I have read a few posts regarding "features" some of us want like flybys on books, and to be honest, many of those suggestions would not be feasable without a major re-write of the engine.
I say this because as I have been making levels for Unreal Tournament, much of the functionality in it, means you can have those features that we ask.
I'll follow with RT flybys on linking books, as this is one of my favoured additions, in UT2004 this is easy as all would have to do is put a camera on an interpolating curve and some scripting, in Plasma, I can see no such feature. So instead of RT (Real Time), an animated gif can be used, and would require little extra code to implement, if not done so already.

I would also want to see and play UO in full 3D or VR. but that requires alot more code, and as such may never be implemented. I'll get the edimensional glasses, but this will lead to eyestrain and ghosting effects.

One last thing, and it has been bugging me since Uru came out, that being Riven, I want Riven in RT, but that would ultimatly mean poorer visual quality, besides that, I personally think that it is better that it was a slide show game, it added a special something that I cannot explain but made the game great.

My concern at present is if Cyan uses Plasma 2.1 for Uru Live, I had lots more problems with M5 than with Uru. Cyan knows that and will probably try and fix them for Plasma 2.2 or 3.0, I don't know, I don't really care too much other that severe lag.

That reminds me, One thing that could be optimised retively easy , and is probably on thier list of things todo, is trying to render in RT far and near objects and players, with my nVidia GeForce 2 32Mb card, as well as in sinle player mode, when viewing Aegura fom next to the library, near a marker, its a good example of how I would like to see a radius field of view, especially for lower end video cards, setting from the options menu, how far the avatar sees, 100m to 1Km. My two cents worth.

Keep up the good work Cyan.
Please don't have Ahnonay puzzles again, the Ahnonay big puzzle was too difficult fo me to solve, same with Todelmer, which is based on Ahnonay as far as I could see, but a Riven style BIG puzzle that relies on solving small puzzles that are also clues to a bigger puzzle. Riven was fun, Ahnonay wasn't for me, sorry.

Uru Live will not be using Plasma 2.1. It will be using 2.0, same as Uru right now.

Flyby's are easy with the Plasma engine, the problem is getting them to work properly at different screen resolutions. You want them in the right spot, no matter what resolution you are at, so that might require some stuff to be added to the engine, but if they did it in Myst V, I can imagine they will be able to do it in Uru.

Also, Maratanos is correct: Uru Live will use the original 2.0 code, with some of the engine features from 2.1 backported. These features will probably consist of faster PRP loading, new physics engine, and DirectX 9.0c support (since Uru used DX8)

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and DirectX 9.0c support (since Uru used DX8)

Are we sure about this? If so this is wonderful because DirectX 9 allows so moany more shaders which can breath life into materials like water and metal(anything that reflect or refracts at all) this also could mean real-time normal maps which can create detailed lighting interactions withou a detailed model.

crossing fingers for this to be true... [/quote]

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The ending to this post HAS been written

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as I have been making levels for Unreal Tournament

I swear, this forum is going to give me some kind of repetitive motion injury, from the eye rolling.

[subliminal message]
fly-bys... fly-bys... fly-bys...
[/subliminal message]

blackhole wrote:

Quote:

and DirectX 9.0c support (since Uru used DX8)

Are we sure about this? If so this is wonderful because DirectX 9 allows so moany more shaders which can breath life into materials like water and metal(anything that reflect or refracts at all) this also could mean real-time normal maps which can create detailed lighting interactions withou a detailed model.

crossing fingers for this to be true...

[/quote]

From the Town Hall with Cyantist MarkDeForest:

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(06/03 08:32:3 Chogon: Uru Live will stick with DirectX 9.0c. And far as Vista, the only thing that we've seen is that Creative Labs has told us that the EAX libs don't work on Vista, so we've been changing that.

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Maybe I'm just weird (okay, I know I am, but never-the-less...) I found Riven to be much more frustrating than Ahnonay.

Although both were very similar in their approach: "okay, I need to get over there, how do I do that?" There was a key difference in how the small sub-puzzles aided the player.

In Riven, solving a puzzle typically just gave you a tiny clue to scribble down, and very seldom made you feel like you had accomplished anything. Basically, Riven made you feel like you were wasting your time for the first 80% of the game.

With Ahnonay at least there was clear and quantifiable progress, and nothing so easy to screw up as the fire marble puzzle. (I can't be the only one who consitantly messes up my amature cartography, and ends up having to make a dozen trips to check and recheck each coordinate and color.)

As for the real topic of the thread: The flybys were cool, but it sounds like they're more trouble to impliment in Uru than they're worth.

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"History is irredeemable."
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I feel I should point out that the Unreal Engine wasn't designed with massively multiplayer online puzzle solving quest-based games in mind, it was mainly designed for 64 people in a first-person shooters environment or an RPG.

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One last thing, and it has been bugging me since Uru came out, that being Riven, I want Riven in RT, but that would ultimatly mean poorer visual quality

Not really...
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1363
And that was in march. Graphical technology has developed a further three months since then. Compare that to a movie of say, Myst IV, and the quality is almost indistinguishable.

EDIT: Fixed spelling

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Quote:

I have read a few posts regarding "features" some of us want like flybys on books, and to be honest, many of those suggestions would not be feasable without a major re-write of the engine.

Not really Myst V has flybys in the book panels, so they have the material in the Plasma 2.5 engine, alright i think Live is going to use 2.1 (yes I'm confused) but that means they will be back porting a lot of their code anyhows, the only problem would be to get people in it.

Quote:

I say this because as I have been making levels for Unreal Tournament, much of the functionality in it, means you can have those features that we ask.

And?

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I would also want to see and play UO in full 3D or VR. but that requires alot more code, and as such may never be implemented. I'll get the edimensional glasses, but this will lead to eyestrain and ghosting effects.

Ok everyone with a VR headset stick your hand up(I think only Sony bother making them these days). Plus this isn't much code I have a 7 year old game designed for a 386 which was called VR Motorcycles, and unless you had a headset was actually impossible to play.

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One last thing, and it has been bugging me since Uru came out, that being Riven, I want Riven in RT, but that would ultimatly mean poorer visual quality, besides that, I personally think that it is better that it was a slide show game, it added a special something that I cannot explain but made the game great.

Well I don't think this is going to happen, as far as I know Rivens gone, it no longer exists so we will never see the maps in Uru Live, as for making a Realriven, many people have gone on about this I'm not so fussed myself i got through Riven by clicking everything possible in everyscreen hoping something will happen. Rather than my normal observation twiddle, think gameplay style.

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My concern at present is if Cyan uses Plasma 2.1 for Uru Live, I had lots more problems with M5 than with Uru. Cyan knows that and will probably try and fix them for Plasma 2.2 or 3.0, I don't know, I don't really care too much other that severe lag.

You have to be the only person I know whos problems increased with Myst V. Lets see it supports intel extreme cards, will run on a lower spec system (just), uses the latest version of direct x and so is a little more driver friendly. As for Plasma 3.0, a quick breakdown Plasma 1.0 was the engine used in Realmyst, however the qaulity level amoungst others things lead them to doing major work to it. Giving us the Plasma 2.0 engine, this basically could handle more poly's, more textures had netcode, lots of things. Of course in making Myst V Cyan beefed up the Plasma 2.0 code, there was no need for netcode so that was scrapped, they had ideas on improving loading so those were applied and you'll note the use of directx 9, changed physics engines to a Mac compatible one and well the huge differences (toldermer and Noloben.) However some of the Uru style of things were scrapped. So Cyan have taken the 2.0 engine and are beefing it up with some code so some of the enhancements we had in 2.5 are included. So Plasma 3.0, its just not going to happen for a bit.

Quote:

That reminds me, One thing that could be optimised retively easy , and is probably on thier list of things todo, is trying to render in RT far and near objects and players, with my nVidia GeForce 2 32Mb card, as well as in sinle player mode, when viewing Aegura fom next to the library, near a marker, its a good example of how I would like to see a radius field of view, especially for lower end video cards, setting from the options menu, how far the avatar sees, 100m to 1Km. My two cents worth.

Buy a new graphics card do you have £35? Cause your get a bottom of the range card thats about 5 times as good as your current (5500fx or a 6000.) As for this radius of view thing, me if i look accross Ae'gura i want to see everything thats there from people to markers maybe in not high res textures but if their there I wanna see them.

Quote:

Please don't have Ahnonay puzzles again, the Ahnonay big puzzle was too difficult fo me to solve, same with Todelmer, which is based on Ahnonay as far as I could see, but a Riven style BIG puzzle that relies on solving small puzzles that are also clues to a bigger puzzle. Riven was fun, Ahnonay wasn't for me, sorry.

Am I the only person in the entire community who liked Ahnonay? It was my favorite age in POTS and seemed quite simple to solve, where as I thought Riven was a little to large, however I think thats because I went back to it from Myst 3 and the lower resolutions made the puzzles even harder.

If i've said anything wrong here people please correct me

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From the FAQ, on system requirements:

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DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c

I repeat:

Plasma 1: realMYST
Plasma 2: Uru, in all its incarnations
Plasma 2.1: Myst 5
Plasma 2.5: Unknown, but verified in existance

Maratanos if you read Greydragons blog you'll note Myst V used the dubbed Plasma 2.5 engine and if you browse these forums you'll not that Uru Live uses Plasma 2.1

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So will this be like Plamsa 2.6, or Plasma 2.1.5?

greydragon in the 'Make the story real this time' thread wrote:

Paradox wrote:

There is no Plasma 2.5
GreyDragon has said that they will be using the Plasma 2.0 code base (because it still contains the Network Core) and back-porting the Plasma 2.1 features (which has been figured out for a while Colin Bonstead [the Cyan employee who did all of the encryption for the games] said he had already figured out how to do it when Myst V was released)

Woah??? I've seen 2.5 in action. It exist.

Here it is.

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst 2.0

Myst V: End of Ages and Crowthisle 2.1

- Unknown - 2.5

Current Uru Live - 2.0 with enhancements and fixes
...

Therefore, Uru Live will probably be 2.2 (since we are now assuming that 2.5 is being built for Latus)

Now, if everyone was as interested in the engine, then I could possibly stop spamming the forums with engine versions. There was one point where GD accidentally said that EoA used 2.5 (when he meant 2.1). Also Crowthistle uses what we call "Plasma 2.05"