I’m going to keep this brief. I am writing to you from the Opera web browser just released for the Wii. Say hi Shadow…. um, he’s feeling a little shy at the moment. Hopefully he will open up a bit soon. Maybe Esher can get him to say something :)
That reminds me… apparently Esher now has a peanut to go with his bread. Go figure.
TTFN!
-k
Hell, The ending can kiss my ass! It is almost time… URU Live will live again. The deep city calls; growing, breathing, alive again!
Sorry, I get the feeling that many of you are confused… thats OK, because the whole world will understand soon enough! (disclaimer: the whole world probably wont, but one can hope…).
URU: Ages Beyond Myst came out in fall 2003, along with the final phase of open beta called the Prologue. Ubi Soft pulled the plug on URU: Live, and the servers went down in Febuary 2004. Expansion packs were released, one free and one that you had to buy, but they were all single player. Cyan Launched Until URU, a free version of the online code open to anyone who owned a copy of URU. The idea was to thank all us fans for our support and to keep the hope of URU Live alive until it could find funding.
Summer 2005, Myst V: End of Ages comes out. Shortly thereafter, Cyan is forced to close due to a lack of money (boy did I choose a bad time to send a letter for suggestions on colleges to Rand Miller O_o). A few weeks later they were re-opened with help from a mysterious funder, later found out to be Gametap. The D’ni Restoration Council (DRC) Site forums began having activity again… one of the 5 members of the coucil was trying to get in touch with the others. The D’mala shard of Until URU is launched, an official shard run by Cyan with limited appearenced by in character DRC members. The DRC called for 5 liasons to be elected by the explorers (fans), and soon ‘town hall meetings’ began to be set up with DRC members and Cyan employees in the cavern.
Finally, the moment we had been waiting years for; URU Live was announced as being re-published by Gametap as part of the monthly service in December of this year. Skip ahead several months, the closed beta was going well (or so they told us), and it was getting closer to launch time. There had been no word from the DRC for some time (’behind the scenes work’), and we were told that the Live launch was going to happen in ‘very early 2007.’ However, the final open beta, the ‘preview,’ would start on December 20th.
A town hall meeting with the DRC was set up on D’mala for last night… things got so crowded that they had to move it so tht the DRC members gould even link in! I was not there, but I have seen the chat log and heard reports. Only three or four questions were answered before everyone (in every age on D’mala) heard a Bah’ro screem echo out from the silence… and then everyone on the shard was linked back to their personal Relto (see blog title). When they arrived, they all found the following message on their KI:
D’mala Explorers:
Thank you for all your support on the D’mala shard this year. The Bahro scream that was just heard throughout all of the Ages, and the subsequent simultaneous linking of every person back to Relto was a significant event. This event signals that D’mala’s chapter in Uru’s story has officially come to a close. The story will pick up from this moment in Uru Live.
Please note that we’re leaving D’mala open for a while because, unfortunately, Uru Live is not yet available to everyone who is here on D’mala. But everything that occurs in D’mala from that event forward (including this KI-mail) should be considered OOC.
Thanks again for all your support. We hope to see you all in Uru Live soon.
Your friends at Cyan
Today is December 20th. The final vault wipe of the servers is complete, and they will go online at some point today. Open beta begins, Live awaits.
“Alone or together, destruction is coming. Alone or together, find a way. Alone or together, make a home. They come, he comes… and I will come as well”
D’ni calls, you only need to answer.
-K
My second wiimote just arrived. Still no sign of Zelda, but now Shadow and I can play with another person :). Oooo, vacation is gonna be fun this year!
-K
So we had that talk by the guy who worked on Aslan today (Steve something). He didn’t do all of Aslan (that would be impossible), but he did the animation for the scene leading up to the sacrifice, and then the sacrifice itself. By that I mean that he did those whole scenes (all the animation)… he didn’t jsut animate Aslan while someone else animated the goblins and whatnot.
He had some interesting tips about animation that I’m going to have to keep in mind, but I already knew he was cool about 10 minutes into the presentation. You see, he started off with a lengthy explaination of what work he has done, bouncing around from place to place between gaming and movies. Well, at one point he says something to the extent of, ’so then I worked at Westwood… you know, the Command and Conquer people? So I worked there on Earth and Beyond for a while…’. The rest is unimportant…. the man worked on EnB! This guy automatically moves to the upper ranks of my opinion scale for that (unless I were to find out he had something to do with it being cancelled, in which case I would have to sneak up on him as he’s boarding that plane to New Zeland and… well, you can guess. But I doubt he had anything to do with it, so anyway…).
But, yeah… interesting. Anyway, that’s it for now.
-K
Oh my god…. the Wii is amazing! Mine came today, and I’ve been having a blast. I’m not sure my back is happy with me, but it will learn to love Shadow (my Wii’s name…. thanks Zoids!). Unfortunately my copy of the new Zelda game hasn’t arrived yet (should be here in a few days), but until then I will be having fun with Wii sports. I spent almost an hour on homerun practice and batting practice (haven’t played a full game of any of the Wii sports, but I had to practice first). Thats the biggest workout I’ve had in quite a while.. probably since I quit fencing. Sorry, I meant since I took a hiatus from fencing. On a side note, they damned well better come out with a fencing game for this thing!
You see, with the Wiimote (Wii remote anyone?) and Wii Sports, you can really play like you were a batter or a bowler or a pitcher or a tennis player… even a boxer (or so they say…. I had trouble with that one). I can fully understand what my sister was saying when she told me about all of the out of shape nerds who have Wiis. Granted, a lot of things you can do by just flicking your wrist, but what’s the fun of that? This is by far the most fun I have ever had with a console game…. and it was a sports title! I can’t wait to get Zelda and that big ass sword…. or a first person shooter where you have to aim? That is going to kick ass! Granted I need to get in shape (playing Wii Sports of course ;p)… I took the fitness test (only allowed to do it once a day) which picks 3 trials from the Wii Sports stuff and, you know, tests your fitness. Anyway, it gives you a score with an age gradient where 20 is the best you can get. Well, I got… a… um… well…….. 67. Yeah, I need some practice. But hey, cut me some slack! I only started playing the thing about 10 minutes before I did the fitness test!
Oh, and did I mention I can send emails from it with our wirelss network? And it updates itself wirelessly (supposedly while it is ‘off’ too)! Sooo cool.
Anyway, I’m tired and I have class tomorrow… the guy who did Aslan in the new Narnia movie is coming to guest lecture! Yay! :)
-K
I’ve been thinking lately about what was going on this time last year. My life really started to get interesting back then, and it hasn’t really slowed down at all in some ways. For instance, I had so many easy (AP) classes that I could focus on other things; my first real english class in several years for instance. Zuckerman was definately one of the best teachers I have had since Russel in 9th grade. That wholse fiasco was certainly interesting, esspecially since suddenly people were looking to me to fiure out the next step. Now, I like being a leader, but that sort of thing hadn’t really happened much so it was a good experience… but I digress from this time of year.
One of the biggest things that happened was, of course, Holes. That was definately the culmination of all those years of working on tech and buying into Marty’s philosophy. For one thing… I don’t really like kids, so it still kinda surprises me that I was able to work on a middle school show with little help from upper schoolers (don’t complain, I said little not none). Hell, all the stuff that department says about me being a ‘colleague’ definately wouldn’t fit if I hadn’t done that show the way I did. Set, lights, sound, stage manager, 3D poster desgin, all wrapped in one. You definately done see many students ASKING to be able to come in on the weekends and days off to work on the show.
Oh, and then there was that one big disappointment from last year. In some ways, I think that was proably the most important experience to have walked away with…. though I still kinda wish things had worked out differently. But regardless, that is the past and I’m not going to go into it right now. There are plenty of poasts chronicalling what happened between about October and January.
Wait, thats right… those poasts are locked! Silly me, I guess only people who have accounts would be able to see them, but since pretty much no one has an account, I guess you couldn’t see them even if you wanted to! (not that I expect anyone would want too….)
Well, plenty more to say, but I have to get ready for class.
-K
Hmm. Apparently, it has been about a week and a half since I last poasted anything. Oops, sorry about that folks. My excuse is that I was busy… I swear, busy! End of Thanksgiving break I was working on some stuff that was due for class (that no one else did…), along with hanging out with crazy college people who were home for the week. Then last week, I was frantically trying to get stuff done and very tired at night so I had no energy to write (that’ll teach me to watch Zoids late into the nig….. erm, forget I said that).
Regardless, here I am. I did learn something interesting last week; well, beyond the normal interesting stuff. So once upon a time, Andrew (teacher) got a school he was working for to get him Maya certified by Alias (now Autodesk). He’s been studying the past month or two in preperation for taking a test to renew his certification (none of the other 3d teachers are certified). Well, we recently found out, by a fluke in a conversation, that his teacher certification has benifits for all of us. So, normally at the end of ths 9 months, we would get out 3d animation certificate from Boston University, which is still a great thing in its own right (apparently it is on the list of schools ILM recommends, and that aint too shabby). Now, we still get this certificate, but the ten of us in Andrew’s class (so not the other 3d class) also get a certification from Autodesk saying that we are officially certified in Maya (because he is officially certified to teach Maya… get it?). C’est tres sweet, non? ;)
-K
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