Age Creation Proposal

[BenB]

This idea about a bubble going throug a canyon, is a one way trip right?
It makes me think about an idea I had a year ago.

I was thinking that all the ages seem to be one piece of property, like a square or a circle. Even Cyan ages, when it looks from the inside like you are going some where, you are still staying inside that area, really. Like Gira or Kimo.
But is there a reason why an Age cant be stretched out more? Like you take Minkata, and make it a long tube instead of square plane? Ercana is may be stretched the long way, but that is the only one I think of like that.

And if we can making paging work right, can we connect one of these long ages up to another one, and another? So we keep on going, on a really long trip?

[Emor D'ni Lap]

I like that idea, Ben!

It's something I've wondered about too: if properly paginated, can the Plasma engine work for a game that really is a long journey, requiring traveling long distances, encountering and overcoming many obstacles? In other words, can large amounts of data be handled properly as long as the engine doesn't have to load it all at once?
I've only worked with connecting pages once; it worked okay but I wasn't exactly "pushing the envelope" very hard, either!

Does anyone have any experience with / opinions on this? Christopher? GPNMilano?

This also makes me think that a modular structure could work well for a group project where various artists take responsibility for one portion - one page - of the journey, with the hookups in-between carefully pre-planned. Texture-sharing between participants' areas would also have to be planned well, to keep that .prp size down somewhat.

I know Rell-too was set up like a round-robin or "Exquisite Corpse"-type project, where the files were handed off to each person in sequence. But doing a modular project could allow all participants to be working simultaneously, yet at their own pace. Cool!

[BenB]

I like that idea, Ben!

Good! That idea about how to put a large age together from several builders work is a good one too.

What about story though? Some things I was thinking about are that it should not be like a straight line with a player having to go through one agebuildrs part then the next and then the next you know?
And it feels like there has to be some kind of a quest to make a reason to go through everything. So maybe something happens in the first section to get things going. And the last part in the series of pages has a wrap-up some how.

We shouold probably test the page assembly process some how first though?
What does everyone think about this?

[Karkadann]

Perhaps if each section was a separate prp file combined with VisRegions.

also you could also leave area's with locked doors in case you wanted to expand later on.

[Emor D'ni Lap]

Perhaps if each section was a separate prp file combined with VisRegions.

I think that's what BenB was talking about at the top of this page, when he suggested using paging. Unfortunately, "page" is also the name Cyan used for the Component that separates parts of an Age into individual .prp files.

But yeah, you're right: applying VisRegions with paging is what allows the client to only load the areas of an Age necessary for immediate rendering, right?

Ae'gura is an amazing example of paging: over a dozen .prp files integrated into one Age, so the whole place doesn't have to be loaded into memory all at once!

Since January, I've been putting in some bits of time on a PageDemo age, just so I can see where the pitfalls and advantages lie in structuring such a project. It's butt-ugly, but it's not intended to be pretty or fun...just a place I can learn from, and indeed I am learning quite a bit on it!

It's almost finished, but I'm presently in a computer-hell quandary:
Last November, I won a schmancy piece of expensive software in a drawing/raffle. Turns out my old graphics card wouldn't run this software, so I had to buy a new, expensive card (that I really can't afford). Now, of course, that new card doesn't have drivers suitable for my older versions of graphics software. It doesn't even render URU properly! (alphaed textures are shown as white blocks). So now it appears I have to reset my machine to the way it was, and build a new computer specially for the @%#&!!!! software I won, if I ever want to use it!

That's why I think it may be another week or so before I can get back to finishing this PageDemo age.....

[Emor D'ni Lap]

The computer-rebuild issues went on for months, but were solved about a month ago.
Then other priorities have taken over all my spare time.

The PageDemo Age has taken a back-burner position, and is likely to remain there for the next couple months at least. Sorry!

...but I still intend to get back to it.
We'll follow through on this Proposal...eventually!

[cskid13]

Hey, some of you might have seen me once or twice at the Guild of Writers forums. I see that this project hasn't been very active for over a year. Is there anything I can do to help?

[BenB]

Hi cskid13! Thank you for asking!
Like Emor and me have been talking about before, this would be a really really big age, with parts by as many people as possibble.
Each area would lead to the next so the player would feel like they went on a long long trip.
But it needs a really good story to take the explorer from one end to the other. Something that would get age creaters exited enough to want to be part of the project.

The other thing Emor was working on was a test age, I think to see how VisRegions worked on a big age. He's around, but looks like not much lately.
Are you a builder, an artist, or a coder? What kind of things do you like to do? Are there ages you have finished all ready? Are you working on stuff now?

[Emor D'ni Lap]

Sorry, you're right, I haven't been around much over the past seven months or so: a really rough period for me in terms of both all-consuming freelance work and some difficult family matters. Right now it looks like both of those areas will be clearing up soon and I will hopefully have more and more free time in the remaining months of 2015.

cskid13: like BenB says, "thanks for asking what you can do to help!" And as Ben says, please let us know what you would LIKE to do, what you're good at, and maybe what you've done already, would you?
And, as Ben says, this project is still in need of a storyline. I think what's needed is a story that motivates the player, then has a number of hurdles that must be overcome in separate areas that can be built by multiple volunteers, and a resolution...either in a final area or as a return to the first area.

Regarding the Page Demo Age:
I still intend to get back to this test Age.
However, earlier this year Adam Johnson straightened me out on one misconception I had: apparently URU loads an Age's entire .prp file into active memory on link-in, no matter how it is paged. The only advantage of setting up visregions lies in taking the load off the client's graphics card, so that only the visible areas of the Age have to be rendered (if visregions are set up properly).

So, for a VERY large Age, the question is more like: "What are the Plasma engine's tolerable limits for triangle numbers and texture Megabytes, for the lowest end of our target range of computer quality?"

When I get back to this project, I might just try stuffing it with more and more junk mesh and texture, and we can all test it to see where it bogs down on each of our computers...or is there a better way to test the modern-day limits of the average gamer's computer? What do you think?

[cskid13]

My main age creation skills right now are general building (without textures), maps and design, music (and basic sound design), and story writing. I have two ages that I am focusing on at the moment, but another project that I wish to start relatively soon (ironically, a failed group project). My main issue is finding textures that work, and then actually using the textures in such a way that they look good, so texturing may need to be left to someone else. However, I did recently learn about what I've been doing wrong with texturing in the past, so hopefully I'll get better with practice.

So here's my main question. Have we decided for sure that we'd like to do a single age that is very large, or are we considering the possibility of doing a couple of smaller ages (or even one smaller age with a great story and puzzle)?

Anyway, my favorite part of age creation is story and puzzle design, so I'd be happy to do some of that if you'd like.

Also, I think we should make sure to communicate well if this project is going to be a success. In my experience most of the group projects that fail do so because members stop communicating. So if any of us are too busy to work on it, that's fine, but we should make sure the other members know and have access to anything they need to continue the work themselves. That way progress can still be made, even if slowly.