 3dsmax 7? I doubt it or you wouldn't even speak of the plugins for it as it is near to impossible to find and is no longer sold legally. I'm not even going to comment on the petty comment about international cooperation.

The more i think of it, the more i am leaning toward the hard fact that myst is just not a multiplayer game. Not true myst anyway. It could be made to be much more "multiplayer friendly" i guess, but the logistics of such a task would be daunting. Part of what makes myst so much better than the rest is the difficulty of the obstacles and the logic that drives them. To make that same difficulty apply to more than one player at a time would make it near to impossible to complete puzzle or you'd end up dumbing the thing down to a point that would bore most.

If you play myst like it was meant to be played (without walkthroughs) than it takes a very long time to complete. how are you supposed to work out logical problems with a group when they require that much time?

I've gotten off my original point entirely, but this is something I haven't thought of before. If uru is to be a better more functional, attractive game for multiplayer audiences it is going to have to be reworked from the ground up.

All of the myst games for me were magical. They were all about the "oh... I get it" moment. And that moment can not be achieved in the same manner with a group of players working together. I'm sure it can be accomplished, but it would take another revolutionary step in gaming to make it so; much the same as myst was back in the 90's revolutionary.

I'm not at all set in my thinking yet. I only post to get feedback. I want to know what others think. Thanks guys for all the great feedback.

[I.Brattin]

You can't get 3DS Max 7 short of illegally. It's not sold anywhere in the world. At one time people were selling used copies on eBay. But Autodesk quickly put a stop to that. If memory serves me right they were wanting only the current release sold anywhere on the internet.

Edit: Checked on Amazon out of curiosity, while I didn't see Max 7 they did have Max 4 ($2000), 5 ($500), & 6 ($1500). Kinda surprised me they have any old ones up with Autodesk wanting only their current release sold.

[Jojon]

I am sure Autodesk's primary concern is with the second hand market.
You pay for your *using* the software, not the physical media (disks, manual hardcopy) on which it is distributed and which can be supplanted, resupplanted and multiplied indefinately. The license is personal and non-transferrable.
This comes with the nature of intangible assets and is only reasonable.

One might argue that there is no good reason the license should not allow you to have several versions of the product installed, up 'til the version you've paid for and that the producer should have older versions available at self cost, especially if they can't uphold backwards compatibility, but I don't purport to understand Autodesk's reasoning. I suppose they don't want to have their sales department become bogged down people who might come and feel entitled to purchasing older versions at a "proportional" price, nor having to keep track of multiple product keys per customer.


I too prefer single-player and will rarely be seen in the cavern, but I do recognise the appeal and puzzle design possibilities, for all the shortcomings in concept and implementation. Even the original Myst was, apparently, often played by more than one person, sharing thoughts and enjoyment.


As for the matter of personal relations on the forum; how about we start over with a clean slate, rather than let things escalate into a miscommunication-induced knee-jerk-y argument on who is the one exhibiting petty attitudes?


Note, btw, that the issue of switching/redesigning framework and engine, is not by a longshot a new one.

[bnewton81]

Sry for the "petty" comment. Sometimes i try harder to be witty than understanding. My bad. All good points. The thing is, when myst came out the internet was in its infancy and the only sure way to get "cheats" for a game was to call a 800 #. Why does this matter? Well the fact that it only takes 10sec to find the answer to a difficult puzzle in a game is very tempting, even for me, and I feel that this single fact is the reason puzzle games are declining in popularity. I'm going to start a new thread for this topic, as it is completely off topic now. Look for it. I'll call it "Times have changed"

[diafero]

You are wrong that every 3d designer could re-create Plasma easily: Actually, some fans are doing that ( http://plasmaclient.info/ ), and it is a hard process as we are not willing to loose the existing ages, so the new engine has to be compatible with the old one. This also means that age creation does not change at all from that, it's just another piece of code that does the rendering.
I am under the impression that the real issue you have is that age building is complicated? Yes it, is but there is no way to change it. Sure, PyPRP could need some improvement, but as long as the ages can use all the possibilities they can now, it won't be easy. Once you start removing possibilities, you restrict creativity. I don't see a good way out, besides working hard on making the features we have more easily available. I guess the end result would look similar to the 3ds Max plugin, but be free - but I do not know what kind of vision the PyPRP2 devs have

I am sure Autodesk's primary concern is with the second hand market.
You pay for your *using* the software, not the physical media (disks, manual hardcopy) on which it is distributed and which can be supplanted, resupplanted and multiplied indefinately. The license is personal and non-transferrable.
This comes with the nature of intangible assets and is only reasonable.

No, it's no reasonable - I should be perfectly able to sell my right to use that software to somebody else. I should also be able to change my PC as often as I want to without depending on the grace of some support guy due to online activation. What you describe is called renting, but they call it buying and let us pay as if it was. Essentially, we loose most of the rights we usually have when buying something, but do not gain the rights we usually have when we just rent something for use.
I know why I prefer FLOSS
<End of off-topic rant>

[bnewton81]

Apparently it is not as simple a problem as I first thought; esp. if you won't give up what is already available. And yes my true problem with PyPRP was probably that it gives me a headache and pisses me off. I still think there may be a better route to the endgame here. How much would it cost for cyan to rerelease a set of tools that we could use now? Maybe we just need to start raising money to pay cyan off. Give us our genie Cyan!