Revisiting D'ni
I don't know about other people, but I have phases where I go back to previous fandom favourites and geek and obsess over them like I used to. Earlier this fall, it was Firefly, before that was .hack//, before that was... you get the picture.
Lately I've been wanting to play the Myst games again and in particular URU: Ages Beyond Myst. The last time I played it was shortly after I got it in 2005 and later when URU Live died, the expansion pack Path of the Shell and To D'ni.
I don't know if you've ever visited the Myst portion of Eldar-Luin, but it's a small section of my website dedicated to the writings of Myst. More specifically, the journals. Why? Because the writing and the story surrounding Myst are intriguing to me. I have all three novels, and all the games. I've still yet to finish Revelation and End of Ages because of my habit of playing 'til the near end and just stopping cold turkey for no particular reason, but that's beside the point.
I love the journals and started years ago on copying out (I know I'm odd sometimes) all the journals of the Myst games and posting them. Why? Why not? Now I have more than one computer so I can actually type them out. Beats hand writing them out any day! (Yes, I hand wrote the journals for the original Myst, then typed them out.) Having two computers now is great because there are journals everywhere in URU. Everywere!
Having forgotten most of the game (URU), I had created a new character a few days ago and was making my way though Yeesha's Age lesson again. I was copying out a journal last night from the expansion pack Path of the Shell which was written back in 2004 - each entry begins with the date.
I got to the last three entries of the journal and the dates actually jumped from 3/1/04 to 1/16/2011.
I did a double, then triple take. Then grinned. The journal entry mentioned me. "Is someone else here? I'm not sure I'm alone anymore." etc etc.
I love it when games do things like this. So technically in my game canon, Douglas Sharper was alone in D'ni for seven years. That's a long time to be a hermit without journaling.
Myst Art
I have always loved the topical maps of Myst island and others that Atrus draws in his journals. I don't do well with maps or at least I haven't tried enough to know enough. Somewhere in my ever growing drawing reference library, I have printouts of the Age sketches.
I guess the Myst bug bit me when I was watching a documentary on the making of all the five main Myst games; URU was not part of the documentary since it is not part of the Atrus storyline. While watching, it kept showing concept art from the game and I wanted to draw. (Drawing urges are weird sometimes.) So beside one of my usual fantasy character designs, I started doing a series of islands using the Mechanical Age map as a guideline.
I loved the result and since I had thought up a very strange environment lately, I tried to draw the structure in the same style with mixed results. I'm trying a larger more detailed front version and will post it on DA shortly.
Also, in doing a hint website, I stumbled across some news informing me that URU: Live is back online.
Looks like I'll need to make my PC wireless in order to get into that. I missed UL last time around and I don't want to miss it this time.
Lately I've been wanting to play the Myst games again and in particular URU: Ages Beyond Myst. The last time I played it was shortly after I got it in 2005 and later when URU Live died, the expansion pack Path of the Shell and To D'ni.
I don't know if you've ever visited the Myst portion of Eldar-Luin, but it's a small section of my website dedicated to the writings of Myst. More specifically, the journals. Why? Because the writing and the story surrounding Myst are intriguing to me. I have all three novels, and all the games. I've still yet to finish Revelation and End of Ages because of my habit of playing 'til the near end and just stopping cold turkey for no particular reason, but that's beside the point.
I love the journals and started years ago on copying out (I know I'm odd sometimes) all the journals of the Myst games and posting them. Why? Why not? Now I have more than one computer so I can actually type them out. Beats hand writing them out any day! (Yes, I hand wrote the journals for the original Myst, then typed them out.) Having two computers now is great because there are journals everywhere in URU. Everywere!
Having forgotten most of the game (URU), I had created a new character a few days ago and was making my way though Yeesha's Age lesson again. I was copying out a journal last night from the expansion pack Path of the Shell which was written back in 2004 - each entry begins with the date.
I got to the last three entries of the journal and the dates actually jumped from 3/1/04 to 1/16/2011.
I did a double, then triple take. Then grinned. The journal entry mentioned me. "Is someone else here? I'm not sure I'm alone anymore." etc etc.
I love it when games do things like this. So technically in my game canon, Douglas Sharper was alone in D'ni for seven years. That's a long time to be a hermit without journaling.
Myst Art
I have always loved the topical maps of Myst island and others that Atrus draws in his journals. I don't do well with maps or at least I haven't tried enough to know enough. Somewhere in my ever growing drawing reference library, I have printouts of the Age sketches.
I guess the Myst bug bit me when I was watching a documentary on the making of all the five main Myst games; URU was not part of the documentary since it is not part of the Atrus storyline. While watching, it kept showing concept art from the game and I wanted to draw. (Drawing urges are weird sometimes.) So beside one of my usual fantasy character designs, I started doing a series of islands using the Mechanical Age map as a guideline.
I loved the result and since I had thought up a very strange environment lately, I tried to draw the structure in the same style with mixed results. I'm trying a larger more detailed front version and will post it on DA shortly.
Also, in doing a hint website, I stumbled across some news informing me that URU: Live is back online.
Looks like I'll need to make my PC wireless in order to get into that. I missed UL last time around and I don't want to miss it this time.