Visual effects: linking avatars and Linking Books

[Mac_Fife]

The more I think about Tweek's suggestion, then the more significant an omission the absence of a table or book pedestal in Relto seems: We've got two sets of book shelves and nowhere to rest a book. Although that's slightly aside from the link out visuals themselves

[75th Trombone]

Back in the day, I came up with a complicated contraption they could've put in the Relto hut. You stand on a panel, a jukebox sort of thing with opens up, you choose a book, it opens up flat on the contraption in front of you, you link, and then when your weight is gone the panel lifts up and the whole thing closes up automatically. It could have a switch you flip to lock it open, so that friends you invited to your Relto could link after you.

That's insanely complicated, but also potentially cool. But we need to start a whole new thread for that sort of thing.

[realXCV]

There's already a place like this. It's called: "Nexus"

[75th Trombone]

Wow, I'm an idiot. I didn't think about how exactly that describes the Nexus. It looks completely different in my head. And the Nexus doesn't use a weight plate. And by "lock it open" I meant physically restrain the book from closing.

But yes, you're right. To be fair, I think I came up with that idea before the Nexus existed.

[Gehn, lord of ages]

Why not just have the Relto bookshelf do this? Instead of the weighing platform, it maybe can detect linking (either by the pressure against the panel, or perhaps by a hidden weight tripped platform. There could somewhat easily be added a feature that would let people link after you.

[Skydiverjimq101]

In Myst 3 Exile, In an area near Narayan. Where the stranger retrieved the Releeshahn from Saavedro. Presto Studios was clever in putting a stairway down to another area below.
So I figure, if they put a similar stairway down to a cave just below Relto, you can add more linking books and maybe putting a meeting area where avies would come together and talk to one another.

SkydiverJimQ101

[realXCV]

You can also put the cave in the mountain behind the library. Or you can have a book to an age where you have another bookshelf.

[Gehn, lord of ages]

In Myst 3 Exile, In an area near Narayan. Where the stranger retrieved the Releeshahn from Saavedro. Presto Studios was clever in putting a stairway down to another area below.
So I figure, if they put a similar stairway down to a cave just below Relto, you can add more linking books and maybe putting a meeting area where avies would come together and talk to one another.

SkydiverJimQ101

A stairway and cave would definitely open up more room in Relto. Are you saying that this cave would be collective for everyone's Relto's, though? I don't think that would be technically feasible, and kind of ruins the instancyness mumbo jumbo. If it is for each individual Relto, why do you need a "meeting area"? Is there something special about this place that makes it better than just standing on top or going to some other Age?

[Anaerin]

Personally I think the dissolve would be easy to do, and simply too. You take the existing model, overlay a (slightly) scaled-up version, with no textures, and put a particle on every poly intersection. Then you apply a "Gravity" effect to those particles, centered on the linking panel (Make a kind of "Gravitational black hole" that sucks the particles in).

As for the books in Relto, I was always under the impression there were springs (Of a sort) in the bindings to close the book, and a line/wire/string from the book cover to the shelf, with a slight tension on it at all times. When you link out, you stop holding the book open and pulling against that tension. The springs in the bindings close the book, and the line retracts back into the shelf, pulling the book back with it.

[GPNMilano]

If you're in third person, you'd notice that the book never leaves the shelf. Each book has a slider, when you choose a linking book the lock opens (if its locked) the slider pulls the book out in front of you. Once you accept to link through the book, you link out and the book (still on the slider) slides back into position into the shelf.

As for the limited shelf space, there's actually a setup already in place, but never used. A yeesha page would allow you to change the linking books from the normal ones we always see, to the shelf that is in Phils relto. All the slots on the shelf have two books on them, each fully textured. It's just that the page for the second set of books is always off. It was never implemented, but logic suggests that at one point in time, Cyan was going to have the shelf be capable of having 72 books, and a yeesha page that toggled between the two sets of books. So when the page was turned off you had the normal books we always have, and when on it switched to the "zandi" bookshelf you see in Phils Relto, (its called Zandi's Junk in the SDL files, and the texture for the second books is actually "psnlzandibooks" I believe.

So, my gut says that when the time comes that we need more shelf space to just finish the job Cyan started with it, have the second set of books work the same as the first, allowing for 69 books in total, with three of them staying the same when you toggle the shelf (the city, nexus, and bevin book).

On the subject of shelves, what I'd really like to see is that second shelf get filled with more journals. Like the DRC journals scattered about, maybe a few D'ni journals, and explorer ones. Another thing you could collect as you travel through the ages that could find its way to Relto.