Guild of Writers

I… haven’t touched Blender in 2 months.
I haven’t done any meaningful work in Blender is far longer.
It’s sad for me to say that, because I have things that I want to do and ideas that I want to develop.

We’re losing people. I’ve seen more people lose interest over the past 6 months than I have in any other period of Uru. We’ve been given hopes and promises, and now we’re all waiting for something that might never come. Times change and people get busier, and I feel that need to seriously ask myself why I’m still here.

It’s not because I enjoy it: Uru is depressing these days, and I don’t want to build Ages that nobody will ever explore;
it’s not for the community: I’ve seen almost all the good people lose interest, leaving only the idiots on MOUL worshiping their Holy Blue Lords of Cyan;
it’s not for the potential: time killed whatever potential was left in Uru.
It’s not even for Plasma anymore, the more I see of it, the more I realise how much it could be improved and yet there’s no way to do that.

I thought things would be more open when MOULa started, but instead they’re more closed than before. Any incentive to work on stuff is crushed by Cyan’s continued silence, and the overwhelmingly vocal disapproval of many community members. We all have bad days where we ask “Why do I put up with this?”; but when you’re seriously asking yourself that question every time you think of Uru, maybe it’s time to move on. I don’t want to be part of this anymore.

Uru’s dead, more dead now than before MOULa started. I keep wanting things to change, but I can’t keep pretending that they ever will. Cyan can’t make Uru work. They’ve lost direction and fragmented so much that the only thing keeping them in business is rehashing existing games on new platforms. The “Golden era” ended with Prologue, and came to a crashing halt after Myst V. MOUL never managed to bring any of that back.

The future is uncertain. I can say for sure that prpl-uruki will probably never be finished, and libHSPlasma development has mostly stopped as all the developers lost interest. PyPRP2 is up in the air, very dependent on what happens with Blender and whether there’s still enough interest to keep developing it. Without maintenance and support for the current tools, Age builders will lose interest and drift away, and with them goes any lingering hope for Uru’s potential.

For now, we keep waiting… but maybe someday you have to accept that the story’s over.

(Responses to this post are archived here)

In one of my odd moods, I decided to post a development article of a location that hasn’t yet been released.

Fehnir House was a small D’ni location that I designed and built for the D’ni Location (Creation) Contest that was being hosted over at the Guild of Writers forums.
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The D’ni Location Creation Contest is now in full swing over at the Guild of Writers forums.

Kaelis invites Age builders to create a D’ni location, showcasing, building, texturing, playability and story aspects.
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If I was to post the list of the various artists I follow we’d probably be here for the next week, however I grabbed a small handful of links to offer you. I’m sure many of us hit those points where we just can’t seem to find the inspiration we need to progress with our projects. Looking over the work of others often leads to that inspiration or teaches new things to try out.
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More and more people are turning to The Art. But the question arises, just how are they doing it?

The path towards explorer written Ages has been years in the making, thanks to the great tools and work done by those at Cobbs/H’uru/GoW. And during MOUL the story turned toward the future inclusion of explorer Ages, with Dr. Watson of the DRC stating that.
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I shall open this post with a couple of quotes, from a post on the MOUL forums that lead to the crafting of this article.

Put canon on hold? Then it’s not Uru. It’s not Myst. Period. Uru IS canon. Myst IS canon. What you have if you remove those is not open source Myst Online. It is an open source of the engine that was used to construct Myst Online. If that’s what you want, more power to you. I could actually have a lot of fun with that, designing my own worlds, plots, and story-lines. But it’s not Uru, and don’t pretend it is.

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September 2008 was when I finally dived into Age building. I downloaded all the bits and bobs and started getting to grips with Blender.

I can be a surprisingly quick learner at times, and it didn’t take me long to get the hang of building, and the first thing I even tempted to build was what became Fahets.
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The shift in dynamic for content creation has shifted from Cyan to the player base, with this we start seeing differences in the Ages release that we are not used too. People have a tendency to imprint their personalities upon their Ages, whether they mean to or not.

But with it comes a concept that I have noticed many people in the player base have a troubled time comprehending. It was started by Cyan, back in 2007 when they released an Age called Jalak Dador. The premise to the Age was simple, it was a sandbox where people could build their own games and play games other people had created.
Yet with this simple concept came a struggle by some, here is an Age which has no deep meaning, no great puzzle or “journey” behind it, it is what it simply is.
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Linking Books and journals, the two things that are rife within D’ni and its Ages, with each Age often requiring its own different covers. Fortunately, Lost and Taken have a nice selection of 17 old book cover textures for downloading.

So head over, check it out and download their 17 Book Cover Textures

Todays offering is another texture resource, this time pillaged straight from my bookmarks list. The following 10 websites and blogs offer a selection of various textures for use in your building or for using as a base to create new textures.
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