 Rell-too    revision 0.1    2009-04-13
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 Hello, and welcome the the chain letter age, which is written
by a succession of volunteers. 

 Each contributor takes a week (loose guideline) or so, to so 
SOMETHING with the age. What this "something" is doesn't matter and 
it's the dictatorship of the last person to have a turn that goes; 
it can be a change to the story of the age, or just a suggestion
or idea, a new object, or an old one improved, some scripting,
a sound sample, a puzzle draft; truly whatever. You could even
take out something added by an earlier contributor, which is why 
you, should you choose to participate, should keep a backup of your
work, so that, if someone does this with one of your additions,
you can put it back in, when it's your turn again, 
if you really want it there.

 This is how we do this:

 -  Everybody who want to have a go, announce their interest in the
   "Chain letter age" thread at the Guild of writers forum.
   www.guildofwriters.com

 -  They will receive the project files, in turn, as listed. New
    contributors will be added to the end of the list.

 -  When we get to the end of the list, we start again, from the top.

 We keep going until everybody are terminally bored with the whole thing.
(If you wish to end your committment, just say so and I'll take you off,
 (but add you to a second list of departed heros, unless you don't mind.))

 When it's your turn, I (Jojon) will PM you with the link to the latest
project files and the password you need to be able to upload your revised
version. (If you just "don't do" FTP, we can work something out with an 
easy to use registration-free filesharing service). When you are done and
have outlined your changes in the history text file (as brief as you can
get, without leaving out any important details), rar or zip the directory,
append "NEW" to the name of the archive and upload it -- then PM me back.
 I will export, briefly test-drive and release your new version of the
age and store your revision along with all the preceeding one, in case
something goes badly wrong and, at some point, we have to revert.
 Then I will pass the project on to the next contributor.

 I reserve the full right to cut out things deemed, for any reason, unsuitable.
You are free to challenge any such decision in the forum thread.

 You can stand a turn, if you like, but then please don't delay in saying so.



 Contributors so far are:

 - Jojon: The spider in the web. I collect what you have done and pass the baton
   to the next relay runner.



 Synopsis (alter as much as you want):

 For now, the age has been given the tounge-in-cheek name "Rell-Too", since it 
blatantly rips off ye-olde ridicolously-tall-pinnacle concept - for extra silliness
it adds a slight twist. There are no clouds in this age, just a homogenous fog.
Maybe a better name lurks in somebody's head.

 Currently there is no story to the age. It consists of three (within range of
sight) hollow pillars, whose top bits literally looks like screws driven down.
There are no plans to let the players reach the ground. After travelling far
down the second tower, they wind up on a large balcony on its outside and still
the towers disappear in the mist below -- idea so far is that the age ends here,
with some sort of story macguffin making that acceptable.

 There is little to the age at this stage. There are plans for a succession of
three "rides":

 The "elevator", which takes you atop the first pinnacle. To get it running,
you must first visit a lower cave and open the canvas "iris", that throttles
the airflow inside the tower. Pulling the handle on the elevator will release
its six "arms", between which sails are attached. The updraft will lift the
umbrella-like elevator, which is guided along a steel wire. To get the elevator
back down, one can either close the sail again by pressing down on the handle
(let's pretend the wind is that much weaker at the apex), or close the
throttle from below.

 Once at the top, there will be a minimalist cablecar thingie, which will 
come to a sudden halt after just a little while of riding, leaving you dangling. 
Possibly there will be a trailing rope, with which the thing can be hoisted back
up. From your precarious perch, you will have to risk a jump to a ledge along 
the side of the broken neighbouring pillar and there we have the last ride.

 The third one is a chute ride crisscrossing the interior of the second
tower. Either you fall right into it upon landing after the jump (this
would also provide a decent excuse as to why you survive the fall),
or you have to negotiate the cliff face for a while, before reaching
the opening.



History:

v0.1  2009-04-13  editor: Jojon

 Everything at this point is very basic and serves mostly as placeholders.
 The basic screw model, made long ago from what used to be a perfectly smooth
spline object, has been butchered into probably far too few polygons and given
a single texture via a more-or-less one-piece UV-map -- this doesn't work too
well, but the screw part tiles rather well, so one might want to think twice
before ripping into it with too much gusto.
 The elevator has some basic scripting, which makes it rideable. SDL variables
and conditions will have to be added at some point. Animation of cloth bits can
not be done at this stage, because bone animation has not been implemented in
pyprp yet. There will be need for new avatar animations, for the operation of
the  lift and cablecar.
Some cameras and footstep regions have been roughly placed.