Rethinking our goals

[Lontahv]

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!

Cyan doesn't have the programmers it needs to make such tools. If they were to hire a new team, making easy to use tools would be very hard. As it has been said before by others: Plasma is complex. There's no getting around that fact.

The current focus for PyPRP2 is to get it as easy to use (gui-based) as PlasmaMax is. Personally I really want to try to transfer over the concept of Cyan's modifier stuff in PlasmaMax. I have to say, there are things that can be made simpler that Cyan's interface, but at the same time, care must be taken to let the user remain in control of the environment and settings.

Bnewton81, just because PyPRP is hard for use at the moment doesn't mean the alternatives are any easier. 3dsMax is slightly easier to use for many than Blender, however, to really use either tool effectively takes a lot of training and skill. I'm amazed with how talented so many people at the GoW are with age creation after less than a year using Blender. These are not easy to use tools, don't feel bad if the learning curve is steep at first. Currently, if you want to make ages for Uru you must use one of these tools at some point (unless you would like to code each vertex by hand in XML).

Edit: As an example of PlasmaMax's ease of use ideas transferring to PyPRP2: based on PlasmaMax's light baking, PyPRP2 now has automatic light-baking into vertex-paint. Any object without a color channel will be automatically lit.

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[Paradox]

How much would it cost for cyan to rerelease a set of tools that we could use now?

Cyan has already released their only set of tools in the form of the PlasmaMax plugin. They don't have a version that is compatible with newer versions of Max because they all use Max 7. They can't make a plugin for newer versions right now because they are still using Visual Studio 2003 (which isn't compatible with the newer Max SDK).

I'm not sure what exactly people are still waiting for from Cyan (aside from source code and a licence), at the moment they've given us all that they have in terms of their toolset.

[bnewton81]

I agree with Paradox. Cyan has been more than helpful in the past, but those days are at an end. I think personally that Cyan is just sick of the whole issue. Thanks Lontahv for the encouraging words. I do have moments where the whole project of age creation seems rather insurmountable, but how easy did i really think learning 3d design/game design from scratch was really gonna be, esp. since we do all this basically on our own. I have been swayed by this thread to keep on keepin on with PyPRP. It's not pretty, or perfect, or easy, or.... what was my point? Oh yeah, ... but its all we have. So thanks PyPRP team for giving us something to work with.

[ZURI]

@bnewton81 I think you'll find that the game engine is very capable. Many moons ago, I made maps for Quake 3. While that engine has more features in some regards, it's not nearly as forgiving as plasma. I used to spend hours aligning vertices because planes couldn't intersect - amongst other niggles.

Plasma really is a beautiful game engine, and once you learn how to use the plug-in - I'm sure you'll agree. Yes, the learning curve is steep. I've been at this for a little over a year now. Honestly, I'm just now getting to the point where I believe I have the knowledge, and tools, to make ages of a high quality. You won't learn it all overnight, but if you're willing to take the time - you can do it. I believe in you.

If you're still learning blender, I'd recommend going to youtube with a case of caffeinated soda and watching some tutorials. They're great because you can pause it as you go. I learned a lot that way. Otherwise, ask lots of questions! There are many veterans here, as well as a new brood of writers that are coming of age. If you seek answers, you will find them here.

I wish you the best and hope you stick around.

[bnewton81]

I am learning that Zuri. I have learned a lot already from this forum that i otherwise would not have been able to. I'm fairly confident in my blender skills (having a whole 5 months under my belt in it) I just hate getting all creative and working real hard on a project just to find that it can't be added due to a limitation the plugin has. This hasn't happened to me yet, but i know it will if i don't learn the limitations before hand. It is very tiresome to spend hours just loading a single plane age.

I know you are right though. The more i learn the easier it will become. So i will try and keep my negativity to a minimum.

[ZURI]

You'll find that there are many tools in blender that you can't use in Plasma. Bones, and particles are a few examples. It's not that the game engine isn't capable of the task, it's just that you have to go about it in a different fashion. We can't use bones for animations yet, but you can add snow and rain. There's a tutorial.

However, you can do a lot of really cool stuff. I've spend most of the last year learning to make realistic, custom textures from stacks of stock photos. While it takes a lot of time in GIMP, you can add that special "touch" to your ages that reflect your style.

How many fan ages have you visited now? There some truely beautiful specimens out there.

[andylegate]

When I first started using Blender and the PyPRP to make Ages, the only sounds we could have in our Age was your footsteps. We could not animate objects or textures. We did not have Wavesets (the realistic looking water). No subworlds, so you could not make things like Elevators or other rides the avatars could use.

However, that first year that I started, the PyPRP plugin was being worked on and every few months there was a new version that started to allow these things. That kept me around and using it.

Unfortunately, the focus is on the next generation of PyPRP and Blender right now, and it's been a very long wait, with no other improvements made to the current PyPRP plugin. I know it can be depressing, especially if there are things you want to do that it can't handle right now. But keep in mind that the next generation of it will support these things from what I hear. They just need Blender.org to finish up and release a stable version of the next gen of Blender.

In the mean time, there are things that can make using PyPRP easier:

As has been stated: ask questions here. It might take a day or 2 for someone to get back to you, but I find that's actually unusual. Most people here are scattered all over the world so someone will reply within hours normally.

Try to use the GoW's Wiki that has many tutorials on using PyPRP. Yes, it's a bit unorganized, cluttered, and some of the tutorials are lacking, but trust me, when I started there was nothing there, hehehe.

Try using some of my tutorials that I wrote over at the UAM Wiki. I tried to make tutorials that assume you don't know how to do anything, and use lot's of pictures to show how to do things. There are not as many Blender tutorials as there are Max tutorials, sorry about that, but that's because I use Max now to make Ages.

If you have an project that is going to need things that PyPRP can't provide, that's not a problem: Team up with someone that uses Max and Cyan's plugin! EVERYTHING you make in Blender can be imported over into Max, and that person can actually us Cyan's plugin to help make your Age project become a reality.

[J'Kla]

I've got to find myself agreeing with Andy however I have stuck it out with Blender to the point where I change between edit and object mode uncociously and rotate an object to look from another side again with no mental effort.

My head banging point is Python and I want to make reward objects and deal with variables pass information to a users KI and the like but I can handle 3D space like a dream.

I spent ages getting books to work and have spent a while working on content. Yes theres loads to come.

My latest age project Cidoirep took me a week and the longest pat of that was deciding which pictures to use.

Something I will say I use my copy of "The official Blender 2.3 guide" as a refrence work and still have a copy of 2.3 installed so I can do a tutorial from the book now and again.

Blender has its foibles as does 3dMax whichever tool you use there is a satisfaction that comes from building an age that can't be put in words.

[Jojon]

Speaking of dealing with 3D space (..and sorry for sidetracking).
I recall somebody mentioned having bought some current generation steroscopic gear. If this person reads this: have you been able to get Blender's OpenGL views in stereo and is it in any way useful to have while modelling, for visualisation, if nothing else (we edit in orthographic for a reason)? :)