June 2023 All Guilds Meeting Summary

Here is the summary for the 158th All Guilds Meeting, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!

Contents

1. Firmament
2. Events in the Cavern
3. Mysterium
4. OpenUru
5. D’ni Language Classes
6. R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
7. Miscellanea

Firmament

Firmament has been released on May 18 on Steam and GOG. Discussion forums can be found on Facebook, Discord, Reddit, Steam, and there is also a wiki. Let us know if you find other venues 🙂 Reviews have been posted on (possible spoilers) The Spokesman-Review, GeekWire, Shacknews, Inverse.

Interestingly, the game includes “AI assisted content” for journals, logs, songs, letters, backer portraits, wallpapers, banners, voiced announces and other speeches.

Unfortunately, the release was marred by various bugs, mostly related to missing voiceover lines or getting stuck in places. So far three patches have been released, fixing most of the issues; Cyan is hard at work at fixing the remaining ones. Most bugs related to getting stuck can be fixed by pausing the game, select “Settings”, then from the “Controls” menu (the default), move the cursor all the way to the bottom and select “Teleport to safe spot”. This will reset both your position and that of the objects and devices you have interacted with.

In a post on Facebook, they asked anyone still experiencing issues, to submit an email to support(at)cyan(dot)com with the subject line “Firmament Bugs” and the following information:

• on Windows PC: attach the dxdiag report, and attach the complete contents of your %LocalAppData%\Firmament\Saved directory, zipped up, to your email;
• on MacOS: attach screenshots of the “About this Mac” page, and the Hardware and Graphics/Display, and attach the complete contents of your Application Support/Epic/Firmament/Saved folder inside your Home folder to your email;
• include details of the bug, with any repro steps if possible.

The system requirements are a minimum of an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X eight-core processor (16 CPUs), ~3.7 GHz or Intel i5 7000 series; 16 GB RAM of memory; AMD Radeon RX 5700XT or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB graphic card; DirectX 11; 20 GB disk space.

The game will release for PS4, PS5 and PS VR 2 at a later date. PC VR includes free roam and teleport modes and supports Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Rift S, and Quest 2 via Oculus Link.

Events in the Cavern

☛ June is Pride Month; banners are on display in the Guild of Messengers pub.

☛ Since Mysterium begins on June 30 (see below for more), the July All Guilds Meeting willl be postponed to July 8.

☛ IwonK will host a Wonky Talk (on her Twitch channel) on Friday 16 at 15:00 KIT in the Guild of Cookies’ Hood by the heek table. This month’s topic is child protagonists in video games. Feel free to suggest interesting games she could talk (and draw) about. As always, there will be cookies!

Mysterium

The annual Myst convention is less than a month away, on June 30 in Spokane (WA). The schedule is packed, with a visit to Cyan’s headquarters on Saturday, where Rand will answer questions; on top of that, a New Thing from Rium+, a mystery panel, Unwritten sessions and more.

Standard registration is hovering around the capacity cap of 250 people. The Committee has opened up an overflow registration queue for attendees who do not wish to go to Cyan, or would like to go if someone cannot attend. There are a total of 275 purchasable tickets for Mysterium this year, which  means there are only 25 overflow spots (likely less, at the time of this writing). The overflow tickets are also discounted.

If you are planning on attending Cyan on Saturday, a registration ticket has opened on the registration page for a bus ride; there is a limited number of these, and a buy in is required, as bus rental rates are very high right now. There is also a signup spreadsheet on the Mysterium Discord “Looking for People” subforum in the “Cyan Ride Share” thread for anyone who is bringing or renting a car, and would like to offer seats for other attendees.

☛ During the “Uru World-Building” panel on Friday 30 at 14:00 KIT, Doobes will hold a 50 min demonstration of Age building, using Blender for Korman. He also plans to show Age import via Sirius’ ZLZ Age Importer, to show how Cyan’s Ages are converted to Blend files for fixing, updating, etc., and what goes into that. There is also a chance that other programmers, Age builders, etc. will be able to join for a roundtable discussion during the demo.

☛ The creative prompt for June is “Scream”; the deadline is June 30. Entries for the “Spring” prompt for April were from Redwoodrroad, Laughingpineapple, Calum Traveler, IwonK, Talashar, and Tweek.

☛ For the latest info and more details, check the official website of the Mysterium Convention.

OpenUru

☛ Christopher Therburg gave an update on his Fall of D’ni Memorial Island project. The island is almost ready to open, possiblly in July or later in the summer. Christopher wrote and left a journal on the island, which describes the work on the memorial and the island and also tells the motivation for building it in the first place. The official name of the island is Bahntefoonet, D’ni for “Memorial Island”; the original name of the island is unknown.

Christopher also mentioned the other Age he found: he explored this Age a little more closely and at first glance it might be a watery Garden Age. Restoration for this Age is now at phase 1, and is tentatively planned to be released in 2024 or 2025.

D’ni Language Classes

R’Tayrtahn gave two updates, one for the D’ni Language Classes and one for the Story Nights. Another student has completed the 101 class and is working on their final exam!

Visitors are asked to not post pellet points into the hood imager: one of his former students and a close friend, Yutiel Yoshi, who passed away in 2018, is listed there. He has refrained from posting pellets to maintain her name at the top, as a form of memorial.

More about the D’ni Language Classes (click to expand)

• Those who would like to attend the lessons should contact Rehn via PM or KImail (KI# 58324), or on Discord (r’Tayrtahn#1317).
• The Guild of Instructors’ Hood will be open and public unless a class is in session. There are daytime openings Monday to Friday, at 12:00, 13:00 or 14:00 KIT, though availability is subject to change with little or no notice;
• evening openings are on Monday to Friday, at 20:00, 21:00 or 22:00 KIT, depending on the student’s schedule.
• Daytime availability is subject to change with little or no notice. Last-minute changes to class times are posted on the left-hand imager in the hood.

R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights

Story Night Europe and Original Story Night are telling the story of Atrus as told in the book Myst: The Book of Atrus. After that they will begin the story from the game of Myst. Eventually they will cover all of the books and games. as well as the three human attempts at the restoration of D’ni.

R’Tayrtahn records videos of the sessions (via an avatar named “I’m a bot, do not message”), that he will eventually upload to his YouTube channel. Be careful if you PM r’Tay or the bot during the events, as messages will be visible in the videos 😉

More about the Story Nights (click to expand)

• Story Nights are held in Tsahno’s Hood every Saturday, gathering at the fountain at around 23:00 KIT, with the story starting at about 23:30 KIT.
• For Story Nights – Europe, the gatherings are on Saturday starting at 13:30 KIT, with the story starting at about 14:00 KIT.
• On All Guilds Meeting days, the event will begin at 14:00 KIT or 15 minutes after the meeting, whichever is later.
• The stories are told using voice chat, so you will need to have your speakers, headphones or KI devices on. If you would like a reminder, please send r’Tayrtahn (KI# 58324) a KImail with your KI number included in the text, so that he can add you to his buddies list.
• Last-minute changes to Story Night times are posted on the left-hand imager in the hood.

Miscellanea

☛ In June, the Fan Ages Expeditions will continue the exploration of Tentsahveet by Jhon J. Jaguar, the third chapter in the The Secret of the Rainbow series about a group of defectors from the Black Ships’ flagship and its cruel captain Krakon. This Age will take one or two more sessions to complete. After that, they will begin the exploration of Semjay’s Ages: Terahgrahm, Zahlto, Tovaht Bay, Ahreesen Melin.

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And that was it for this month. Please consider donating to keep the Cavern open!

The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, July 8 (Leesahn 5) at 13:00 KIT.

Until then!