Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

A community Age for Uru.

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Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

Postby Aloys » Sun Dec 02, 2007 8:17 pm

This has been a busy week for me, and I haven't been able to do much beside preparing and sending shells.. As I look at my list of things to do I see a large amount of work left, but it's also very little compared to what's already been done. So I try to keep that in mind as I'm preparing for the last rush of work. I mentionned previously I wanted to have version 1 of the Age ready for this month, and I firmly intend to do it. It would be my christmas present for everyone here. (and in a way for me as well, because I also want to have some time to work on other Ages.)
So what exactly will be in version 1? Essentially all that PyPRP and time will allow me to do. Because Ahra Pahts is meant to always evolve there cannot be a 'final' version. So v1 will only be one version among others, but it will be the biggest (and hopefully greatest) version. To break that down into a more precise list, here is what we have:

- New (and final) textures for everything; except the shells (of course), and the sky. That may seem surprising but essentially all of the textures are placeholders and always were supposed to be replaced. That should be a drastic improvement. Also part of the new textures will be specific to each district.
- The three largest courtyards (in the red, green, and blue districts) will be available. Again, like much of the city they may be updated in the future; but I will make sure that for this version they will be of a quality on par with the rest of the Age. The green and blue ones are already planned, and I have some precise ideas for the red one.
- The Hub. This is being handled by J'anim, so I can't speak for him, and it may or may not be available for v1. But as much as possible we will try to make it.
- New smaller courtyard and shell courtyards. There are 4 'smaller' courtyards (those currently covered in grass) and 11 shell courtyards (the areas between the shells) in each district (except for the white district). They won't be all customized for v1, nor can I give a precise number of how many I will be able to make; but some will be there. These aren't too long to make and I enjoy doing them.
- New canals railings. There are many canals in the city so this will be a noticable improvement.
- Whatever new shells are available. (yes this is a disguised message to try and convince people to have some shells ready ;) )
- And of course, as much as possible: no bugs.

And finally... the Age will have sound. Great progress has been made on this lately by our great Huru guys, and I have just successfully added some (extremely basic) sound to a test Age (with some difficulty). So, although it may be hard, I can say with complete certainty that the city will have sound. Actually, I am confident that, as documentation (and possibly tools) progress over the next days and weeks, other Ages will feature sound.
BTW we could now use a 'sound specialist' for Ahra Pahts if anyone is interested. ;)

All in all in terms of features (as opposed to content) v1.0 will have everything planned for this Age; except for the loading and performance optimisations because that's currently technically impossibe. (I won't go into details here, those interested can take a look at this old post). In the far (but hopefully not-so-far) future this might be added, as well as other things (boats?). But one thing at a time.

Next week there'll be a new version, although it will mostly have minor updates, but it'll feature an update to Robert's shell. After that version, there will most likely will be no more updates until version 1. Getting a version ready takes time and I'd rather focus on creating new content and updating stuff than preparing a version. (Next week's version will be named 0.9 just for fun, so that I don't jump from version 0.8.8 to 1; although that's really a minor detail at this point.)
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Re: Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

Postby Chacal » Sun Dec 02, 2007 8:35 pm

Sounds good. I'm drooling already.

Aloys wrote:BTW we could now use a 'sound specialist' for Ahra Pahts if anyone is interested. ;)

What exactly do you mean? I have a good friend who's a professional, she does post-prod sound, Foley, music, etc. for movies.
She has a library of sounds and can record or mix new ones. Is that what you need?
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Re: Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

Postby Aloys » Mon Dec 03, 2007 6:16 am

That would be something along that line. As sound become available we'll need some ambient sounds to add..
I'm not much into that area myself, but I guess that at least at first we use simply some slight wind sounds or something like that.. Personally I am a fan of the ambient sound in Relto (Uru/Sfx/psnlAmb_Loop.ogg), with that low undulating background.. It gives a lot of warmth to the Age.
I'll start a separate topic about that.
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Re: Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

Postby Chacal » Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:02 pm

My friend's specialty is ambient sound.
She explained to me that they use a specific ambient sound for every location ("room tone") in a movie, even if it is so low as to not register on the conscious level. This helps the viewer identify the location at the unconscious level, even though the shot may not show any visual clue.

So each room in a set, each exterior location, will have its own room tone. No ambient sound makes the scene sound flat.
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Re: Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

Postby Robert The Rebuilder » Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:23 pm

Sounds like a great plan, Aloys! And even more fantastic is the prospect of sounds (other than footsteps).

Aloys wrote:(I won't go into details here, those interested can take a look at this old post on the GoAB board.).


Just a quick note: your journals have been transferred to the GoW, and here's a link to that same post:

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Re: Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

Postby Aloys » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:29 pm

oops, I forgot. Old habbit. Thank you for correcting this. :)
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Re: Ahra Pahts weekly update #5

Postby Aloys » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:11 pm

I just posted a separate topic about the sound we'll need here.
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