How do you write Ages?

[tachzusamm]

No, this is not an asking for the "how to". I don't mean technical stuff, like Blender, Max, PyPRP or scripting, texturing, modeling.

I'm just curious; how do you write?
Do you make plans, draw layouts or drafts before you begin? Do you have in mind how exactly your age should or will look like, prior to the real building? Or do you just let the ink flow and see what you get?

There are so many people here in the Guild, and some of you already have released Ages; but my guess is, that there are a lot more Writers in our Guild. Some may do not have plans to ever release their Ages, and that would be okay. But from the first day you have taken a Pen in your hand and have put it into some Ink, you have started to be a Writer. No matter how long it will take, or if it will ever get finished.

When I joined the Guild some years ago, I thought that Age Writing isn't really my thing. True, I thought it could be interesting, but my skills are more on the technical side. Programming. Building tools. Helping others. Exploring and explaining.
But then, someday, I gave it a try. Just to learn. I started with drawing some outline of how "my age" could look like on a sheet of paper, and immediately found myself getting more and more involved. I wrote a story for a book, to give it a base and history. I began writing a landscape, hills, trees, water, thought about the people who could possibly live there.
But to be honest, I'm not sure if I will ever get my Age released. Age Writing is a really hard job. So many things to take care about when it should look nice, feel real, smell true, sound great. And, I find myself still experimenting. Trying this or that, lettings objects move, finding a good lighting, swapping to a different ink, building and demolishing again, when something does not come out as expected. But it's still more and more interesting.
I truly doubt that I'm a good Writer sometimes. I started writing the Age many months ago, and still only about 3% of the pages are written. This is because even while writing, I realize there's still so much to learn. Mostly I then close the book, put the Pen away, and continue to learn and think.
I fear it will never come to an end...

It seems that sometimes it works better when I just forget any plans or drawings, and just let the ink flow. Modeling feels like writing, texturing is hard work, so I'm currently trying to just build things that come into my mind, based on pure fantasy. It's a bit disappointing though, because things look ugly in an Age without textures. But this workflow seems to fit me better. Can it be the case that the D'ni wrote Ages this way? Beginning with a coarse structure, without colors, light and life, and after that, refining the Age more and more, until it's done? Well, it may sound strange to introduce such an IC element here, or just to ask "how did the D'ni do it", and you may laugh about it, but honestly, I would not be able to practice Age Writing if I totally reduce this to the fact that it's just bits and bytes in a computer. Would you? What I do love in all this, is to get the artist in me freed, and forget a while that I'm a technician.

What is your experience with Age Writing?
How do you do it? And, maybe, tell us why?

Shorah

[Tweek]

A lot of the time it varies. Some Ages I have a definite plan in mind, some are more fluid.

If you're interested in some of the processes I've been through you should check out the development entries for Cass, Fahets and Fehnir's House I posted on the GoW Dev blog;

- Fahets Developement
- Cass Development
- Fehnir's House Development

[J'Kla]

Back during the UntilUru time when it looked like Cyan were going under a couple of guys wanted to build a version using a different engine.

They were soundly rebuffed the status quo sait it could jepordize the concession that we had in UntilUru so I thought I would try and write a story that would use the concept of Uru that would allow new content that was non Cyan.

With the help of D'Lanor we embedded this story in the city as a beta test task released a chapter at a time. It was ruuning as Beta on H'uru shard when Cyan announced D'Mala and everything was put on hold. Although I did extend the story.

Eventually I decided ti build an age so I could host this myself. That's still in work.

I am not good with pencil and paper but I can build so I use Blender as my modeling environment.

[andylegate]

It's a bit of a mixture for me and depends on what I'm doing.

Sometimes I sketch a layout and follow that, like a floor plan. Other times, I'm in blender using the extrude and sculpt modes to make something and that's done from the hip, then export it over to Max. And then there are other times I'm told what to do, or how something has to look (that's not as fun as creating it on my own).

[Calena]

Great topic . I'm a technician first and can't draw to save my life, so my inspiration comes from seeing and imagining. My age began with a story in my head combined with a real-life picture - Red Rock Canyon, Utah. The story developed from reading IC posts on forums. It's coming together from hours and hours of research and finding the pieces to bring the story to life. It's really more of an adventure than a story. The basic concept revolves around an ancient resident of D'ni picking up the wrong linking book and finding himself thrown out of D'ni and landing in Utah. He's in Red Rock Canyon because I was looking for something around New Mexico, but different.

First I wrote the terrain, using photos to guide me. Then I researched buildings that would be in this place. I stay on target because there's a goal of getting back to D'ni. Of course, everything is limited by what I can actually produce and my attempt to make the adventure believable. I ask myself the questions and then seek the answers. The terrain section of the Age is very real-life, though it's abandoned from the 1800's. The next section combines that with more imaginative concepts to begin moving from one world to the next. As he's getting closer to his goal, I'm spending more and more time wandering around URU ages to get my inspiration, looking at what Cyan created and trying to capture the feel and look of their world. Once I know what I need to build, I start studying how to build it, one section, one room, one piece at a time. I've spent the past two weeks learning how to put dirt on the bottom of giant trees.

I know where and how the story will end (hopefully, if I can get a linking book to work). My primary goal in building this age (beyond the enjoyment and satisfaction) is skill building. I already have plans for my next age and the primary plan is to get the help of a concept artist .

[dendwaler]

With Turtle Isle I did have a vague plan of how i wanted my age to look, did have ideas for puzzles . A little storyline and i wanted to have appealing visuals.
But first i had to learn "the noble art of agewriting" itself and had to learn about everything.
It was the hard way, zillions of exportings later I lowered the bar i raised for myself and forgot about being "Canon", forgot to follow the storyline.
The puzzles i had in mind where to difficult to realize with my excisting short of knowledge.
It was simply to difficult to implement, to much Python coding was needed.
But without former programming experiences, it was impossible to learn it in a short time.
It will take me years to reach the disired level.
But I have started learning Python since short , with the O'reilly's book "Learning Python" in front of me.

In agebuilding, I have to learn from what is going wrong, only by building I am able to discover the bounderies of what is possible within the scope of my own knowledge and skills in relation to the behavior of the game engine.
Learning by doing is my way.
Sometimes it's a boaring task to start again and again with the same age to Iron out all that what could have done be better.
Then seems better to start with something fresh and new, with the improved skils from today.

And that is what i will do, but not before i have my current age smoothly running with a number of improvements.

May be i first make a little age where you can link in from turtle isle.
It will look something like this.


I have to confess that i made this from a free unfinished Blender model i found somewhere in Blendernation.
It inspired me, I retextured it , scaled it up, finished some parts and exported it.
I really learned from that file, just by analysing how it was build.
Unfortunately it was not build for a game.
I will make a remake from scratch because it has some anomalies i cannot get rid off.

[Aloys]

Age design, my favorite topic.
I enjoy doing all of the design work (actual design; not modelling) directly in Blender. This includes visual design as well as puzzles. The last Age I drew an exact map for before modeling was Ahra Pahts over 3 years ago.

Warning: incoming giant wall of text.

For me Ages are environments to explore first of all, story comes after that. I just love to explore places. This is what guide all the creation process. Puzzles are very tightly tied to the geography of the Age, they are here to slow down the exploration and to make sure the various part of the Age are visited in a certain order. So, to me, when it comes to Age design Puzzles and environments work hand in hand. That's why I am much more at ease when working directly in 3D: I love drawing, but working digitally; especially in 3D; allows for much quicker and easier prototyping. You can try various solutions, merge them, revert back; and modify at will very quickly.. And working in 3D is easier for some complex environments than working in 2D.

The first golden rule in design is 'form follows function', so I work out the function of the Age first (puzzles/exploration/story); and then I look at the form (visual design). That works in 4 steps:

1) Thinking.
Obviously this comes first. I think a lot about the Age before creating anything. Inspiration pops up at random, but once I catch a flying thought that seem to have potential as an Age I think about it a lot before doing anything else. I avoid looking at any other source of inspiration: I try to stay 'fresh' and focus on that first idea. I try to 'freeze' it, this is the core concept of the Age that must not change. I think about it a lot: I imagine myself walking in the place, discovering it for the first time. I usually do that at night when it's dark and silent. I take lots of notes, like a continuous brainstorm session, writing only simple things; often just abstract concepts like: 'empty', 'blue', 'holes everywhere'.
With that I make a list of the physical elements I want in the Age (a house, a wind turbine at the top of a mountain, a tunnel leading from the house to the turbine, etc). More can be added later, during the 2nd phase, but those elements will stay.
At this point I only think about 2 things: how the Age will work (puzzles/exploration), and how the Age will feel. I do not draw concept arts or maps; this comes later.

2) 3D layout.
This is the most difficult and most important part. I lay out in Blender the elements I have listed with very basic shapes (cubes, cylinders, very low resolutions models), no textures just flat colors (green for grass, brown for rocks etc). I often use objects from other Ages as placeholders. I add avatars everywhere in the scene so that I can get a better sense of scale. And with this I try to set up the geography and the puzzles together to lay down the overall structure of the Age. I think a lot about the order in which the Age is explored and how the puzzles influence that. ("do I first visit that small house and then the big mountain, or the opposite?"). At this point the puzzles are very basic, I only think about them in relation to the exploration; like: "locked door, code is located in the journal in the house at the other end of the island"..
This is like a 'connect the dots' game: I have all the pieces, I just need to put them together in a working structure. But there is an infinite number of valid solutions and I have to find the most interesting/fun one.
I use mostly polygons, but I also use curves, modifiers, whatever is quick enough to make a very basic placeholder; all this will be destroyed later. I have used metaballs at times for landscapes; they are very useful to create complex 3D shapes quickly (especially to dig holes/caves). But they can really slow down Blender when working with detailed metaballs.
I export the Age frequently at this stage to be able to actually walk in it in Uru, to check the scale, and to imagine how the puzzles will work, to simulate an actual play session. It is essential, because some things can look ok in Blender but once in the game I realize it is not practical: it is too small, too big, to complicated, to slow etc.
The story appear sometime at this point, and I often have to modify what I have already done, which is ok because changes are still easy at this stage. The layout is really the most important part to me, and usually the longest. Final modelling and texturing is pretty quick comparatively.

3) 'Beautification'.
Once I have the structure of the Age set up, I go back to the drawing board. Now that I know what the function will be I can create the form. This is where the Age gets its actuall visual design. I go back to my original notes, and use those to define the actual style. I look at references, inspirationss sources, and I draw actual blueprints, maps, objects etc.
Usually I do not draw the landscapes though, I prefer to do these in 3D; it's easier because usually it doesn't require a very high level of detail (as opposed to buildings or plants); and I get a better feeling for it and a better sense of scale in 3D as opposed to a 2D drawing.

4) Final modelling
Finally I move on to the actual modelling phase; all the basic 'prototypes' shapes I had so far are scrapped or moved to a different layer in Blender and I can model the final stuff. Then of course I do the texturing/lighting/integration.

This is not a really productive way of working. Most of the time I am just having fun sketching in 3D, and because I am never totally happy with what I do it can stretch on for a long time before I actually decide to freeze something. The very first Age I started working on is a hood I started in late 2005, and I am still working on the basic layout. I create Ages for fun, so I'm not in a hurry.

[J'Kla]

I've been reading this and realised I haven't said how I built my age.

There were lots of age with exterior views islands etc. but I thought there must be ages like the cavern or even just an incredibly big buildings where you don't see the outside.

I had this little snake puzzle game a cube of 3 x 3 x 3 cubes joined by an elastic cord that unwinds into a snake so I figured 5 x 5 x 5 as D'ni uses base 25 and in stead of exploring the snake from the outside expore it from the inside and construct it from standard blocks.

And so the first mastercube for Enobmort was formed.

If you look all of my ages follow this plan but finaly Noidrocca has burst it's bonds and has an exterior view and Nilodnam has become a gallery for images from all of the other fan ages.

[bnewton81]

This is a great help to me. I don't have anyone in the real world that cares about Uru or 3d modeling and it is helpful to see how you guys make ages.