Troubles In Teledahn!

[Annabelle]

It's something that can be frustrating but you have to remember that the authors of a 3D environment has a big picture in their head and that doesn't include the glitches. We are used to see them in every 3D environments except they weren't initially planned. Human mind & behaviour has created this side activity not the opposite. There's no 3D game with the sole goal of finding glitches and exploits. It's an activity that his part of the deal but wasn't planned at all.

For Cyan, there are Easter Eggs, they did (in the past) patched some holes but they don't anymore. They don't have the time & funding anyway.

For the balcony jump, it was surely really nice back in 2003 when the bevin was not reachable in any other way. Skydivers back then were entering a new world litteraly... These days, apart from the thrill of it, there's nothing really to it. You cannot reach any secret location either. The bevin main section was closed to exploration and the seed/egg room was locked down <--- that was the secret location. Now just a simple visit to your hood age will be enough to see that these out-of-reach locations are rather normal zones.

There are more locations to explore. I'll invite you to look at some of my posts on MOULa's forum. You should have a lot of insight on what can be reached. Type "Info Central", "skydiving" and/or "Release" in search engine alongside my name, you'll find my posts. I made more than 150 marker quests to reach everything that is possible to reach.

I think we are going far off-topic right now on this thread, the main issue of it has been already solved.

[Christian Walther]

We may be going off-topic, but since we’re still answering questions by the original poster, I’m taking the liberty of continuing in this direction…

Only found one skydiver/glitcher at YouTube so far, someone called FrauGrimhilde.

I know of a couple videos by Mouski, but I’m sure there are more.

If you know of any really cool places to, er, skydive too, that is places that take you to special areas you can explore, Easter eggs, relto pages or books, I would sure love information on them! If not actual instructions then the name alone should be enough to research.

As Annabelle said, she and other skydivers have made numerous marker quests that explain how to get to a lot of interesting places. You can follow these on your own, but much more fun – for both – is to have someone else teach you how to reach a particular place. I encourage you to visit the city (Ae'gura) when there is a bunch of people there and ask around e.g. “can anyone show me how to climb onto the roof of the bridge?” It’s very likely that there will be someone there who knows how to do it and will gladly teach you. (That bridge roof in particular is a good starting point for a number of routes all over Ae'gura.)

… Cyan, the Miller brothers or whoever is responsible. Maybe they were never really gamers …

It’s funny you mention this now, because that’s exactly the case. Have you watched the video of Robyn Miller’s recent GDC talk? He explicitly mentions it a few times. Frankly, many of us prefer it that way. I am not a gamer, and it’s likely that I would have found the Myst/Uru games much less attractive if they had been made by gamers for gamers.

That said, I do enjoy skydiving and would love to have more intentionally placed easter-egg-style climbing locations. But you have to keep in mind that while these days skydiving is a fun and mostly harmless activity, at the time when the content was new and there was an actual story being played out with the DRC etc., cheating like this could spoil things for everyone and having players where they weren’t supposed to be could be really disruptive to the story. I have some understanding for Cyan’s eagerness to patch glitches in light of that. And finally, it has also happened that their efforts have unintentionally made things more interesting for skydivers: In Until Uru, it was quite easy to walk up the ropes onto the tent on Tokotah Plaza and sit on its roof. At some point, additional collision walls were added to inhibit that – with the effect that we now have a much more challenging and rewarding way of climbing much higher on the tent!

[Annabelle]

At some point, additional collision walls were added to inhibit that – with the effect that we now have a much more challenging and rewarding way of climbing much higher on the tent!

Always expect skydivers to come with imaginative ways to overcome obstacles

One of the main entries for out-of-reach locations in the city is the suspended bridge (Christian mentionned it in his previous post). This bridge was a design lack that slipped through and make us very happy. The bridge could (only theorically) be removed if Cyan would decide to do it as it is encompassed in a SDL variable. SDL variables in a given age are options that can be toggle to show different states. If the bridge had been more beta-tested (because in the first version of URU, it was toggled OFF), they would surely had removed all the stickiness to the collisions disabling us the ability to climb on top of them.

URU is not like many online games. There might be gamers that come in URU and enjoy it but for the most, if I do a quick survey of my buddies; not many folks consider themselves "gamers". I don't consider myself as such. I've said it to many explorers already: if I'm not playing on URU, I don't play any game, I'm doing something else that interest me. I don't have any console. I do have PCs but they only holds URU and few other solo graphic adventure games. My over curiosity made me looked in every corners of every ages in URU and I shared (this word is very important in URU community: sharing) my knowledge throughout my quests and my one-to-one help. Sharing is important. I wouldn't be as skilled as I'm if I wouldn't had received teaching by others at some point. I then taught new explorers who then taught me back and taught others and so on.

[Charura]

if I'm not playing on URU, I don't play any game, I'm doing something else that interest me.

Like sleeping?..lol

[Annabelle]

if I'm not playing on URU, I don't play any game, I'm doing something else that interest me.

Like sleeping?..lol

Like...anything that I've decided to keep private because that's my private life. With the phenomenon of the Web 2.0 anyone with or MOSTLY WITHOUT anything of interest thinks it's a "good" idea to share everything with the entire planet. I might be younger than many and I "should" evolve in that "modern environment" except I have self-respect and hold a high value on private life, therefore... you had everything I was inclined to tell about what's I'm doing outside URU community.

And I come and go...you might see me a lot during a short period of time and then it's "death on the line" period for me. It depends mostly on what goes outside the community and not the opposite

[DreamBliss]

Well I shall definitely hook up with some skydivers, should I find some, in the city sometime in the next week or so.

My position is a little strange I guess. I was a gamer, identified myself as that. Loved to play Deathmatch, especially split-screen. Spent hours in Halo and Quake. My first website was dedicated to Quake. Later I had one for Unreal. I always gravitated more towards the tools than the games though when playing by myself. Liked to make maps/levels (ages in Uru) and model stuff. Created a village in the trees for Morrowind.

But then RL stuff happened, a lot of stuff, the sort of stuff Annabelle is of the opinion people shouldn't share publicly. I changed. I grew disenfranchised with the game industry - too many broken promises and disappointments. Moved away from my friends. Split-screen vanished from the consoles. My 360 and PS3 both died. I don't keep up on gaming news anymore. More interested in older titles I always wanted to play but didn't for various reasons.

However I still love to play games, I just want to be the one making them. My rules, my way. I'm tired of everyone else inundating me with their stuff - from what they think makes a good game to the programming in the news. My point, that I am now finally getting to, is that my experience as a gamer has taught me very well what makes a good game and what doesn't. My experience as a modder, for lack of a better term, has taught me very well what makes a good toolset and what doesn't.

So right now I have a very good idea what I want to do and what the final product should be, But at present I have little knowledge of how to do it. So that's where I am. In the process of redefining myself by freeing myself of definitions, and trying to learn how to do what I want to do. I think my 10 years or so of experience in the various areas related to gaming have given me unique and needed insight. I do not think that the Miller's not being gamers is any kind of strength. Because they have no experience with what fun is, or what makes good tool design. And isn't this exactly what we see in the Myst games? You can not really define them as fun by any normal definition. And the tools are almost non-existant. I think if the Millers would sit down and play games, especially other adventure games and their own games, they would gain valuable insight that would aid them in figuring out what to do next.

But that's just my opinion, and yes, way off topic. But nice to express anyhow. There is some merit to being to speak out publicly about some things.

[Sirius]

Sorry for keeping this thread off topic, but...

And isn't this exactly what we see in the Myst games? You can not really define them as fun by any normal definition.

About the fun thing:
Most people consider killing NPCs is fun, and spending hours to crack a puzzle is not.
And yet, I prefer a LOT solving puzzles in Myst than killing NPCs in any FPS.
So, the meaning of "fun" always depends of the person using this word.

Plus I really think the Miller brothers not being gamers is a strength, because Myst is all about ambience, and not about using physics/killing npcs/levelling up.

Oh, and don't get me wrong, I love skydiving ! I spent most of my time on MOUL climbing out of the walkable area, often with Annabelle (though she always bested me ). But that's just a way to keep logging into the game, I don't consider it a real part of Uru's gameplay.


About tools:
I tend to think it's not the tool that makes the person a good modeller, but it's what he can model on it.
Though of course it's really frustrating when you don't like the tool you have

[Annabelle]

I always bested my teachers in skydiving... I remember an evening beyond collisions in the Kadish Gallery with one of my teachers at the time, JohnB, he was "still" teaching me stuff and it was maybe the first time I made it to that area and I told him out of the blues: "Oh BTW, here's a picture of me standing in the middle of the Wall room in Gahreesen, I made my way there yesterday". The reaction he had is hard to describe... It's like going in search of the Holy Grail of the Skydiving being a newbie and reach it on Day 1.

After that, I was "launched" . I met Sirius (in fact it was the other way around) and he taught me a lot of stuff. One of his finding in Relto, climbing to the mountain with only walk-jumps & run-jumps, may have faded out from explorers' memory but I made a quest on Minkata shard: "30 markers for a busy day" inspired by his route. A lot of his teaching, especially in Ahnonay, are included in my own quests.

If you want to learn how to build ages of your own, it's the forum & especially the wiki to look for. You will find all the tools necessary. I should point out that you will maybe be a bit frustrated at the "design" of the game. I don't see it as I'm not a coder but many tend to say: "Uru code is a mess more than a code". Miller Brothers might not have been gamers, they were not good coders either . Definitely good artists with too many ideas... they left us a wonderful unfinished 3D world. Skydiving can be depressing too by the fact that you will go to the limits of the ages and see how near they are and how much there is stuff missing everywhere .