MOULa 10th Anniversary Celebrations

Minasunda was first, with a reminder to register to the three events of the celebrations that require it: the Door Run Quest, the Fashion Show Quest and the Magic Dance.

She also had another important note about the Door Run Quest: occasionally the gate seems broken, some players cannot see the symbols, while others can. After extensive experimenting, the conclusion was that this happens when using an internal client. It is therefore recommended to play with the standard client.

Also, some events are likely to be disrupted by using the bot. Please avoid using an internal client and avoid using magic commands, in order to prevent malfunctions, lag or crashes.

An outline of the celebration events is available on the MOULa forum thread, or in our dedicated post.

Cavern Tour

Among the celebration events there is the second Cavern Tour of 2020, on Saturday 8, 11:00–12:45 KIT, starting in the Cavern Tour’s Hood for a brief orientation. CT Hostess Susa’n was on stage to announce the date and answer some questions.

The first tour gathered 43 participants. The tours occasionally visit hard to reach places (but not places like e.g. Kerath’s Arch). Mir-o-Bot (KI# 32319) is 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

Shokhootahn Rehn is still putting things away and finding homes for everything after his recent move. So there will be no daytime classes until sometime in Spring. Nighttime classes are unaffected.

r’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

Story Nights and Story Nights – Europe are now at the same stage. They are continuing with the story arc of the D’ni kings, and will continue for the next 26 weeks.

Next week’s Story Night – Europe is part of the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of MOULa, with a special story of the Restoration. The event will be held in Mir-o-Bot’s Baron’s Office and will start at (or after) 14:30 KIT.

Cyan social media pages

On late January, Cyan announced their decision to retire a bunch of social media pages: Myst, Obduction and Firmament on Facebook; Myst, Obduction and Firmament on Twitter; Myst and Firmament on Instagram.

All the news will from now on come only from their main social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The given rationale is that Cyan has a small team, and an even smaller subset of the team is responsible for PR. Time spent managing social media is time spent not working on game development. So, to avoid stretching their resources, they decided to limit the number of channels they use and monitor.

Fan-managed websites, pages, groups and forums are of course not affected, as Cyan is not directly involved in their management. In this regard, we are aware that Rel.to is not accessible, we are working on it

No news has yet came out about the state of the cavcon, and whether other channels will be set up if and when it will be restored.

Retirement of the MOULa and Cyan forums

More controversially, Cyan also announced the retirement of the MOULa and Cyan forums. On Tuesday, February 4 the forums will become read only. Registering an account for the forums will also be turned off, which is effective immediately. On Tuesday, June 16, publicly-accessible threads will be archived, and the forum sites will no longer be hosted.

The last point has been poorly worded in the announcement: the content of the forums will still be available in some form, so the history of the community will be preserved, except for hidden threads, or personal messages. Also, the MOULa website itself will still be accessible.

Because of this, users are encouraged to archive any PMs or specific threads they wish to keep personally before the change takes effect. PMs can be exported en masse as table files (by clicking on “Export this view” at the bottom of the PM list), and for single posts it would be a good idea to save the BB code, to keep the formatting for an eventual export to another forum.

Even more controversially, Cyan announced that the replacement of the forums will be the Official Cyan Chat Discord server. Many fans have expressed their objections that Discord is not a suitable replacement for a forum.

OpenUru.org, the Guild of Writers, the Guild of Archivists, the Guild of Messengers, and other fan groups with their own forums will welcome anyone who prefer this time-tested format of discussion.

Events will still be regularly announced on the usual channels, like Facebook groups, Discord, and through the GoMe calendar (which, if you have a Google account, you can add by clicking on “+Google Calendar” at the bottom right of this page).

Bug reports should be reported on the recently-reopened Support page, or by sending an email to support[at]cyan[dot]com. MOULa downtime reports will be most quickly received via Discord.

Mysterium

Submissions for art designs are now open. There will be four categories: T-shirt, pins, activity books, writing and artwork table. Deadlines will be staggered through early-to-mid 2020.

• For the T-shirts, the Triumvirate encourages the artists to incorporate contrasts in their designs: Sirrus vs Achenar, Red vs Blue, Haven and Spire, etc. Tying in the host city of Washington, DC is also encouraged. The winning design will be rewarded with a free Mysterium shirt. The deadline is February 16, 2020 (hurry!).
• For the pins, they are once again planning a set of enamel ones. Pin design is an easier and faster process than shirts. The deadline for these is March 15, 2020.
• For the activity books, which are the new thing for 2020, artists can create a coloring book page, a word search, a crossword puzzle, etc. The deadline is April 19, 2020.
• For the writing and artwork table, artists will be able to showcase their Cyan-related artwork or writing. All content must be in by July 31, 2020.

Also, barring any unforeseen issues, registrations should open on March 1. Stay tuned for more info about this year’s hotel and how to book your room, as well as transportation and parking details!

Assorted news

As you probably know by now, the Starry Expanse team is now working with Cyan to complete the Riven remake. In a recent post, the team has outlined how they are dealing with objects that are small and blurry in the original game, but that you will we able to look at up close in VR – specifically, the blue light pole globes in the Mag-Lev dock.

Ars Technica posted an interview with Rand Miller, about the development of Myst and Riven, and how they pushed the limits of the then-new CD technology.

Some time ago, the MYSTAges wiki was put offline. The data has been salvaged, however, and posted on Archive.org by Deledrius. The Guild of Archivists is looking into merging some of the lore info from there into their own wiki.

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

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, March 7, 2020 (Leevotahr 24) at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

As some of the attendees arrived on Thursday, they relaxed in the ‘peanut shaped’ pool near the lobby, in anticipation of an exciting weekend.

The convention officially started on Friday. At 9:30 am the registration process started, pins and shirts were collected, and to some, unknown faces started to be related to familiar nicknames. As the room started filling (around 200 attendees for this milestone edition!), taniith gave the obligatory introductory words and reminders.

At 10:30 am the Starry Expanse team gave an update about their ‘realRiven’ project, illustrating the developing process, made more complex than usual by the need to translate as faithfully as possible the look and feel of the 2D game in a realtime 3D environment. They also showcased their ‘best’ demo ever, and their latest progress on the Survey Island elevator.

During the panel Marty O’Donnell, the original sound designer for Riven, announced he recovered the original unmixed sound files, and handed them to the Starry Expanse team, making it much easier to recreate the soundscapes!

After a lunch break, at 1:30 pm the From A to Zed panel (hosted by Katie ‘Kha’tie’ Postma, Chuck Carter, Neal Laurenza, and Ryan ‘Grey Dragon’ Warzecha) shared some insights into the development of ZED, a story of an aging artist lost in regret and the haze of dementia, and shared their experiences in the game development industry. Carter last visited Mysterium in 2016; you can watch his previous presentation here.

At 2:30 pm, the Tales from the Devs panel (hosted by Katie ‘Kha’tie’ Postma, Chuck Carter, Hannah Gamiel, Karl Johnson, Jason Calvert, Brandon Collins, Ryan Miller, and Eric A. Anderson) shared stories and insights from their time developing various games for Cyan (and about them being laid off and invited back again) and the different attitudes in the relation between developers and producers.

At 4:00 pm, the crowd split: some of the attendees teamed up to solve a set of devious puzzles for points and glory, also looking for random location markers hidden around public areas of the hotel for extra points. At around the same time, the first autograph session with the special guests started.

After the dinner break, at 8:00 pm more activities followed: some tried a VR demo of the Survey Island elevator (as many commented, the place it’s larger than what you might expect!). Some tried the Escape the Age card game, designed and built by Fused Shadow and Devon: inspired by the Unlock! game, you solve a mystery by interacting with the Ages we know and love in new ways. Blade ran an Unwritten campaign, a RPG adventure through the Ages. The second autograph session was also held.

Other attendees just chilled out with new and old friends, chatting about games, puzzles, and ideas.

And now, we are ready for the second day and one of the highlights of this year’s edition: the trip to Cyan HQ!