Tag: MacOS

  • August 2024 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    August 2024 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    Here is the summary for the 172nd All Guilds Meeting, moderated by Claidi Song, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!

    Contents

    1. Mysterium
    2. Summer Festival & D’ni Palooza
    3. D’ni Language Classes
    4. R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
    5. Miscellanea

    Mysterium

    ☛ The recordings of the panels that were streamed on the official Mysterium Twitch channel have now been uploaded to the YouTube channel.

    ☛ Some of the speakers for the MOULa panel shared their experience at the meeting: Skyisblu, Semjay, Calum Traveler, Doobes, Darryl Pogue, Murry,

    ☛ A large part of the MOULa presentation was taken using the experimental MacOS client. “Nightly” (i.e. untested) development builds of the H’uru client and 3DS Max plugin are available at the GoW’s GitHub page. You can also find a one-click Destiny shard setup tool for testing your newly-built Ages at Hoikas’ GitHub page.

    ☛ The Creativity Prompt for August is “Revelation”, the deadline is August 31st. Entries for the “Serenia” prompt for July were from Calum Traveler and Talashar.

    ☛ Calum Traveler announced a new Age called Gahlahno. He will be streaming the building process on his Twitch channel, and will upload recordings on his YouTube channel.

    Summer Festival & D’ni Palooza

    ☛ The Summer Festival is back, on August 5–11, organized by PodHopper. This year the festival will also be a comeback for the D’ni Palooza, showcasing music made by explorers, be it people playing, singing or DJ-ing. You can find a schedule in PDF format here, courtesy of PodHopper. All the events are also marked in our calendar.

    Schedule (all times are KI time) (click to expand):
    • Monday, August 5
      • 12:00-14:00: “Cooking Session with Sky” by Skyisblu
      • 14:00-16:00: “Wall Game” by Dah’mpa
      • 18:00-20:00: “Cooking Session with Sky” by Skyisblu (same recipe)
    • Tuesday, August 6
      • 13:00-15:00: “Relaxing Palooza” by PodHopper, featuring: Edison Rex, Jodok, Maurus, Mystler, Piboc & Semjay
    • Wednesday, August 7
      • 14:30-16:00: “Cone Race” by PodHopper
    • Thursday, August 8
      • 13:00-14:00: “D’Marnah/Lillo Minniti” by PodHopper, featuring: Turjan Aylahn & Lillo Minniti
      • 14:00-15:00: “Karaoke Mix” by Dah’mpa, featuring: Dah’mpa, Prad & Skyisblu
      • 15:00-16:00: “Money Show” by AlanDJ, featuring: Music with the theme “Money”
      • 16:00-17:00: “Rock Music” by PodHopper, featuring: Jet Blast, Jodok & Skyisblu
      • 17:00-18:00: “Piboc (Part 1)” by Dah’mpa, featuring: Piboc
    • Friday, August 9
      • 13:00-15:00: “Classical with Babbel” by Babbel, featuring: Classical music & music by Babbel
      • 15:00-17:00: “Wonky Draws” by Iwonk
    • Saturday, August 10
      • 14:00-15:00: “Story Night Special” by r’Tay
      • 15:00-16:00: “What’s That Tune?” by AlanDJ [Guess the name of a song by a few notes
      • 16:00-17:00: “Turjan Aylahn” by Dah’mpa, featuring: Music from Turjan Aylahn other than D’Marnah
      • 17:00-18:00: “Piboc (Part 2)” by PodHopper, featuring: Piboc
      • 21:00-23:00: “Ayoheek Tournament” by Bogusmeatfactory
    • Sunday, August 11
      • 13:00-16:00: “Radio Free D’ni 10th Anniversary Show / Review of the Decade by Edison Rex” by RFD

     

    ☛ There will be three gaming events: a Wall Game, organized by Dah’mpa, a Cone Race, organized by PodHopper, and an Ahyoheek Tournament, organized by BogusMeatFactory.

    ☛ The Wall Game will be hosted by Dah’mpa (#11225300) and Nosi La (#09902277). The game format was conceived with the aim to involve all players interested in taking part, including those who have never played or watched a Wall Game before.

    In each game both players will face the same maze, created and input by the organizers; players will therefore just climb the Wall, without setting the barriers. This simplified format allows new players to deal with only a few simple rules, without fiddling with the sometimes tricky to set up panel.

    Players can enroll at the beginning of the competition, but booking is encouraged, as it helps with organizing the rounds.

    ☛ IwonK will host a Wonky Talk (on her Twitch channel) on Friday 16 at 15:00 KIT in the Guild of Cookies’ Hood by the heek table. This month’s topic will be “Myst games“. Feel free to suggest interesting games she could talk (and draw) about. As always, there will be cookies!

    IwonK is also making some games of her own as a year-long gamedev challenge; you can find them at her itch.io page.

    ☛ Babbel will host her next classical music program in the Hall of Kings in Ae’gura, on Monday 19 at 13:00 KIT. The theme this month is “Summer“.

    ☛ For a more complete list of upcoming events, check our calendar. Times and events may change at the last minute; you can find the latest updates at:

    D’ni Language Classes

    Shokhootahn Rehn 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
    • Those who would like to attend the lessons should contact Rehn, preferably on Discord (r’Tayrtahn#1317), or via KImail (KI# 80428). Be sure to include your KI number, so that Rehn can send you a reply!
    • The Guild of Instructors’ Hood will be open and public unless a class is in session. Classes are individual.
    • Daytime openings are on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, at 10:00, 11:00 or 12:00 KIT, depending on the student’s schedule.
    • Evening openings are on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and 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 will be announced via Magic Bot (KI #27527) or Mimi Bot (KI #71459); to be notified, add both as buddies, then PM them “advert”.

    R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

    Story Night Europe and Original Story Night have begun a new season. 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 😉 The channel is current through February 20, 2021.

    Videos now also come with auto translated captions in French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. Automatic translation often has trouble with words like “D’ni” or “linking books”, so your mileage may vary 😉

    More about the Story Nights
    • 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 30 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.

    Miscellanea

    ☛ For most of August, the Fan Age Expeditions in Deep Island will explore the vast Age of Somewhere by Denost, solve its puzzles and wonder about the ultimate fate of its first explorer, Gary. Then, they will explore the caves of Gavster by Calena, and the experimental features of Denkasen and Canyon by Sirius. Likely in September, they will then be back looking for Gary in Iceworld by Denost.

    A couple of Ages from the same time period – Turtle Isle by DenDwaler and R’Oshanhnin Korvahkhn by Calena, Dustin, Wamduskasapa and Tachzusamm – will unfortunately have to be skipped, as there are unsolved bugs affecting these Ages.

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

    At the time of this writing, no CavCon is known for July. June ended with the CavFunding at 115% (CavCon 4.1) and the reserve at 607%, with no extra expenses.

    The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, September 7 (Leetahr 25) at 13:00 KIT.

    Until then!

  • 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!

  • December 2023 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    December 2023 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    Here is the summary for the 164th All Guilds Meeting, moderated by Claidi Song, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!

    Contents

    1. Mysterium
    2. Events in the Cavern
    3. Magic Ages
    4. H’uru macOS client
    5. D’ni Language Classes
    6. R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
    7. Miscellanea

    Mysterium

    ☛ There have been some minor changes to the Mysterium policies, mainly:

    • heckling and shouting out during presentations will be taken more seriously: reactions and cheering are fine, but repeatedly interrupting presenters is not;
    • attempts at circumventing the refund policies via charge dispute may result in a permanent ban from future events.

    ☛ The creativity prompt for December is “Refuge”; the deadline is the 31st. Entries for the “Found Family” prompt for November were from Tomatoes, Calum Traveler, redwoodrroad, Talashar and Rahshahth.

    Events in the Cavern

    ☛ For December’s Cooking Sessions with Sky, on Monday 4 at 12:00 KIT in the Guild of Caterers’ Hood, Skyisblu will be making whipped shortbread, and show some easy ways to transform them into really beautiful gifts for family and friends.

    Every month is something new and different, often inspired by what is in season. She also tries to answer any questions regarding the recipe she is cooking, other dishes or cuisines, and takes suggestions for future sessions. You can find past recipes and recordings at Skyisblu’s blog and YouTube channel.

    ☛ IwonK will host a Wonky Talk (on her Twitch channel) on Friday 15 at 15:00 KIT in the Guild of Cookies’ Hood by the heek table. This month’s topic will be Christmas games. Feel free to suggest interesting games she could talk (and draw) about. As always, there will be cookies! IwonK also made some games of her own as a year-long gamedev challenge; you can find them at her itch.io page.

    ☛ Babbel will host her classical music program in the Hall of Kings in Ae’gura on Monday 18 at 13:00 KIT.

    ☛ Minasunda outlined a few, upcoming special events:

    • December 15 at 13:00 KIT: Game Music Session in the New Messengers Pub with Karel, with the theme “Music from Fortnite”; the pre-show will start at 12:45 KIT.
    • December 24 at 13:00 KIT: Magic Christmas Eve;
    • December 31 at 13:00 KIT: Magic New Year’s Eve. Location and details for both will be announced later, so keep an eye on the usual channels on Discord and Facebook!
    • January 8 at 13:00 KIT: on the occasion of Elvis’ birthday, Eternal Seeker will play Elvis songs for two hours in the large hall in Eder Bahvahnter.
    • February 10 at 12:00 KIT: the Nulp Dance Group will play on a new show, which will take place in Eder Naybree on the beach.
    • February 5–10: the 14th MOULa Anniversary is coming soon, so if you have any idea for an event, it is a good time to start planning! You can contact Minasunda at any time to schedule time.

    ☛ Diranda, on behalf of the Guild of Authors and Artists, announced the theme of this month’s writing workshop: “Creative Prompts”. The workshop will be held on December 13 at 15:00 KIT in the New Guild of Messengers Pub. You can find more info and take part in the discussion on their website and their Discord.

    ☛ There will be no Town Hall in December, due to the holidays. Meanwhile, the Rei’schu Diplomacy Discord is going on its next adventure. To catch up on and read it in real time, check the #to-naybrees-mountain-ic channel; the start is in the pinned posts. The contents of the adventure will be added to a journal or series of journals here in MOULa sometime after the conclusion.

    Magic Ages

    Mister Magic is back with all his magical bots:

    • MagicBot and MimiBot, who allow to perform magical movements and guide you in magical games specially created to have fun in the cave;
    • the Fabulous Magic Treasure bots Game Master, Magic Treasure and Mimi Treasure, who will accompany you in the ten episodes of this adventure game with many hours of thought, puzzles and research to restore light to the City of Ae’gura;
    • the Hidden Treasures, where you will play the role of a private detective, searching for Miss Smith’s stolen jewelry; and
    • the Magic High School of Skydiving, introducing any explorer to Aerobatics with the help of Magic Skydiver and Mimi Skydiver, who will guide you on the invisible walls of the Ages in a progressive manner.

    The skydiving bots took the most time, because the physics effects worked a little differently a few years ago. There are currently 46 missions and 5 certificates, plus some special missions performed by instructor skydivers. The new Ages added since 2020 will also be the subject of new skydiving missions.

    More informations and all the commands of the bots can be found on the Mystpedia forum, which has an English and a French section. The magic bots also have their own channel on the MOULa Events Discord.

    H’uru macOS client

    Darryl Pogue gave an update on some of the recent development work happening from the H’uru team.

    Firstly, thanks to some contributions from IntelSpark on the OpenUru Discord, the PlasmaMax Age creation plugin for 3DS Max now supports 3DS Max 2023 and 2024. PlasmaMax is the 3DS Max plugin written by Cyan for the creation of all their Uru content, and is available as an alternative to Blender and Korman for Age builders. You can download the PlasmaMax plugin for all versions of 3DS Max from 7 all the way to 2024.

    On the macOS front, the Metal rendering system for macOS was merged in to the H’uru client earlier this week. That means it is now possible to compile and run an Uru client on macOS, for both Intel and Apple Silicon processors!

    A huge thanks goes to Maccodemonkey, who spent the past two years single-handedly implementing the Metal rendering system and trying to make it match how the game looks with DirectX on Windows.

    There is still some more work that has to be done before a macOS client is ready to be tested, but getting the Metal renderer merged was one of the biggest pieces and means that people can compile a mostly-working client to use for their own local testing on their own local shard (not on MOULa).

    Some of the remaining macOS work is technical (handling display resolutions, handling patching) and some of it is logistical (handling Apple Developer accounts for code signing). The client is not ready yet for a beta test. Stay tuned for future announcements!

    D’ni Language Classes

    R’Tayrtahn gave two updates, one for the D’ni Language Classes and one for the Story Nights. Currently there are are two students taking the classes, at various stages of completion.

    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# 80428), 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, Tuesday and Thursday, 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 will be announced via Magic Bot (KI #27527) or Mimi Bot (KI #71459); to be notified, add both as buddies, then PM them “advert”.

    R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

    Story Night Europe and Original Story Night are currently telling the story from Myst IV: Revelation. 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 😉

    There will be no Story Night on December 23 as R’Tayrtahn will be traveling for the holiday; but there may be one on the 30th.

    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 30 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.

    Miscellanea

    ☛ TikiBear and Ametist will soon submit the Age of Mirtahm for testing on the Minkata shard. Time for testing!

    ☛ In December, the Fan Ages Expeditions in Deep Island will explore some more Ages from 2008–09: Tunnel Demo (by Nadnerb), Wianeroy (Perlenstern), ERC Age (Jennifer P., Robert The Rebuilder, Ametist, Corvus), Torilacha (Mystpedia forum); two more, Box Age (Nadnerb) and Odema (Nadnerb, concept by Yali) will have to be skipped because of a bug.

    Then they will explore the works by the late Andy Legate, including Serene. After that, it will be time for the second RAD Contest entries, all Ahra Pahts shells. The month (skipping the 31st) will conclude with a few works by Whilyam.

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

    The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, January 6, 2024 (Leevosahn 4) at 13:00 KIT.

    Until then!

  • 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 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 #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.
  • June 2022 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    June 2022 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    Here is the summary for the 146th All Guilds Meeting, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!

    Contents

    1. Cavern Tours
    2. D’ni Language Classes
    3. R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
    4. Fan Ages Touring Club
    5. Korman
    6. Development news
    7. Miscellanea

    Cavern Tours

    The Cavern Tour are back, on the fourth Saturday of the month, starting on Saturday 25 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!

    D’ni Language Classes

    R’Tayrtahn gave two updates, one for the D’ni Language Classes and one for the Story Nights. Currently there are two students taking the classes and are at various stages of completion.

    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); be sure to include your KI number in the message!
    • The Guild of Instructors’ Hood will be open and public unless a class is in session. Daytime openings are currently on Monday–Friday at 12:00, 13:00 or 14:00 KIT; evening openings on Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday at 20:00, 21:00 or 22:00 KIT, depending on the student’s schedule.
    • Last-minute changes to class times are posted on the left-hand imager in the hood.
    • Shokhootahn Rehn (aka r’Tayrtahn) can be found on Discord as r'Tayrtahn#1317.

    R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

    Story Night Europe and Original Story Night are in synch, and are telling the stories of the kings of D’ni, which will go on for the next 14 weeks.

    R’Tayrtahn has restarted upload recordings of the Nights to his YouTube channel and is in the process of uploading the backlog of videos from previous sessions. Be careful if you PM r’Tay, 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 AGM, 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.

    Fan Ages Touring Club

    Korov’ev gave a quick update on the Fan Ages Expeditions he is hosting on the Deep Island shard, every Sunday at 11:00 KIT.

    In May, they started with a quest to recover Quilla’s piano through Elonin, the Beach house, the Cafe and Tsameti. They then visited a few Ahra Pahts shells they missed last time, including the one with the black fortress. They then visited the prison Age of Pakin, the playground of Hayal, the beaches of T’vel, the lake of Ahreeuhtahv, the castle of Chamassa and the memorial of Aquh.

    In June, they will start with the puzzles of Ahrkane, by Ekimmai. Then they will compete in a few Ages with giant board games, mostly by Karkadann; they will get lost in cubic mazes by J’Kla, and close the month with a few Ages by Justintime.

    More about the Expeditions (click to expand)
    • The expeditions are streamed (without comments), and the videos will be available for two weeks after. Be careful if you PM Korov’ev, as messages will be visible in the videos 😉
    • A gallery of fan ages with some details is available on the Writers’ wiki. Setting up a Deep Island client can be a bit tricky in some situations; a quick guide is available in our Troubleshooting section.

    Korman

    Darryl Pogue announced the release of the Guild of Writers’ Age building tool Korman 0.13a, fixing a couple of crashes.

    In other H’uru news, they are continuing their work on engine improvements, including many quality-of-life fixes by Zaroth and content fixes by Hazado. Work on Linux and macOS ports also continues.

    To learn more about development news, you can join the OpenUru Discord server (channels #hood or #dev).

    Development news

    Argo gave a quick update on the MOULa update plans for the coming months. Work on the lake lighting is going on: the final coding is being worked on, while animations are ready but need a model for automatically switching between states.

    They are also nearing the finalization dates for this next quarters release. The goal is to get the update in-game before August for the Mysterium decorations for the Ae’gura Guild of Messengers Pub.

    A few activities for Mysterium are planned for the Cavern, including possibly a marker game, assuming a fix to prevent them breaking will be implemented by then. No major in-Cavern events to go alongside the missions are planned, however.

    Miscellanea

    • Two VR games published by Cyan Ventures were released in May: Area Man Lives and The Last Clockwinder.
    • Mysterium’s COVID-19 policy has been updated, requiring full vaccination and N95 (or equivalent) masks.
    • Along with the convention registration, you can book an optional excursion to the Meow Wolf: Convergence Station art exhibit for a discounted price until June 30.
    • Mysterium Writing & Artwork submissions are still open until July 31.
    • The Mysterium prompt for June is “Resilience”; the deadline is June 30 at 21:00 KIT.
    • The Lost Art episode 14 is coming out on June 18 at 13:00 KIT, on MystiTech YouTube’s channel.

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

    May ended with the CavFunding at 148% (CavCon 4.5) and the reserve at 541%, with 4% extra expenses. Population was at 44,747 (⇑250), with 1228 unique visits.

    The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, July 2 (Leebro 29) 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!

  • Reflecting on 10 Years of Open-Source Uru

    It was 10 years ago today that Cyan unexpectedly released the source code for the Uru game engine client and related development tools. I recall thinking it was inconvenient timing, because I was less than a month away from being finished with school, but right in the middle of final projects and exams when the source was released. It’s funny looking back at all the excitement – and politics – and seeing where it led to.

    A lot changes over the course of 10 years. Sometimes a lot stays the same too. Our group of developers has seen people come and go over the years, and I’m incredibly grateful to get to work alongside many of these people — in some cases for over 15 years developing tools and Uru-related projects long before the engine codebase itself was released. It’s not an understatement to say that Uru is directly responsible for my becoming a software developer, and I owe a lot to these folks who patiently explained concepts and patterns to self-taught younger me.

    A lot changes in a codebase over the course of 10 years too, and that’s what I want to focus on today.

    There have been almost 700 pull requests merged to the Plasma project since we mirrored the original source code on GitHub. Some of the highlights include:

    • Replacing the Visual Studio 2003 project files with the CMake build system, which allows building on multiple platforms with various compilers and IDEs.
    • Updating the physics engine to PhysX 4.1 which is open-source and cross-platform.
    • Updating the scripting library to Python 3.9.
    • Simplifying management of library dependencies, and writing new user-friendly build instructions.
    • Significant code modernization by adopting features of new C++ standards in favour of custom implementations.
    • Various performance improvements and gameplay enhancements, such as clipboard functionality and widescreen support.
    • Lots of code cleanup to allow for 64-bit and (in future) native macOS and Linux clients

    This work has been a group effort, with lots of contributions from the core H’uru team as well as numerous community contributions. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to Uru over the years, whether through code changes, bug reports, tutorials and documentation, or gameplay testing.

  • News roundup #12

    A few news from Mysterium, which will be held in Washington, D.C. on July 16–18:

    • To help with the uncertainty brought by COVID-19, cancellation policy for registration refunds has been shortened to 45 days.
    • The Triumvirate have put together a brief survey to gauge how people are feeling about this year’s convention; the deadline is April 4.
    • They are still accepting submissions for events (through May 31), activity book pages (through April 25), and the writing and artwork table (through July 1) for this year’s convention.

    A few news from Cyan:

    • In 2019, application requirement changes for macOS Catalina (and all subsequent macOS releases, including Big Sur) caused Myst IV, Myst V, and Uru: CC to stop launching. Cyan is still working with Codeweavers to make the games run on these versions again and will update everyone about the completed fix as soon as it is available.
    • Strange Seeds, Unwritten’s live stream, this month is moved to Saturday 10, 14:00 KIT.
    • On April 1st they announced a revolutionary, never-before seen VR gaming experience called … Myst Sayber!

  • March 2021 All Guilds Meeting Summary

    Here is the summary for March’s Meeting, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!

    Contents

    1. Saint Patrick’s Day
    2. International Women’s Week
    3. Cavern Tours
    4. A new era in D’ni
    5. Korman
    6. OpenUru
    7. Fan Ages Touring Club
    8. D’ni Language Classes
    9. R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

    (more…)