I came to Second Life from Must Online: Uru Live. Uru is the only part of the Myst series to make it online. It didn’t do well. There is a whole saga about the game and how it earned the title: The Game that Won’t Die. Check the category here if your interested.
The Great Zero Machine Replicated in Second Life
Uru Live is slowly going open source. The kink in this open source is the content is not going open source. That essentially means the game is still very much proprietary and restricted. So, there is never much new going on the current free Uru Live.
There is a new video from Uru Live by… I am not sure… I think David Drury But, you can see it on Facebook: More Uru Stuff. Be sure to switch to HD. More videos are here: Album.
I check the Myst Online community every other day or so. I found they are talking about and excited about the Alpha/Beta releases of a game called Xing (pronounced zing) The Land Beyond (more videos and pictures here). For those of us familiar with the Myst worlds the game is very similar. Several reviewers have already made the connection. Xing’s big claim to fame for Myst fans is, like Myst, its non-violent, so it is a great parent-child activity to share.
[youtube iadinK_K1c4]
The creative team behind Xing is White Lotus Interactive. John Torkington and Koriel Kruer started the Xing project as a classroom project in early 2012. The first 4 levels became one of the top ten finalists in the IEEE GameSig competition at Chapman University. In a completion judged by industry professionals they took second place. Then in late 2012 James Steininger joined the team.
Myst Online: Uru Live is an old game that will not die and one that has developed into a long running saga. It is an online episode in the Myst based series of games made by Cyan Worlds, Inc. One can still play the game for free at: Myst Online.
The D’ni, the in game people that made the worlds, made the worlds people found in this story. Cyan made this story arch and the in game worlds rich in history of and backstory about the D’ni. A language and culture were developed for the story. There are even fan sites providing language lessons and historical information. I have contributed a site and added information to some of the fan sites dealing with the history of the game.
Cyan Worlds, the creators of the Myst games, announced that they are porting Riven to the iPad. The blog Touch Arcade picked up on an interview with Rand Miller, Cyan’s CEO, over at Modojo and wrote: ‘Riven: The Sequel To Myst’ for iPad Is Still Coming. You may know that Riven for the iPhone was released in December 2010 (US$4.95). We may see iRiven (for the iPad) this month.
Riven the sequel to Myst
Fans of Cyan Worlds will be happy to hear Rand say the realMyst iStore sales have passed breakeven. Meaning they are making a little money on top of paying the realMyst development costs.
iRiven is in progress. Rand says they recompressed the images to improve quality, improved animations, movies, and sound. The user interface has been touched up for the iPad. Now iRiven will run on all models of the iPad and even the iPad mini.
There is not going to be a fully explorable Riven (realRiven) any time soon. Rand says it is too large a project. But, he goes on to say that the work done porting to mobile devices will be used to update the Mac and PC versions… now there is something to think about.
I last wrote about Myst-Uru in May. You may or may not know that fans have been hoping to see the Myst story made into a major motion picture. Today I saw that we have news on the Myst Movie. A day or two before, I was reading a thread in the Myst Online Forum. It is about how fans might promote Myst-Uru and get more people playing. That should sound familiar to Second Life users. As these two things come together in my mind I can see some possible changes coming for the Myst franchise and online game.
Uru Live by Larryf58
The thread “A Myst Movie Update” brings fans up to date on what is happening with the possible Myst Movie. Events and information leading up to current events can be found on MystMovie.com.
If you do not know, there are a series of books that tell the story of Myst. It is that story that provides the background for the Myst Games. It is a fascinating enough story fans wanted more. One of those books is called the Book of Ti’ana. For some time it was considered as the sole basis for the movie. But, Hollywood types looking at it objectively did not believe the book provided the starting point needed for telling the Myst story to an audience with no clue about what Myst is, the Cavern, or the D’ni.
