The situation is this: We need people to go through our forums, gather and organize all relevant data/pictures/design decisions/ideas/etc, and then post all of that into an organized wiki. Sound easy enough? The thing is, there are currently 11,340 posts in 1086 topics, and that's a lot of work to do! Well, many hands make light work, and before we can continue with the project we need to knock this obstacle out of the way. Right now it's difficult to proceed because everything is disorganized; and because a lot of data was lost some time ago, it's hard to tell what stuff survived the data loss, what stuff needs to be done or redone, or even where to look to find out if something is lost, survives, or needs to be redone. It's a big mess! And that's where the wiki updating comes in. Never updated a wiki before? Well no worries, it's not very hard to learn, if you're willing to put in the effort.
We also need people who simply scan through the threads, pick out and summarize the relevent facts and data, and post their findings so that someone else can put those findings into the wiki in an organized manner. Here's the official request from our fearless leader, Paulo Monteiro:
Look guys, what we need at this precise moment is not testers, not even modellers or animators. We need dedicated Myst fans. Our problem is simple: we have a huge volume of data which has been blown to smithereens years ago. It is here, thanks to the commendable efforts of our staff, but it is completely out of place.
So this project is now open to ALL MYST FANS who desire to help putting this data back in place. It's just a wiki, a simple wiki, that has to be organized again. But there is a lot of data.
(See http://www.ilathid.com/boards/index.php/topic,1641.msg2812566.html#msg2812566)
And the sign up sheet's here: http://www.ilathid.com/boards/index.php/topic,2153.0.html
For those of you who have never heard of Ages of Ilathid before, I'll mention a few details about it.
Ilathid is a fan-made game in the style of Riven and original Myst. When released, it will be free of cost. Our ultimate goal is that all Myst fans will be able to play it--whether they run Mac, PC, or Linux, or speak Spanish, Dutch, French, etc (of course, Linux and specific-language support is dependent on whether anybody from those sectors helps us to implement it--i.e., if we can't speak Chinese, we obviously can't make a Chinese language version, but if a Chinese speaker volunteers to help us then we're willing to make that language version, same with Linux). Miscellaneous: We have a legal agreement with Cyan which permits us to make the game. We have our own game engine, based on Python. Ilathid has been around since 2004, at least. We are recruiting talented artists, writers, modelers, musicians, coders, translators, etc. to help out with other aspects of the project. And nope, we don't know the completion date (I knew you were going to ask that)!
For the shameless purpose of tempting you to help us, here's a link to our website, where you can find a gorgeous gallery, marvelous movies with astounding animations (I recommend Trailer 2), and a link to the less-than-perfect public forums (the private forums are what we really need help organizing, and you won't be able to see them until you're upgraded): http://ilathid.com/
And best of all, the demo! If this doesn't lure you in, I don't know what will. Sadly, it's for PC only at the moment (the Mac version of Ilathid has only run on one developer's computer so far). http://www.ilathid.com/setup.exe
Be sure to click on the menu at the end and listen to the music that goes with it. It's one of my favorite Myst pieces, second only to Kadish gallery!