This article is about events happening in Myst Online. If you don’t know, there is a community of Myst fans playing in Second Life. Find the D’ni Refugees Group if you want to connect. For that group of fans there is exciting news.

Myst Online Uru Live

Today, this was released!

Cyan Worlds, Inc. and OpenUru.org jointly announce open source delivery of the CyanWorlds.com Engine client and 3ds Max plugin, aka Plasma, the engine used to power Myst Online: Uru Live. – OpenUru.org

An Open Letter on Open Source ☺
The progress on our open source roadmap has been slow but has never stopped. And now what will look like a large step is really the result of numerous people, both inside and outside of Cyan Worlds, slowly cutting the rock into shape…

Today we are announcing that the sources for the MOULA client engine and development tools (CyanWorlds.com Engine) will be made available as open source. At the same time, MOSS which is a MOULA server replacement (written by a’moaca’ and cjkelly) will also be released. Both open source projects will be hosted on OpenUru.org.

The goal of the open source CyanWorlds.com Engine and the MOSS server is to provide a “playground” where new writers can learn their craft, and new maintainers can inspect it, and new cartographers can map it. The Cyan Worlds MOULA servers will continue to provide a (relatively) safe environment for the D’ni faithful to mingle and share.

The path forward from here seems fairly obvious and very exciting – with amazing parallels to the D’ni universe itself. As new writers arise with new books, the books are tested and documented – and books that are approved by some new kind of maintainers guild will (hopefully) find their way to the MOULA server where the public can enjoy new worlds once again.

These are exciting times, but not without risk. The tools and skills are new and need to be sharpened. There will be disagreements and strongly expressed opinions. And there will be decisions and mistakes. But keep in mind that the big picture is a lot like rebuilding a long dead civilization – and the forest of common goals far outnumber the few trees of differences. Let’s keep it civil. ☺

There have been numerous people cutting on the rock, and they’ve kept this project alive. We sincerely thank all of them for the wonderful help. Specifically there are a few people who went above and beyond – JWPlatt, a’moaca’, Mac_Fife, cjkelly, rarified and Chogon.

Thanks again for the continued support!

Shorah,
Rand – Reference: Myst Open Source Code Released

This in effect means open source is here. It was February 8, 2010 that Uru Live came back online as a free to play MMOG. A few months later Cyan Worlds change their plans and committed to making Uru Live open source. Today that happened.

See: Announcing CyanWorlds.Com Engine Open Source

See a reprint: CyanWorlds.com Engine

The release is not totally complete. We do not yet have the full Cyan server side software. But, there is a replacement server side that is available: Myst Online Server Software (MOSS).

OpenUru.org announced:

OpenUru.org is prepared with tools to support new development of the CyanWorlds.com Engine with MOSS. We welcome all developers, issue reporters and users to contribute to the effort. Contributors can use our Foundry with Atlassian tools such as JIRA, Fisheye and Crucible to manage development projects and Jenkins (previously known as Hudson) for Continuous Integration to produce automated builds.

OpenUru.org has executables of the various parts.

I haven’t found detailed information on the 3DSMax plugin. The one currently being used is only for older versions of Max. I’m assuming this plugin works with newer versions. The release of the code will make it possible to improve the Blender plugin. However, those using Max have a head start.

I’m still reading and sorting things out…