Jamey wrote:

Scroll Bars for both the KI and the Nexus please.

Even without scrollbars, I'd be happy if my position on the list wasn't reset every time it was updated. Scrolling back through recent chat is next to impossible if people are still talking, because every time someone posts something new, my position is reset to display the most recent posts.

Ditto for a long list of Age Players, which resets every time someone moves enough to alter their position in the list or someone new links in.

The Nexus has the same problem with neighbourhoods, but it isn't as noticeable since it happens less frequently.

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DLF - Ian A. Watson

MOULa KI: 00084841 - MOUL KI: 00179642

Um...I was promised cake.

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Frisky Badger
Guild of Maintainers
My opinions are my own and not necessarily those of the Guild of Maintainers.
KI# 00140468

Unfortunately, after I started this thread, I realized maybe it would've been better placed in the "Suggestions" category.

Oh well...

Animated linking panels are a very cool idea. They'd take up some space (given the sheer number of ages in the game) but it'd undeniably be worth having them.

As for "working with volunteers", well, yeah, I've suggested as much on these boards, repeatedly - get a small group of part-time Cyan Worlds team leads (someone writing story, someone designing puzzles, someone as art director) - and then have a big group of talented fan volunteers - artists, programmers, musicians - to bring those story/gameplay/art designs to a completed form.

The creative vision, the design, would be Cyan's, but the work of developing that vision into actual finished ages would be up to the fanbase.

BTW, sorry for posting the sparklie spoiler - shouldn't have mentioned which age the broken sparklie was in.

I guess I forgot that I was in the non-spoiler section when I posted the initial message.

Yes, Cyan Worlds can convert Myst V worlds to Uru - but it'd be a debatable business decision to convert all of them as it'd reduce the perceived value of one of their major sale products (Myst V) if all the worlds in that game were available for free in Uru.

I'd argue in favor of converting a variety of small pieces of those ages at first - little parts of Myst V's worlds that aren't heavily woven into the slate puzzles and which wouldn't require much redesign to function in Uru.

For instance, the Todelmer pod would be easy to convert - it's a self-contained space and wouldn't need to be changed much at all to work in Uru.

Cyan doesn't have the resources to make major redesigns of Myst V content and puzzles right now anyway - but there are several little enclosed or almost-enclosed bits of Myst V's worlds, like the Todelmer pod, that might be fairly easy to move into Uru.

Cyan can release Myst V material into Uru bit by bit, starting with the simplest bits - in between organizing completion of genuinely new areas (Kahlo), or reopening closed ones (Gahreseen Wall).

But this is all hypothetical right now, it's contingent on us reaching CAVCON 5.

Excellent points matthornb. I do see a commonality in all forum post as of late so let me ask this of the forum crowd: What other sources of income can Cyan pursue? We've seen what happens when you get tied into one of the big developers/publishing companies. Now I am sure Cyan, being a business, knows what to go after for new business development but what if they are not thinking far enough outside the box? I know some of us on the forums are just gamers but others are likely business people, consultants, lawyers and such. Why not put our heads together and see what we can come up with. This conversation should probably be in a new thread but I just wanted to throw that out there for people to think about. Something needs to give for Cyan to get back into the development phase, maybe we can help with that.

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Phat Jimmy
KI# 01657164

matthornb wrote:

Cyan doesn't have the resources to make major redesigns of Myst V content and puzzles right now anyway - but there are several little enclosed or almost-enclosed bits of Myst V's worlds, like the Todelmer pod, that might be fairly easy to move into Uru.

What about the tunnels? I don't think they'd require much work, given the very limited amount of puzzles and interactive elements. I'm sure most of us would love those... although it would not be possible to explore them with friends, since the Cleft is single-player only. :-(

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Simone - KI#1001138
Please avoid drinking the lake water.

Agreed. The tunnels are one of the better parts of Myst V to convert to Uru.

As for ways for Cyan to fund development, I've suggested an entire laundry list of (often unpopular) ideas over the past months, with that fundamental goal - namely, funding development of new content.

1) Advertising other Cyan Worlds Myst games inside Uru during loading screens - to remind bored Uru players that, hey, there are other Myst games you can buy! Like RealMyst, Myst V, Riven, etc - because sales of those games raises money for the company.

2) Buyables. Cyan Worlds would make new pieces of content for Uru (add-ons) and sell them on an official Cyan Worlds store. This has raised the objection that it would divide players into haves and have-nots, which is a noteworthy argument, but the truth is that Cyan Worlds needs more funding to ramp up content development - and so far, donations haven't been enough to do that. If it's a choice between Uru content we have to pay for, or no new content, I'm in favor of paying.

3) Sale of fan ages on an official store. In this scenario, Cyan Worlds would give fans permission to sell content for Uru (using Cyan Worlds' game engine, etc) on the above store if they so choose - but on the condition that Cyan Worlds takes a large cut of the sale (30-60%) of said content.
Look how much money Apple's app store has made for Apple - they take a 28% cut of everything there - plus $99/year in developer registration fees from every app developer. This'd be similar. Cyan Worlds could start by just setting up this store and dealing with the legal issues, and then rake in half the cash from sales of fan content they didn't spend any money/effort developing. Once they've built up enough funds this way, they can develop and sell their own (official) add-ons with the proceeds using the same store. In this way, exceptional (sellable) fan content like Breldur could be harnessed to raise funds for official Cyan development.

4) Get more players to donate. I mean, we don't want to be pushy, but if we could get every one of our current 22,000 players to put $4/month into the dev fund, Cyan Worlds would have an Uru development budget of over a million dollars per year!

5) Subscriptions. We've tried it before and failed miserably. Twice. Both times there just weren't enough subscribers to make it profitable. But if you *could* get enough people to subscribe somehow, then it's still possible that a subscription system could work.

Anyway, not saying these are good ideas, necessarily, but they are ideas nonetheless.

matthornb wrote:

2) Buyables. Cyan Worlds would make new pieces of content for Uru (add-ons) and sell them on an official Cyan Worlds store. This has raised the objection that it would divide players into haves and have-nots, which is a noteworthy argument, but the truth is that Cyan Worlds needs more funding to ramp up content development - and so far, donations haven't been enough to do that. If it's a choice between Uru content we have to pay for, or no new content, I'm in favor of paying.

I'm strongly against buyables in Uru, exactly for the reason you stated. If you feel like you could pay $5 to Cyan in order to get a fancy t-shirt for you avatar, and you are willing to do it for the sake of having new content added to Uru, then why don't you simply donate those $5 to them? In a way, with donations we are already paying for new pieces of content - as well as for keeping Uru "live".

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Simone - KI#1001138
Please avoid drinking the lake water.

All good points. But what about more books, theatrical movie rights and possibly a new non Myst game? This is the kind of outside the box I am getting at. Cyan has a cult following but it's only 22,000 people. The Iphone app was a great idea. RealMyst was a great idea. Gamers are looking for the next best thing. Most I have talked too are getting tired of the basic shoot'em up bang bang games with no story. I get them going on Uru for starers and most have loved it because it's multiplayer and the graphics are awesome. But... the most common complaint is that they run out of things to do. Now they are like me, playing Valve titles waiting for the next Cyan move on Uru or any other game. This is why I have always supported fan created stuff. It's different and keeps us busy. Yes, many have donated but it's going to take more than that. A cash infusion is what will make Cyan a major player in cutthroat industry, cut and dry.

My vote would be for a Myst movie (not Uru). If done properly and stay true to the stories/game, you could have an easy blockbuster. The technology today is the film world is amazing and could make this story "real". But it's critical that the story be done right. And of course we would love to see Rand Miller play Atrus. But seriously, Hollywood is lacking anything new. All they are doing to remaking stuff from the 80's. I don't know about most of you but I can't see paying $20 per person to see something that I saw as a kid......

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Phat Jimmy
KI# 01657164

Release Nick White!

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mr_jimmy wrote:

My vote would be for a Myst movie (not Uru). If done properly and stay true to the stories/game, you could have an easy blockbuster. The technology today is the film world is amazing and could make this story "real". But it's critical that the story be done right. And of course we would love to see Rand Miller play Atrus. But seriously, Hollywood is lacking anything new. All they are doing to remaking stuff from the 80's. I don't know about most of you but I can't see paying $20 per person to see something that I saw as a kid......

There is a myst movie in the works....

kaelisebonrai wrote:

There is a myst movie in the works....

Myst Movie

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Tai'lahr wrote:

kaelisebonrai wrote:

There is a myst movie in the works....

Myst Movie

precisely.

mr_jimmy wrote:

My vote would be for a Myst movie (not Uru). If done properly and stay true to the stories/game, you could have an easy blockbuster. The technology today is the film world is amazing and could make this story "real". But it's critical that the story be done right. And of course we would love to see Rand Miller play Atrus. But seriously, Hollywood is lacking anything new. All they are doing to remaking stuff from the 80's. I don't know about most of you but I can't see paying $20 per person to see something that I saw as a kid......

That's actually not true, have you even herd of Tron Legacy? it's not a remake of Tron it's a sequil.

Sales_Kital wrote:

mr_jimmy wrote:

My vote would be for a Myst movie (not Uru). If done properly and stay true to the stories/game, you could have an easy blockbuster. The technology today is the film world is amazing and could make this story "real". But it's critical that the story be done right. And of course we would love to see Rand Miller play Atrus. But seriously, Hollywood is lacking anything new. All they are doing to remaking stuff from the 80's. I don't know about most of you but I can't see paying $20 per person to see something that I saw as a kid......

That's actually not true, have you even herd of Tron Legacy? it's not a remake of Tron it's a sequil.

Ok, your right. But you have to admit that most movies are not new ideas. I can't wait for Tron! Looks BA

This Myst movie is interesting. I hope these guys know what they are doing. The last thing we need is another box office bomb movie made after a game. I noticed that they say that Cyan has to approve all story changes. I hope the Miller boys are scrutinizing this script. Like I said previously in this post, if done correctly this could be the cash infusion that Cyan needs. Plus, they have 6 games to follow the movie. More cash.....

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Phat Jimmy
KI# 01657164

Yeah, the Myst Movie could cause a massive surge in interest in all things Myst - but they've yet to agree on a script and it hasn't actually been greenlit by the studio yet.

It's in development hell for now and probably it'll be another 2 years before actual release - if it even is greenlit at all.

What do we do until then?

I think our next immediate hope for a breakthrough is MagiQuest Online - if Creative Kingdoms can advertise it intensively in the coming months, then it could sell well and be the breakthrough Cyan Worlds is looking for - supplying them with steady work and a stream of spare cash.