Firmament Kickstarter Tops Goal

This morning when I checked Cyan Worlds, Inc. kickstarted had topped the goal of US$1,285,000. Yay! This means the game Firmament will be built. Estimated release date July 2020. The video explains what the game is… sort of.

Cyan Worlds is the company that made Myst in the 90’s, a game that was the number one best seller until the Sims came out. They made a series of Myst sequel games. One is their Myst Online:Uru Live, which is still running and free to play.

The most recent release is Obduction. Continue reading

Myst-Uru 2018 Status

The official name Myst Online: Uru Live™ is a game that started about the time of Second Life™, 2004±. Both are multi-player, persistent games. By 2007-8 Second Life was peaking and Uru Live was closing. Those that played Uru were enchanted by the game. For many playing it was a parent and child time of bonding.

Fans saved the game by paying for the servers to run it and the original authors, Cyan Worlds, Inc., accepted and have kept a playable version online. The game moderators that kept the game safe for children are no longer around. So, it isn’t the kid-friendly game it was.

Uru has been called the game that ‘would not die’. Many have predicted its demise. If you click here in CATEGORIES (in the right-hand column), Myst-Uru, you can see my writing about the game over the years. The game has lots of history and exo-drama, drama outside the game. But, while it has survived the drama, it has taken a toll. Continue reading

Myst Uru: New Video

Myst Online: Uru Live was my first MMORPG. I mention it now and then. Anyway a character named Slightlybartfast on YouTube has made a video giving his version of the game’s history, which is nothing like what I remember. What can I say, he’s in the UK…

You won’t see any of the game until about the 6 minute mark. Then you’ll only see a few second of it. So, this is an 11 minute video mostly with Slightlybartfast talking about his understanding of the history of Uru and the author’s, Cyan Worlds, Inc., marketing mistakes. He touches on some of the other games in the Myst series.

The game is currently free to play at Myst Online. There is a donation thing that supports the cost of the server and pays for someone to do occasional maintenance and repairs to the server and software.

The gaming system is about 13 years old. It was initially written about the time Second Life (SL) was started. SL has been maintained and updated. Uru hasn’t been. There have been fixes and some proprietary parts of the code replaced with open source code. But, it has an old look to it. In its day it was awesome. It is still an enchanting world to play in. Continue reading

Myst Online: Uru Live – Around?

Long time readers know this is the first MMO I played and that eventually lead me to Second Life™. I still scan the Myst Online forum. I was somewhere in the hierarchy of management of the lasse faire Guild of Cartographers (GoC). A family member helped me set up MY first web site and it is still a shared hosting thing under his domain. And I may be the last member of that guild paying any attention to the D’ni world made by Cyan Worlds.

My 2010 Uru Live Avatar Meets My 2016 SL Avatar

My 2010 Uru Live Avatar Meets My 2016 SL Avatar

We have 600+ people from that world playing in Second Life. If you script, build, are into furniture or clothes making, building, or role playing you are likely to know some of those people. Look for the group D’ni Refugees. Some percentage of us became movers and shakers in SL… not monumental shakers, maybe a 3 or 4 on the Richtor scale… Continue reading

Myst Uru Guild Hall

Two or three years ago Jeff ‘Lehm’ Adams began modeling the Guild Hall from the Myst Online: Uru Live game’s concept art. I later started modeling it for my use in OpenSim. I had started building a replica of the guild hall in OpenSim before the introduction of mesh. So, it was being built with prims, which was rather limiting. Once mesh was on the horizon I lost interest in the prim build.

Jeff had RL distractions. Neither of us was doing much with the Guild Hall. Now he apparently has had some time and has moved his work into the Unreal Engine and made a standalone model available in an executable Unreal file.

Jeff 'Lehm' Adams ' Myst Guild Hall.

Jeff ‘Lehm’ Adams ‘ Myst Guild Hall.

You can find a copy of the Guild Hall linked to from the Myst Uru forum.

SL Mesh Objects

Mesh Objects

I haven’t worked on my model of the Guild for some time, years. Walking around in his model and walking in my model is very different. Seeing his nearing completion rekindles my interest. I need to get Blender’s procedural textures figured out and generate some textures.

Myst-Uru: What Takes So Long?

Myst-Uru or Myst Online:Uru Live again (MOULa) has been open source since about 2010. In the following 4-½ years we have seen little change as we wait for new fan made content to appear in-game. A lot of work has been done, but little of it is stuff fans can play with. Here I take a quick look at What is Taking So Long and compare that to what Myst-Uru fans are building in Second Life™.

Myst Island - 13

Myst Island – 13 by: Shigeko Tachikawa – Date: 2011

Recently it seems more people are coming by the MOULa forum asking where the new ages are and what’s taking so long. One of the people working on building new ages (ages = new game areas or game mods), Tweek, wrote a reply. See: WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG?  Continue reading