///// [Brice] <links in from somewhere on the internet Age> \\\\\
[Paradox] Also, if you're running it on your test server, can you check the "Reverse" option to see if that works?
[Nadnerb] ok...
[Paradox] Leh > My CyanChat client
[Paradox] hello Brice :D
[Brice] hi
[Nadnerb] um. where and what is the "reverse" option?
[Paradox] Options->Client Options The last checkbox ("Messages appear at top")
[Nadnerb] ah
[Nadnerb] ok.. unchecked the box, and restarted.. no change.
[Paradox] oh... 'k
[Paradox] I suppose it always helps when you actually use the bool at a later point >.>
[Brice] it depends on whether or not you are trying to actually fix something or just make people feel better
[Nadnerb] heh.
[Brice] the plamsa tools for model creation had a check box titled "Double Frame Rate" it didnt do anything
[Nadnerb] never checked for that option?
[Paradox] lol
[Paradox] Nad > nope, I hate having message appear at the bottom >.>
[Brice] mf was the funniest graphics genius around
[Paradox] Brice > I only realized a last week that Plasma supports bumpmaps :P
[Brice] i dont think they were used much in uru
[Nadnerb] kemo and ahnonnay.
[Brice] hmm
[Brice] kemo? are you sure
[Paradox] yeah
[Paradox] That's where I noticed them, on the path and the railings
[Brice] oh right
[Nadnerb] aye, the walkway.. watch it in a thuderstorm..
[Brice] yes you are correct
[Brice] wow its been a while
[Brice] actually its coming back to me. Mf got to have alot of input on the creation of kemo
[Paradox] Mf?
[Brice] thats why alot of the lighting effect is so nice in there
[Brice] mark finch
[Brice] he did all the graphics code in plasma back in the day
[Paradox] ah
[Nadnerb] ahh.
[Brice] scary smart
[Nadnerb] mm. he came up with the water effect, right?
[Brice] yes
[Brice] it was published in graphics gems
[Brice] he also created the keyed object system
[Paradox] wow
[Brice] iirc
[Brice] moose was the network lead
[Paradox] Keyed Object system is what makes Plasma so cool (from my perspective)
[Brice] mark was the defacto client lead
[Paradox] ah
[Brice] the whole keyed object messaging thing was cool. but sometimes it made things hard to debug
[Paradox] yeah
[Paradox] Plasma has an insane amount of messages -_-
[Brice] yes
[Brice] some parts are better designed than others
[Brice] but
[Brice] overall it came out ok
[Paradox] Worse still, those MsgReceive functions in each class >.> (sure, let's just handle half of Plasma's messaging system in one function)
[Paradox] Yeah, it's a great engine
[Brice] it does a good job of taking a soup of non optimal data and rendering it well
[Brice] im not really happy with how the physics/avatar came out
[Brice] but i guess you learn from experience
[Paradox] I assure you, Havok was ten times better than what they've got right now
[Brice] not that im ever likely to do a game engine again
[Paradox] heh
[Brice] Its not an issue of havok vs. ODE vs. PhysX
[Paradox] ah
[Brice] its more about how they are integrated
[Paradox] yeah
[Brice] Havok is really good
[Brice] but you still feel through the floor in uru
[Brice] and garrison was still a nightmare
[Paradox] heh
[Paradox] Garrison is a nightmare in a lot of ways :P
[Brice] i am not a believer in physics based gameplay anyway
[Nadnerb] subworld city!
[Nadnerb] ahh gahreesen..
[Brice] the subworld concept was a late add so that things could work at all
[Brice] mostly it was for elevators
[Paradox] yeah
[Brice] personally i think Garrison would have worked better if we didnt try to use "physics" and did a much simpler model
[Brice] more like a platformer
[Lehsa] Hi Brice
[Brice] hi
[Lehsa] How goes it?
[Brice] good
[Lehsa] :D
[Brice] But like i said Im not a fan of physics gameplay
[Brice] some shooters have done well with it
[Brice] but i dont think it fits with uru
[Paradox] yeah
[Nadnerb] well... I don't really know if gahreesen really counts as "physics" gameplay..
[Nadnerb] that's more like.. Gira
[Paradox] The fish nets in Gira were always a pain, and Teledahn was bad too
[Brice] yes
[Brice] but its all part of the same thing
[Nadnerb] walk on ze baskets without letting them move, kick the rocks around, if you can...
[Brice] You have to make a decision about what your "model" is for how the player moves and interacts with the world
[Nadnerb] gahreesen, on the other hand, had no free moving objects that were essential to gameplay
[Brice] if you want a physical simulation then you kind of have to have it
[Brice] the bridges were essentially that
[Brice] jumping onto them at the right time
[Brice] was all done with sim
[Nadnerb] well.. it was done with subworlds... which are more of a graphics trick than a physics one.
[Brice] actually iirc the subworlds were a physics hack
[Nadnerb] though, the way it's implemented is not .. optimal. <.<
[Nadnerb] it shouldn't be.
[Brice] depends on what you think they are for
[Brice] the idea was when you are in a moving space you are in a subworld for that space which is Not moving
[Brice] so the physics thinks you are still
[Nadnerb] subworlds would be areas that are static..
[Nadnerb] yes
[Nadnerb] exactly
[Brice] so often the avie has to move between subworlds
[Brice] sometimes with limited success....
[Nadnerb] and when you shift subworlds, it warps you to the equivalent spot in another area.
[Brice] y
[Brice] its hard to remember this stuff...
[Nadnerb] it's a graphics hack because of the way they're drawn on top of each other.
[Nadnerb] when the physics engine doesn't see anything moving..
[Brice] i guess but if it were not for physics they would not exist
[Brice] you can decide which one is doing the hack i guess :)
[Brice] I would be surprisde tho if the word subworld appears in the graphics code
[Brice] it really should only care about nodes with transforms with animations
[Paradox] The subworld is essentially present so that a "moving" location such as Gahreesen's inside, can exist as a "static", non-moving space
[Brice] yes
[Paradox] Was there any reason that the interior couldn't just rotate?
[Brice] aslo iirc you can specify a list of things that are included in each subworld
[Nadnerb] right.
[Nadnerb] and everything that is in the same subworld you are exists, and everything else... doesn't.
[Paradox] basically
[Nadnerb] which causes problems when they intersect.
[Brice] we had trouble (again iirc) with the avie sitting on a rotating object that was really rotating. Force would get imparted to the avie
[Nadnerb] like markers
[Paradox] ah
[Brice] we did the sw's initially i think for elevators for a similar reason
[Paradox] Nad > that's partly the DrawableSpans stuff and rendering order
[Brice] i have not heard the phrase drawablespan in a long time....
[Nadnerb] subworlds are entirely rendering order. all parts of the subworld get drawn with the same, extra, transformation.
[Paradox] lol I hear it on an hourly basis :P
[Brice] Did you guys ever get any code?
[Paradox] erm, not C++ code that was written by you
[Paradox] We have all of the ASM
[Brice] i thought they might have released some of it
[Brice] asm with symbols?
[Paradox] uhm, we got a pdb for one of the early Live builds
[Brice] heh
[Paradox] Nothing from PotS though. The Myst V Mac Demo had all of the function names though
[Brice] heh
[Brice] nice
[Brice] and im sure you have all the python
[Paradox] yep
[Nadnerb] who doesn't.. <.<
[Brice] me
[Paradox] Shortly after Myst V was release (and after we broke the encryption) Colin contacted us, he said that he'd see about getting Mark to release the Myst V engine with some stuff stripped out; but nothing ever came of that
[Brice] So do you guys work mostly with the original uru code, the myst5 code or the new uru code
[Paradox] uhm, The Live code is nearly identical to the PotS code in most aspects, so we've been using the early Live build (with symbols) for most of our work
[Brice] releasing code is hard. there are too many companys and lawyers involved
[Paradox] We use Myst V occaisionally for MV specific stuff, but Myst V is never a high priority
[Paradox] yeah
[Brice] When you say Live Code. You mean Uru Live and not MystOnline
///// [Zadok] <links in from somewhere on the internet Age> \\\\\
[Zadok] heyoz
[Paradox] I mean Myst Online stuff
[Brice] oh
[Brice] i thought it was pretty different from PotS
[Paradox] no surprisingly it isn't; it even keeps the Keyed IDs in the same order
[Brice] my recollection is alot of the net stuff etc was redone for MOUL
[Paradox] Net stuff is all redone, but we've never really looked into the Net stuff much (aside from the people working on Alcugs)
[Brice] didnt they change the securiy some about how the python worked as well?
[Paradox] yep, packed, encrypted, stored as a locked temp file and deleted when UruExplorer is shut down
[Paradox] same with the SDL stuff
[Brice] SDL was moose and the net guys
[Brice] sorry im just playing memory lane
[Paradox] and they got rid of the /To_Dni switch that I used in Beta to by-pass the patcher >.>
[Brice] So other than fun. What is the goal of your project
[Paradox] Someone at Cyan decided that it would be a good idea to implement some of the old D'ni Guilds in MOUL (Myst Online Uru Live), so our tool is meant to allow people to create Ages and edit the flags on certain object types
[Brice] how will these ages get published?
[Paradox] hopefully through Cyan; but if necessary, we'll distribute PotS versions offline
[Brice] hmm
[Paradox] Alcugs already has a plugin for Blender that works with PotS for Age Creation
[Brice] cyan already has plugins for max
[Paradox] yeah, but Blender is free ;)
[Nadnerb] and cyan doesn't go distributing their plugins.
[Brice] well if cyan wants people to make ages why wouldnt they
[Paradox] Too much proprietary code?
[Brice] i will not comment on whether or not max is free
[GermanShepherd] we don't exactly know WHAT the guilds are for... nobody's told you that, yet ;)
[Paradox] Brice > Oh, Max can be acquired... but I don't think Cyan wants to encourage that sort of behaviour :P
[Brice] well the plugins in binary can't be more code than the app in binary
[Paradox] No one has had any luck getting any sort of information out of Cyan
[Lehsa] Duh
[Lehsa] they have Mr Watson as a good example of "yes..." No" LOL
[Lehsa] maybe
[Lehsa] ;)
[Lehsa] loose lips sink games
[Paradox] Also, Brice, I'm not sure how artist-intensive Cyan's plugins are
[Brice] as in?
[Brice] do you know anything about how they work?
[Paradox] Not really :P
[Paradox] But I imagine that Jane Doe couldn't just stretch something out in Max and export it and have it work properly
[Brice] you might be surprised
[Brice] Basically the plugins give you tools to annotate a max model
[Brice] and then you just export
[Paradox] Ah
[Brice] there are a few things to get right etc
[Brice] but its not out of reach of someone who can use max
[Paradox] I can't imagine how all of those flags can be presented in a user-friendly version all at once though
[Paradox] unless more of them are built into Max than I thought
[Brice] well at least along time ago. the plugins made them mostly seem built into max
[Paradox] wow
[Brice] plamsa defines its own material plugin for max
[Paradox] Ah, that makes sense
[Brice] so all the graphics attributes are selectedin there
[Brice] and then there are lots of other "components" which hang on the max objects for doing other annotations like subworlds, rendering regions etc
[Brice] but things like layer blending etc. are in the max material mostly
[Brice] basically it means plasma has its own objects in the .max file
[Brice] which is good and bad
[Paradox] yeah
[Brice] presto studios used a different approach
[Brice] the did all of thier annotation with guis done in maxscript
[Paradox] ah
[Brice] and then just had a single annotation function ( a maxscript plugin) that let you assign name value pairs to the objects
[Brice] max has something like that built in now
[Brice] cyans approach was good in that the objects(components) could be smarter. They were kind of first class max objects on thier own and could connect to other things etc
[Brice] but it means the max file is more fragile
[Paradox] yeah
[Paradox] Was there any post-export work done on the PRP files?
[Paradox] (adding PythonFileMods, Sounds, ResponderModifiers, etc?)
[Brice] the expoter itself did some sortings and other optimization
[Brice] but then the prp was done
[Paradox] How did Max handled the messages?
[Brice] pythonmods, responders, sounds etc. ALL are in the MAX file
[Brice] everything
[Paradox] o.o
[Brice] it is literally 1 step from max to engine
[Paradox] That sounds like its either a stroke of brilliance or a disaster waiting to happen
[Brice] that was the way we did it from the begginning at headspin
[Paradox] ah
[Brice] its different i think that most other people
** David is back *
[Brice] most people use max to make models
[Paradox] yeah
[Paradox] wb David
[Brice] then a Build process collates everything
[Brice] but for uru
[Brice] Max is the build process
[Paradox] cool
[David] which version are you guys using now? 7?
[Brice] to build uru we had a script which would load max and then have max load the .max file and then export it
[Brice] all this ran in batch
[David] I remember they were using 4 during RealMyst when I was there
[Brice] it took about 4 hours iirc
[Paradox] The only way that we could do that with Blender would be to fork a development branch and hack it to pieces by adding all of Plasma's types to it
[Brice] i dont know what version they use now
[Paradox] David > I think they're on 8
[David] ah
[Brice] at times we had versions of plasma that ran directly in max
[David] bleh, blender
[Brice] but it was pretty unstable
[Paradox] ah
[Brice] the thing is process determines how things come out to some degree
[Brice] most shooters (historically anyway) were made using a building block approach
[Brice] level designers imported models done by artists and layed them out
[MC] [Simon_Bitdiddle] *looks up, bleary eyed at unb0rking his mailbox.*
[Paradox] yeah
[Brice] in uru the worlds are hand built custom
[Brice] so they don't "look like a game level"
[Paradox] yeah... custom everything
[David] which is basically how Halo builds it's levels instead of how Unreal builds its levels
[Brice] its cool
[Brice] but more expensive
[Paradox] yeah
[Brice] halo does not I suspect have budget issues
[David] definitely
[David] but they do build the levels in max and then add items and scripting in a seperate editor
[David] as opposed to Unreal engine 2 and beyond which use artist built blocks
[Brice] yeah thats becomeing more common since the geometries are getting more complex
[Brice] i think we were doing it before anyone els
[David] yeah, definitely
[Brice] like 97 heh
[Paradox] Random question: Are you responsible for the variable "keyToReadInAndThrowAwaySoJustLiveWithIt" in plRegistryPageNode?
[David] yeah, which makes it contemporary with pre T&L accelerated engines like Quake 3
[Brice] para no
[Paradox] oh :\\
[Paradox] I love that variable, even if it breaks all coding standards :P
[Brice] sounds like chris purvis but i can't be sure
[Paradox] Is anyone from HeadSpin still working with Cyan?
[Brice] are you sure QIII was pre tnL david?
[David] yup
[Brice] there is one remaining headspinner
[David] it was one of the last pre- TnL engines
[Brice] Austin
[Paradox] ah
[David] I think it got a patch that moved some of the pipeline to TnL for a bit of speed improvement but it wasn't designed around an acceleratable architecture like Unreal Engine 2 was with precompiled components that could be quickly fed through TnL as a pointlist
[Brice] "3-D Hardware Accelerator with full OpenGL support" from the sys reqs
[Brice] my fav hack in uru is the "adder" hack
[Paradox] eh?
[Nadnerb] what'sat?
[Brice] very late in dev (very late) we changed how the ui works when you are on a ladder
[Brice] i forget the details but it was something about how the mouse effected your movement if you were more or less than half way up the ladder
[Brice] well
[Brice] it was too hard create a new "ladder" modifier and go in and add it to all the ladders
[Brice] so
[Brice] we put in a hack in the standard oneshot contol mod
[Paradox] hehe
[Brice] where if you were on a ladder it worked one way
[Brice] if not it worked another way
[Brice] but the way it decided this
[Brice] is too check for the string "adder" in the keyname
[Paradox] lol
[Brice] We left off the L so we didnt have to worry about case
** Paradox fires up HuruStudio to look for "adder" objects *
[David] nice hack
[Paradox] So.. uhm, what would happen if I named a non-ladder "adder"?
\\\\\ [Xanos] <mistakenly used an unsafe linking book without a maintainer's suit *ZZZZZWHAP*> /////
[Brice] i often wonder if the sting "adder" still appears
[Brice] bad things would happen
[Paradox] Oooh
[Brice] but the hack is hopefully long gone by now
[Brice] this was done to ship uru single player on time
[Paradox] It should still be in PotS though :P
[Brice] maybe
[David] I'd love to get ahold of the Plasma 1 tools for Max, realmyst was pretty
[Brice] the plasma 1 tools were simpler
[David] I remember Og showing off some portal culling or something in stoneship back at first Mysterium
[David] the door into the light house was a clipping portal I think
[Brice] in plamsa 1 we started off just typing in flags in the Freetext field that max gives you for each object
[Brice] that worked for the programmers
[Brice] but edog couldnt spell
[Paradox] lol
[David] yeah, I remember a lot of people use to use that
[Brice] so we made a plugin for max called "plasmatagger" or something
[David] maxscript?
[Brice] which had a zillion checkboxes and then set the values
[David] nice
[Brice] maxscript would have worked too
[Paradox] :P
[Brice] but we already knew how to do c++ in max for the exporter
[Brice] and no one new maxscript
[Brice] and maxscript was less cool back then i think as well
[David] yeah, as long as I've been using Max I've still never gotten around to learning Max script
[David] yeah, it wasn't really useful till R5 or 6
[Brice] the first time i saw what all you could do with maxscript and GUI was at presto
[Brice] i was impressed
[Brice] that was when they were doing exile
[Brice] dont remember the year
[David] 99 or 200 wasn't it?
[David] *2000
[Brice] if you say so. I am bad at remmebering this kind of stuff
[David] the guy showing of how J'Nanin's rock cliffs were made in the making of video taught the Max master class on normal mapping a year or two ago
[David] I was watching the video ofit trying to figure out why he looked vaguely familiar
[Brice] they had some good people
[David] yeah
[Paradox] Hey! "adder" (as a string) is used in plMultiStageBehMod::MsgReceive() :D
[David] shame they crashed
[Brice] that would be the one
[Brice] they quit more than crashed afaik
[David] I miss the adventure friendly market of the early 90's
[David] ah
[Brice] para in what version?
[Paradox] MOUL Build 2
[Brice] high end graphics is killing videogames
[Brice] para how recent is that
[David] yeah, production requirements are getting out of hand
[Paradox] Last december
[David] can do some insanely nice things but it takes way too much effort
[Brice] yep
[Brice] last dec. then its probably still in there
[Brice] lol
[Paradox] heh
[David] probably noone knows it's there...
[Brice] that was done at 2am maybe 4am a long time ago
[Paradox] yes, it's also in the most recent build :P
[David] so where are you working these days brice?
[Brice] i made chris put it in cause i knew most of the other coders would balk at such a shamelss hack
[Brice] i do contract work out of my house
[Brice] worked on gametap for a while
[David] nice
[Brice] now im doing web dev
[David] been trying to get into that for graphics
[Paradox] cool
[Brice] i like programming again
[Brice] sometimes I miss having people to boss around tho
[David] yeah, programming's nice
[David] my art skills don't seem to be ever getting to where I want them to be so I've been drifting back into programming again
[Brice] they are both hard
[David] started picking up SQL since c++ doesn't seem to be as hot as it used to be
[Brice] javascript is the future
[David] yeah, I'm doing PHP/SQL JS and HTML/CSS
[David] anyways, wife's yelling at me, gotta run
[Brice] cya
[Paradox] cya
[Nadnerb] cya
[David] might be back later if she passes out
[Brice] css just makes me want to hurt people
[Paradox] :\\
[Brice] im going to have to give markd a hard time about adder being in the code still. But then I was the one that put it there
[Paradox] lol
[MC] [Simon_Bitdiddle] Heh.
[Nadnerb] :P
[Paradox] Tell MarkD to release some .pdb files while he's at it :P
[Brice] whats the largest thing made without using cyan tools?
[Paradox] you mean like user-created content?
[Brice] y
[Paradox] Ahra Pahts, without a doubt
[Nadnerb] indeed.
[Brice] what do you have to show your all your decompiling and grepping
[MC] [Simon_Bitdiddle] RSI. :D
\\\\\ [Dalken Starbyne] <links safely back to their home Age> /////
[Nadnerb] there are some weeird sounds in here...
[Brice] screenies?
[Paradox] http://www.didanka.com/huru/City/SSCity7_04.jpg - Running in Plasma 2.0 (Build 63.12)
[Paradox] (with the Python hack flymode)
[Brice] that is big
[Brice] is that blender
[Paradox] yeah, it's supposed to be a community project
[Paradox] yeah
[Nadnerb] hmm. that's a pretty old pic
[Paradox] Each of those triangles is a "shell" and each shell could be reserved by someone who could build something in there
[Paradox] Nad > That was the best overview one I could find with a quick search of AB
[Brice] its like second life with a decent renderer
[Paradox] http://www.bergen-hill.com/rtr/LinkTest01/prinpahts_09.jpg - Part of an Ahra Pahts "Nexus" running in Plasma
[MC] [Simon_Bitdiddle] I still wonder what that'd be like after a few cycles of development...
[Nadnerb] Tweek's panorama. Ground level: http://beneath.dnijazzclub.com/photos/albums/panorama/ahra-pahts-pano.jpg
[Brice] so is the focus more on rendering ccyan models with user made code or making model for cyan code
[Paradox] making models with Cyan formats and code
[Paradox] Adding our own content to Uru
[Brice] sounds like fun
[Brice] but so does sleep right now
[Paradox] it is ^_^
[Paradox] heh
[Nadnerb] prinpahts full view: http://www.bergen-hill.com/rtr/LinkTest01/prinpahts_08.jpg
[MC] [Simon_Bitdiddle] *ponders creating a kinetic sculpture in Uru...*
[MC] [Simon_Bitdiddle] After all, there's a pretty hefty physics engine involved...
[Brice] nite all
[Nadnerb] g'night
[Paradox] cya Brice
[MC] [Simon_Bitdiddle] Night, Brice.
** Nadnerb wonders how well a chain would work *
\\\\\ [Brice] <links safely back to their home Age> /////