March 2021 All Guilds Meeting Summary
Here is the summary for March’s Meeting, along with the raw and cleansed chatlogs!
Contents
- Saint Patrick’s Day
- International Women’s Week
- Cavern Tours
- A new era in D’ni
- Korman
- OpenUru
- Fan Ages Touring Club
- D’ni Language Classes
- R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
Saint Patrick’s Day
Minasunda announced the Saint Patrick’s Day parades: the first will be at 14:00 KIT, lead by Thallan, the second at 17:00 KIT, lead by Claidi Song; in both cases the starting point will be the Ae’gura plaza. In between, there will be a dance party in the revamped Guild of Messengers Pub. Music will be provided by Seeker.
For more info there is a Discord server, a Facebook group, or you can contact Minasunda via KImail (#5667000).
International Women’s Week
Korov’ev mentioned the coming week dedicated to the International Women’s Day organised by Nosila:
Sunday 7
11 KIT: Fan Age Expedition, in Deep Island, hosted by Korov’ev [stream].
13 KIT: Music by Enya, in Ae’gura Plaza, hosted by Radio Free D’ni [stream].
Monday 8
12 KIT: Music by Female Artists, in Ae’gura Plaza, hosted by Nosila [stream].
14 KIT: Tracks played, sung or composed by Female Musicians, in Ae’gura Plaza, hosted by Root Beer [stream].
Tuesday 9
12 KIT: Ancient & Medieval Women Composers and their Music, in Ae’gura Hall of Kings, hosted by Ghaelen [stream].
13 KIT: Relaxing Session: Ambient Women, in PodHopper’s Hood, hosted by PodHopper [stream].
Wednesday 10
13 KIT: Fil Live for IWD, in revamped Messengers Pub, hosted by Fil [stream].
Thursday 11
13 KIT: Female Country Singers, in Mir-o-Bot’s Cleft, hosted by Seeker [stream].
Friday 12
12 KIT: More Than Mothers and Daughters – The Women of Myst, in Kirel, hosted by Owly [stream].
Cavern Tours
The Cavern Tour will be held on Saturday 13 at 11:00 KIT, starting from the Cavern Tour’s Hood.
The host, Larry LeDeay, will use his Twitch channel for the presentation, so you will need to keep a browser or the app open in the background. Videos will be available for two weeks after the tour. The stream will be simulcasted on Facebook and Youtube.
The tours occasionally visit hard to reach places. Mir-o-Bot (KI# 32319) is employed for special effects and long-distance travel (and to avoid stairs). If you arrive late, you can PM Susa’n (KI# 9122427) to join the in-progress tour – but do try to arrive in time!
A new era in D’ni
Doobes was back with news about the restoration of new Ages for the Cavern. He mentioned the new additions to the revamped Guild of Messengers Pub: decorations for New Year’s Eve, Saint Patrick’s Day, LGBTQIA+ pride, Halloween, Fall/Thanksgiving, and Christmas/Hannukah. Chogon already switched on the Saint Patrick’s Day decorations, to prolong the festive atmosphere.
Chiso Preniv had some new lighting effects and, most importantly, fan writings: in this batch it was the Heritage Documents and the four part Activity in the Cavern chronicle. There is also a new commentary journal with some backstory and lore for the age.
This is hopefully the first of many such fan additions. Any type is fine: stories, historical accounts, poetry, etc. The length of the text should not be a problem, but please keep any potential pictures to a minimum. A cover is recommended, but not required if you do not mind a generic one being used.
Veelay Tsahvahn had performance and functional fixes, hopefully more people can now get through the age without it glitching up; reportedly it works a lot better on macOS after the update.
For the next big update, three more ages are planned to the added to Chiso! Tre’bivdil, by Lontahv, has already gone through the testing phase on Minkata, so it is pretty much ready to go. Currently, Serene by Andy Legate is being tested to make sure everything is working properly. The next in line will be the Vothol Gallery by Rustee.
The hope is to get this batch ready to go by sometime late April. The releases are being spaced for Chogon and Cyan’s benefit, as well as the programmers improving the client. Thanks go to everyone who helped testing on Minkata, and to Rarified for setting them on Minkata. Every bug report helps, although for ages not made by Doobes changes are limited to purely technical or very obvious issues, to maintain the original artistic vision.
To keep updated on Doobes’ work, check his blog and his Facebook page. To keep updated on Tweek’s work, check his blog and his Facebook page.
Korman
Doobes also mentioned the recent update to the age-building Blender plugin, Korman, which is now very close to include all the functions as the original 3DS Max plugin. For those interested in age creation there are tutorials available in the Guild of Writers’ wiki.
More is planned for version 0.12, including custom GUI mods (i.e. clickable notes, or working machinery such as the Great Zero scopes or Er’cana ovens), or particle systems (fireflies, snow, smoke, etc).
Korman requires Blender 2.79b; it is not currently supported on macOS or Linux, though it may run under Wine. You can keep up on the latest from the GoW at their Guild News section of the forum.
OpenUru
Rarified reminded the crowd about the two Minkata shards: Prime, where bug fixes, GUI improvements and fan ages are given a last test before being sent to Cyan, and Alpha, where new ages and features are first tested. Tre’bivdil and Serene are on their way to Prime, but more eyes for bugs and glitches are always welcome. Prime is also going to have a few user interface improvements added before the next delivery to Cyan.
Next, he announced a support website he has been working on, one that more resembles a support ticket service for bugs or help requests (including e.g. forgotten passwords), to replace the MOULa forums that were frozen about a year ago, and not adequately replaced by Discord for this purpose.
The site is still in the early stages, and Rarified is unable to operate it all by himself, so he asked for volunteers who think they might have time and ability to look at problems and send them to the right people. The help site is publically available, although requests may not get answered in a timely manner at this stage. Tickets can be submitted for both MOULa and the Minkata shards. So far two volunteers already offered their time, but more are needed.
However, for fan age bug reports, the best place for now is still the #hood channel of the OpenUru Discord, or on the forum. A shared Google doc has also worked well in the past. First time visitors could write a journal to be included in Chiso.
The third announcement was that Cyan released a set of images for textures used in Uru and Myst, available to be used in fan contributed content. The number of files was overwhelming, more than 8000. Rarified set up a browser on the OpenUru website where they can be viewed. It may not be up forever, but it will be kept up as long as possible.
The original files are available on both the Guild of Writers’ and OpenUru’s repositories.
Fan Ages Touring Club
Korov’ev gave a quick update on the Fan Ages Expeditions he is hosting on the Deep Island shard, every Sunday at 11:00 KIT. Recently, they visited Iceworld by Denost, the recently released Tsameti by Dulcamara, and began the exploration of Elodea by Dulcamara.
For March, the plan is to continue the visit to the underground levels of Elodea.
More about the Expeditions (click to expand)
- After the expeditions, the participants will be able to share their observations in dedicated threads in the Guild of Writers’ forums (listed in the index). The expeditions are streamed (without comments), and the videos will be available for two weeks after.
- After the tour, those who still have the energy are welcome to Korov’ev’s Gahreesehn for some Wall training (send a message to #194197 for an invite).
- A gallery of fan Ages with some details is available on the Writers’ wiki. Setting up a Deep Island client can be a bit tricky in some situations; a quick guide is available in our Troubleshooting section.
D’ni Language Classes
Shokhootahn Rehn (a.k.a. r’Tayrtahn) gave two announcements, one for the D’ni Language Classes and one for the Story Nights.
He is still putting things away after his move. He is, however, accepting daytime students on a limited basis; those interested should contact Rehn (see KI# below). Night time classes, however, are unaffected.
Two students, Shineyjo and Sunvalor, have completed the 101 classes.Votahret ah’shem khebahrtahtahvteeom! One more is working on the final.
Two more instructors have also been certified to teach 101 classes: Shokhootahn Aqua and Shokhootahn Nack. A third instructor is currently going through the certification process.
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); be sure to include your KI number in the message!
- The Guild of Instructors’ Hood will be open and public unless a class is in session, currently on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday starting at 20:00, 21:00 or 22:00 KIT, and on Friday starting at 20:00 KIT, depending on the student’s schedule.
- Last-minute changes to class times are posted on the left-hand imager in the hood.
R’Tayrtahn’s Story Nights
Story Night – Europe is one story behind original Story Night. They are about halfway through the story of Riven.
R’Tayrtahn has been uploading the Stories on his YouTube channel. The videos are usually uploaded a few days after the live event.
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 30 minutes after the end of the AGM, 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.
And that was it for this month. Please consider donating to keep the Cavern open!
February ended with the CavFunding at 94% (CavCon 2.9) and the reserve at 117%. There were no extra expenses. Population was at 39,679 (⇑385), with 1375 unique visits. Donations were almost even with expenses.
The next All Guilds Meeting is planned for Saturday, April 3 (Leenovoo 16) at 13:00 KIT.
Until then!