Obdormio.com

It’s been two weeks, so I guess it’s time to face it: Uru is gone, for now at least (hope springs eternal…). I don’t really have time for extended mourning due to imminent exams, but I finally took the time to hang up the Journey Cloth I bought before Christmas. If I can’t have the real thing, at least I can have a reminder. Courtesy of my seldom used camera, here are a couple of shots of how it turned out:

My desk, with the Journey Cloth hanging over it. It was actually good to get something on that wall, it’s been a bit bare.

Here’s a close-up of the cloth. It’s very cool, just the way you’d imagine they would look if the game were real. The hand print even glows in the dark, but it can sadly not be activated by touching it.

For those wanting their own Journey Cloths, look here.

I want to talk briefly about Dreamfall. If you haven’t played it yet, beware that this post will contain spoilers and that you might want to avoid it. No spoilers beyond chapter 5, though, mainly because I haven’t gotten beyond chapter 5 yet.

Dreamfall is the sequel, of sorts, to The Longest Journey, one my my absolute favorite games. I loved that game, most of all its story, so I naturally had high expectations and hopes for Dreamfall and the continuation of the story. I’m not disappointed here, it is a wonderful and intriguing story so far, and I’m looking forwards to seeing the rest of it.

The Longest Journey was a pretty traditional adventure game. It had a point-and-click interface, and plenty of devilish puzzles. Ernest Adams cautions us against designing games where you have to “use the lampshade with the bulldozer”. Some of my friends took this as a challenge (should you ever find a game called Cygnus, make sure to collect any lampshades you see), and maybe Funcom did as well, since The Longest Journey requires you to use the rubber duck with the clamp and the clothesline.

Dreamfall, on the other hand, is marketed as an action-adventure. In addition to puzzles, it includes action sequences such as sneaking and combat. It is 3D, controlled by keyboard or x-box controller, not point-and-click. The news of these changes were received with a lot of skepticism on various forums, many felt concerned that this wouldn’t be their kind of game at all. Despite a lot of trust in Game Director Ragnar Tørnquist, we couldn’t help but feel a bit of fear that the action sequences would ruin the game. Well, now I have the game, I’ve played the game, and, speaking for myself, I can say this:

They do. They really, really do.

Not the whole game, mind you. The game as a whole is still wonderful, the story fantastic, and the game world beautiful. It is well worth the money. It’s just those parts where the action plays a big role, they are completely ruined for me.

Take for instance the Victory Hotel. In Adams’s column, linked above, one of the headings are “You Have 30 Seconds to Figure Out This Level Before You Die”. This pretty much sums up how I felt in the Victory Hotel level. There was absolutely no enjoyment. It was a matter of sneaking around, with no clue what to do and no proper opportunity to find out, because if I made a single unsneaky move, or stood still in the same place for too long, or forgot to say the alphabet backwards every two minutes or so, Marcus would come running up to kill me. I had to find a corner where I wouldn’t be detected, stand there thinking, then sneak off to see if my theories were usable, run back when I found they weren’t, except I couldn’t run, I had to sneak, which is very agonizingly slow. Like I said, there was no enjoyment.

I sought out a walkthrough in the end, so I could learn what I needed to do, just so I could move on from that bit. I still nearly got killed by Marcus and the patient on the top floor. Shortly thereafter I had to deal with the cave trolls, where I actually had to fight the buggers, which again afforded no enjoyment, unlike the wheel puzzle that followed.

Right now, I am at a location reminding me very much of the Victory Hotel, the fourth floor of WATIcorp. It’s about sneaking and hiding form the security robots, or being blasted and killed if you can’t. No enjoyment. I expect I shall seek out a walkthrough for this too.

Now, as I sit there, wanting so bad to move on to the good bits (which are very good), I can’t help but wonder if including these action elements did any good. There are, luckily, not very many of them, so I think an action game fan might be disappointed and bored by the game as a whole. Adventure game fans who are after puzzles and story, like me, will be frustrated and annoyed by the action sequences. The only people who win are the ones who love both.

Here is a Venn diagram I just made up. It might not reflect reality:

As you can see, both 1 and 2 are clearly bigger than 3. I can’t help but thinking this is a bit like putting a kiss into an action movie and thinking that women who like romance movies will flock to theaters to see it. Or even more fitting, putting a gunfight into a romantic comedy, and thinking that action movie fans will camp out for tickets.

I want to stress this again; the non-action parts of Dreamfall are fantastic. The story is wonderful. The game is well worth the money. It is a good game. But The Longest Journey was better.

Well, as there is only one day left of school, it looks like we will not get to play the final Red Dwarf adventure that I wrote. I’m declassifying some of my notes, and may soon put up the adventure scenario, even though it is untested. For now, you can have a look at absolutely nothing, everything’s classified again. Caches are cheating.

I really hope I can find some new players when I go to university next year, this game is too fun to just stop now. Maybe I’ll even manage to make some more adventures during summer, so I’ll have some ready ones when the time comes.

Oh, and Davey, I hope you find a new group too.

YES!

Oh, sweet GameTap, yes!

And I only have my useless laptop! I need a new computer, pronto!

I was working on the next and possibly last Red Dwarf adventure for my group, and I was puzzling out some ships, when it struck me that there seemed to be some small inconsistencies regarding ship sizes and numbers of crew or passengers. I’ve just been through all three books, making myself some statistics, and here’s what I found:

There are five categories of size in the Red Dwarf RPG; Small, Medium, Large, Bloody Huge and Immense. As far as I can see, no official vessel has been put in the Immense-category.

For Small ships, the absolutely lowest number of passenger capability is 1, and the highest is 8. For Medium, the lowest is 4 and the highest is 40. For Large, the lowest is 9 and the largest 2000. Yeah, I was shocked, too. For Bloody Huge, the lowest is 150, and the highest is 5000.

The reason I began this count was because I kept seeing Large ships, with wildly different numbers, and I started wondering if any ship could be squished into Large with a bit of imagination. Certainly, these overlap.

Looking at required crew, there is little more to gain. For Small, not counting automated pods, the lowest requirement is 1, and the highest 2. Medium is exactly the same. Large has 2 as lowest and 4 as highest, and Bloody Huge has 3. As both highest and lowest.

Obviously, these numbers are not the most important factor in determining size. Red Dwarf is Bloody Huge and houses 1169, because much of it is cargo space, docks, ship bays, shops, recreation areas, and all the other things needed to form what is essentially a flying city. Enlightenment, on the other hand, houses 2000, but is classified as Large. It has no use for cargo decks, but does have a deck devoted entirely to sports and sexual recreation. Bloody Huge Leviathan houses a mere 150, but is mostly made up of cargo decks, being a transport ship. There is logic to this.

The ships I question are the likes of the Centauri, the Nova 5 and the Hermes. They don’t seem like they should be in the same size category as the Esperanto and the simulant ship from Gunmen of the Apocalypse.

The real problem though is with Blue Midget, White Midget and Starbug. Each of these need a minimum of one pilot, and can house up to four people. And they’re all classified as Medium.

Come on. Even before the season 7 warping, Starbug is magnitudes bigger than Blue Midget. Blue Midget is a car! A tiny little cab, barely room for four to sit up in the cockpit, probably a small luggage compartment, and then the engines. That’s it. That’s Medium, according to this, along with zeppelins and personnel shuttles with room for forty people and their luggage.

White Midget seems to be slightly larger than the blue type, but it’s in the same series, and the differences seem to be mainly cosmetic.

Starbug is a home for four people, beds, small kitchen, cargo bay, medibay, three decks, for crying out loud! It does not belong in the same size category as Blue Midget. Problem is, it doesn’t belong with the Nova 5 either, and definitely not with Enlightenment.

You might say that this is all totally irrelevant, and that it only matters if you’re in space combat and want to be boringly accurate about movement, and well, you’d be right. It has little to no impact on the actual gaming. Even so, it bothers me. I like things, even inconsequential things, to make sense. That’s why I made my own rules for hologram simulation. Compared to the madness of the original hologram rules, this is nothing, but I’m still considering writing myself some clearer guidelines. Maybe put in a new class between Medium and Large, or put a new Tiny class at the beginning, redefining Small and Medium.

Anyway, it can wait, I just wanted to rant about it for now. The adventure is as good as done, and I think I’m finished with everything I absolutely needed to do, leaving tomorrow and the rest of today off for things I want to do. Like pine for Dreamfall. Joy.

It’s an Untìl Uru meme! Yay! Just the sort of thing I needed.

And, of course, memes are made to be spread and posted on blogs everywhere. Spread it. Even if you don’t want to play, spread it anyway! It’s a meme, that’s what you’re supposed to do!

Of course, the best thing would be if you wanted to play as well…

A big and important thing happened some time ago. I didn’t say anything about it at the time, because of circumstances I’ll get back to, but I’m saying it now.

Cyan Worlds, Inc. opened an official Untìl Uru shard.

Are you familiar with Uru? Or with Cyan? They’re the people who made MYST, one of the most popular and successful games ever. A few years ago they made Uru, which was something so rare as a MMOAG, a Massive Multiplayer Online Adventure Game. Or at least, it was intended to be. If you know nothing of this, allow me to briefly recount the sad history of Uru.

Uru was originally made to be an online game, an adventure/puzzle game for multiple players. The idea was that players had to cooperate and interact in order to advance in the game, and to keep it going, new content would constantly be added, and storylines would constantly run. The intention was to make it a pure multiplayer game. Sadly, their publisher wanted an offline portion, one that could be played without access to the online part. Cyan made the necessary changes, and you can still buy and play that offline bit as “Uru - Ages Beyond Myst”.

To differentiate between this offline bit and the main part, they called the online bit Uru Live. Or would have. Uru Live never even got started.

There was an online bit, briefly. It was called the Prologue, and was intended as a period of bugs solving and testing before the launch of the actual Uru Live. They gradually increased the number of players allowed in, to test their capabilities and fix any problems encountered. I was fortunate enough to be amongst those allowed to play online in this Prologue. There was little new content in the Prologue, all the good stuff was saved for Live. Sadly, we never got so far.

Supposedly due to low interest and few signups, Uru Live was cancelled before it even got started. The Prologue ended, the servers were shut down, and everybody were left with nothing but the offline game.

Two expansions packs were made, with the content that was planned for Live. “Uru: To D’ni”, and “Uru: Path of the Shell”. These were then republished with the original game as “Uru: Complete Chronicles”. And that seemed to be that.

Then, Cyan released their server code, and allowed fans to set up their own servers, or shards as they are called. These recreated what was available in the Prologue, and allowed players to play together again. It was not Uru Live, there was no new content or official support, no bug fixes, nothing more than what was already there. It was called Untìl Uru, intended to keep the community and the game alive until… until something happened. And we loved it. This was in 2004.

Now something has happened. In February, Cyan opened an official Untìl Uru shard, D’mala. Recently, the released an update, an update, with bug fixes. They have, apparently, received limited funding for a trial run, to see if there is still interest in the game. I couldn’t play then, because I was at school with only my small laptop,but now I’m home again with my old, rickety and buggy but Uru-capable computer, and I’m loving every moment I get to spend in the cavern.

And that’s where we’re at now. In need of interest for the game. I have heard some numbers, though none of them official. There are already nearly two thousand registered players, if I am correctly informed. I’m one of them. Had I my way, every one of you who read this post would be one too.

That’s the story. Sad, but with a hopeful ending. For now. But that probably matters little to you if you’ve never played the game. I highly recommend getting hold of a copy, even without Live, the offline game is very verygood.

Have you ever played MYST? Uru is slightly similar, but very different. Have you played realMYST or “Myst V: End of Ages”? They are more similar, but still not quite the same. Uru is a 3d world, unlike most of the Myst games, and it is a third person game, you have an avatar on the screen. It involves more physical puzzles than the other games. It is set in a number of worlds, but begins in the desert in New Mexico, and ends in a cavern beneath it.

The story is complicated, and I fear I would do it injustice to try and explain it here. You should play it and see for yourself. If you are at all familiar with the Myst mythos, you’ll recognize some places and people and names, and be amazed. If you’re not at all familiar with the Myst mythos, everything will be new and exciting, and you’ll still be amazed.

“Uru - Ages Beyond Myst” is dirt cheap now. The Untìl Uru patch and the account registration is free. Get a copy. Then go to the Untìl Uru website and download a patch and get an invitation for registration. Log on to D’mala. Only then should you begin to play the game, because then you will have a cavern full of friendly people eager to play it with you.

And when you’re converted, tell a friend, tell all your friends, post it on you blog, like I’m doing. If you’ve ever tried Uru, but not Uru Live, or if you were in the Prologue but didn’t bother with Untìl Uru, or if you’ve ever thought that a MMOAG sounds like a cool idea, here’s the chance.

Hope to see you in the cavern.

Well, we finally got around to playing some more Red Dwarf, which is insanely fun. Since the adventure is over, my notes are now declassified. Any AI wishing to draw inspiration from them, can find them on the RDRPG page, under Episode 2 - Horticulture. That’s the short title, the long one can be read above this post.

Hopefully, we’ll have time to play some D&D on Thursday as well.