Guild of Writers

ddb174 wrote:Take a look at converted Direbo for examples of looping, animated linking books in Pots! And the linking book to Direbo in Relto(which you get after you first link there) shows such a panel inside of a book Gui itself.

I've been meaning to ask you about this...

*does a tiny bit of research before proceeding*.

Ok... I was delighted when I visited the drizzled descent and saw the animated linking panels in 3D and not just on the book GUI, but noticed that the emo-Yeesha imagers were dead. I figured, at the time, that it wasn't just a decision of your's, but that there's something complicated about controlling movie textures, but now that I have a quick look at Direbo, using Prpshop, it looks like we have a "LayerBink", using what I presume to be the same LayerAnimation/AnimationTime as any other layer animation. My (open) questions would be:

1) ARE there any further complications?
2) Does pyprp do Bink yet? If not; is anyone looking into it? :7


Hmm, "drboUrwinShape" and -walk... Are there supposed to be big birdie silhouettes strutting around Direbo? I've completely missed that. :7

I made an age a while ago with the UbiSoft start-up ad bink as the texture for a plane. It worked really well (even had the sound ). I used libPlasma, and I know exactly how to do it (it was quite easy). So if you're willing to do some work with PageEditor I'd be happy to help you out with this (you don't need to know anything about PageEditor, I can walk you though the steps).

Actually, this would make a good tutorial. I'll look into making this into a tutorial.

Essentially I'd change two things:
- In first person I'd get rid of the 'press right click to move the camera' system. Or at the very least I'd add an option in the setting to do it. I'm more of a fan of the 'press right click to stop moving the camera and set free the cursor' solution.
- Change the 3rd person camera from the current 'pan & scan' system to a regular 'orbit around head system', that 99% of the other games out there use.. They use it for a good reason. The current system is just too restrictive. You just can't look around freely in 3rd person, can't even turn your head left or right, you either have to actually turn the whole avatar or to switch to 1st person. Which is just terminally annoying to me.

Completely agreed.

I second that. It annoyes me as well, and I always wished there was a possibility to turn the camera freely.
But such a change would require another behaviour to be changes as well: The way the avatar moves / walks.
For example, in other games the avatar walks towards a point you clicked - then, while the avatar walks, to can turn the camera around the avatar.
As we know, in URU the avatar only walks into the direction we look to - so this would require huge changes to the engine.
I doubt this would be possible, although I would really like it.

That doesn't bothers me a lot. I rather keep it as it is. I can't see what the problem is. I move the camera around my character, and when I want to walk, I just look at the direction and press left mouse button.

As for linking panels: I always thought it will be cooler if the linking panels could show a "window" of the age, the view you see when you first link (1st person, obviously).

tachzusamm wrote:

Aloys wrote:- Change the 3rd person camera from the current 'pan & scan' system to a regular 'orbit around head system', that 99% of the other games out there use.. They use it for a good reason. The current system is just too restrictive. You just can't look around freely in 3rd person, can't even turn your head left or right, you either have to actually turn the whole avatar or to switch to 1st person. Which is just terminally annoying to me.

I second that. It annoyes me as well, and I always wished there was a possibility to turn the camera freely.
But such a change would require another behaviour to be changes as well: The way the avatar moves / walks.
For example, in other games the avatar walks towards a point you clicked - then, while the avatar walks, to can turn the camera around the avatar.
As we know, in URU the avatar only walks into the direction we look to - so this would require huge changes to the engine.
I doubt this would be possible, although I would really like it.

Oh, it could definitely work, we would just need a slightly different control scheme. You don't necesseraly need to move the camera at the same time as the avatar. Although it'd definitely be nice. Technically you can control both the avatar and the camera at the same time, but it's far from great. That's where console games have a huge advantage: controllers; it's much easier to control a camera with a stick than with a keyboard.

Lontahv wrote:I made an age a while ago with the UbiSoft start-up ad bink as the texture for a plane. It worked really well (even had the sound ).

That was the coolest Age ever made. :p

Lontahv wrote:if you're willing to do some work with PageEditor I'd be happy to help you out with this (you don't need to know anything about PageEditor, I can walk you though the steps).
Actually, this would make a good tutorial. I'll look into making this into a tutorial.

That'd be totally great!

Hey Aloys, you're misquoting me!

There's nothing stopping the Yeesha videos aside from the standard problem with clickables in Myst5. It didn't seem like a high priority because one can always play Myst5 anyway, so the content isn't otherwise lost, as was the case with Moul.

But if someone else want's to fiddle around with Drizzle's Myst5 physics conversion and can get clickables working consistently, be my guest!

As for the Urwin, it may have originally been intended for inclusion with Direbo but was dropped in the end. It isn't noticeable in Myst5 either.

@Lontahv:

I don't mind PageEditor as such - just having to redo the whole thing all over again, with every new export. :)

EDIT: Come to think of it, I suppose I wouldn't have to do that, if I only put that sort of things on a separate page... Worth looking into...

I made and binked a little test recording, for an imager, some weeks back and have been minded trying to put it into a test age, but never seem to get around to it - maybe your tutorial could poke me into action. :P


@ddb174:

Aha - didn't realise the physics engine had anything to do with clickables.

Lontahv wrote:Hey Aloys, you're misquoting me!
Oh my, I totally did. sorry about that.

Hey look I did it again.

Well there's that thing about them being annoying and useless...

ddb174 wrote:There's nothing stopping the Yeesha videos aside from the standard problem with clickables in Myst5.

What about Converting ages to Source? I don't mean the whole game at this point, but just a couple ages such as Eder Delin/Tsogahl, Gira, Cleft, Minkata, ect..

We all know that Blender can now import Cyan ages thanks to PyPRP. And SoftImage XSI Mod Tool can import several different types of files that blender exports (COLLADA, .X files, I think DFX). From there XSI has built in Source Plugins to export as models or Objects for Hammer Editor. From there it is compiled to Source. With some tweeking on the sides and Modding of the Engine, You could have a working Cleft, Minkata, Garden ages, ect..

Source can do everything Plasma can do, But better. It may be hard in some cases, but Worth it due to the Physics, postprocessing/graphics, ect.. No, I'm not sure how it would run on Multiplayer. But who knows? Please don't flame me on this I just would like to know if the idea is good at all, and if it has any extreame downfalls.

Thanks,
Valdez

P.S. If we got this to work, we wouldn't have debacles such as the Rocks in Teledahn or the baskets in Gira Also note, The Journeyman Project, another famous adventure game made before Myst, is being remade under the source engine. http://www.vigilantec.com (The Project has been halted due to the companies size and reputation, aka. not well known, but I've seen videos of it on Youtube and it looks fantastic! Don't think i'm lying when I say the vids arn't there... Read the history tab on the site and you'll know why...)