Video II
Riven Spider Chair from Cho 102997 on Vimeo.
6 Responses to “Video II”.
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April 25th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Omagosh..this is so intriguing. I am so impressed with you guys!
April 28th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Wow this really is getting impressive. Great work guys!
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Is the animation done so that the uru engine understands it as well?
On a practical note: how will you deal with the maximum number of vertices that an Age could contain? And will the other islands visible in the distance be flat rendered sprites, like the rope bridge in Ae’gura as seen from the Library? If yes; how many levels of detail does any object have at maximum?
I have many more of these questions I’d like answered, while you guys should totally focus on the project. In that case ‘no answer’ would mean ‘good news’.
May 8th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Everything’s done in blender at the moment, so we can’t design for the uru engine yet, but we can design for the plasma exporter (PyPRP) which has very limited animation capabilities at the moment. At some point it will probably be in our best interest to start porting blender to 3DS MAX in order to use the official tools which ensure successful exports.
May 8th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
About performance: For long shots we’re planning on using visregions, where we hide the big island in the background and replace it with a large backdrop (like in Ahnonay). This will create problems with use of the MagLev and cart, however, so here’s our plan so far:
Say you’re going from Jungle Island to Boiler Island. You hop in the cart and go through the tunnel, but we can’t freeze the game in the middle of the ride (to load more content) or anything, and we can’t show you a big sprite as you emerge from the water and approach the island. So we’re going to include everything you see of Boiler Island on the ride (mainly rock) in the file for Jungle Island. Likewise, there will be a portion of Jungle Island on the Boiler Island file. Once you arrive at your destination, much like the 5-CD version of Riven, you’ll be asked to wait while the next island loads. Getting the next island to load is also a problem, though, because it’s not as easily done as said.
For that we’re considering the use of “pages” (existing reverse-engineered technology where when you get to a certain part of an age, the game freezes while it loads the next part) which would require some kind of GUI hack (openURU) to let you know the game’s not frozen and it’s just loading. Another option we’re considering is a link from one “age” to another “age” when you arrive at your destination island (both “ages” are really Riven, just different parts / files). It would be out-of-cannon to have a linking sound right there, though, so we would want a special hack (also openURU) to bypass that sound somehow.
Yes, we’re hoping for presents from and depending a great deal on the OpenURU and PyPRP movements/people, but is that necessarily a bad idea? We’re all pioneers, we feel, and it feels good to share the sense of purpose with our code-oriented friends. We can only hope that they’ll fulfill our wishes. 🙂
May 9th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Right, clear answer. I was thinking in the ‘split-Riven-up-per-island’ way too, although mainly due to the shortcomings of the Engine for the result would ruin the experience somewhat because of -you said it- the necessary Link.
I wasn’t fully aware of how little (sounds unthankful; I’m not) has been developed in the PyPRP script, but as I understyand it’s most important to have the geometry ready and textued first, and await the 3DsMAX dev.env…?
Will rough avatar animations be possible for ‘transportation’ or would that have to be ‘link from island to island Yeesha-style (i.e. within the same Age)’?
I noticed the water effect on the prison island sea that suited it very well (/me claps hands) and is commonly used in UrU. Is that a specific effect/algorithm? If yes,and if tested,did you guys get the Village water to be visually like the water in the giant mixers at Er’cana (but with holes in it)? Very curious about that one…
More questions will certainly follow.
Keep up the good work!