Ramblings from a Noob +1

[Calena]

Thanks for the encouragement, I really appreciate it. This place can be a bit intimidating for noobs. Lots of brilliant people talking high-tech.

So, the saga continues. Being that I can't draw for diddly, my solution has been to find pictures of things I want to model, print the picture and put it on my desk to guide me. So, I'm now on the part that needs to look like the player is in D'ni. I'm spending lots of time in URU, often in first person for closeups, sometimes in first person fly mode so I can get down on the floor and up to the ceiling. Those guys at Cyan are good. The level of difficulty just went way up. I've learned how to texture paint . I was all proud. Then I got the brilliant idea of taking a screen shot of the gazebo I want to mimic and putting it on my desktop to study. I need to avoid brilliant ideas. This picture is stunning. And I keep seeing more and more details. And more details. Like the steps. I got the steps done, thought they looked good. Then I'm looking at this screen shot and noticed the shadows on their stairs. Now I have to do this. It's a good thing I just learned texture painting. So I paint a new texture with shadows and re-map everything. Looks great, I'm all happy. Then I noticed the dark line at the seams where the riser meets the stair. Okay, re-paint the texture, re-map everything. Wait - there's dirt stains. Start all over again. It's looking good, way better than it would have if I didn't have this screenshot on my desktop. Unfortunately, I have no idea how long it's going to take me to finish this section. But it'll look good when it's done . And no, even doing this, I'm still not Cyan. Those pros are light years ahead of me.

Now the fun part. My two guinea pigs (son and grandson) took their second look at the age. Son approved of the rusty tin cans. Then he instructed me to add spiderwebs. Huh? There aren't any of those in Myst (I'm thinking, Oh no, not more work!) He gives me a dead in the eye serious look and says, "It's abandoned. If you want it to be good, you need spiderwebs." Yea, they're in there and he was right again. Thank goodness they were easy to add.

My real interest was in seeing how well my 'challenges' may work. There will be no complex programmed puzzles in this age because I have way too much to learn. I want to learn, but I'm trying to pace this mountainous learning curve. But there needs to be challenges and interaction, so I got creative and dreamed something up. It works . I had to tell them what to do because they got stumped and stuck. So far, so good. I'll just keep working.

Now, the really good part. Grandson was not too pleased that I didn't produce the animated bear. We had our discussion and he forgives me, though I'm certain he thinks his grandma is a moron. He gave me that look. Not his fault, at 7 years old, he can't understand. So he went back to ride the dinosaurs. Then he went to Hayal to show papa the secret garden. You need to appreciate what is going on here.

Grandson lives in a house with two die hard gamers for parents. They have PS3 and WII with multiple flat screens, including the 65" monster. He comes to Grandma's house and I have URU and Myst Exile, no big TV's, but lots of computers. He wound up riding ametist's dinosaurs because Grandma didn't have an animated bear and he wanted to ride an animal. I said, "No problem. You can ride DINOSAURS!". He was thrilled. Then he wanted to know if we had any robots. Hayal! Yes, we have robots. This time after going back to those two, he pops up with, "Grandma, do they have any lava? Lava's cool." Yes, we have lava. Here you go. He was all happy and played around in there for a while. Then he asks, "Grandma, do they have any slides?" Oh, do we have slides. We hit a major home-run with Huinexus. He was so excited, yelling "This is AWESOME!". I didn't think I'd ever get him away from the age. This progressed to the next morning when papa showed up. "Papa, papa, you got to SEE this!" Every toy manufacturers dream scenario. Which led to my son asking if I thought this would run on his old computer and how does he get it.

Yup, you guys beat out the big boys. If you don't believe me, ask my grandson .

[bnewton81]

am i the only one temped to make a bear for his grandson?

[Calena]

am i the only one temped to make a bear for his grandson?

Grandson and grandma say Thanks! Don't worry, he will get his age. Hopefully before he goes off to college.

The age is built! That doesn't mean it's finished, but the objects are all there and the texturing is complete. There is still my punch list of corrections to be made, but it's been whittled down to 30 items as of now.

I've gotten into the habit of deleting my entire texture cache once a week and re-exporting everything. The last full export only found three texture errors to correct. The age has over 500 textured objects in it and most of the textures have been through several revisions, so I'm happy with only 3 errors. The majority of the errors are due to deleting and replacing texture images without deleting the material index from the blend file. I've done everything I can manage to keep the texture file as small as possible, re-using textures, re-sampling the images to reduce the size, doubling textures on images, painting the shading directly onto the images and UV mapping to what I want and the file is still huge. I had it back to 40Mb and then I learned about baking ambient occlusion. Great results for the age, but it bloated that file again.

The age itself is a very manageable 27Mb and loads super fast, so I hope I'm good on that for the older computers. I have a circa 2003 AMD Duron sitting on the floor unused and I'm tempted to fire it up and try loading everything into it. At this point, I haven't been tempted enough to actually do that. Besides, there is still incorporating the regions to optimize performance to be done. And sounds. And music. Ack! I don't want to think about it. It's too much like trying to swallow an elephant in one bite.

I still have to tackle the Python coding to finish the age. I've been over the wiki instructions a few times and I'm experienced with writing code and I've studied the Python files. I can at least follow them and understand the logic. Unfortunately, being familiar with coding also means I know only too well that if so much as one space or comma is out of place, it won't work. I'm counting on the wonderful fact that D'Lanor already wrote and posted the code for us.

In spite of this, I'm pleased that I still know my real name, for the most part my hair is still on my head and I haven't tossed my computer off a bridge. I'm thrilled to tears with the results I've managed and running around in an honest to goodness 3d video age that I built! Way cool. And to those that won't like it (and they will be there), I'm more than willing to point them to the directions to download all the files, face the cube and go to work.

Happy age writing.

ETA: Another first - MUSIC!!! There is music in the age. And it worked on the first try. Much more to add in sound effects, but it is happening.

[Calena]

Happy update - all the sound is in, including the subworld sound.

And . . . Frankie and Bobby are zooming around . Yes, I named the flies. I spent way too much time with them sorting out the Alscript to get the regions to trigger the looping animations.

I have to say, the sounds, music and animations are really starting to bring this age to life .

On to the next challenge. I have to create a journal book. I think that means Python. I need a drink.

[Corvus]

Cheers and good luck with the journal!

Your reports are very entertaining. And I'm looking forward to visit your age.

[Calena]

Possibly big news! I think I just released my age. I uploaded it to the UAM shard. At least, I think I did. There's no verification that the upload is complete. I sent an email to request verification. In any case, Rahsoo Bahrotan should be available early this week .

Technically, it could use a bit more work, but I had been looking at it for too long. I couldn't 'see' it anymore, it was time to let it go to new eyes. And because some things never change, I went back in the age to test a last minute fix after the upload and of course, the fix didn't take . I set a collider with 'convex hull' bounds and it doesn't work. There's one spot where you can jump off the wall and into nothingness. That's fixed now and I will not complain if I have to re-do the upload.

I'll update when I know more about the status.

Geez, I built an age! It hasn't quite sunk in yet.

[diafero]

If you could also upload it to some 1-click-hoster (like rapdidshare, mediafire, whatever), I can add it to Deep Island as well
(or I will wait until it appears in UAM)

[Calena]

If you could also upload it to some 1-click-hoster (like rapdidshare, mediafire, whatever), I can add it to Deep Island as well
(or I will wait until it appears in UAM)

Thanks for the note. This should do it: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=87T8T3W8

I think all the files you need are here. I uploaded the files I use to transfer the age around on my home network.

Note: We noob writers could use a good wiki page on what to do with our ages once they're finished. I was looking all over the place for instructions on how to get this thing out to the shards and didn't find much.

[diafero]

Yeah, that's really quite obscure... maybe the GoW could have an age-upload service, but there's the problem of preventing people from using it to share their music or whatever. Or it is made downloadable for some people only.

[Calena]

AKA "Start, Stop, Study, Do Over", including "Where did it go?" and "that's not what it looked like in Blender!"

I must admit I'm having much fun building my first age, in spite of the stop/start nature of the experience. Having first downloaded Blender on Dec. 3 and PyPRP on Jan. 13, I feel like I'm light years away from the initial "Look, it's a cube!" moment. I have an actual partial age . Yes, I'm very proud of myself.

START . . . . STOP . . . . STUDY . . . . DO OVER

I passed my one year anniversary . I made it through the first two practice ages. I'm ready to attempt building my first real age. My concept artist is on the job. I have a basic idea of what he has in mind. He gave me my first assignment tonight. He called me ON THE PHONE and said Build This and Can You Make This Happen? Once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I started getting excited. This is going to be so awesome. It won't be perfect, it never is. It doesn't have to be perfect, it only has to be believable. It will be an adventure, a mystery, a challenge.

We've set a one-year timeline to build this thing. It will be huge. But the joy is in the journey, the building, creating something from nothing and I'm doing this with my son . This is what I call great family fun.

I build in Blender. I hope someday we can share our vision with everyone, but right now, who knows? Diafero has assured me that as long as Deep Island is needed, it will be available. I'm counting on that. I still believe that eventually the super-devs will find the time to sort out and resolve the 10,000 details they're challenged with to bring us a completely new set of tools. But I'm not going to whine and sit on my hands till that happens. There's no reason we can't keep building and learning. And as far as needing the 'latest and greatest' graphic effects to succeed? The most successful game on the planet right now is "Angry Birds". It's really about the concept. The tech is simply here to bring the concept to life.

One small brag: I WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO RIDE THE MYST ROCKET!!!!! That was my biggest disappoint with that game. I had to wait almost 20 years and build the thing myself, but I did it

God Bless.