Tutorial and Information Requests

[Aloys]

I've gained a newfound respect for tool development lately.

I've done game development in a capacity or another for a while, but tool development is a new thing to me. At work recently (I mean for the last year and a half) I've lead a development effort for an in-house visual scripting Unity plugin (shameless plug: it's for this game). And I would never have thought it would be that long to make... It definitely one of those things that looks easy when it's definitely not.. Even for relatively simple things like "changing" a state, or a variable getter/setter; there's always a fair bit of work involved; and often more than anticipated.

tldr: kudos to the Korman team for doing this!

[J'Kla]

Thanks for the shameless plug the game looks good I have downloaded the demo

[Sirius]

I'm still working on making an example Age with a few templates for puzzles, interactions, etc. Unfortunately, these days it's hard for me to find motivation to work during my free time, so it's going really slowly Wish I could be of more help, but it's just hard for me currently...

I've gained a newfound respect for tool development lately.

Agreed. There are so many things that can go wrong due to the very numerous interactions between the tool and users... And working on UIs isn't really sexy either (ugh, do I really have to code a full UI just to expose a single line of code to the user ?).
It gets quite rewarding once your tool is finished, though (assuming there is such a thing as "finished" in software development ).

[Deledrius]

I'm still working on making an example Age with a few templates for puzzles, interactions, etc. Unfortunately, these days it's hard for me to find motivation to work during my free time, so it's going really slowly Wish I could be of more help, but it's just hard for me currently...

I've had one in the works since we started Korman, right at the beginning. But yeah, I've had a hard time working on much in the last year. Hoikas has been doing most of the work on everything lately. Hopefully you or I or both will have something to share eventually.

I've gained a newfound respect for tool development lately.

Agreed. There are so many things that can go wrong due to the very numerous interactions between the tool and users... And working on UIs isn't really sexy either (ugh, do I really have to code a full UI just to expose a single line of code to the user ?).
It gets quite rewarding once your tool is finished, though (assuming there is such a thing as "finished" in software development ).

I love working on tools. It's one of my favorite things, and I love spending the extra time trying to figure out the best way to make something both powerful and self-explanatory.

But doing it, and doing it well, is very hard. There's a lot of both technical and social knowledge that goes into the entire process.

[Sirius]

I love working on tools. It's one of my favorite things, and I love spending the extra time trying to figure out the best way to make something both powerful and self-explanatory.

True, in a way the increased complexity makes it much more interesting, and more rewarding when you achieve your goal... (like most programming, to be honest, but with the extra social knowledge as you pointed out).
I like designing UIs from time to time, but most of the time I admit it's not big on my priority list, especially when I have direct access to the source code...

[Aloys]

I'm still working on making an example Age with a few templates for puzzles, interactions, etc. Unfortunately, these days it's hard for me to find motivation to work during my free time, so it's going really slowly

That would be super useful. Is there anyway I can help you with this? Maybe 3d art? Anything?

[Sirius]

I already have the "art" - I'm going with some very basic visuals for simplicity (and because I already wasted enough time trying to understand Blender's global illumination system).
The remaining stuff is mostly learning about/making/testing node trees, and I feel I'll progress just as fast on my own, to be honest. Thanks for the offer though !

[J'Kla]

I suppose that just leaves us with giving you as much vocal moral support as we can.

[Bookwyrm]

Is it possible to export specular maps with Korman that render correctly in Uru?

My forum searches have bought up mention of them here and there, but I haven't found a definitive answer as to whether or not they're actually possible.

[Sirius]

As far as I know, Uru doesn't have traditional specular maps (Uru's materials are rather weird).

You might be able to achieve a similar effect by duplicating the model, marking it as a decal, assigning it a material with high specularity, and use your specularity map as alpha map.
(Theoretically you could achieve this with multiple layers and a single mesh/material, but I'm not sure Korman supports it due to the way Blender works.)

However, keep in mind that Uru's shading is all done per-vertex, so things like specularity, lighting and reflections always look weird when used, especially with a low number of vertices.

(Not exactly what you're asking for, but it's also possible to use cubemaps to get some very simple reflection on metals and the like. Cyan did this extensively for the Great Zero, for instance.)