Contents

1. Cavern Tours
2. Korman update released
3. State of Minkata
4. Fan Ages Touring Club
5. D’ni Language Classes
6. R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
7. Cyan news
8. Mysterium news

Cavern Tours

CT Hostess Susa’n was on stage to recap the seventh Cavern Tour of 2020, that took place right before the Meeting. The next one will be either on Saturday 1 or 8 (the latter date would be during Mysterium) at 11:00 KIT, starting from the Cavern Tour’s Hood. Stay tuned for the definitive date!

The Nexus is currently malfunctioning, and the neighborhood is not showing up; if the problem persists, you should ask Susa’n for an invite.

The host, Larry LeDeay, will use his 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 tours occasionally visit hard to reach places. 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!

Korman update released

Version 0.10 of the Guild of Writers Age creation plugin Korman has been released, with a slew of updates and fixes! In particular, it adds the ability to print dynamic decals, various templates (e.g. linking books), the ability to export the Age and launch Uru directly into the Age from Blender, adds a simplified linking book modifier, and fixes for at least 24 bugs. The release also celebrates the day the first version was released in 2015.

State of Minkata

Rarified gave a quick update about the Minkata testing shard. There is a persistent bug still present – a crash during activities such as seeking markers – he is trying to ger rid of, and a few others that should not have as much of an impact on gameplay.

It has been noted that those issues are not present in fan shards like Gehn. Rarified said the reason is the initially different goals of OpenUru, that was keeping the client closer to the one in use on MOULa. Now that those differences are being ported to MOULa, OpenUru needs to bring in almost ten years of updates from the H’uru client.

On the topic of fan Ages, Rarified stated that the ones on Minkata are ready to be released on MOULa, possibly before August. How they will be released, whether there will be an IC event with DRC members, and how the fan Library will be accessible – currently on Minkata it is a new alcove in the Watcher’s Pub – is still to be decided and agreed upon with Cyan. Rarified said the preferred place to discuss is the OpenUru forum. In any case, it is important that such discussions are kept going and not let unanswered.

Along with fan Ages, modifications to Cyan’s Ages themselves were mentioned, now that they are allowed. The most common are fixes to collisions and improvements to textures. Altered assets will probably be treated the same way as fan Ages.

Fan Ages Touring Club

Korov’ev then gave a quick update on the Fan Ages Expeditions he is hosting on the Deep Island shard, every Sunday at 11:00 KIT. In July, the Touring Club will visit Semjay’s new Age, Tovaht!

Then, it will be the turn of Jamey’s Ages, like Tsoidahl Sheegahtee; after that it will be more Ages from early 2009, like Terrati Lab, Hayal, The Maze, Wianeroy, and Soundgarden. A gallery of fan Ages with some details is available on the Writers’ wiki.

After the expeditions, the participants will be able to share their observations in dedicated threads in the Guild of Writers’ forums (look for threads that start with “Fan Age expedition”). The expeditions are streamed (without comments), and the videos will be available for two weeks after.

One of the main objectives of the Touring Club, besides getting more explorers to know and appreciate the many Ages created in the last 15 years, is also to give some feedback to the authors, who are very welcome to attend the tours and talk about their works.

Setting up a Deep Island client can be a bit tricky in some situations; a quick guide is available in our Troubleshooting section.

D’ni Language Classes

Shokhootahn Rehn gave two announcements, one for the D’ni Language Classes and one for the Story Nights.

He is still putting things away after his recent move. As a result there will not be any daytime classes until further notice. They should be able to return sometime in autumn. Night time classes, however, are unaffected. One more student is working on the final exam.

R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

Story Nights and Story Nights – Europe are now at the same stage. They will be finishing the story arc of the D’ni kings, and learn about the years between king Kerath’s death and the start of the story of the Fall.

And that was it for this month.

Please consider donating to keep the Cavern open!

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, August 1 (Leetahr 1, 9676 DE) at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

Young, Gifted & Black

On Monday 15 at 13:00 KIT, Nosila will host a music event; the location will be the Ae’gura plaza, and the stream will be at nosilaradio.caster.fm.

Cavern Tours

CT Hostess Susa’n was on stage to announce the sixth Cavern Tour of 2020, on Saturday 13 at 11:00 KIT, starting from the Cavern Tour’s Hood. The Nexus is currently malfunctioning, and the neighborhood is not showing up; if the problem persists, you should ask Susa’n for an invite.

The host, Larry LeDeay, will use his 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 tours occasionally visit hard to reach places. 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!

Future physics update

A recent update to the MOULa client reportedly included a physics update, stirring the longstanding question of the future of ‘skydiving’ (a.k.a. glitching), the practice of jumping on invisible colliders to reach normally out-of-reach places, stemming from an older practice of jumping off high places. Innumerable marker games have been created to map skydiving paths along the Ages, and more recently a robot-assisted training course.

Skydiving, however, depends on broken physics engine (PhysX) implementation, causing an uneven game experience depending on computer and network characteristics, fixing which has been part of the open source roadmap since the beginning in 2011. Perhaps even more importantly, upgrading the physics engine (to at least version 4) will lift a major obstacle to a truly native macOS and Linux clients.

Hoikas and Doobes therefore agreed to illustrate the developer side of the issue, and clarify a few questions and misconceptions regarding the client update roadmap:

• the latest update did not break the bot functioning itself, but the physics that the marker games dispensed by the bots depend on;
• the ‘physics update’ mentioned in the release notes is a bump from PhysX version 2.6.0 to 2.6.4, the same version used in the Gehn shard in the last six years;
• the entire process of updating the MOULa client happens in the clear, on the Writers’ IRC, on GitHub and on the OpenUru Discord server;
• explorers who create content for the game based on bugs are invited to be active participants in the discussion on how development moves forward, as developers cannot be aware otherwise of them.

As for future options, a ‘skydiving client’ was released years ago by Lyrositor – who in the meantime retired from the community – but an update to the KI functioning made it unusable. The source code, and some guidelines on how it could be brought up to date, are publicly available to any coder willing to take up the challenge. However, the long-term solution to preserve skydiving would be a dedicated skydiving shard.

As an addendum, it was noted that another planned update is the transition from the exceedingly obsolete Python 2.3 to 3.8; for robot makers, this will require checking their code for no longer compatible syntax (e.g. from print "string" to print("string") ).

Ages of Doobes

Doobes’ latest releases – Chiso Preniv, Veelay Tsahvahn and the New GoMe Pub – have been ported to the Minkata shards, where the heavy testing will begin. From then, if all goes well, they will be ported to Cyan’ staging server for the last quick checks, and eventually on MOULa, hopefully very soon.

But the big news was the announcement of another, yet unnamed Age in the works! It will be a competitive puzzle Age, based on the Gahreesehn Wall idea, but as a circular maze with configurable (or randomizable) walls. The player or team that will manage to reach the center of the maze, will win.

There will also be a one-in-four chance to remove the walls to gain an advantage, using a control panel beside each wall; but it may also be a disadvantage, so you will need to make a strategic decision! To make things even more challenging, a timer will also be available. During the Q&A, Theo suggested implementing a command to save and load wall configurations.

As for his other Ages in the work, the next release will likely be Kotsahvosahn, a.k.a. the Waystation, the beginning of the journey of D’ni citizen and Messenger Lothias, so it will be more story-heavy than Doobes’ previous Ages.

After that, Doobes has started a new project with AgeExplorer, which promises to be both story and puzzle-heavy.

To keep updated on Doobes’ work, check his blog and his Facebook page.

Fan Ages Touring Club

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

• On May 10 the Club adventurers visited TikiBear’s recently updated Ages (Duck Knee Skydiving Club, Sprite Gallery, and Paper Pagodas);
• On May 17 they visited Doobes’ Ages (the New GoMe Pub, Chiso Preniv, and Veelay Tsahvahn), finally released on the shard only a few days before;
• On May 24 they started the 3-part expedition to the Geologica series, by Ametist and Metabasalt, starting in Dragon’s Tooth, but also visiting Ametist’s latest release, Tiam.

In June, the Touring Club will visit Enobmort and Noidrocca by J’Kla, Paah’kweh and Sonavio by Boblishman, and Pre-Swaltu by Tolip Ydop. A gallery of fan Ages with some details is available on the Writers’ wiki.

After the expeditions, the participants will be able to share their observations in dedicated threads in the Guild of Writers’ forums (look for threads that start with “Fan Age expedition”). The expeditions are streamed (without comments), and the videos will be available for two weeks after.

One of the main objectives of the Touring Club, besides getting more explorers to know and appreciate the many Ages created in the last 15 years, is also to give some feedback to the authors, who are very welcome to attend the tours and talk about their works.

Setting up a Deep Island client can be a bit tricky in some situations; a quick guide is available in our Troubleshooting section.

The Lost Art

Korov’ev mentioned that Mystitech Productions released Episode 10 of its The Lost Art machinima, on Saturday 30.

Cyan news

• realMyst: Masterpiece Edition has been released on Thursday 21 for the Nintendo Switch.
• After more than three months, a new update was posted in Thursday about Firmament. Among other news, it mentioned the need to improve on the gameplay and setting aspects of the game, and the official hiring of a member of the Starry Expanse team.
• May ended with a CavFunding of 90% (CavCon 1.9), a population of 35,052 explorers, and 1441 unique visits. The reserve covered 29% of the costs and is now empty. The server costs were the same as last month.

See also the News Roundup #4 and #5.

Mysterium news

The convention will be held virtually, with a combination of Twitch and Zoom for presentations, and Discord for live chatting. The convention dates will be the same as planned, August 7–9, with a possible extended weekend. Refunds will be available, but roll-overs to next year’s in-person convention will too.

The deadline for event submissions has been extended to June 30, with the option to submit pre-recorded presentations. The deadline for the Digital Activity Book is also extended to June 30.

The existing T-shirt design will be used for Mysterium 2021, with altered dates. A store page will be opened soon. The 2020 pin designs will also be rolled over into 2021.

D’ni Language Classes

Shokhootahn Rehn gave two announcements, one for the D’ni Language Classes and one for the Story Nights.

He is still putting things away after his recent move. As a result there will not be any daytime classes until further notice. They should be able to return sometime in autumn. Night time classes, however, are unaffected.

There are currently two students working on lesson 6. Meanwhile, Aqua completed her final exam and passed the D’ni 101 class! Votahret ah’shem khe-bahrtahtahvteeom!

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 four weeks.

Rehn hinted at a possible special Story Night on the Gehn shard, in a “certain memorial Age”.

And that was it for this month.

Please consider donating to keep the Cavern open!

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, July 4 11, 2020 (Leesahn 2, 9676 DE) at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

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!

Fan ages

Quietly, four new ages have been released recently. In April it was two small but atmospheric ones: Kahntinoy, by Rich, and Fena Barel, by Wodan and Hans. Both Ages has been in the works for many years, and are now available on Deep Island and for offline Uru through Drizzle. Be sure to read the (numerous) journals!

At the end of June, two more ages have been released: Terahgrahm and Zahlto, both by Semjay. They are (much) larger than they look at first! Terahgrahm was actually announced two years ago, and is now available through the usual channels.

Zahlto is new, with many nice aesthetic upgrades to the KI, T-shirts, bookmarks … pity that shop owner Ella Darrington is away, so you can only look. Also, secret passages, many secret passages!

Because of technical issues, Zahlto is not yet on Deep Island, but should be soon.

Firmament

The Firmament campaign is continuing on Fangamer, with new stretch goals. The first one, “developer commentary and making of”, at $1.5M, has almost been reached.

Also, all Kickstarter backers who pledged at tiers $250 and higher should have received the Proof of Concept. It is worth repeating that the PoC is not exactly a demo, the actual game might look different.

Mysterium

The schedule is now available. It will be a packed weekend, which will include a visit to Cyan on Saturday.

On Friday, there’ll be two special guest signatures blocks. Signatures are free, but you will need to bring your own photos or signature sheets (up to three per visit, but you can redo the queue). You can take a photo with one of the guests, but it will have to be a quick selfie on your phone, out and ready to go.

The hotel is booked solid at this point, about 200 attendees! There is a handful of rooms at a nearby overflow hotel available.

After Russell Brower, Chuck Carter, Jack Wall and Tim Larkin, two more special guests have been announced!

The first one is Marty O’Donnell. Marty has worked on everything from Flintstones Kids commercials to the multi-award-winning Halo games series. Myst fans, however, will know him as the sound designer for Riven … and for the ytram. These days, Marty is co-founder and co-owner of Highwire Games in Seattle.

The other special guest is cyantist Kha’tie Postma. In the early 2000s she was Ubisoft’s Community Manager for the Myst games. After Myst V and the Uru sequels launched, she moved to other studios. Since the Myst XXV Anniversary Kickstarter, she has been working with Cyan as a community, social media and marketing management consultant.

Regarding panel topics, and other submissions, more info will come soon.

There will also be a Writing & Art Table for fan creations! The deadline is July 30. By the way, the coloring book is gorgeous.

D’ni Language Classes

Shokhootahn Rehn has finished moving. Hooray! Still, putting things away takes time, so there will be no daytime classes until sometime in fall; nighttime classes are unaffected.

• 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!
• Shokhootahn Rehn is in the Hood most days (when he is not on the move) at 10:00 KIT and 20:00 KIT to answer questions regarding the current lesson;
• the Guild of Instructors’ Hood will be open and public unless a class is in session, currently on Monday and Thursday nights, starting at 20:00 or 21:00 KIT, depending on the student’s schedule;
• the left-hand imager and Magic Bot are employed to announce last-minute changes to class times: to get notified, add him as a buddy (KI# 27527), then send him a PM with the word “advert”. If Magic Bot is not online, you can send a PM to Mimi Bot (KI# 71459).

r’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

Story Nights – Europe will continue with the events from The Book of D’ni; no puzzle spoilers will be given during the story. Original Story Nights will continue with the events from Myst IV: Revelation.

Due to r’Tayrtahn traveling, there will be no Story Night – Europe on July 27. The 23:30 events are unaffected, but thunderstorms can cause power outages; in that case, r’Tayrtahn will try to contact someone from the regular audience, so they can relay his situation.

• Story Nights are held in Tsahno’s Hood every Saturday night, 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 14:30 KIT or 30 minutes after the end of the meeting;
• 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 KI mail with your KI number included in the text, so that he can add you to his buddies list;
• Magic Bot is employed to announce last-minute changes to Story Night times: to get notified, add him as a buddy (KI# 27527), then send him a PM with the word “advert”. If Magic Bot is not online, you can send a PM to Mimi Bot (KI# 71459).

And that was it for this month. Don’t forget to donate to keep the Cavern open!

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, August 10 at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

Firmament

Another busy month meant that the Meeting went straight to the Cyan news, starting of course with the Firmament Kickstarter.

Backers should have received an email from Fangamer with a link to a survey page, that should be filled (or confirmed) with their mailing details. From there, they will also be able to upgrade their pledge or add on other tiers.

If you did not get the email, you can use the resender link, or if that does not work, send an email to orders[at]fangamer.com with your Kickstarter backer number.

If you missed the Kickstarter campaign, you can still back the game through the Fangamer page!

Myst XXV Anniversary

The goodies of the unlucky few who still have not received them (because they did not fill the Blackbox survey in time or because their rewards were lost, returned, or with defective pieces) will be shipped directly from Cyan in the next few weeks.

You should receive an email soon; it is a time-consuming process, so please give it a week before re-contacting Cyan.

Cyan Ventures

Cyan Ventures’ first publication, ZED, by Eagre Games, now has a lauch date: June 4!

On the same day, at 1:00 pm EDT, there will be a live stream with Chuck Carter, on Cyan’s Twitch Channel.

On June 3, at 1:00 pm EDT, there will also be a AMA with Chuck Carter on Reddit.

Mysterium

The Early Bird registration ends today, so hurry if you are planning to attend and you like discounts!

From tomorrow, T-shirts and coloring books will no longer be available for pre-order (there may be a small number of extras available on-site), the registration price will increase by $5, and no free swag will be guaranteed (there may be extras on-site).

The hotel is basically booked solid at this point, though there may be one or two rooms still available. The Commission is actively working with the hotel to secure a block of overflow rooms; in the meantime, some people on the Discord server have expressed an interest in sharing rooms.

After Russell Brower, Chuck Carter and Jack Wall, another special guest has been announced: Tim Larkin! He started as sound designer for Riven, and later as the Audio Director and composer for Uru and Myst V. Currently he works at Valve for games such as DOTA, CSGO, Half Life, Portal, and more.

And that was it for this month. Don’t forget to donate to keep the Cavern open!

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, July 6 at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

Firmament

A busy month and a certain Kickstarter meant that the Meeting went straight to the Cyan news: first of all, the successful conclusion of the Firmament campaign, up to its first stretch goal!

Consequently, the game is planned to support Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Rift S, Valve Index, both Windows and macOS (no Linux at the moment), and will have EFIGS support.

During the campaign, Cyan had AMA sessions on Reddit and Discord, a live streaming on Facebook, and linked Proof of Concept demo streamings.

As with the Myst 25th Kickstarter, there were community goals, which of course were achieved; rewards will be:

• a 3D printable model of the Adjunct;
• some concept and in-game arts; and
• one of the first music tracks.

Cyan also clarified that the $49 tier and higher will include custom narrative elements and unique skins only available to the campaign backers. There will be of course ways to back the game for those who missed the campaign.

Myst XXV Anniversary

As part of the campaign, Cyan partnered with Nvidia to provide exclusive codes to gain access to the free GeForce Now beta (Archivist tier and higher).

Also, the Myst eBook novels and the Riven digital map rewards for Writer tier backers have arrived; details for their distribution will arrive soon.

Mysterium

The Mass Mysteria conventions were held on May 4 in: Denver, Boston, Rochester, Cleveland, Columbus, Portland, Salt Lake City; the only non-U.S.A. event was held in Berlin, Germany. The Melbourne, Australia one has been postponed to a soon-to-be-announced date.

Participants enjoyed escape rooms, scavenger hunts, museum visits, puzzles, souvenirs, and some people have already started making plans for next year.

Registration and hotel reservations for regular Mysterium are still open; the location will be the Ruby River Hotel in downtown Spokane. The Committee has secured a rate of $119/night for one-bed rooms and $129/night for two-bed rooms (plus tax).

Besides the hotel, the registration to the convention itself is also open: from now until June 1, you can purchase a weekend registration for $35 or a premium registration (weekend + shirt + coloring book) for $60. After June 1, the price will increase and shirts/books will not be available.

Event submissions are still open, but the deadline is close, May 20. The Committee is also collecting memories from past editions, to be displayed in some fashion.

D’ni Language Classes & Story Nights

Shokhootahn Rehn’s move is done, but is still putting things away; so there will be no daytime D’ni classes until further notice. They should return sometime in June. Night-time lessions however will resume this week.

Story Nights – Europe will conclude the events from The Book of Atrus and start those from the Myst game. Original Story Nights will soon conclude the events from The Book of D’ni, explain the various prophecies and start the events from the Myst III: Exile game.

Explorers

Korov’ev concluded the speaker session announcing that explorer Peke’s operation went well: she is doing fine, and already visited the Cavern again a few times!

And that was it for this month. Don’t forget to donate to keep the Cavern open! The CavCon status has not been updated yet; internal sources assure that the situation is good, but that can only continue with your help.

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

Firmament is a deeply immersive narrative adventure game for both VR and PC that stays true to the storytelling, artistic integrity, and inventive puzzles that Cyan holds dear.

This is an entirely new property – the beginning of an exciting new Cyan universe, delivered using Unreal 4, one of the most powerful game development technologies available.

Firmament is designed for and will be built from the ground up to take advantage of the VR sense of presence and a seamless interface. Stunning and enigmatic locations (with a certain callback to the steampunk roots of Myst) were conceived to allow for highly immersive and eclectic visuals for which the world-building artisans at Cyan are known.

But unlike previous games you don’t travel this world alone. You’ll have a clockwork adjunct…

Firmament will be designed for VR, but built to play on PC as well. All backers will be able to play the game on both platforms, and effortlessly switch between VR and PC to continue your progress in the game.

A Word to Mac Users

Cyan has always been a big Mac supporter. Myst started out as a Mac title, and over the years, Cyan has always tried to release each of our games for the Mac. We’d love to continue that tradition with Firmament, as an indie studio, but with the minimum funding and resources we anticipate having available, and the complexity involved, this campaign will be focused on Windows (PC and VR).

BUT… We’ve have announced a Stretch Goal!

The stretch goal would allow us to build both a Mac version and PS4/PSVR version. We’re really hoping that we can reach the extra level of funding that allows us to build the Mac version. And of course, the world of gaming is changing quickly, and we’ll continue to keep an eye out for other solutions that allow as many fans as possible to play Firmament.

☞ Firmament’s Kickstarter page