sideshow118 wrote:

Tweek, I'm curious. It seems to me that as an employee of Cyan, you have a tremendous resource for solving Age-making problems with the pool of experts you work with. Are you not allowed to ask others at Cyan for help/advice?

Cyan employees don't use Blender, nor do they use the scripts which the Guild of Writers uses to make Ages, so they probably cannot advise on any specific Age-creation problems.

_________________
quahog42 | theclam | lazugod

Not really, I build from a fan perspective, I'm just an intern.

_________________
Beneath - Journey of an explorer in D'ni
UruBlogs - Blogs from Uru Explorers
Tweek@Guild of Writers - Age development Blog.

Last edited by Tweek on Mon Oct 26, 2009 1:30 am; edited 1 time in total

Firstly, WOW, Tweek, you've done a superb job on this age. You've made a lot of progress. Your plants look great, your rock formations look great, I love the lilypads and the weird purplish textures on those fungi/trees/formations.

(Whatever they are - what are they? Are they alive?)

I have the same issue you had with white edges on textures with transparency maps on my environment. Do you have any tips, from your experience, on how to get rid of those white edges, aside from just making the texture massively high-res or not using transparency maps?

How did you solve your lilypad problem?

Oh, and I'm curious about the machine in your age and what it does.

I'm looking forward to loading your age, exploring, looking around, and figuring out what those buttons/lights do.

I'm downloading it now...

Tweek, since you're working at Cyan Worlds (as an intern) obviously you know what's going on there more than we do.

I know there are some things you probably aren't allowed to tell us, and I recognize that you're busy, but I can't help but ask:

-How are things going with Magiquest Online? Is there anything you can tell us about that project - either about the game itself or the experiences of the people who are working on it?

-What is it like working at Cyan Worlds HQ? What do you do there as an intern? Can you describe a typical day at Cyan Worlds?

-Also, when do you think Cyan Worlds will release the first Chapter of MagiQuest Online, and how long (honestly) do you think it'll take them to open source Uru after that? How do you think MQO's success (or failure) will affect the open sourcing of Uru?

Anyway, if you would answer any of those questions, that'd be awesome. We're pretty hard up for news lately on these boards.

Anyway, beautiful age. Though somewhat puzzling to see a "Place Order" button associated with a FREE age.

But, in any case, it's your first age. It's absolutely amazing for a first age.

If your future ages are even better than this one, and your upcoming worlds are great quality and reasonably large, I can definitely imagine you actually selling them with your Place Order buttons, as a means of raising funds for Cyan.

With Cyan Worlds' permission, of course.

Maybe if the fanbase expands substantially after the open-sourcing, and your sale ages become lucrative enough, you could use their success to convince Cyan to start making Uru content again.

Very unlikely, of course, but if it somehow did happen it'd be exciting.

EDIT: Just explored your age.

I'm disappointed that the buttons/lights don't do anything but not surprised by that.

I did notice a crate in your age that looks like Portal's Weighted Companion Cube. Nice easter egg!

Your pond is one of the best-developed fan ponds I've seen. It has good textures and lilypads and reflections and sloshing sounds and ripples when you walk through it.

How much work did that take you? Must've been pretty involved, getting all that to work.

And the objects in your age cast nice shadows, and have smooth transitions between textures. I have to say, I appreciate that.

Cyan Worlds is lucky to have you. You're a good artist.

_________________
Matthew L. Hornbostel, creator of Panoramic Worlds,
a Myst fansite , and
various other stuff.

matthornb wrote:

Firstly, WOW, Tweek, you've done a superb job on this age. You've made a lot of progress. Your plants look great, your rock formations look great, I love the lilypads and the weird purplish textures on those fungi/trees/formations.

(Whatever they are - what are they? Are they alive?)

I have the same issue you had with white edges on textures with transparency maps on my environment. Do you have any tips, from your experience, on how to get rid of those white edges, aside from just making the texture massively high-res or not using transparency maps?

How did you solve your lilypad problem?

I don't know that I have fixed the lillypad problem, but I I think I may have a solution. With the ripples I had for the water the texture was a white ripple on a black background, the texture properties were changed in Blender to "add" I think it was, so I am wondering if doing the same would work but that's something I plan to experiment.

Quote:

Oh, and I'm curious about the machine in your age and what it does.

I'm looking forward to loading your age, exploring, looking around, and figuring out what those buttons/lights do.

I'm downloading it now...

The Book of Commentary in the Age explains a great deal about the machinery and wildlife in the Age.

Quote:

Tweek, since you're working at Cyan Worlds (as an intern) obviously you know what's going on there more than we do.

I know there are some things you probably aren't allowed to tell us, and I recognize that you're busy, but I can't help but ask:

-How are things going with Magiquest Online? Is there anything you can tell us about that project - either about the game itself or the experiences of the people who are working on it?

No clue sorry

Quote:

-What is it like working at Cyan Worlds HQ? What do you do there as an intern? Can you describe a typical day at Cyan Worlds?

I don't work at Cyan HQ I work from home, I dealt with the MOUL site/forums Hex Isle site etc.

Quote:

-Also, when do you think Cyan Worlds will release the first Chapter of MagiQuest Online, and how long (honestly) do you think it'll take them to open source Uru after that? How do you think MQO's success (or failure) will affect the open sourcing of Uru?

No clue sorry.

Quote:

Anyway, if you would answer any of those questions, that'd be awesome. We're pretty hard up for news lately on these boards.

Anyway, beautiful age. Though somewhat puzzling to see a "Place Order" button associated with a FREE age.

But, in any case, it's your first age. It's absolutely amazing for a first age.

Well you can place an order for free stuff. The Beneath website is an In Character site, do having "Download Age" didn't really work there so I decided to go with a book ordering kind of thing.

It's kind of my first Age, it was the first one I started building when I first started learning Blender back in 08, but Cass/Tochoortahv would be the first one I actually released.

Quote:

If your future ages are even better than this one, and your upcoming worlds are great quality and reasonably large, I can definitely imagine you actually selling them with your Place Order buttons, as a means of raising funds for Cyan.

With Cyan Worlds' permission, of course.

Yeah bit of a grey area there, plus I'm not really sure how I'd feel about that, I enjoy making the Ages and enjoy trying to tell the story I've been crafting over the last 6 years, and seeing people enjoy exploring it makes it worth just making them and giving them away in my opinion.

Quote:

EDIT: Just explored your age.

I'm disappointed that the buttons/lights don't do anything but not surprised by that.

From an IC point of the view the pump automatically kicks in when water levels reach a certain point, which means it wouldn't be something the players could turn on.

Quote:

I did notice a crate in your age that looks like Portal's Weighted Companion Cube. Nice easter egg!

Quote:

Your pond is one of the best-developed fan ponds I've seen. It has good textures and lilypads and reflections and sloshing sounds and ripples when you walk through it.

How much work did that take you? Must've been pretty involved, getting all that to work.

And the objects in your age cast nice shadows, and have smooth transitions between textures. I have to say, I appreciate that.

Cyan Worlds is lucky to have you. You're a good artist.

Thanks. Actually it was pretty straightforward, once you've got the hang of wavesets they're not to bad to deal with, the biggest problem I had was the ripples which were determined to be black instead of white, took me a couple of days to figure that one out with the help of the GoW guys.

_________________
Beneath - Journey of an explorer in D'ni
UruBlogs - Blogs from Uru Explorers
Tweek@Guild of Writers - Age development Blog.

Tweek wrote:

I don't know that I have fixed the lillypad problem, but I I think I may have a solution. With the ripples I had for the water the texture was a white ripple on a black background, the texture properties were changed in Blender to "add" I think it was, so I am wondering if doing the same would work but that's something I plan to experiment.

(First of all, sorry for sidetracking.)
I'm afraid I don't believe that will lead anywhere, since the add mode is literally additive: a red circle foreground (255,0,0) ADDed over a background consisting of a blue square (0,0,255) will result in a bright purple circle on a blue square (255,0,255 (0+255,0+0,255+0), always adding to the background (amount scaled by the col slider value), without any division, whereas with mix mode, foreground can completely replace background, if Alpha is 255 and col-slider (here master alpha) is 1 -- a 50/50 mix of the example above would, of course be (255+255/2,0+0/2,255+255/2), giving us the average luma of the mixed images (128,0,128), whereas with ADD we got the sum, resulting in something much brighter.

I am still surprised the renderlevel thing didn't help - it did with the alpha transpiracies on the lowLOD version of the bridge in ERCAge.

@Matt: There is a bit (well, a lot) of bothering involved with transparent objects, when it comes to Plasma. You can, as a start, try ticking the "Transp" button in Blender's Object buttons panel -> Draw/DrawExtra, for the object. This will make Plasma try to draw the transparent object AFTER the things behind it has been drawn already, by putting it in a "later rendered" "span" than the default. Think of it as a photoshop layer, higher up in the stack. Without this, your transparent bits may mix with whatever is behind the background object and this may well be white fog.
If this doesn't help, look on the same buttons panel for a value called "PassIndex" - this allows you to sort objects that already share the same "span", to determine which goes on top of the other - higer value is drawn on top of lower. Actually, as soon as you set this to a non-zero value, the export script will also set some flags that makes Plasma try to automatically sort things, to its best ability.

(In the case regarding "Wavesets", they are placed in a *very* "late" span, making it difficult to have transparent objects in front of bodies of water -- these objects can, however, be forced into an even later span, which, alas, didn't appear to help in Tweek's case.)

Hope this helped a little. Don't be a stranger to the GoW forum - lots of brainics there, often happy help the rest of us out.

Matt wrote:

Your pond is one of the best-developed fan ponds I've seen. It has good textures and lilypads and reflections and sloshing sounds and ripples when you walk through it.

How much work did that take you? Must've been pretty involved, getting all that to work.

And the objects in your age cast nice shadows, and have smooth transitions between textures. I have to say, I appreciate that.

Cyan Worlds is lucky to have you. You're a good artist.

Very much agreed. I especially like the algae floating at the edges of the pond. Tweek has got all the detail touches in place and excellently executed.

If you don't mind, Tweek; How did you do your texture blends? A single mesh, with stencilled layers? ..or separate meshes pehaps, with alpha vertex painting, or maybe a combination thereof? Transitional meshes, possibly?

Ok, I'll shut up now...

Separate meshes with Alpha Vertex painting.

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Beneath - Journey of an explorer in D'ni
UruBlogs - Blogs from Uru Explorers
Tweek@Guild of Writers - Age development Blog.

Thanks!

Yeah, that's a good idea - alpha vertex painting. It makes sense for those nice blended areas. Alternatively, the blending can be part of the image texture itself.

The little details in Fahets *are* quite nice; the pond is probably the best I've seen in any fan age.

As Jojon pointed out, the "add" setting is good for ripples but useless for leaves, which is what I'm dealing with.

I've got a tree with hundreds of leaves, and it's done with a texture map + transparency map. Unfortunately, the leaves have obvious white edges.

Jojon, I'm not sure I completely understand your suggestion, but I mostly do and I'll pursue it as a way of fixing the issue.

This is for the tree in the D'ni Temple, but it'll also apply to countless plants in the jungle age I hope to make later.

I intend to make a lush, dense jungle at some point - and that'll involve *loads* of objects with transparency maps.

Tweek, I know what you mean, it's great to have your work seen by people, that by itself pretty much makes it worth it.

Still, the idea - not that it'd have to be you who does it, but the idea of having a bunch of fans make small "expansion packs" for Uru:CC, basically some of the top-quality fan-created ages, and instead of giving them out directly to the fanbase, give the content to Cyan Worlds so Cyan Worlds could sell it and profit from what the GoW is doing anyway, which is working for free to make content for Uru:CC.

And then that could raise funds for the open-sourcing of Uru which Cyan Worlds has (thus far) been slow to move forward on. You're a web designer, you could throw up a site for sale of these fan-created items, designed so that all the money from it goes to Cyan Worlds directly. An age like Breldur might sell for $3, one of mine maybe for 60 cents, and so on - but it'd be organized as a fundraiser for Cyan Worlds to fund an Open Source Uru.

The fans can't give money directly to Cyan Worlds - Cyan isn't a non-profit - but we probably can give them content if they hire us as unpaid "freelance artists" or unpaid interns. Then Cyan can resell said content.

Obviously the content would need to be vetted by someone, but the GoM could handle most of that.

If our fanbase can create, say, 15 good ages averaging at a 99-cent sale price per age, and around 7000 fans buy each one, that's $105,000 for Cyan Worlds - Maybe enough to pay for the Open-Sourcing of Uru.

Indeed, the system could remain intact even after Uru goes open source; the sales of fan content could then begin to fund production of official content, which would also be sold on the same site and would in turn fund further content.

The idea is to take what we're already doing - working for free - and coordinate it with Cyan Worlds so that they can profit from our unpaid work and use it to move forward on open-sourcing Uru and adding to it.

Obviously there'd need to be approval given for such a project, but if we could get approval from Cyan Worlds, and make this happen, then...

I'd be quick to volunteer to submit content.

And be an intern, an unpaid intern, or unpaid, uncredited freelance artist working from home for Cyan Worlds. Y'know?

But I digress...

Fahets looks amazing. Good job, Tweek.


You work from home; where, generally, is your home?

And can I do the same?

How did you apply to be an intern at Cyan Worlds? How did you get that position?

Are you paid or unpaid?

Is there any chance - any at all - that I could be, if not an unpaid intern for Cyan Worlds, an unpaid freelancer doing tasks for the company? (Less liability for them if I screwed something up, as I wouldn't technically be their employee)

They could send me modelling tasks and I'd do them, I could send them 3d models based on their designs. For free.

If they'd let me.

Ever since MQO went into crunch time it's been hard to get any reply from them!

Or maybe I just creep them out and they're avoiding me.

Seriously, I think - really, I do - I think I could sustain an unpaid work-for-Cyan-Worlds position on a fairly long-term basis. I could work part-time, unpaid, now, even full-time unpaid (After June 2010)

Whatever it takes, really, to get a chance to work for their company.

I noticed an interesting Stone when visiting your age, The stone itself seems ordinary itself, but there is a carving on it, its significants I don;t know, but what I was wondering is was this here as part of the age or something your brought in? If it was there any idea on its meaning?


http://lh4.ggpht.com/_PvbwLCq5hMI/SvqF8ZFMFfI/AAAAAAAATk4/-V6rGT3GNvE/s640/UruExplorer%202009-11-11%2005-30-03-46.jpg

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-Atrion Darnay-

Nice find. I never noticed that symbol.

I wonder, does it have anything to do with the TTP crates?

What does the "TTP" stand for?

BTW, sorry for being so nosy about Cyan Worlds, I know my suggestions sounded kind of crazy, and probably Cyan will be able to open Open Source Uru without the fans' help, but it's an inevitable question when we've been waiting this long, whether there's anything we can do to speed things up or help Cyan get Uru open-sourced.

So we come up with a lot of suggestions, most of them stupid and ill-concieved, in the hopes that there's something - anything - we can do to have open source Uru.

But it's true, I would like to intern at Cyan Worlds or work for them, it sounds exciting to me. And I would be willing to start out as an unpaid intern/freelancer for Cyan Worlds for a year or so if that'd get my foot in the door.

The freelance idea is one I'm open to, BTW, doing freelance 3d modelling work for Cyan Worlds for (negligible) pay or no pay - that'd reduce the level of commitment on Cyan's part as I wouldn't be officially connected to the company in any way, I wouldn't be an actual intern and wouldn't be a liability if I somehow did something stupid.

They could just farm out modelling tasks to me whenever they want to, and I'll do them.

I'm making my own age for Uru already, and some models/textures for Subterranean Restorations. I do this sort of stuff for free anyway. Maybe Cyan Worlds could take advantage of the GoW fans, or the fanbase generally, somehow to get things done.

The Myst fanbase is pretty dedicated. If Cyan Worlds tells us there's a way we can help to get Open Source Uru released, I think the fanbase would spring into action to do that. But what it looks like is that there's no way we, as fans, can help get Uru running. We just have to wait patiently for Cyan to do this because only Cyan has the needed expertise.

It's not just the wait that has people griping. It's the feeling of powerlessness, the sense that Uru's survival is dependent entirely on the decisions of an (often uncommunicative) company. If Cyan Worlds would give us something to do, something that'd make a difference in getting Uru open, it'd help turn our conversation into something constructive. Or if they gave us regular updates, that'd help too.

My tactic, personally, is to buy whatever games Cyan Worlds makes (to support them financially) and to make content for Uru and help maintain interest in the game. Plus do some work for them if they want me to.

That's a constructive approach, I guess.

This also makes it clear that I'm one of the creepily dedicated fans who is just a bit TOO Uru-obsessed and needs to chill out.

It's just a game... It's just a game... *sigh*

_________________
Matthew L. Hornbostel, creator of Panoramic Worlds,
a Myst fansite , and
various other stuff.

Yes it is an interesting symbol

TTP stands for The Third Path, which is a restoration/develpoment group much like the DRC.

_________________
Beneath - Journey of an explorer in D'ni
UruBlogs - Blogs from Uru Explorers
Tweek@Guild of Writers - Age development Blog.

There seem to be many such groups out there!

The Third Path - Who is in that group, IC and OOC? You are making ages involving them - is anyone else doing that, or is The Third Path your personal creation? What is the agenda/ideology of The Third Path? (I'm guessing, it's designed as an alternative to the DRC's and Yeesha's paths)

What have they done, what are they doing, and what are they planning/trying to do (aside from releasing ages)?

The DRC was Cyan Worlds' way of releasing content in an in-character manner, and the fans - the Guild of Writers, Subterranean Restorations, The Third Path, etc - seem to be following that pattern as well, releasing content and giving both the content and often the group releasing the content an in-character/in-cavern story.

It's more interesting that way, giving all the fan-created places in Uru, and all the fan groups, storylines that fit into the IC metaverse that Cyan Worlds created.

I'm giving my Uru environments backstories too, but I don't keep an IC production journal while making my content, just an OOC one.

_________________
Matthew L. Hornbostel, creator of Panoramic Worlds,
a Myst fansite , and
various other stuff.

Matt,
your 'question everything' attitude is brilliant (and I wouldn't think of asking you to stop as that sort of thinking should only be encouraged), however, you're asking OOC for direct answers to questions possibly sensitive to content expecting to be released IC by TTP.

As an organisation, wouldn't you think that if they weren't announcing themselves and pasting their name across websites that they would probably be selective of appropriate times and places for the release of each bit of information deemed publicly releasable by TTP?

As a side note, some writers like to create seemingly useless things within worlds which would become useful only when future worlds give those things context, however, with smart level creation you may be looking at the wrong object; without the hints of the future context how can you know.

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http://sunnytokyo.daportfolio.com/

matthornb wrote:

There seem to be many such groups out there!

The Third Path - Who is in that group, IC and OOC? You are making ages involving them - is anyone else doing that, or is The Third Path your personal creation? What is the agenda/ideology of The Third Path? (I'm guessing, it's designed as an alternative to the DRC's and Yeesha's paths)

OOC - The group is classified, bringing IC characters into OCC ruins the feel of the IC mythos created to go with it.

IC - The group is myself, Keira Benson, Sophie Thomas, Robert Lumley and Steven Ross (with past members being David Clarke and James Rofen).

About - The Third Path
About The Third Path Members

The Third Path is my personal creation, stemming from Prologue, where I was once a follower of Sharper's Great Tree movement then moved away after disagreeing with how he was handling things and started a movement called The Third Path which sought to work together with both the DRC and Yeesha for the benefit of rebuilding D'ni.

The groups goals have always been located around rebuilding and obtaining/archiving documentation regarding D'ni and its Ages, eventually as knowledge of the Art leaked down development of human written Ages started taking place.

The group is heavily influenced by the DRC and the DRC's structure yes.

Quote:

What have they done, what are they doing, and what are they planning/trying to do (aside from releasing ages)?

Beneath's Project Page and Archives page has a lot of what the third path has done over the years (the forums also list the teams history (although not all posts have been moved over from the old forum yet).

Quote:

The DRC was Cyan Worlds' way of releasing content in an in-character manner, and the fans - the Guild of Writers, Subterranean Restorations, The Third Path, etc - seem to be following that pattern as well, releasing content and giving both the content and often the group releasing the content an in-character/in-cavern story.

It's more interesting that way, giving all the fan-created places in Uru, and all the fan groups, storylines that fit into the IC metaverse that Cyan Worlds created.

Yep, TTP has been following a similar suit for the last 6 years or so now, from their time as The Third Path, to when they were the Restorers Guild to now.

Most of the members have stories behind them, as do the Ages and Areas I've released (and plan to release).

Quote:

I'm giving my Uru environments backstories too, but I don't keep an IC production journal while making my content, just an OOC one.

Well Beneath has been around since I started playing Uru back in 03, it just seemed natural to keep an IC blog. I do post OOC about age building on my grey skies blog but that's more of a behind the scenes, tutorials and resources kind of thing.

But Linger is correct, we do have a set time when we want to release information, so we keep mostly quiet about what we have planned, although some hints do get out when discussing it with people in CC (for feed back and what not).

_________________
Beneath - Journey of an explorer in D'ni
UruBlogs - Blogs from Uru Explorers
Tweek@Guild of Writers - Age development Blog.

Okay, sorry, I'm just curious.

Of course you have your set timeline for releasing information.

But the stuff you showed does look really cool, and I'll be excited to explore your upcoming ages as they're released.

I'm a bit curious about Tehren hood - I see it's only available to the Guild of Restorers (I.e. your group, as it was in the past)

I take it that this was a hood in UU?

Lehns looks interesting too, the screenshot is very enticing - you didn't show that much but definitely enough to demonstrate that it's good quality, and to make me interested in seeing more.

And the D'ni Jazz Club, and Sul (I like the imager scene, even though it's probably far from its final release state), and Eder Allatwan sounds good even if there aren't any pictures of it, and all the ages, really, seem very promising...

Exciting stuff!

Anyway, I really liked Cass and Fahets, and am eagerly anticipating your team's future ages.

You seem to have a great group working on Uru.