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, 2020 (Leesahn 2, 9676 DE) at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

Uru Advent Calendar

Minasunda was first, with two announcements: the first about her Uru Advent Calendar marker game, available from Mir-o-Bot (KI# 32319) by sending it “sendme 8833282” in PM.

Before collecting markers, it is advisable to use the “/startlog” command, that will save a chatlog in Documents/Uru Live/log. For each day there is a marker in Ae’gura, with two links to Youtube videos – one in German, the other in German with English subtitles. The videos will not be released in advance.

The Advent Calendar is also available on Minasunda’s website, again in German and English.

Christmas Party

The second announcement was about the Christmas Party, planned for December 15 at 13:00 KIT in Mir-o-Bot’s Eder Delin; to get there, send “link” or “meet” in PM to Mir-o-Bot. Yoda will provide the magic, the Nulp Dance Group will perform one of their dance and Seeker will play music (stream).

Minasunda also gave a remind about MO:UL’s 10th anniversary, coming on February 2020. So far, only two events are planned.

Fan content and state of Minkata

Doobes and Rarified were next, to give an update on the fan content situation.

At the end of November, with the help of Hoikas and Emor D’ni Lap, they were able to get the New Guild of Messengers Pub working on Minkata-alpha. Doobes and Emor previously submitted a few very basic testing Ages, but the new Pub is the real stress test, so it is useful as a benchmark.

They were also able to locate, and in some cases squash, a few bugs both with the Age itself and with the fan-made server MOSS. It has been said many times, but this really is a concrete step in bringing fan-made content to the official Uru Live server.

This content will include upgraded Cyan Guild Pubs and an upgraded Watcher’s Pub – although the path to the Tree still requires more work to function correctly. Doobes is hoping to also send all four Ages (Tre’bivdil, Fehnir’s House, Vothol Gallery, New GoMe Pub) currently on the Gehn shard and The Open Cave, plus two brand new Ages of his to help tie things together.

Rarified commented that November has been unusually productive on the testing pipeline; things picked up with a code submission from cjkelly1, one of the original authors of the MOSS server used on Minkata, which provided the initial additions to the client necessary to be able to explore Ages built with Blender and Korman.

The regular Minkata (beta) shard will stay relatively clean, for testing bug fixes to be incorporated in the Uru Live client. Minkata-alpha will run in parallel, using the same client but through a special batch file. Announcements about new testing cycles will in the future come from the creators, rather than Rarified, who will take the role of adding the new content to Minkata-alpha, and leave it up to the author to describe the things they want tested, as well as any special ways to get access to their Age.

Rarified also mentioned a couple of Ages under construction (including Doobes’ library Age, Chiso Preniv) that will provide in-game access to the other new Ages. Once those have become available and tested, he will start moving fan content into Minkata along with them. That will be the enabling event to start considering when fan content can be considered for inclusion in Uru Live.

To summarize, a new Age will first be tested on Minkata-alpha; when all the major bugs will be fixed, it will be moved to Minkata (beta); next it will be given a final test on Cyan’s Staging server before being released on Uru Live. There is a lot going on behind the scenes to start making this happen, and it has been the result of excellent coordination between authors, testers, and shard admins, and the enthusiasm from both Cyan and fan creators.

Becoming a tester

If you want to drop into Minkata-alpha and get ready for what is involved in testing, all the details are in two threads (one, two) on the OpenUru.org forums. Note that, and this cannot be stressed enough, Minkata is a testing shard:

• it is not meant for playing, Ae’gura especially will have barriers in place that will not be removed;
• the server, or the new Ages, may not be available all the time;
• the Vault may become corrupted, so complete wipes of the database can (and likely will) happen;
• it requires using an Internal client and being familiar with console commands;
• testing an Age involves doing some tedious activities, like walking against every wall and clicking every interactive element;
• your progress will be volatile, avatars are there just for testing things (see point 3).

Cyan assets upgrades

Doobes had more to say about his work on porting Cyan’s Ages into ready-to-export-and-modify files. Chogon has drafted some legal notes to include with these files. Once that is finalized, Doobes should be able to post the ‘base’ versions of the blends on GitHub.

From there, anyone can download the Ages and modify them. Presumably, one could even customize many Ages for their own shard for a sort of “alternate dimension” shard. A Shard of Dreams, if you will.

Fan Ages and content coming to MOUL have been promised for many years, and it can be incredibly frustrating getting hopes up and continuing to wait. However, the recent developments, along with Cyan’s loosening of the rules with their assets, has opened things up as they never have been before. Exciting new things are coming, and soon.

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

OpenUru.org fan Ages repository

Rarified closed this section by mentioning the notion that building Ages is not for resource-challenged computers. With content comes the need to store it; free access to large quantities of storage is uncommon. But OpenUru happens to have a fair amount of free space.

So he offered to establish a repository on the OpenUru server to run in parallel with the Guild of Writers repositories on GitHub for authors to store their big Blend files and Ages as they evolve.

If you are an author, be ready for an announcement from Hoikas and Rarified when this is set up and tested.

The Lost Art

Korov’ev mentioned the release of the latest episode, “Schisms”, of MystiTech’s machinima series, The Lost Art, produced with the help of Mirphak and Yoda for advanced lighting and special effects, Dulcamara and Doobes for special sets, Larry LeDeay and Tweek for graphics, and Larry LeDeay for D’ni translations.

In the last episode, we had a mysterious egg, shared dreams, and Thomas’ new assistant turned up to be not exactly human. What is next?

Episode 9 is tentatively planned to be released on December 29 at 13:30 KIT, as a Youtube Premiere event, during which people will be able to chat live with the creators while watching.

If you have a question, or you want to help with the making, you can send an email to enquiries[at] mystitech[dot]de.

Uru Live client update

For the Cyan News section, Korov’ev started with a reminder about the official Cyan newsletter.

A new version of the client (Build 918.OpenUru=139) has been released, for the first time in years! The update includes:

• Physics compatibility with Korman created Ages;
• KI art changes by Hoikas:
  • fixed miniKI text chat scaling to be resolution independent;
  • fixed “text x-raying” in the Big KI;
  • hid the blackbar handles visible on ultrawide resolutions;
  • restored the Big KI background noise animation;
• updated the Terms of Service/End User License Agreement;
• updated the Zandi Radio music to replace copyrighted material;
• updated Tomahna end credits music, removed copyrighted material.

Note that the client does not automatically update the uncompressed music when updated; you will need to delete the file sfx/streamingCache/clftZandiRadio_Loop.wav to hear the new music (“IV. Allegro Molto” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).

Launcher problems

Some people had problems updating. Usually the issue is that the client is unable to replace itself (UruLauncher.exe); temporarily launching it with admin privileges (or even better, moving the game folder somewhere else other than the UAC-protected C:/Program Files (x86)) should fix the problem.

Other problems happens mostly because of missing libraries or DLL:

• A stack dump error probably indicates a failure to initialize PhysX: it is advisable to install the Legacy component;
• the error related to msvcr71.dll and msvcp71.dll can be fixed by downloading them from Chogon’s post, extracting them, and putting them in the Uru Live folder, along the launcher;
• the error related to d3dx9_27.dll can be fixed by installing a few extra DirectX files. The install procedure is a bit unintuitive: you will have to download the installer, make a new folder on your desktop, run the installer and tell it to extract into the folder you created, then run DXSETUP.exe in the folder to install the DLL files. If it worked, you can delete the folder on the desktop and the installer;
• a Windows 10 update from 2017 broke the way moving with the mouse works. The problem has been fixed on the Gehn shard, and is one of the bug fixes planned to end up on MOUL, but for now you can use Sirius’ fix.

Unwritten RPG acquired by Cyan

On November 26 it was announced that Cyan Ventures acquired the tabletop roleplaying game Unwritten: Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond, by Inkworks Productions, one of the first 3rd party works set in the D’ni universe since Myst IV: Revelation.

Small revisions will be made to the existing Unwritten manuscript to reflect the new ownership, and the revised version will be available in the future from the Cyan Store, as well as from DriveThruRPG.

Future versions of the Unwritten core rule book, future supplements, or other related products will be published by Cyan Ventures, in partnership with Inkworks, which will remain the primary developer for the Unwritten product line.

Lexember

To celebrate Lexember, Cyan will post a D’ni word every day throughout December on their Twitter account. Some of these words are already known, but some are of course new releases, for the happiness of all D’ni linguists.

At the time of this writing, the following have been released: advuh, n. arch; taygahn, v. to love deeply, with the whole mind; bol, n. brother; b’rish, adv. very, so (lit. “to twenty”); dahgo, n. hammer (derived from dahg, v. “to strike”); elioykhets, adj. gusty; eder, v. to rest / n. a moment of rest (used in naming garden Ages).

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.

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.

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 winter; 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 tries to be in the Hood most days 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 Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 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

r’Tayrtahn thanked Mirphak and NikiMay for their invaluable help with the Bahro Glyph Tour.

Story Nights – Europe started the story arc of the D’ni creation myth, the pre-history, the life of the first King Ri’neref, and will continue with the lives of the Kings.

Original Story Nights will conclude part 5 of the fan fiction “Jae’s Journey”.

November 9 will also be the start of the bi-annual Bahro Glyph Tour! The tour will last for two weeks, finishing on November 16.

• 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, January 4, 2020 (Leevosahn 3) at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

Saint Patrick’s Day

Minasunda began the speaker session with the parades planned for Paddy Day, on Sunday, March 17:

• 13:00 KIT – the first parade will starts from Ae’gura Plaza, led by Eternal Seeker (stream);
• 14:00 KIT – special Radio Free D’ni show, an hour later than usual (stream);
• 17:00 KIT – Dance Party in the Greeters’ Pub, you will need to get the green shirt from Kirel, as Mir-o-Bot will be on holiday (stream); and
• 19:00 KIT – the second parade will starts from Ae’gura Plaza, led by Fil (stream).

Keep in mind that Daylight Saving Time starts on March 10 in most of the U.S., but on March 31 in most of Europe, so the events will start an hour earlier than usual in Europe.

For further updates, check the MO:ULa forum post by Minasunda.

International Women’s Day

Max outlined the music events for the International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8; they will start at 12:00 KIT and will run until at least 17:00 KIT, and will be hosted, among others, by Minasunda, Ghaelen, Mystitech, AlanDJ and Fil. The definitive schedule will be finalized in the MO:ULa forum post by Max.

The call is for female D’niJs, or tracklists with female artists, or suggestions for tracks composed, played or sung by female artists.

State of Minkata

rarified announced that the Age state retention bug in the OpenUru.org testing shard Minkata has been finally fixed, and the shard is open again!

First, a couple of fixes will soon be sent to Cyan, to be added to MO:ULa. Second, rarified found the mechanism to sync Minkata-alpha (the second shard planned for testing fan content) with regular Minkata: the alpha shard will mirror your progress in the regular shard, but not viceversa. The login will be the same for both shards.

The first goal of Minkata-alpha will be to make the client and fan content compatible with the current MO:ULa client. As the fan Nexus is not yet ready for testing, the initial Minkata-alpha client will be an internal client, that uses a console command to link to fan Ages.

Minkata-alpha is planned to be released in a few weeks. To sign up to the regular shard, visit the OpenUru.org Foundry page.

Ages of Doobes

Doobes was back with a quick update on the Ages he is working on, specifically Veelay Tsahvahn, which is nearly complete and will feature original music composed by Mystler! The track, appropriately titled “House of Reminiscence”, captures the tone Doobes wanted for the Age.

On Mystler’s website you can find the albums he has released so far: The Great Traverse and Seraphim: The Ufumuk Invasion, the latter being the soundtrack to an original sci-fi universe of his creation.

On a sadder note, Doobes mentioned the passing of Jeff Zandi, friend of the Miller brothers and inspiration for the character that greets the explorers by the Airstream in the Cleft. You can read more about him here.

An entry for Zandi has been added to the MO:ULa memorial and in the Veelay Tsahvahn’s journals. Explorers will be able to submit short memories to agesofdoobes[at] gmail[dot]com about any of the explorers and have it added to the journals for all to read.

If a name happens to be missing, the best action is to update the memorial page at OpenUru.org, as updates will regularly be picked up from there.

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

Ages of Tweek

Tweek gave a quick reminder that the deadline (March 9) for the submissions for Eder Fahsee, his Age dedicated to Myst’s 25th anniversary, is nearing. He is asking explorers for chronicles about their first interactions with Myst and the impact it had on their lives.

Eder Fahsee is planned to be released for offline Uru and any shards willing to host it. To keep updated on Tweek’s work, check his blog and his Facebook page.

The Lost Art

Korov’ev was joined by Nora of the MystyTech team for an update on their machinima, The Lost Art. In the last year they managed to enlist the help of Mirphak and recently Yoda for advanced lighting and special effects, Dulcamara and Doobes for special sets (two of which will appear in future episodes), and Larry LeDeay and Tweek for graphics.

Episodes 7, 8 and 9 are completely filmed and edited, apart from a few pickups; the two things that are holding up their release are the music and the titles sequence. Filming and editing of episodes 10 and 11 are also well along.

If you have a question, or you want to help with the making, you can send an email to enquiries[at] mystitech[dot]de.

Myst25 Kickstarter & Mysterium

Korov’ev then gave a quick update about the Myst25 Kickstarter. Quite a few backers cannot find the inkwell pen: it is in the hidden compartment close to the ‘spine’, on the bottom; there is a flap you can pull. You can see where all the compartments are in this video, and the controls of the linking panel in this diagram.

As for Mysterium, event submissions are now open! The deadline is May 20th. The events include ‘Microtalks’, short (max 10 minutes) presentations covering almost any interesting topics.

The special guest for this year will be Russell Brower, three-time Emmy Award winner, Composer, Musical Director and Conductor. Myst fans will know him best from the Myst 25th Anniversary Kickstarter, for which he composed several Myst-inspired musical pieces available to backers. He is also known for World of Warcraft’s soundtrack.

Mass Mysteria is also close, on Saturday, May 4th in various locations in the U.S. and around the world! Opt-in channels have been added on the Discord server for each location, so that you can communicate with other attendees and decide on plans.

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, April 6, 2019 at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!

Ages of Doobes

Doobes was first, with an update on the Ages he is working on:

• The revamped GoMe Pub: a fitting start to the ‘Journey’ and Doobes’ first official release; the other Ages will be found somewhere in the Pub.
• The Library: Doobes hopes to feature other fan Ages here as well, but it will also act as a ‘Nexus’ of his own.
• Veelay Tsahvahn, a.k.a. the Memorial Age: a remembrance for explorers who have passed away, and a place to gather, mourn and celebrate those we have lost over the years; it will be available in the Library right away.
• The Vale: a mysterious garden Age that has distinctly D’ni architecture, but a bit of a mysterious origin; it is known that a D’ni Writer did not Write it, which was quite unusual at the time it was Written.
• Kotsahvosahn, a.k.a. the Waystation: the journey begins and ends right where it should, in the Cavern; this was a port used by the D’ni Guild of Messengers right up until the Fall and will be the beginning of Lothias’ journey (more on that in the future).

A couple of these Ages are just about ready, while some have several details that still need to be knocked out. The plan is for a tentative early 2019 release on Gehn Shard, The Open Cave, and Deep Island. Later, Minkata and (hopefully) MO:ULa!

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

guildofmessengers.org

Next, Doobes announced the launch of the website you are currently reading! The GoMe site has been absent for over a year; the old “.com” domain lapsed and fell into the hands of some sort of… gambling thing. The new site now ends in “.org”, in line with the Guild of Writers’ site.

Some of the information pages need to be carried over; you yourself can help! The look is similar to the 2.0 site (WordPress with the ColorMag theme), mostly for consistency. The All Guilds Meeting chatlogs, which have been previously hosted on Doobes’ own website, will from now be located here, both raw and cleansed.

The new domain is hosted and maintained by Doobes, so it will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future; the maintenance costs are fairly cheap to maintain, so he will not be looking for donations.

Videos will need to be linked to instead of being stored on the site, as the storage space has its limits; an RSS feed for the news page is likely, and the rel.to link is in the process of being updated.

Ages of Tweek

Tweek gave an update on Eder Fahsee, a familiarly unfamiliar garden Age that celebrates Myst and the impact it had on all of us. As such, he is inviting any one who is interested to contribute to the Age: he is compiling 25 books (and maybe another 25 later) to go within the library on the Age that will chronicle the first interactions the explorers had with Myst. It can be something short or long (but not too long!), expressing your thoughts, feelings, etc. Not all submissions will make it into the Age, but Tweek will try to fit in as many as possible.

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

Myst25 deliveries

The discs for Cyan’s 25th Anniversary Kickstarter have been shipped, and in many cases already reached their destinations! If you are still waiting, check your emails for a tracking code to know where your discs currently are. For those living in the UK, if your tracking is showing a “failure to deliver”, you probably have additional custom charges to pay.

At the moment, it appears that only the Windows discs have been shipped; macOS users unfortunately will have to wait a bit longer.

The Cyan staff took a winter break from December 21 to January 2; if you sent inquiries at support[at]cyan[dot]com, info[at]cyan[dot]com or press[at]cyan[dot]com during this period, please allow a few days as they are preocessing them in order of receipt.

The Lost Art Season Two

MystiTech Production’s machinima is back for Season Two! Not one but two videos have been released on their Youtube channel: a Christmas teaser on December 16, and Episode 6 on Christmas Eve.

Around March some extra avatar operators will be needed for some special scenes; requirements will be the ability to use an internal client and a Skype account to coordinate acting. If you are interested, you can contact MystiTech on their Youtube channel or by email at enquiries[at]mystitech[dot]de.

Get well, Chiro

Korov’ev ended the speaker session wishing get well soon to explorer Chihiro.

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 assured that the situation is good, but that can only continue with your help.

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, February 2, 2019 at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!