Taniith’s Relto

(I hate it when I accidentally click a link and am forced to re-write an entire blog poast). I know this is the third poast today, but I gotta say something about this.

As you already know, George Carlin died this month, which is certainly a big loss to the world. However, two other people, who I feel were important, also died this month.

First, a man by the alias of CAGrayWolf passed away this month. I never met him in person (in URU or real life), but I knew him by reputation and by his forum posts. He had a huge impact on the Myst community, having been a DRC liaison in the past, and most recently having had a large role in the organization of Mysterium in Boston this year. He will most certainly be missed.

The other loss is Don S. Davis, who played General George Hammond on Stargate for many years, who died on the 29th. He was a great actor, and apparently also a great artist. His final reprisal of his role in Stargate will show up in the movie Stargate: Continuum, coming out later in July. Its sad to think that he won’t ever show up in Stargate Command again, and he will also be missed.

And thats it for now. In fact, I certainly hope thats it for this kind of post for a long time.

-K

A short post: today marks the last official day for consumer XP sales. There are still ways to get XP, and it will still be supported for a long time, but it will be increasingly more difficult from here on out to get a new copy of XP.

/bow to XP

/slap vista in the face with a herring

-K

I think the Spokesman Review article says it best:

After several months of negotiation, Spokane-based Cyan Worlds regained the rights to its complex immersive game, Myst Online.

Company President Rand Miller said Monday the deal was arranged with GameTap, the Turner Entertainment subsidiary which published Myst Online for about a year. The company shut down Myst Online in April 2008, saying the closure was due to business reasons.

Ardent fans of Myst and Myst Online have been vocal about having a hand in resurrecting the game and adding more content to the project. Up to now, Cyan Worlds has resisted approving that option, pending the regaining of the publishing rights from GameTap.

Miller said the new plan is for the game’s fans to have that freedom to create new environments and new content.

He added it’s uncertain if the revival will lead to a longterm commitment by Cyan to continue developing the game. The regaining of the rights is a step in that direction, but Miller said it’s unclear where the experiment in shared, user-created content will lead.

Cyan Worlds itself has downsized its game-development staff to less than 10.

The delay in regaining the rights to Myst Online was due to both Cyan and GameTap working through a gradual understanding of how the game’s development might proceed.

Miller said Cyan did not pay anything to regain the publishing rights. But at some point, if a commercially successful revival comes about, the two companies have an agreement on how each will be compensated, he added.

“They realize that unless something happened (to revive Myst Online), it wasn’t going to live. And if it didn’t live, no one would ever get anything out of it.”

Cyan Worlds made its first breakthrough game, Myst, in 1994. Later versions elaborated upon the notion of a lost D’ni civilization and its “ages” or areas where participants are allowed to explore.

The online version of Myst was an ambitious 3-D world with rich and constantly changing circumstances and interaction with other game-players.

Miller said the new, revived version will charge participants a minimal fee of perhaps $25 per six months.

“That’s not being done to make money,” he said. Rather the charge will be to cover the costs of adding servers at Cyan Worlds to handle the game play, said Miller.

Essentially, Cyan (who has now downsized to only 10 people on game development, but still has others in the QA department) got the publishing rights for URU back; they got it for free on the written understanding of how each side gets compensated if it eventually becomes a financial success.

The biggest new, though, is that the intent is less for Cyan to develop for it, than for the fans to create the content. A small fee will be charged every 6 months, mostly to support the servers. Fans will be able (in some undisclosed manner) to create and add content. This is exactly what I’ve been wanting… Cyan supported development. Hopefully, they will be willing to release some of their 3DSmax plugins which would mean I could start working on my own age(s). Ad much as I applaud the Myst community for the work on tools for offline Uru using Blender, I just can’t get into Blender after becoming used to the way tools like Max and Maya work, and it is much easier to transfer between Max and Maya than Maya to Blender. I think I know what my next project will be now… time to start solidifying the concept.

Not that I’m not going to do the Sailor Moon bit, but I will probably work on them concurrently in some fashion; making an age is a bit more of a long-term thing, eh?

-K

My dad and I were about to go get some lunch, but it started to rain. Looking out the window he said something to the effect of ‘I think we should wait, because it looks really windy.’ So I agreed, and then he said, ‘look at it, thats like 80 MPH winds! Something could fall do….’ and thats when one of the giant oaks in the backyard decided to split in half and fall down. Now there’s half a tree lying across the entire backyard and into the yard of the people next door. Its really a fiasco.

In other news, we got the HDTV installed (52″) today. That means the old (not really all that old though) TV is now mine for to take to my apartment. Yays

Stupid tree

-K

edit: Pictures, clicky

So, today is Bill Gate’s last day at Microsoft.. one that has been in the works for two years. Now, whatever you may think of Microsoft and the things they did under his leadership, remember that he’s one hell of a philanthropist. I mean, he’s giving a large majority of his money to various causes and is going to make a huge difference; I didn’t save the URL, but I read an article yesterday commenting on how he got his big break at IBM through his parents’ activity in a big charity, and so its seems only fitting that he give back what he made from that connection.

So, here’s to a great man in the history of technology. *clink*

-K

PS

I think this guy hits my sentiments right on the nose. Clicky

-K

So I’ve been thinking about a fun (small) project I could do to keep up my 3D skills, but also push myself, and I think I have it. I think I’m going to do my own rendition of Sailor Moon’s transformation. It’s not a huge project since its just the character model and a bunch of animation and effects, I think. For those who don’t really know what I’m talking about, here’s a pair of transformations:

No real time-table on when I’ll get started on it, but I think it should be fun. After all, it can’t come out any worse than the live-action version:

;D

-K