Tag: Documentary

  • Mysterium 2024

    Mysterium 2024

    The XXV Mysterium was held in Montréal, Canada on July 12–14, with the panels and presentations streamed to both Twitch and YouTube.

    Belford wrote a summary in his blog, giving his perspective on the various updates.

    Friday started with the Opening Announcements with a few words and reminders from the convention chairs.

    ☛ In the Cyan ‘State of the Union’ prerecorded panel Rand Miller, Hannah Gamiel and Eric A. Anderson gave a few updates on their games. While Riven‘s critical reception has been phenomenal, sales have not been correspondly positive. Riven costed “less than 2%” of a AAA game of comparable quality to make; it was a “monumental effort” and they really want to scale down their workload.

    Touching on the design process, they started with drastic redesign ideas, narrowing them them down to only those that directly supported the game experience. They also had to iron bugs and glitches quite close to launch.

    For the immediate future, they will be working on porting Firmament and Riven to more platforms, and improving Myst on the Quest 3. After that, Rand confirmed they have started on a new game in the D’niverse; it will be a new storyline and you will not have to be familiar with the Myst series to play it. They expect to have more to say next year.

    Also, Rand is retiring: with Riven released, he feels it’s the right time to cut back considerably; he will still be involved with advising on game design and such, but not as often and as much.

    ☛ In the Myst Reverse Engineer panel, Jeff Barbi showed how to hack the original Myst (thanks to Uli Kusterer’s HyperCard work), and a few interesting results of editing the HyperTalk source code. The original fireplace puzzle accepted two codes, from page 158 but also page 148. The HyperCard stack was password-locked against editing, but this feature can easily be bypassed with modern tools, and Jeff was able to recover the original password.

    ☛ In the Myst Online Update, a group of fan developers (AgeExplorer, Doobes, DPogue, Harley, Semjay and Yali) gave a few updates on what’s been going on in the Cavern. The writing team is trying a long-term story arc (“Diplomacy”) involving first contact with an unexpectedly inhabited Age. On the open source client front, DPogue has continued to improve the Korman Blender plugin, as well as the MacOS client, which however is not yet ready for testing on the live servers.

    As for upcoming Ages, Doobes and AgeExplorer are still working on the Descent: you can now take the elevator down the Shaft and mostly solve the puzzles there, and walk down the spiral staircase that runs the entire length of the Shaft. Doobes is also working on a major Chiso expansion. Tweek is working on a library Age, a garden homage to Myst, a rework of of Fahets, and a new Neighborhood. Semjay is working on completing one of Cyan’s cancelled Ages for Uru, Venalem, and also on the Explorer’s Emporium. Harley is working on expanding Naybree and on an Age called Rei’schu. Yali is working on a private city area and on UI updates for the client.

    ☛ The rest of the day was dedicated to events that were not streamed. In Uru Live, a devious marker mission ws released (video). For Puzzle Time, Rayne and m13 challenged the participants with a set of devious puzzles. For the Dance Event, Annacat explored the music of the Myst series through dance and creative movement, teaching a simple short choreography.

    Saturday started with a few events that were not streamed: the Mysterium Unconference, an unstreamed set of participant-driven discussion sessions; What Would Catherine Build? (Atrus was too busy this year!), where teams were asked to build something that met certain requirements, and delivered clever presentations for why they built like that.

    The subsequent three panels were all about Myst IV: Revelation:

    ☛ In the Designing Worlds panel, Patrick Fortier (Creative Director & Lead Game Designer), Mary DeMarle (Designer & Writer), Sebastien Yelle (Level Designer) and moderator Katie “Khatie” Postma (Community Manager) discussed bringing Myst IV’s world to life, the creative process, technical challenges and innovative design choices.

    ☛ In the Living Worlds panel, Meinert Hansen (Senior Art Director) and Guy Sprung (Actor for Achenar) shared their experience bringing the worlds and characters of Myst IV to life through visuals, sound, and motion.

    ☛ In the Retrospection panel, Mary DeMarle, Patrick Fortier, Meinert Hansen, Katie “Kha’tie” Postma, Guy Sprung and Sebastien Yellel shared behind-the-scenes insights, stories and the creative processes that brought the game to launch.

    ☛ The rest of the day was dedicated to events that were not streamed. In the Guildmaster event, Taerun assigned the participants a variety of unique tasks to complete.

    ☛ Sunday started with the Myst Documentary panel, where Philip Shane (filmmaker), Katie “Kha’tie” Postma and Joshua Reinstein gave the latest updates and showed some footage of the Riven launch event at Cyan HQ. The documentary is having trouble funding the full production. David Van Taylor was brought in to help with pitching, and Julie McElmurry is helping with production. The working title now is “A World I’d Want To Live In: Myst and the Video-Game Revolution“.

    ☛ The Closing Ceremonies wrapped up this year’s convention, running the prize drawing, and announced next year’s location: Atlanta, GA!

    ☛ After the Closing Ceremonies, attendees joined unofficial excursions to see some of Montréal’s many attractions, including the Biodôme and the Jardin Botanique.

    Thanks and kudos to the Mysterium Committee, who did a great job at organising and managing the event.

    Looking forward to next year!

  • July 2023 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    July 2023 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    Here is the summary for the 159th All Guilds Meeting, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!

    Contents

    1. Mysterium
    2. Events in the Cavern
    3. MacOS MOULa client
    4. D’ni Language Classes
    5. R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
    6. Miscellanea

    Mysterium

    Calum opened the meeting with a recap of the annual Myst convention, this year held on June 30–July 2 in Spokane (WA). Over 300 badges were issued this year. A more detailed coverage can be read in our dedicated post.

    ☛ The Cavern Today podcast recorded a live episode at Mysterium, plus a bonus episode detailing their visit to Cyan the day after.

    ☛ Doobes held an Age building demonstration using Korman. As a finale, he showed a trailer for the first area of Descent he has been working on.

    ☛ The creative prompt for July is “Sun”; the deadline is July 31. Entries for the “Scream” prompt for June were from Calum Traveler, Talashar, and Redwoodrroad.

    Events in the Cavern

    ☛ PodHopper announced the Moula Summer Festival 2023, planned for August 7–13. Preparations are still ongoing; so far the schedule includes a Wall game, a Jalak game named Mayak, and a few music or video events. PodHopper will host a Cone Race contest, a Relaxing Session in Kalamee and a new marker game, “A brief history of Kalamee”. A schedule should be finalized in the coming weeks.

    Information about the Mayak game can be found on the Discord server MOULa Events, #summer-festival channel.

    MacOS MOULa client

    Darryl Pogue shared that several members of the H’uru team were at Mysterium, meeting in person for the first time. A few people saw an informal demo of the macOS client for Uru being developed by maccodemonkey, including Chogon from Cyan.

    They hope to be able to share it with more people in the near future, but there is a bit more work to do before beta testing, hopefully before the end of the year. Work also continues on the Linux client, but it is definitely not ready for testing.

    The work on the macOS client is leading to improvements to the Windows H’uru client too: they recently merged support for high-DPI displays.

    If you are interested in getting involved, visit the OpenUru Discord server, #code-dev channel.

    D’ni Language Classes

    R’Tayrtahn gave two updates, one for the D’ni Language Classes and one for the Story Nights.

    Visitors are asked to not post pellet points into the hood imager: one of his former students and a close friend, Yutiel Yoshi, who passed away in 2018, is listed there. He has refrained from posting pellets to maintain her name at the top, as a form of memorial.

    More about the D’ni Language Classes (click to expand)
    • Those who would like to attend the lessons should contact Rehn via PM or KImail (KI# 58324), or on Discord (r’Tayrtahn#1317).
    • The Guild of Instructors’ Hood will be open and public unless a class is in session. There are daytime openings Monday to Friday, at 12:00, 13:00 or 14:00 KIT, though availability is subject to change with little or no notice;
    • evening openings are on Monday to Friday, at 20:00, 21:00 or 22:00 KIT, depending on the student’s schedule.
    • Daytime availability is subject to change with little or no notice. Last-minute changes to class times are posted on the left-hand imager in the hood.

    R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

    Story Night Europe and Original Story Night are telling the story of Riven as told in the game. After that they will begin the story from The Book of D’ni. Eventually they will cover all of the books and games. as well as the three human attempts at the restoration of D’ni.

    R’Tayrtahn records videos of the sessions (via an avatar named “I’m a bot, do not message”), that he will eventually upload to his YouTube channel. Be careful if you PM r’Tay or the bot during the events, as messages will be visible in the videos 😉

    More about the Story Nights (click to expand)
    • Story Nights are held in Tsahno’s Hood every Saturday, gathering at the fountain at around 23:00 KIT, with the story starting at about 23:30 KIT.
    • For Story Nights – Europe, the gatherings are on Saturday starting at 13:30 KIT, with the story starting at about 14:00 KIT.
    • On All Guilds Meeting days, the event will begin at 14:00 KIT or 15 minutes after the meeting, whichever is later.
    • The stories are told using voice chat, so you will need to have your speakers, headphones or KI devices on. If you would like a reminder, please send r’Tayrtahn (KI# 58324) a KImail with your KI number included in the text, so that he can add you to his buddies list.
    • Last-minute changes to Story Night times are posted on the left-hand imager in the hood.

    Miscellanea

    ☛ In July, the Fan Ages Expeditions in Deep Island will begin the Path of the Lost Ages, consisting of Palamary bay, Peridia, Myst Refuge, and concluding in Ruins of Azmar, by Melvin. This will take most of the month; after that, they will visit some Ages by Doobes.

    And that was it for this month. Please consider donating to keep the Cavern open!

    June ended with the CavFunding at 97% (CavCon 3.0) and the reserve at 592%, with no extra expenses. Population was at 48,397 (⇑225), with 1060 unique visits.

    The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, August 5 (Leesahn 27) at 13:00 KIT.

    Until then!

  • Mysterium 2023

    Mysterium 2023

    The XXIV Mysterium was held in Spokane, WA on June 30–July 2, with the panels and presentations streamed to both Twitch and YouTube.

    Belford wrote a summary in his blog, commenting on Cyan’s announcements.

    Friday started at 11:00 KIT with the Opening Announcements with a few words and reminders from the convention chairs.

    At the 12:00 panel D’ni Linguistic Fellowship, Christopher “Kh’reestrefah” Gilson discussed word formation in the D’ni language, first showing how words in D’ni can be used to form other words, then looking at known D’ni words to discover patterns that point to historical rules that have not been explained before.

    At the 15:00 panel Uru World-building, Patrick “Doobes” Dulebohn gave a demonstration of Blender for Korman, the free plugin currently used to create Ages for MOULa and CC. He also briefly showed the use of ZLZ Age Importer, to get Cyan Ages converted to blends.

    At the 16:00 panel Art of Shoomlah, Claire “Shoom’lah” Hummel showed a retrospective of her Myst art over the years, and how the games have impacted her career as an art director and concept artist in the games industry (including hiding a Riven easter egg in Half-Life: Alyx). She runs a “real places that look like Myst” blog.

    At the 17:00 panel The Cavern Today Podcast, Dalken Starbyne, Esto Centura, Maurus and Sh’aeri held a live episode right at Mysterium, discussing the convention, D’ni, Cyan, and did a brief audience Q&A. The Cavern Today podcast has been bringing listeners news from the Myst fan community since 2005.

    At the 18:00 event Moving the Slider (not streamed), Rayne and m13 challenged the attendees at a group game, working together to solve puzzles, find clues, and trying to figure out what in the world the Thing is for.

    At the 19:00 panel Unwritten Character Creation Workshop, Faroguy, Eleri Hamilton, Vee Hamilton and Thomas “Curator” Steele announced the Modern D’ni expansion for Unwritten, and gave tips on how to plan a good character for the game.

    Later, Curator and Eleri hosted two parallel Unwritten sessions.

    Saturday started at 9:30 KIT with a few words from the convention staff, then the attendees headed over to Cyan HQ. At 11:00 Jeff Lanctot gave a brief welcome talk and order of events.

    At the 11:15 Cyan State of the Union, Hannah Gamiel and Eric Anderson discussed the recently released Myst (VR) and Firmament, and gave some updates about the Riven remake; notably, there will be some changes giving more lore details.

    Currently all resources are focused on Riven; future projects will likely be smaller, a bit more experimental, and possibly more related to the Myst universe. The presentation ended with a preview of the Riven remake, specifically the Boiler Island area!

    Starting at 12:15 the attendees were divided in three groups, alternating between lunch at the Squee Conservatory, a guided tour of the campus at DRC Headquarters, and an opportunity to meet some Cyan employees and guests at Gehn’s Temple.

    At 14:30 Mike “RIUM+” Ando showed off another one of his amazing creations: the Andotrope, a recreation of Gehn’s holographic imager from Riven. As RIUM+ put it, he “accidentally invented new technology while trying to make a videogame prop more screen-accurate”.

    At 15:10, at the Special Mystery Presentation, Phil Salvador from the the Video Game History Foundation announced they got permission to digitize a huge stack (about 100 hours of footage) of videotapes from Cyan’s vault, recorded in the Nineties, found by Philip Shane while he was collecting material for the Myst Documentary. They hope to finish digitizing the tapes and make them available by the end of this year.

    At 16:00 Rand Miller held a Keynote Q&A, discussing a few design choices for the Riven remake, and taking questions from the audience. Cyan is now focused on the remake. Richard Vander Wende has returned as creative leads, along with Rand Miller. The game logic is in place, but a lot is still needed for the visuals. They confirmed they will not use live-action video for the characters. No release date or platforms were announced, but they want to release it by the 30th anniversary (2027).

    The remake will expand a bit the lore, under the premise that they uncovered more archaelogical material from the New Mexico desert, and they will incorporate those discoveries into the new game. For the occasion, Rand showcased a metal plate with a relief of D’ni letters (possibly a gahrohev), originally used to cover the Fissure around the telescope.

    After Riven, they want to focus on smaller games, with more replay value, going back to the Myst universe.

    Wrapping up at 17:30, the crowd headed back to the hotel for the rest of the events.

    At 21:00 four parallel events started:

    Harley hosted the Gemedet Tournament, a game in which two players take turns placing pieces of their color in a three dimensional grid nine wide, nine long, and nine layers high. The objective is to complete an unbroken straight line of six pieces of the players color. Any direction the line of six can fit will count, including diagonals.

    Dan Binder hosted Name That Tune, a competition in which the attendees identified songs and tracks from the Myst games.

    Eleri and Curator hosted two more Unwritten sessions.

    After some announcements from the convention staff, Sunday started at 11:00 KIT with Cyan Games Completed Rapidly Live, a marathon of Myst games hosted by the Guild of Speedrunners, to show the differences and the development of its various iterations, in celebration of 30 years of Myst.

    At the 12:00 panel Uru Demake, Phil R showcased his ‘de-make’ of Uru, a recreation of some of the Ages in a very simple 2D pixel art engine called Bitsy; he discussed the process of translating puzzles from Uru into a minimalist style and redesigning some of the puzzles based on player feedback.

    After lunch, at the 15:00 panel Myst Documentary, filmmaker Philip Shane and team members Randy Woods, Joshua Reinstein, Katie Postma and Elana Bogdan gave an update about The Myst Documentary, highlighting how it will be structured and showing a few clips about the Miller family. Attendees were given an exclusive sneak peek.

    At 17:00 the Closing Ceremonies were held, wrapping up this year’s convention, running the prize drawing, showing the “Crafting With Watermelon” video, and announcing next year’s location: Montreal, Canada!

    Thanks and kudos to the Mysterium Committee, who did a great job at organising and managing the event.

    Looking forward to next year!

  • News Roundup #28

    ☛ As mentioned in the MOULa update post, the Relto start was given a new video, which was premiered on YouTube on the day of the update; you can watch it in English, French and German.

    Eder Bahvahnter will open on April 17 at 12:00 KIT; you can get there via Elonin, or by sending “to Bahvahnter” in PM to Mir-o-Bot (KI# 32319).

    Kalamee will open on May 1 at 13:00 KIT, in Chiso Preniv; Nosila will provide the music.

    ☛ A new update for the Myst Documentary was posted. There has been great progress on several fronts. The film’s treatment is now complete. A new trailer was completed, to be shown to potential partners to gather the additional funds required to finish the documentary; the trailer will be showcased at Mysterium 2023. Two new excerpts are also available in the article. The Vault of Stories so far has gathered more than 90 volumes with 535 pages.

    ☛ Doobes’ work on the Descent path and the possible integration of more Myst V ages was the focus of an article on Massively Overpowered.

    ☛ The Cavern Communications Network has released the 5th episode of its podcast The Water Cooler Show: an interview with Ametist.

    ☛ A few ages have been ported to VRChat, with Cyan’s approval: Bevin, Eder Tsogal, Kadish Gallery, Ahnonay Cathedral, and more. More info is available at the Virtual Reality Guild Discord server and VRC group.

  • Mysterium 2022

    Mysterium 2022

    The XXIII Mysterium was held in Denver, CO on August 12–14, with the panels and presentations streamed to both Twitch and YouTube.

    Minasunda and Civer Gaming made summary videos; Belford wrote a two-part summary ([1], [2]) in his blog, commenting on Cyan’s announcements.

    Friday started at 10:00 KIT with the Opening Announcements and Cyan’s “State of the Union”, with Eric A. Anderson (Creative Director) and Hannah Gamiel (Development Director). They are super busy developing Firmament (they also showed a preview video), so they will combine Myst’s and Riven’s anniversaries next year. They will share something new every month, including challenge coins, Cyan logo shirts, re-releasing the ebook versions of the Myst novels, and digging through Riven’s archives. They are working with members of the community on “special, secret projects”. There are no plans for an official remake of Uru.

    At 11:30 the Walkabout Mini Golf: Myst panel with Don Carson, Henning Koczy, Lucas Martell, Edward McAndrew of Mighty Coconut studio discussed their approach to design for immersive gameplay with realistic physics, in combining their VR mini golf game with Myst’s iconic island.

    At 14:00 the The Last Clockwinder panel with John Austin and Anita Tung of Pontoco studio talked about their game, developed with Cyan Ventures (which has shifted role from publishing arm to development-support group).

    At 15:00 Kefrith’s Cryptic Contraption presentation revealed his surprise Myst-inspired creation, discussing the setbacks he got into in the creative process.

    At 16:00 the full recording of the concert held by the NULP Dance Group in Elonin was released as a YouTube Premiere.

    At 18:00 it was time for the trip to the Meow Wolf: Convergence Station interactive art series.

    Saturday started at 10:00 KIT with the Cyan Q&A, with Eric Anderson, Rand Miller, Ryan “greydragon” Warzecha discussing what is happening at Cyan, their artistic and technical approach to game design, and the rationale behind some decisions on Myst and Uru lore.

    At 11:15 the MOULa Fan Creations: Tech Development panel with Colin “Maccodemonkey” Cornaby, Adam “Hoikas” Johnson, Darryl “Paradox” Pogue, Paul “rarified” Richards presented the latest development news about MOULa, with an update on the process to make the client cross-platform. To get involved, you can contact the OpenUru team (testing) on Discord, or the H’uru team (developing) on GitHub and IRC.

    At 11:45 the MOULa Fan Creations: Ages panel with Ametist, Patrick “Doobes” Dulebohn, Harley “Calum Traveler”, Keith “Tweek” Lord discussed the challenges of creating and modifying environments for MOULa. The current tool for creating ages is Korman for Blender. You can find tutorials in the GoW wiki; Calum Traveler also made a series of videos.

    At 13:45 the Area Man Lives panel with Amy Green, Ryan Green, Mike Perrotto of Numinous Games, and Ryan “greydragon” Warzecha of Cyan, discussed their VR game produced with Cyan Ventures.

    At 14:45 the highlights of the concert held by the NULP Dance Group in Elonin was released as a YouTube Premiere.

    At 16:00 Erik Oberg’s Libraries of Myst presentation analyzed how libraries fit into Myst, both in the explicit sense of literal, in-game libraries and the broader presence of librarian principles and practices in the Myst universe, as well as how Myst fits into real-world libraries.

    At 19:45 the Achenar: Redemption in One Part panel with Guy Sprung, who played Achenar in Myst IV: Revelation, discussed the process behind playing a character who experiences both sides of being the villain and the savior.

    At 20:45 it was time for Cavern Feud, hosted by Dan Binder, in which teams competed against each other to see who best knows how the Myst community responds to various survey questions, like “what would Yeesha name her cat?” or  “which Myst animal would make the best pet?”

    Sunday started at 10:00 KIT with the Myst Documentary Sneak Peek and Q&A, with Elana Bogdan, Katie “Kha’tie” Postma, Joshua Reinstein, Philip Shane, giving insights into the creation of The Myst Documentary, which will cover Myst, Riven and Uru, the near-collapse of Cyan in 2005 and its climb back in the following years, and the new era that started with Obduction. Attendees had an exclusive sneak peak of the documentary, then they showcased the new online Community Vault of Myst Stories.

    At 12:00 the Closing Ceremonies were held, wrapping up this year’s convention, running the prize drawing, and announcing next year’s location: Spokane!

    Thanks and kudos to the Mysterium Committee, who did a great job at organising and managing the event.

    Looking forward to next year!

  • News Roundup #24

    If you were getting the “SetActivePlayer” error when logging in with an avatar or it took an extremely long time, you should now be able to log in. This is a temporary fix, once you logged in it is strongly advised to join a different neighborhood.

    Chogon’s detailed explanation (click here to expand)

    What was causing the problem was new avatars were being put in the same neighborhood instead of distributing them into neighborhoods with a maximum of 20 members. We fixed that problem a while back but the overcrowded neighborhoods (some with over 1,100 members!) still existed! Which caused the SetActivePlayer error for those players because the client would try to find and download those 1,100+ members of their neighborhood and the database would start choking and say “this ain’t happening”.
    Then I had a crazy idea and a tool was created by Adam{Hoikas}. This morning we truncated all the membership lists of the overcrowded neighborhoods, 41 neighborhoods in all. Everyone in those neighborhoods are still members of that hood, they just won’t show up in the KI neighborhood player list. However, if that member visits their neighborhood, they will get re-added back into the membership list. So, this is just a stop gap fix to get people back into MOULa. I will periodically check for growing neighborhood membership lists and truncate them. But it would be better if these members joined a new neighborhood.

    The Mysterium decorations are now visible in the New Messengers Pub, a piece of the convention in the Cavern. Be sure to visit and get all the new shirts!

    The invitation to the Vault of Stories of the Myst Documentary Kickstarter, where backers can share their Myst Story (as a reward for Planetarium pledges or higher), was sent today. Check for an email from Fangamer to get your code and head into the Vault.

  • News Roundup #22

    Cyan news

    ☛ Obduction is currently on 70% sale on Steam, and will be until July 25. The Myst 25th Anniversary Collection and Cyan Children’s Bundle are also on sale, as they often are.

    Mysterium news

    ☛ The schedule for Mysterium 2022 is now live! You can find it on the convention’s dedicated page; the committee is still finalizing one or two events, so it will likely change in the next few weeks, but most of it is ready to go. The events have also been added on our calendar.

    ☛ Another round of special guests has been announced:

    • Ametist, first started building ages for Uru in 2008;
    • Elana Bell Bogdan, created the soon-to-be-revealed “Vault of Stories” for the Myst Documentary
    • Colin “Maccodemonkey” Cornaby, currently focused on bringing MOULa to MacOS;
    • Patrick “Doobes” Dulebohn, has been creating content for Uru since 2007;
    • Amy Noel Green, has created games with Numinous including That Dragon, Cancer and Area Man Lives;
    • Ryan Green, Creative Director and Head of Narrative for Numinous Games;
    • Harley “Calum Traveler”, writer, artist, and tester for MOULa;
    • Adam “Hoikas” Johnson, developer on the open-source MOULa client;
    • Keith “Tweek” Lord, works on Age development and helps support other developers in MOULa;
    • Mike Perrotto, software developer and producer for Numinous Games;
    • Darryl “Paradox” Pogue, software developer for Uru;
    • Paul “rarified” Richards, fan content coordinator for MOULa.

    ☛ The Cyan update on Friday (not the Saturday Q&A) will be a video: they decided to record it rather than do it live since that way they could get more people; having to find a time when everyone was available would have been more limiting.

    ☛ The Myst Documentary shared an update, going over the film’s most recent progress as well as a glimpse at the sheer amount of work being poured into it; a peek into Cyan’s archival vault (where they found the original Riven greenscreen footage!); a chat with Rand & Robyn’s parents Barbara and Ron; and a view of the Community Vault, where the Myst Stories will be gathered, stored and shared.

    ☛ Social buttons will be available at the convention, signaling the wearer’s comfort level with socialisation:

    • Yes: “I’m comfortable with conversations, come on up and talk to me”
    • Ask: “I’m unsure about my comfort level. Please ask before approaching me”
    • No: “I’m not comfortable with conversations. Please give me space”

    Moreover, the badges will include an optional space for pronouns; if you will avail yourself of it, please use the format “she/her”, “he/him”, “they/them”, etc.

    ☛ Deadlines:

    • Hotel booking at the Mysterium rate will only be available until July 19; after that date there will be no guarantee of availability, as any remaining rooms in the block may be released to the public.
    • The writing & artwork table submissions are open through July 31.
    • Online registration is still open until August 1; after that date, they will sell admission at the door starting Friday morning, but the early badge pickup on Thursday will only be available to those who purchased their badge online.

  • News Roundup #21

    Cyan news

    ☛ An update to MOULa was released on July 12, bringing the avatar dance animations from Uru: CC. You can now pick the awkward dance style of your choice 😀 The new animation is activated using /retrodance .

    ☛ The music for Firmament will be composed by Maclaine Diemer, who previously worked on ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2, Harmonix’s Rock Band franchises, Riot Games’ League of Legends, Amazon Game Studios’ first major original title Crucible, and most recently Salt and Sacrifice from Devour Studios.

    Mysterium news

    ☛ As announced during the AGM, a Mysterium Concert will be held live on August 5 at 13:00 KIT, in NDG Elonin, during the Summer Festival 2022. The concert, conceived by Minasunda, will be a tour across the Myst games and the Cavern and its community.

    For in-person Mysterium attendees, a special highlights video of the concert will be premiered on August 13 and shared on Facebook and Discord. For online attendees, a link to the full concert will be provided on August 14, for those unable to attend the concert live.

    The concert will feature three special guests who will play live: Olivier Maurey aka Piboc, Lillo Moon Minniti aka Lyllus, and Phil Rounds aka Fil. You can find more info about the artists on Calum Traveler’s blog.

    ☛ A new round of special guests has been announced:

    • John Austin, co-founder of Pontoco and project lead on The Last Clockwinder (a Cyan Venture);
    • Don Carson, Senior Art Director at Mighty Coconut and former Disney Imagineer;
    • Henning Koczy, Level Designer for Walkabout Mini Golf (a VR game planning to release a new course based on Myst island) at Mighty Coconut;
    • Lucas Martell, Head of Mighty Coconut and creator of Walkabout Mini Golf;
    • Anita Tung, Art Director for The Last Clockwinder.

    ☛ There will also be a Cyan Q&A Panel; if you wish to ask any questions, please submit them via this form by August 7. It will be a general Q&A, so feel free to ask about Firmament, Venture projects, Starry Expanse, etc.

    ☛ The Myst Documentary crew will share an update and sneak peeks of the film progress, as well as show off the Myst Story Community Vault. There will also be a Q&A session.

    ☛ Proof of vaccination will be asked at the time badges will be issued, you will not need to show proof again for the rest of the weekend. The up-to-date COVID policies are available here, the Committee will avoid changing them unless necessary.

    Other news

    ☛ The third episode of the WaterCooler Show, by the Cavern Communications Network, will be an interview to Aaron Gwynaire, developer of the upcoming Myst-style point-and-click adventure game Neyyah.

  • July 2022 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    July 2022 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    Here is the summary for the 147th All Guilds Meeting, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!

    Contents

    1. Mysterium
    2. Town Hall
    3. Summer Festival
    4. Chiso Preniv updates
    5. Cavern Tours
    6. Miscellanea

    Mysterium

    The first guests for this year have been announced, and several more will be announced very soon:

    • Katie “Kha’tie” Postma, a long-time fixture within the Myst and Mysterium community, now the Social Media Manager for the Myst Documentary;
    • Philip Shane, award winning documentary filmmaker, currently working on the Myst Documentary;
    • Ryan “Greydragon” Warzecha, recently promoted to Associate Designer on Firmament, formerly Head of Developer Relations for Cyan Ventures, and Cyan’s resident tiki bar authority.

    For those attending the Meow Wolf event, a reminder was posted to review their light and noise sensitivity warnings.

    The Mysterium prompt for July is “Voltaic Age”; the deadline is July 31. Winners of the “Resilience” prompt for June were Grayson, Harley and Laughingpineapple. Winners of the “Villains” prompt for May were Grayson, Belle, Talashar and Laughingpineapple.

    Town Hall

    The “Storytellers” group recently held the first of several planned monthly Town Hall events, designed for players who are interested in keeping tabs on the ongoing RP story to be able to catch up on missed events, as well as be able to provide some input on the future. An unedited chatlog can be found on Traveler’s Cavern Log; minutes of these logs are being planned to be posted to a journal in Chiso Preniv, although not before Q3.

    Explorers there voted on three items: first, Eder Naybree was chosen to be released first, with Highgarden second. A second vote was held on the restoration priorities for the Overflow Station area, and the third was on diplomatic relations with an inhabited Age.

    On the storytelling front, some concerns were raised about some ambiguity of rule interactions. A formal post is being drafted for a generic ruleset to address these concerns; most of the rules will be similar to the AGM rules.

    Summer Festival

    PodHopper presented the outline of the MOULa Summer Festival, which will be held on August 1–5, before the next AGM. The number of events made a five-day festival possible, with a variety of events like contests, music, a video event and a marker game.

    For more information, or if you have an idea for an event that you would like to be included, feel free to contact PodHopper on Discord (PodHopper#8133) or in MOULa (#7116825). The events are also listed in our calendar.

      • Monday 1st
        • 12:00–13:30: Cooking Session with Sky (video event)
        • 13:30–15:00: Eternal Evergreens (music event)
      • Tuesday 2
        • 13:00–14:30: Cone Race (contest)
        • 14:30–15:30: Beach Party by the Fountain (music event)
      • Wednesday 3
        • 14:00–16:00: Wall game (contest)
      • Thursday 4
        • 12:00–13:00: A brief history of D’ni (marker game)
        • 15:00–16:30: Door Run (contest)
      • Friday 5
        • 13:00–14:30: Mysterium Concert (music event)

    Minasunda gave a few more details on some of the events. At the “Eternal Evergreens” event – which will take place in the stained glass windows room in Mir-o-Bot’s Elonin (PM “to NDG Elonin” to the bot to get there, KI# 32319) – Eternal Seeker will sing a few songs. A ‘guided dance’ is planned, where avatars will temporarily be taken over for a dance routine. If you do not want to be integrated in the dance, let Mina know so she can put you on the exclusion list for the duration of the event.

    The second event, also taking place in Mir-o-Bot’s Elonin, is a very special, 80 min concert for this year’s Mysterium. Uncle Rebus’ large Persian carpet offers plenty of space for the attendees, so there is no need to climb on the furniture 😉

    The concert is not just a music stream: the Nulp Dance Group will ‘play’ instruments live and will be supported by three backround singers. There will be pieces from Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelation, End of Ages and Uru, plus three artists well known in the Myst/Uru community will play live a few of their pieces: Olivier Maurey aka Piboc, Lillo Moon Minniti aka Lyllus, and Phil Rounds aka Fil.

    A video will be recorded, and excerpts will then be released as a YouTube Premiere during the convention (because of timing constraints, the video cannot be longer than 25 min). The release date will be posted on Facebook and Discord very soon.

    Chiso Preniv updates

    Doobes gave an update on what is coming for the next update to MOULa. The Chiso Preniv library will be greatly expanded, with journals and stories related to the ongoing RP fan stories. All the new content (save a few Ages planned for later release) will be available immediately after the update, but will be somewhat hidden: a hint is to look for the number 18 😉

    If you would like to add a little story-related something, or even just some creative writing related to Myst/Uru for a future update, let Doobes know. Note that you may be asked by testers to work out some ‘wrinkles’ and such.

    With Chiso’s updates out of the way, Doobes will focus solely on the Ae’gura Messengers Pub’s Mysterium decorations. Each of the corner alcoves and the conference room upstairs will be devoted to each Myst game in the series. The main hall and entryway will also have the tables ‘dressed up’ in cliché hotel conference room fashion, for extra authenticity and to give those that could not make it to the convention in-person the same feel as if they were there. There will also be some ‘swag’ to collect 🙂

    If all goes well, the decorations (along with many other goodies and fixes) will appear soon after the update and just in time for Mysterium weekend, August 12–14. The update is planned to be released for the end of July or beginning of August.

    A separate small update will be released in the coming week: an addition was needed for one of the presentations.

    To keep updated on Doobes’ work, check his blog and his Facebook page.

    How to be a tester (click to expand)

    To be a tester, you will need to open an account on the Minkata prime shard; it is highly recommended to read the Tester’s Guide to understand what is expected. To test the cutting edge additions, you can sign up for the Minkata alpha shard.
    To report bugs, you can post on the OpenUru Discord server (channels #hood or #dev); on Discord you can ask to be added to the Testers role to be notified of testing requests, which sometimes need quick response in terms of hours, not days.

    Cavern Tours

    The Cavern Tour are back, on the fourth Saturday of the month, gathering at 11:00 KIT in the Cavern Tour’s Hood.

    Larry LeDeay will reprise his role as the tour guide, r’Tayrtahn will appear as guest guide. Zeke, the original creator of the Cavern Tours, will also be back as host along Susa’n.

    The Tours will use a Twitch channel for the presentation, so you will need to keep a browser or the app open in the background. Videos will be available for two weeks after the tour. The stream will be simulcasted on Facebook and Youtube.

    The tours occasionally visit hard to reach places. Mir-o-Bot (KI# 32319) is often employed for special effects and long-distance travel (and to avoid stairs). If you arrive late, you can PM Susa’n (KI# 9122427) to join the in-progress tour – but do try to arrive in time!

    Miscellanea

    • The Cavern Communications Network has released an episode of its podcast The Water Cooler Show, and will release another one on July 8: the first is an interview to Patrick Dulebohn aka Doobes.
    • The second is an interview to the crew of MystiTech Productions, the group behind the machinima series The Lost Art; episode 14 was released on June 18 on MystiTech’s YouTube channel.

    And that was it for this month. Please consider donating to keep the Cavern open!

    June ended with the CavFunding at 114% (CavCon 4.1) and the reserve at 544%, with no extra expenses. Population was at 44,967 (⇑220), with 1090 unique visits.

    The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, August 6 (Leesahn 28) at 13:00 KIT.

    The role of Moderator is currently vacant, with Calum Traveler filling in for the time being; if anyone would like to take the role, it is your chance to step up 😉

    Until then!

  • News roundup #17

    • Actor and runner John Keston, who played Gehn in Riven, passed away on February 13, due to complications from Covid-19.
    • Cyan’s 2nd Annual Cake Contest started on February 28 and will end on March 7. This year’s theme is “the artifacts of Riven”: choose your favorite artifact (e.g. a maglev, Gehn’s inkwell, the Moiety dagger, etc.), craft a cake, upload a picture of your creation and tag it with #CyanCake2.
    • A Firmament project update released on February 17 went into details about the use of “greyboxing” in game development.
    • A Myst Documentary project update released on February 26 noted they are ready to start “principal photography”, as they call in Hollywood.
    • The 3rd Deep City Lecture, about the D’ni legal system, will be held on March 5 at 15:00 KIT, in the Guild of Archivists’ Hood (Twitch, Discord).
    • There was another great set of submissions for Mysterium’s Prompt topic “glass”, with two short stories from calumTraveler and Talashar and two drawings from KellyC and laughingpineapple.
    • For March, the Prompt is about stickers for the Mysterium Discord server. The plan is to have multiple winner this time. The same rules as the normal submissions apply, so feel free to publicly discuss works in progress. Stickers can either be static or animated.