Deep Island vs. Open Cave vs. Gehn

[Deledrius]

A few factual corrections:

PhysX is not open source. It's a proprietary commercial physics engine just like Havok.
MOSS was not developed by Cyan or through any direct contributions from them. It is a fanmade open-source server in the same way as DIRTSAND. Cyan has never released their server code.
Alcugs was developed before MOUL. As I recall, it was in development even before and during the operation of the UU servers.
Uru: Complete Chronicles was released in 2004.

[Annabelle]

I updated my text

[hhhenry]

Stability
I enjoyed The Open Cave but the City Of Dimensions kept crashing and one crash took down my operating system. I have never seen Win7 crash like that!! I had to restore my computer from a 3 week old image. I have never had to do that with any MYST game. I'd like to talk to them about it but my account on their board is messed up. It thinks I'm under age (at 68??) and wants me to send a CAPRA from to...and no address and no way to email the admin. I would apprecaiate if someone here can give me a contact.
Needless to say, I'm not going there anymore!

Fan Ages on Deep Island - some are unstable on computers with weak graphics but fine on the latest graphics cards. Moving water seems a problem and getting out of sight of water seems to help. Odema is pretty but the least stable. It used to crash my old XP machine on arrival.
Most beautiful - Jonea, Jonae Hood, Zepher Cove (moving water), Tehr'Dovah (moving water), Fen

Minkata and Gehn tend to be lonely with few explorers. I have been unable to find partners to complete Annoy {what it should be called] or the pellet task, let alone a door run. Deep Island is based on POTS so there is no need for partners for anything.

[Karkadann]

That's one of the reasons why I stick to age writing, their seems to be a whole category of weird stuff that for the most part is exclusive to the online version because the offline version is less complex and has most of the bugs worked out

[Deledrius]

I updated my text

Awesome. Thanks.

It's not easy answering the sort of question that needs context, and Uru's context is... complicated.

[GPNMilano]

Annabelle, Also you mentioned that Alcugs server code is added to Uru:CC through Drizzle. This isn't true at all. Drizzle downloads fan ages and age improvements (OfflineKI, Relto Pages etc) but it isn't associated with Alcugs server code in any way.

[Annabelle]

NEW POST (I deleted the older one to replace it with this one... mostly I just changed my last sentence)

Thank you Deledrius!

This morning I was in a hurry so I just had time to modify my text, I'm always open to corrections

All the information I gathered in my text are taken from many sources and even from my own understanding which can lead to biais information.

Annabelle, Also you mentioned that Alcugs server code is added to Uru:CC through Drizzle. This isn't true at all. Drizzle downloads fan ages and age improvements (OfflineKI, Relto Pages etc) but it isn't associated with Alcugs server code in any way

Thank you GPNMilano for your input! I made some additional corrections to the paragraph where I'm talking about Drizzle. It should make more sense now.

[Yali]

Just a correction, Uru in 2001 to 2002 was known as MUDPIE and was the original pre-beta version of Uru that had some different gameplay elements (such as no journey doors in each age and the lack of instancing for the most part). When Ubi came into the picture (2003) they demanded a single-player version of Uru which led in turn to the modification of the online portion for consistency sake. This also split Uru between Live and Offline. Before then (2002) Uru was solely an online project.

February 9th 2004 was when Live was shut down and CC came out that summer after the release of PotS. I remember because this was the first time I played Uru was right before PotS was released. Until Uru began in 2004 and Myst V in fall 2005 contained re-purposed second year Uru content.

[Tweek]

Not quite true Yali

1997 - 2000/2001 - DIRT/Parable (single player)

2000/2001 - 2002 - MUPDIE

2002 - 2003 - Uru Live/Prologue & Uru Ages Beyond Myst

[Annabelle]

I know I disgress from the original topic...

So with info given by Tweek, I should change the birth date of URU from 2001 to 1997, is that right?

I never heard about playing possibility starting as quite early as 1997. Maybe your 2000/2001 make more sense since I've talked with a beta-tester/programmer that would have worked with Cyan and he said to me he played an early version of URU as early as in 2000 which would tend to be right.

One thing I never understood because the documentation lacks on the subject is the possible 2 or 3 servers running at the same time, one of them being Choru. Is that during the MUPDIE project that those 2 or 3 servers were active?

I found this:
DIRT means "D'ni In Real Time"
MUDPIE means "Multi-User DIRT, Persistent Internet Entertainment"

It's hard to go deep in the History because the available sources are

on one hand: wrong...
...like Wikipedia for instance, stating the start of the open-source as early as April 2011 (but when you follow their source, it redirect you to the "Open Letter to Open Source" infamous post that ultimately paved the way to MOSS in 2012...)

and on the other hand: like old fossils' sayings...
..."Ahhh young lady... I remember clearly back in the time, I used to play URU Live, oh yeah, what a good time it was! I registered in 2001, or was it in 2002?!? Ah well! It was back when everything was better. Did I say I played URU back in the good old days? Oh it was something to be part of, I'm telling you young lady, it was... I remember very well in 2003, yeah that's right in 2002!"

So it is hard to get clear & factual real informations out of those really imprecise texts let me tell you!