Build a world. Make a home. Make an End.

Imagine being able to create your own ages, being able to build your own home. One man did. He found the cleft, found a home, but found that it was not enough. He wanted to create his own ages, build his own worlds, to have the power of a God. He left the cavern and locked himself away, hiding amongst his Ages and his journals endlessly reading, researching, learning, until he discovered that linking books are interchangeable. Cut a page here, paste a page there… and a link to another age is made… from salvaging old books and old ages he could create new ones…. An endless stream of new ages, almost limitless in number.
The ability to create whole worlds in the blink of an eye was at his very fingertips…
And the one thing about power…is that it can corrupt.

You are not this man. You are trying to find him. To hunt him, and to kill him.
So to find him you must retrace his very steps, discover what he did, and find where he could be hiding, somewhere in this countless ocean of ages…

This is your story…

You wake up to the sounds of someone yelling. There are screams, a shout, a shot. More screaming and you re up, out of bed and running up the stairs. Bursting through the door you see your sister and father dead on the floor with a shadow standing over them. He spins to face you, grips a book in his hand and snarls. Leaping backwards he smashes out through a window and is gone. You run to the edge and look down, to see nothing. Leaping down and onto the grass of your back yard you find nothing. Nothing but a book with a strange flickering image and a bloody handprint.



Not quite knowing, not quite understanding, you place your hand on the book, and get drawn into it.

The concept for this game is both incredibly complex and incredibly simple - you find a device that the writer left behind that lets you alter basic parts of an Age, pulling pages out, putting new ones in, letting you build a world out of the available parts. The further you progress the more you understand, the more you can change...


A rough idea of the device shows that it will contain a linking book, but will be able to automatically alter which Age it links to by changing the Symbol for the Age and the Name for the Age...


Each letter represents a certain aspect of the age, from the color of the rocks to the type of vegetation to the type of location to the weather of the age... Changing the name changes the symbol, which changes the Age...


Using this symbol, you end up with...


THIS sort of Age...
And as you can see, this can be done in any number of ways....















Now, the images are obviously not of the Ages themselves, merely photographs to stand in and give you an impression of what would be possible...and the final one is a very basic render for the game.

I am aware that there could be more than a few issues here, but most of them are frankly about the Myst Cannon - old style point and click games are not so hard to make any more, and after calling in a few favors we could have a few artists to work on this - the story is structured into a follow-the-breadcrumbs fashion, where you have to find clues to exactly which Ages the murderer created and visited and from there get more clues as to where he could be and how you could find him...
Other concepts, such as releasing the game in a set of five chapters, have been thrown into the mix, along with a subtle hint system within the game to help players with the puzzles.

NOW, who is interested, and who is game?

Shevek

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CHAMBER 0 (demo)

Besides the bloody background story this is rich in detail and stunning beauty, Shevek...

Of course, you know this already that many will love this, but as a layman I wonder what
our creative age builders and you could do about it, if at all... You yourself already mentioned
the Myst cannon issues as of The Art of Writing, as of Linking and Instancing etc. etc...,
but with Open Source now the sky's the limit...

What I'm also wondering about is, by poking through your website, if we will ever see your
(in co-creation with many other artists still around) impressive creations like 'The Springs of Kehlbet',
'Memoranda' etc. ...

Yeah, best of luck and go on being inspired and having fun...

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janaba MOULa KI #154268, Minkata KI #4525 , Gehn KI # 16392, TOC KI # 86963
MO:ULa is

Wow, that would be epic. I too have reservations about the backstory but would love to see this concept in action.

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Owner and creator of JMJ Studios D'ni Bevin
Chris Sifniotis KI = 433655
Skydiver Chris = 9316160

As of April 2013.

Not the backstory, but my younger brother is working on an idea quite similar to this. He had a different way to change the Age, though. Cool!

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Cosmic Osmo for iOS is a must!

This looks very cool. I like the direction of the story, even if it does go a little against the peaceful nature of Myst. But it's not like there haven't been creepy people in Myst plot lines before. I also like the idea of making another point and click. The point and click games were the only Myst games I was ever really good at, so this would be much appreciated.

You're right about violating the Myst Canon. I think there's only a couple of problems, mainly, that a linking book can only link to one Age and the only way to alter that Age, is to alter the writing inside the descriptive book. But Yeesha found ways around the limitations of The Art, so you most certainly can as well.

So to answer your question, I am both interested and game. I can wait too see some updates on this project. If you ever need any help, I am somewhat adept at using Blender and I know some programming.

Best of luck.

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MOULagain name: Charlemagne
KI# 01003877

Greetings and shorah all.
Glad to see some input on the concept, though I am still waiting on some messages (does the PM system actually work on the board or is it just me...?)
I do understand the reservations of the slightly dark opening to the story, but I fail to see how it differs from any previous Myst games... apart from the image of blood in a book?
In MYST we havethe brothers that burned a library and Atrus retaliated by burning the books that they were trapped in... without the knowledge that they are linking books it struck me as really rather brutal. In RIVEN it opens with a man getting poisoned and thrown off of a cliff, and we then meet a man who, if irked, would feed people to giant fish or shoot you to death for not touching a book. In EXILE there is a rather brutal scene involving a madman bashing your brains in, and in REVELATIONS a young woman gets tortured in an electric chair.... It may be the approach to the subject, but the characters of the Myst series have always had their dark sides...
However, if the imagery is a little too jarring then it could simply haveit set that all three are simply injured from a scuffle and a fight, the girl is knocked uncocious, and both men are left bruised and bloody.

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CHAMBER 0 (demo)

Shevek wrote:

Greetings and shorah all.
Glad to see some input on the concept, though I am still waiting on some messages (does the PM system actually work on the board or is it just me...?)
I do understand the reservations of the slightly dark opening to the story, but I fail to see how it differs from any previous Myst games... apart from the image of blood in a book?

I think it is not the darkness so much as the outright brutality of the imagery... Perhaps having the player's family wounded at the beginning would be better, with part of the goal of the player to find medical aid for their family as well as to stop the antagonist? I'm not sure that I would like my goal to be to kill someone in a Myst-type game. I would much prefer to have a constructive goal.

The rest of this game, however, sounds awesome! I would be interested in helping, although I don't really know anything about coding. I have a lot of time this summer to learn Blender, though, and I can make textures, sounds, and music if you need someone to help with that.[/spoiler]

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KI#: 11755282
Eff Yeah Mystverse! - A Tumblr for Myst fans

I really like this idea, I also came up with a method to add and subtract elements of an Age. It would be more Explorer based tech though. If you'd like the concept I'd be more than willing to share it over PM.

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Thelonius "Prof" Higginsbottom

member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent

"I invented the term the Bevin Generation do I get a spot in Mystlore?"

This sounds cool. It's also so good that it could be made into it's own series. Replace the "linking" book with something like say a "mirror" book. The problem with that is everyone would call it a Myst-clone because that's what it would be. It could just be a very complex age to build for the open source project though. That would make much more sense and a project like that with an already very thought out story is something alluring to both OpenUru and GoW.

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TOC#60089 DI#132103 MOULa is

Hello again folks, glad to see his post is getting more attention:

Anyway, to address certain issues: I would appreciate help from any quarter but what must be said is that this is NOT an URU age and so Blender knowledge would not be needed - nor would any advanced programming knowledge - I will put up a quick Flash Game Demo tonight to give you all a better idea as to what I am talking about.
The programming language for flash games is relatively simple and since I hope to stagger the release of the game (and story) into a series of 5 chapters (all of which a rather short - basically one key age per chapter) it should be quite an easy project.

The point of this game is to promote Cyan, Myst, and especially URU - and I hope to be able to hae a "donate to URU" button included in the game - to help raise funds for Cyan and to encourage people to play more myst games - if done well it would make people feel nostalgic enough to play they old games or come back into the cavern again, or it could inspire people into making ages of their own - but I do realise that those are rather lofty hopes!

Anyway, I will put up an Age Demo later tonight and hope to hear from you all then!

Shevek

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CHAMBER 0 (demo)

Okay folks, sorry for the delay. I hope you enjoy the little demo.
If we can get some interest in the project it will go ahead, if not, well, we tried. And I had fun making it, so no loss.

CHAMBER 0

Hope to hear from you all soon.

Shevek

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CHAMBER 0 (demo)

Shevek wrote:

... if done well it would make people feel nostalgic enough to play they old games or come
back into the cavern again, or it could inspire people into making ages of their own - but I do
realise that those are rather lofty hopes! ........ Shevek

Being just a tiny little Demo I'd say this is really well done already, making one feel nostalgic, definitely
reminding of all those 'old beloved adventure games like Myst/Riven, Rhem, Syberia and similar old games
etc...' lol... Very mystical, atmospheric and myst-eriously intriguing and inspiring... one definitely wants to
know and to explore more, esp. as the wonders, miracles and worlds to uncover seem to be unlimited...

I'd just say 'mission accomplished', Shevek and ? (you're always talking of 'we' hehe...)...
As of the 'lofty hopes' I think and believe 'One can dream' and dreams come true and miracles happen...

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janaba MOULa KI #154268, Minkata KI #4525 , Gehn KI # 16392, TOC KI # 86963
MO:ULa is

This is intriguing and has potential. I especially like the name, containing Salve and all Very clever.

I don't know what the name would be in D'ni, but in Latin salve means "safe, be well, greetings, health to you," somewhat like shorah. Age is "to do, to manage, conduct, to spend (one's time)," or an exhortation to a person "go!, Do!, take care (of)!" So the name has even more depth of meaning... Very nice.

I clicked, then clicked some more as I went through the demo. That's a good sign of success so far, I would say. I'm interested to see what more you do with it. Not sure about the gory stuff, either, but if it is historical violence it would certainly match similar storylines in the other Myst/Uru games.

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We are the shapers and the caretakers of this metaverse. How we honor ourselves and others largely determines what we bring into being.

A story: CavernScents Journey

Ghaelen: KI# 23059

Greetings and Shorah all,

The chamber seems to be largely unglitched now, and there should be a slideshow to follow it shortly. Apart from that I have been asking around external resource sites such as CGTalk, Deviant Art, NewGrounds and so on to get people to help me with the project - to be fair it may have been complex back in 1990, but in modern times a point and click game with a few gimicks is easy enough to make.

However, there seems to be very little positive response to the creation and support of such a project and while I love the idea of "write it because you can" I simply can't invest creative time into a fan-fiction project without a goal in mind.
I'll leave the site up for now and keep my ears open for an news from the URUcrew, but for now I think I'm gonna hang up my hat and wish you all the best of luck.

Shevek

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CHAMBER 0 (demo)

Just saw your demo...Good Job!!

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Shorah,

LAHI

KI# 00270844
"...there is always more than one way to skin a reekoo" - Aitrus, BoT