 Rell-too    revision 0.7    2009-07-11
 --------------------------------------

 Hello, and welcome the the chain letter age, which is written
by a succession of volunteers. 

 Each contributor takes a week 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. (The polite way to remove
something would be to give it page number 999 and explain in one's
history entry why it doesn't work - this gives the originator a
chance to adapt his work, or remove it himself.)

 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.


 When it's your turn, I (Jojon) will PM you a link to the project files.
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), you
return them to me (there are upload solutions that should suit anybody).
I will then export and release your new version of the age and store your
revision along with all the preceeding ones, 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.

 - Corvus:  The first visitor to this age and an agewriter with little
           experience.

 - Perlenstern:  The second visitor in this age. Blendering since 3 month
                and hope to learn with you and from you. I'm more a builder
                than a scripter.

 - Robert the rebuilder:  Visitor # 3.  I'm a jack of all trades, but a
                         master of none - although I do fake it pretty well.

 - Justintime9:  The fourth visitor. I've been learning blender since the
                GoW Guild pub was released in MOUL. I've been slowly learning
                all of the aspects of age creation and specialize in Modeling
                and Lightmapping. 

 - Ametist:  The fifth visitor. I'm an agebuilder with preference for the                
            organic life in the ages.

 - Junee:


Rell-too 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. Tower no.2 has lost its "hat", which has taken a bite out of
the side of the pinnacle as it crashed 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 are traces of civilisation to be found in the age - Corvus
has recovered and restored an old cablecar, which she has put into service,
shuttling exoplorers between tower 1 and 2.
She brought the sleeping gear and visitors book on tower 2.

 After discovering large crystal formations scattered throughout the age,
Perlenstern Ventured down into the mist, like Corvus before her, decending
a ladder, which she had brought and installed, to discover a mysterious
causeway connecting tower 2 and 3.

Towers 2 and 3 were originally meant to be mostly unreachable scenery, 
at least not easily reachable - now we may need to texture them properly
and either add detail to tower 3, or come up with an excuse as to why it
looks the way it does. Something related to the crystal growth, maybe,
something really strong at the core of the towers, that allow them to
support their own mass?


 As of RobertTheRebuilder's first visit, the age has a spectacular
day/night cycle of a mere six minutes and the mist has lifted somewhat,
revealing a large red sun. The peculiar properties of this solar system
provides lots of food for thought.
 
 
 Our resident miner, Justintime, noting a sever lack of caves, took a
pickaxe to tower two and discovered that the rock has a different colour
and texture beneath the surface. Something in the air? It also turns
out that the crystals, that Perlenstern found, emit light.


 Ametist found some specimens of a lifeform. Her research reveals
that they feed on the rock, or at least something in it - they eat
it like so many hob-nobs. Perhaps something in their saliva causes
the discolouration of the rock surface?


 Junee pointed out that there appear to be other people visiting 
and surveying the age. We have yet to encounter these, but one of 
them has hidden a journal, outlining their situation. This person 
mused in passing about the uniform height of the pinnacles... 
Picking up on his thought and taking it further, could it be that
this was once a mighty plateau and that after millenia of rockeaters
nibbling away, all that is left is this sparse forest of rock pillars?  


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

 The pneumatic "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. Lifting 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 pressure is that
much lower at the apex (maybe a blowhole could be used to relieve
pressure near the top...?)), or close the throttle from below.


History:
--------

v0.7  2009-07-07  editor: Junee
-------------------------------
 We're not alone! In the month or so that Rell-too has been empty 
someone named James has left a journal of sorts talking about his 
experiences here with Alison. Apparently being so close to the 
sun can give you a nasty burn if you're not careful...


v0.6  2009-05-24  editor: Ametist
---------------------------------
 Life discovered! I added four 'RockEaters' and placed them on the 
third tower. To get them there I added a plank over the gap in the bridge
there. One can hear them slowly chew and digest the rock, thereby making
the sharp-edged rock smooth!
 They are animated with IPO. I also wrote an entry in the 'VisitorsBook'.


v0.5  2009-05-17  editor: Justintime9
-------------------------------------
 I added a small cave, it's entrance is at the bottom of Perlenstern's 
ladder. The cave is lit by perlenstern's crystals, which glow to give 
it it's light source. It's cameras are two regular cameras, and 
a fixed camera. 
(Jojon's note: Justin has also added a dummy avatar under the cave. 
 Do use it, whenever you need to measure things up.)


v0.4  2009-05-10   editor: Robert the rebuilder
-----------------------------------------------
 I added time-of-day lighting and a sky dome with two cloud
layers. This uses the SDL file which is now included in the package.
The "fake background" and the fog need to change color with the day
cycle.  While it is possible to alter the fog (via Python script), we
currently do not have plLayerSDLAnimations that would change the
background material.  I also added a panic link region at the bottom
of the crevase near the entrance to the elevator cave.  I also added a
camera region above the cave entrance to signal to the visitor that's
where they need to go.  [Oh - I moved the spawn point out of the
elevator cave - too easy!]


v0.3  2009-05-03  editor: Perlenstern
-------------------------------------
 Added some small crystals. If you follow the crystals you find a new
ladder on Tower2 and a bridge to Tower3. At the moment this bridge is
broken, so that you can't reach the new hut with a big and a middle
crystal on Tower3.



v0.2  2009-04-22  editor: Corvus
--------------------------------
 I added a cablecar which allows you to ride to the second rock pillar.
There's a small cave now with a bed to rest on, and you'll find a niche
with a book where you can write down your notes.



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.