The Halls of Artifice (a work in progress)

That's fantastic!

Hopefully we can do much more than just make swords with bones. (i.e. magic)

 

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing that Jayson.

And as to the new sneak peek pics... WOW, this is getting exciting! The forge area is pretty creepy and seems to be an important part of the plot of Artifice. Very intriguing. Will we be able to use these for crafting and will this make unique items similar to what is in Hilt?

And that library is HUGE. Love the ceilings in there and all the staircases and ladders that lead to different bookcases and sections/levels of the room. For such a large room though, it seems "too big" for the number of bookcases in there. I would think having more cases of books squeezed together (and possibly even stacked on top of each other... although that might not work with the detailed stone effects on the walls) would give it a purpose for being so enormous. Other than that though, I think it's spectacular.

Oh, will we be able to pick up and read all of the books or will they mostly just be for decoration?

 

Wow... This is uber amazing and I'm super looking forward to digging in deeper here. As always, your work impresses me more each time.

 

That library is on point.

 

Exactly, I'm hoping Bonesteel can be used to make the equivalent of UO's bone armor. It would be cool if it didn't interfere with Death/Necromancy but fizzled Life, similar to how wearing plate allows you to cast Life but fizzle most other spells.

Not to mention, weapons with a soul.

 

I'm really looking forward to this scene in-game. I'm holding off on this (and numerous others) in the interests of experiencing it for the first time after Final-Wipe

 

Heh! Believe me when I say, even now we are desperately scrambling to ensure functionality of the bookcases for areas like this or for, indeed, ANY area in the world where bookshelves are used... I actually made the call concerning "the size of the space versus how jammed full of bookshelves it is" based on this assumed functionality (as well as how books work now)... Each book has a surrounding "zone" in which a person standing may activate the book by clicking on it... This "area of effect" stretches out a certain distance from a shelf full of books, and currently cause a certain amount of acceptable slowness as the code has to think about anything interactive within the avatar's range of use... What this means is that, to maintain an "acceptable" level of speed, I needed to limit the number of shelves full of interactive books that could be near the avatar at any point in time as he walked around the Lyceum... This meant spreading them out to an extent, and making the hall spaces large and grand enough so that approaching a bank of shelves on the opposite side of the hall meant "crossing the street" out of range of the others across the way. Since the bookshelves (every single one you see in the scene) are currently all filled with individually "read-able", "move-able", and "take-able" books,...you can see why this approach was necessary even to be able to wander around smoothly to take these screenshots... Whether this remains doable in the "final" version of this chamber is still something we're trying to figure out...

The real issue here, and one we are slated to solve, is the load time necessary for a scene containing this many use-case items all on one map (between the books, the lights, the treasure, and the furniture,...there are around 85,00 useable items in this map)... What Chris wants to avoid is having a system that constantly needs to ping the server to access use-item data (like book content), since he'd prefer to see it loaded client-side for easy access during play... Richard has very firm ideas about how he'd like players to interact with things, which also drives our attempted solutions... It's all about finding a happy balance... Once we see this solved, then we should be golden... Wish us luck! ^_^

 

It seems to me that one solution to books in general would be to treat shelves as containers and simply list the books out like any other inventory. This would reduce the number of books down to just a few. Players would no longer be able to click on individual books "in shelves" and instead click on the whole shelf. This is really only SLIGHTLY less immerssive, imo, and I'm VERY interested in large libraries. Truly interactive books could still be placed on tables and chairs or whatever...but large collections of books would be put into containers. The books that we players saw on shelves would be more like VERSIONS of book shelves that would show varying degrees of shelf space being used. The range might be something like this:
1. One Book.
2. A few books (3 to 5)
3. A row of book (6 to 10)
4. Multiple rows (11 to 20)
5. Full book case (21+ books)

There could be a few variants of this range to make the shelves more visually appealing, but I think it would work fine. Especially if players could still prop up interactive books here or there on the shelves (maybe 1 or 2 per shelf).

 

Treasure? <ignores all the important stuff Scottie just said> Hmm, where could that be in this room?

Seriously though, that makes sense spacing them out if there are performance issues. If you stacked bookcases on top of each other with a "decorative" version on the one above that didn't have interactive books... that might help fill it up a bit. It could be just 1 or a few different versions (to appear less like carbon copies) of a full bookcase and just use them over and over.

Just a suggestion, but if it can't be done, then we will understand the reasoning behind it.

 

Oh it can be done,...the question is, will Richard let us do it... He tends to say "no" to attempts to create non-functional "decorative" versions of items that look like they should be interactive, but actually aren't... We've already had to strip out art in several places simply because it looked like you should be able to pick it up and use it, but you couldn't... We are always engaged in the joyful dance of "decoration versus functionality", because Richard wants the world to not only look real, but work as expected based on how it looks...

Scottie ^_^

 

Interactive book shelf that acts as a container which you can use to hold books. So that it looks chocked full of books but is one item, and can still be looted for books. Many of us, myself included - full admission, have been begging for this for a while. We also want to build massive libraries without taking up eleventy billion items. Perhaps that solution could solve botht he player and the dev problems.

 

What about blocking in an option to add additional library wings as time and tech allow, so that the Lyceum can be updated with every possible book that is published in-game?

 

This was actually my first suggestion to both Chris and Richard, but Chris was quick to point out that this puts far too much stress on the server, versus downloading content to the client.... I can't say I totally understand the dynamics of this (being from the "art realm" of things),...but I am being assured by folks like Chris and Joaquin (incredibly skilled programmers) that having that many containers in a scene would be far worse a burden in a variety of ways, since they would be constantly pinging the server wherever the player moved... Likewise, Richard doesn't like the idea of a bookshelf being treated like a container if the books are actually visible and out in the open... He'd prefer to keep the paradigm of containers constrained to things you have to "open up" to access...

Like I said,...we're still in the "compromise" process with figuring out the mix of "what works/doesn't work" versus "what folks like/don't like"... It's a fun dance on a knife's edge....

Scottie ^_^

 

I wholeheartedly agree with Richard's vision there. But if these were stacked and all the lower cases were functional but the upper cases were basically unreachable... that might convince him to let you add them.

As a gamer, when I walk into a library full of books, I would expect some/most of it to be interactable but wouldn't be put off if some "fluff" versions were added to give the room itself a better ambiance.

Again, this isn't really a deal breaker on whether the room looks great or not. Just some feedback on why it could be improved slightly.

 

Why not make all shelves in the scene ONE container?

As for player housing, why not make all shelves on the lot ONE container? Just limit the size the container can hold to how many shelves are on the lot.

Just something to ponder (ask Chris!)

 

This might be handled (once we have a generic solution for bookcase functionality) via a script that runs at each reading/taking attempt which simply attaches whatever interactive book you examine with a single random book taken from ANY of the books already published, either by us or by the players,...including player journals!!! Once the script "sets" the book, then that's what the book "is" if you take it, or until you leave it behind in this particular Lyceum scene...

Again, this is "pie in the sky" functionality that Richard wants for this special-case area,...so we'll see what real functionality shakes out in the end....

Scottie ^_^

 

That was an idea Finn had suggested,....having all the bookshelves be "props" and essentially having a master "index" stand at the center of the library that you could access and then peruse the entire list yourself, looking for various literary "gems"... We'll see if either Richard or Chris go for that.... Richard, I'm assuming, would be concerned it would give players little to no impetus to spend time wandering around the place from corner to corner (which he loves to encourage)....

Scottie ^_^

 

Oh yeah,...I totally see how this would work visually,...although it would still heavily depend on getting the bookshelves to work well in the first place, since having them all stacked up like that would still mean having all those regularly-functional shelves (whatever that will mean) all around you at the "bottom levels" of the display you describe... It's a sticky problem to solve, to be sure! ^_^

 

Awesome!

I think we might be able to come up with other ways to get players moving about in the library. Again, you could always have one off books that were interactive and could be strategically placed throughout (or even give hints of what books in the index to look for!). There could even be ways to "unlock" parts of the index by exploring the library. I'll bet Richard would like that idea.

 

Tell him that all libraries should have a card catalog to help you easily find the book you want!