Relevance

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AlKaera
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Re: Relevance

Post by AlKaera »

JWPlatt wrote:Nice to have you around, AlKaera. 8-)

My post was not a complaint about how a mod runs a Cyan forum, but a pointed call for this Eder D'Uru project to pick up some steam.
Thanks for responding so nicely to my apparent total confusion JW. I now read again, and see I missed the point completely. Of course I remember coming here right after seeing the exchange over on the MOUL forum. My brain must have been hacked or hy-jacked. It happens.
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Tai'lahr
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Re: Relevance

Post by Tai'lahr »

JWPlatt wrote:My request:
I would like to be able to reference links to this project. But I do not yet feel I can without a substantially increased effort to document your work here in this project. Please, if you possibly can, make a significant multimedia case/documentary to the community about what you are doing.
Well, it's been a little over two months since we were given this gentle nudge. While we have begun posting the guild meeting summaries & chatlogs in the forums and in-world updates in the blog, we haven't really documented how the sim is being managed, projects developed and decisions are made. The truth is that there has been some tension over how things are done and that's the stuff that IMO would be most relevant to Uru and any group or person considering starting a server/shard.
I hope to begin doing a better job of documenting our experience so that the lessons we've learned can benefit Open Uru. In the meantime, JW, I think the GoMa's Devokan project would serve as a better example of how SL is being used to further Uru projects.

As an aside, does anyone know of a group that has begun serious discussion about organizing a server/shard when Open Uru happens? I would be very interested in seeing the process.
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Mac_Fife
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Re: Relevance

Post by Mac_Fife »

Tai'lahr wrote:As an aside, does anyone know of a group that has begun serious discussion about organizing a server/shard when Open Uru happens? I would be very interested in seeing the process.
The Systems Concepts forum here was fundamentally what that was about; not organizing a specific shard, but a general exploration of what resources might be needed and what might need to be done. I say "might" because until Cyan release the details then we can only make guesses. Educated guesses hopefully ;). That forum has been a bit stagnant recently, because we'd pretty much taken the thoughts as far they'll go without the detail being in place.

Once the detail emerges and we get a chance to try it out, then I expect we'll create a "How to..." on the the wiki (may be several "How to..." pages if there are different configurations that could be used).
Mac_Fife
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Nalates
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Re: Relevance

Post by Nalates »

Getting all the info together and writing a story on what is happening takes some time. I find I am just trying to get all the information linked for others and keep up. Plus there is the matter of how many are interested in any given subject. How many actually look up or find the info and read it. I'm never sure if the use warrants the work to create it.

For now I use blogging as I can see the stats in my Wordpress dashboard. There are tags and categories there for Myst-Uru and Myst-Uru-SL things.

Eder D'Uru is now getting out where more fans can see it and link to it from outside SL. I think the postings here are great. Being a Second Life player I get the info in-world so seldom look at the forum. As the most active group of Uru fans now appears to be within SL (50-100 concurrent logins on a weekend, 300+ logged in at least once in July) that means a large number of fans never visit the web forum for their info, which distorts the visitors stats as a measure of interest.

Devokan and Channelwood are Dot's and others (mostly GoMa people -- and the dwarves think GoMa is irrelivant :roll: ) creation in SL with a story line posted on GoMa.

Documentation for most Myst Uru like builds is weak. But Devokan comes close to what I think JWP was looking for. Not as much behind the scenes info as we might like... Eder D'Uru is more what I think of as unedited raw footage yet to be turned into a movie.

Other projects like Thend's Explorers Community and ECR&D are mostly hidden from those outside SL. I put up an ECR&D forum and watched to see how it worked. Not well. No real interest. Subject matter is a dry, for sure. I can see stats the views of the D'Uru section posts here and those are low. Other Sl related forum are low use to. I can conclude that SL folks don't do forums. It is faster and easier to get info in-game.

BTW, EC and ECR&D are soon ending and closing. Their goals and purpose were to help Uruites transition to SL and R&D was to help new players explore building and marketing in SL. Those goals are complete. The members are looking at joining Eder D'Uru guilds or forming some new type of support group. Thend may reappear in August.

Back to point... I wonder whether the effort to document our play and efforts is worth the work? I know I blog about things because I want to. So, worth and cost efficiency is not an issue. Those having fun do whatever is fun to them. What will we do with the results?
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Dot
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Re: Relevance

Post by Dot »

Nalates wrote: Devokan and Channelwood are Dot's and others (mostly GoMa people ... ) creation in SL with a story line posted on GoMa.

Documentation for most Myst Uru like builds is weak. But Devokan comes close to what I think JWP was looking for. Not as much behind the scenes info as we might like...
Paislee is a prime mover behind Devokan, as well as myself.

Private forums are available on GoMa to share development of ideas, but (because we're a pretty small group) we tend to discuss everything in game -- it's easier, and not everyone looks at the forums. Also, ideas spark off each other in avie-to-avie discussions.

I try to summarise developments in the main Devokan forum on GoMa and in the off-topic section on MOUL. Unusually for an off-topic post, the latter seems to have gathered a small following: each new post adds another 50-100 to the Views column.
VoiZod
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Re: Relevance

Post by VoiZod »

Hi, I play both SL and There and have been a huge fan of all the games of Myst.

These too places; SL and There are and have been the closest alt, existing, 'working'
online game virtual worlds to URU. They have working economies and you can
'build' your 'age' either using pre-made objects (There) or making the objects your self
in real time plus scripting of objects to make them move, for 1 of 100000000000000000's
of examples I could mention but won't. :lol: ( Second Life aka; SL )

I personaly like SL the best because pretty much your dreams are the limit when it
comes to creating things in SL, but there is a learning curve and SL has limits.
But what I have seen and visited have been very good. I'm a stickler for detail
and realisem (emersivness).

One of the problems in SL is the MechanaX of making things work like they did in MOUL, work in SL. Another problem is getting the scale of the cavern and its objects
right so things will look like the normal (moul ingame onjects) instead of distorted
versions etc. ie; learning curve.

I wonder if its possible at all to break down MOUL so you would have all the meshes
in one folder (per say) All the scripts in another folder, exclude the phyX use SLs Havok.
1. upload the ported meshes as objects with the textures.
and build Ae'gura.
2. Then port the scripts to havok format to be used in SL scripts etc.
To be used in like touching a linking pad or pressing a button to make a door open etc. (btw the new MOUL hood Garden age Bahro door swirly puzzle ACTUALY WORKS
:shock: I did not know that was even possible in SL! simply amazing and hats off to the coder(s) who did that.) and used for any phyX stuff.

I know Cyan has OK'd the use of URU's textures in one SL SIM not sure of the other ones, what I'm trying to say is just how hard would it be to get the meshes out of MOUL and ported to 3Dmax (SLs sculpty object, out of game maker proggy) ???

I suggest that a in SIM URL web link koisik be set up so you click on it your browser will take you to HERE! for example.

The D'ni Voice is the best (in game) way of getting the word out to others, for all things related to URU in SL.

There is even a learning how to speak and write in D'ni, language classes are
on going and easy to join.

Now for the next update to URU content to SL is the much awaited;
The Age of CruX. Which is a Island with a story and mysteries to figure out.
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Nalates
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Re: Relevance

Post by Nalates »

VoiZod, the section this would better fit is currently locked. Once the sections are ready, I’ll move the posts.

SL certainly has limits. Those should change significantly this year. Blue Mars is competition and Linden Lab is responding.

The mechanics of SL lacks instances. So, I see no way to economically duplicate some aspects of Uru in SL.
VoiZod wrote:I wonder if its possible at all to break down MOUL so you would have all the meshes
in one folder (per say) All the scripts in another folder, exclude the phyX use SLs Havok.
1. upload the ported meshes as objects with the textures.
and build Ae'gura.
2. Then port the scripts to havok format to be used in SL scripts etc.
To be used in like touching a linking pad or pressing a button to make a door open etc. (btw the new MOUL hood Garden age Bahro door swirly puzzle ACTUALY WORKS
I did not know that was even possible in SL! simply amazing and hats off to the coder(s) who did that.) and used for any phyX stuff.

I know Cyan has OK'd the use of URU's textures in one SL SIM not sure of the other ones, what I'm trying to say is just how hard would it be to get the meshes out of MOUL and ported to 3Dmax (SLs sculpty object, out of game maker proggy) ???

First, there is a difference between what is possible and what is legal.

I’ve experimented with moving MO:UL meshes to SL and OpenSim. It is currently only somewhat possible. The SL & OS grids only support a restricted type of mesh import known as sculpties. Sculpties can be created with the usual 3D modeling tools. However, the meshes going to SL/OS must have 4096 vertices and those must be arranged in specific column & row counts (64x64 typically). Controlling LoD is an additional PITA. It is those limitations that make it frustrating for most 3D modelers to build for SL.

The SL/OS restrictions mean one must remodel the meshes from MO:UL for use in SL. Depending how one does that they are creating a derivative work, which needs a Cyan license for use anywhere. The nature of sculpties and LoD makes it hard to make Uru things look similar in SL.

The textures also require a license to reuse. There is no easy way to just use the texture on a mesh converted to a sculpty. One generally needs to redo the UVMap and bake a new texture. Applying the texture in SL/OS needs rotation and scaling that is dependent on how the sculpty was made. It’s a very manual process.

With the release of the new SL viewer (March?) we should get a second mesh import. This may well allow one to import a MO:UL mesh without change. If that is possible then one may be able to use the textures without change. One would still need a license, but it would be much easier to replicate Ae’gura and other ages in SL/OS grids. I have not played with Blue Mars enough to know what all I can do with mesh import and the limitations. From what I know now it should be possible to replicate Uru there.

The need for conversion of scripts is probably a misunderstanding of what they do or we understand the words differently. Havok and PhysX have more to do with the attributes of things like Ernie the beach ball than the scripts that make the age work. SL does not use Python, so scripts that control the puzzles would have to be translated into SL’s language, LSL. Other languages are supposed to become available for SL, but I haven’t seen any yet. OS grids have the option to add a Python processor. I doubt it will be compatible with the scripts from MO:UL because of how SL/OS software handles object-to-object communication. When the KI was added to Eder D’Uru in SL it was scripted from scratch. I think it would likely be easier to rewrite most MO:UL scripts from scratch.

While it is getting easier to move Uru to SL/OS grids it is still a lot of work and less than prefect result. There are still significant problems to overcome too. One is the size of an SL region, 256x256 meters. My guess is it would take 4 regions just for Ae’gura (4 regions at $300/month/region = $1,200/mo). OS regions can be of various sizes. A 1,000x1,000 meter region and larger is possible. I suspect the lag in a region that large would be a problem.

Blue Mars allows large regions, 16x16 kilometers. Since price is based on concurrent avatars supported, building there is much more economical for large areas. They claim they can handle the lag for large regions. My experience so far is that BM lag is related more to avatars then static models.

I’m curious how you know Cyan OK’d use of some textures in an SL sim and which one?
Nalates
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
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