Playing Fan Ages
What are Fan Ages?
As you know, in D'ni culture an Age is a separate universe, described by and accessible through special books. And as you know, as D'ni culture is represented in the Myst and Uru series of computer games, an Age is essentially a level in one of these games.
This article deals with a certain kind of Age - those created by fans of Myst and Uru, that are playable using Uru's game engine, Plasma.
What makes up these Ages is data made in special tools (Blender, Python, AlcScript, PyPRP). However, the game engine needs a push to recognize these Ages. Manager programs, most notably Uru Library Manager (ULM) and Uru Age Manager (UAM) were written to make this push (installation), and also to manage downloading Ages from a common database.
While Fan Ages are not created by Cyan Worlds (and thus not commercial, not always cohesive, and in some cases not finished), it is important to note that these are the cornucopias of imagination of the person next to you on the bus, and you would be remiss to not enjoy them.
What do I need to play Fan Ages?
- Windows XP or Vista
- 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 by Old Wolle, H'astin, and ddb174.
- Uru Library Manager. Requires .NET. Created by Tyion.
(as of January 2009 there is not an available multiplayer version)