Revision as of 00:21, 16 April 2011

The quickest way to play Fan Ages is to install UruAgeManager or UruLibraryManager.

What do I need to play Fan Ages?

• Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Windows7 (Also known to work in Linux using WINE)
• The Uru game engine, necessarily as part of one of these games:
  • Uru: The Path of the Shell (which requires Uru:ABM)
  • Uru: Complete Chronicles
• An Age manager program:
  • Uru Age Manager, currently included with the Drizzle toolkit. Requires Java. Created and maintained by Old Wolle and ddb174.
  • Uru Library Manager. Requires .NET. Created by Trylon.

For online play, you'll need to find someone running an Alcugs shard, or set one up. Details are at the Alcugs wiki.

What are Fan Ages?

This article deals with a certain kind of Age - those created by fans of Myst and Uru and by the Guild of Writers, that are playable using Uru's game engine, Plasma.

These Ages are comprised of data made with certain tools (Blender and PyPRP to create the Age, and Python and AlcScript to make it interactive). However, the game engine needs a push to recognize these Ages. Manager programs, Uru Library Manager (ULM) and Uru Age Manager (UAM), were written to make this push (installation).

What are Manager Programs?

There are two different methods of downloading/installing/playing Fan Ages: UAM and ULM. Historically, UAM(UruAgeManager) was written initially and used for Fan Ages. During the "Great Cyan Clampdown of 2006", projects that relied on the reverse-engineering of Plasma were driven underground for a while. In time, ULM(UruLibraryManager) was written to take its place. Later on, UruAgeManager was rewritten from scratch to become part of the Drizzle tool, and with the Offline KI there is a tool to actually reach the ages UAM downloads without any further patches.

UAM Strengths

• Uses the Java framework
• Has every Age ever released, some 24+ more than ULM
• No problems with corrupted Ages
• Much faster downloads
• Caches downloads, and lets you easily switch versions of an Age without redownloading

ULM Strengths

• Uses the .NET framework
• Allows you to customize which books are on your Relto shelf, using a simple graphical interface
• Allows Writers to upload their Age to the ULM server

Installing by hand

I don't actually know how this is done, but it would be nice to have a summary of how these programs get PotS to recognize Ages. The strengths are:

• Use whatever freaking manager you want
• ????
• Profit!

However, there will not be any way to reach the installed ages unless you are ready to implement the linking code yourself, which is exactly what Offline KI / ULM do for you.

How can I meet my friends in the new ages?

To meet other players in fan-created ages, you need to get access to a Shard. There are various private ones, but some are public, for example the Deep Island Shard that you can log in to with your GoW account.