There goes my productivity. (Via reddit.)

This was intended as a proof of concept on just how quickly you can develop a game from scratch using popular Javascript libraries (look ma, no Flash), but it also happens to be way too much fun.

There’s some things Uru can learn from Second Life.

Among them: SLurl, a service that generates a URI with the secondlife:// for you. Newer Second Life clients register this as a recognized scheme. Thus, when you click such a link and have the appropriate client, you get “teleported” to a particular location in Second Life.

But before we start from the beginning, let me just throw an assertion out there: Uru Live needs a web service. I don’t mean a web site; obviously it has that (and it would be quite embarrassing if it didn’t). No, I mean a capacity where, without using the Uru Live client (or even having it installed), you are able to access some information from Uru, and possibly even interact with it to an extent.

What would you be able to do?

1. Participate in KI chatter using a regular IM client
2. Preview a public location in D’ni using its Great Zero coordinates and, given private links (possibly with a one-hour expiry or similar), even private, explorer-specific or neighborhood-specific areas
3. And, the bigger deal: if your client is installed, click within a location in order to launch the client and link there

All this is perfectly feasible on a technical level. What’s preventing fans from doing this themselves is mostly security barriers implemented by Cyan; what’s preventing Cyan from doing so is primarily lack of staff. But, perhaps, the idea – or the extent to which it would help everyone – also just hasn’t occurred to them.

I’ll go through them one by one. Being able to talk to others in the cavern while I’m not in it myself benefits:

• me, because I don’t have to keep a rather resource-hungry application running at all times when I only talk to people in there a very small amount of the time,
• the ones I talk to, because they can reach me even while I don’t have Uru Live running, and because they can continue to explore just fine, and
• Cyan (and GameTap), because not only would I have to subscribe regardless (you’d still log in to your Uru Live account, just not with the Uru Live client); I’d also be much, much more likely to hear of events as-they-happen, and thus of launching the client because I would know something exciting is going on.

Being able to preview a location benefits:

• non-subscribers, because, much like the existing static screenshots on the Uru Live website (and elsewhere), it gives an impression of what it’s like,
• existing subscribers, because they can show off to their friends where they are right now, and
• Cyan (and GameTap), because it’s a very cheap and effective means of marketing.

Finally, what about clicking a location?

• If you don’t have Uru Live installed, it would take you to the subscription page. If the location is available to visitors, it would tell you that you can even visit it for free, and point you to the client download.
• If you have the client installed (and do subscribe), it would launch the client and link you directly to the location, assuming you have progressed sufficiently (e.g., probably no going to K’veer unless you have figured out how to get there yourself already).

But where the latter really shines is private invites. The current invite system is needlessly convoluted, confusing and limited. If, on the other hand, the client were to give the inviter a private URL, and the inviter were to share said URL with the invitees, they could get there simply by opening a link in their browser. That’s it.

I can do this today, right now, with songs/TV shows/whatnot on the iTunes Store; if you have iTunes installed, it launches it and points you to the very item. If you don’t have it installed, you get redirected to the download page. I can do it with instant messages, such as Skype; if you have that installed, I could give you a link and it would open a Skype window for you where you’d talk to me. last.fm lets you do it with radio streams, and Steam with installing, purchasing or running games. iCalendars can be subscribed to, and Lotus Note documents can be opened.

Custom URI schemes are becoming increasingly common, because they’re extremely easy to use. The two catches: they have to be implemented, and security needs to be considered. Much thought has to be put into only allowing someone to access a URL they are meant to access. But the benefits are tremendous, and thus, I hope it’s going to happen one day.

I’m watching the discussions on the recent multiplayer Ahnonay release (and the season finale in general) with much interest. For one, because the reception has a great effect on whether there will be a second season at all, but also because, regardless of Uru Live’s success or failure, much of it can be seen as an experiment in massive multiplayer gaming. No other MMOG offers quite the variety of singleplayer-only areas, multiplayer-only ones, sandbox-style ones, heavily scripted ones, ones focused on puzzles, ones focused on just hanging out, and so on.

It’s a mixture so diverse that explorers often get confused as they attempt (in vain) to shove it all in one category. Commonly, people will point to the intro, quoting Yeesha:

Alone or together, destruction is coming.
Alone or together, find a way.
Alone or together, make a home.

I’m afraid the “or” in “Alone or together” is yet another case of ambiguous phrasing on Cyan’s part. What Cyan did mean was that some places are to be explored alone, others together, and yet others either way, depending on your preference. What many assume Cyan meant is that, with minor exception, just about everything would be explorable either way.

The first time notable multiplayer-only areas were released was quite early on, before the episodic format, even: you can visit Eder Tsogal and Eder Delin just fine on your own, but to get a reward, you need several explorers, preferably even eight (though, given practice, little latency and good reflexes, many can do it with far fewer than that). The result of that effort is small, though. So while there was discontent (and arguing) over this decision, some now merely believed that only minor areas would be available multiplayer-only.

It has always been clear to me that that was not Cyan’s intention; that they did, indeed, plan from the get-go that even some of the major places would require an extent of multiplayer interaction. Originally, this even includes Teledahn, where a certain switch near the beginning of the Age was retroactively changed to make it usable at all in singleplayer situations. Since that change was all the way back in late 2002, Cyan never undid it. With Ahnonay, though, they decided differently.

This time, they wanted to really shed the Age of ‘Ubisoft cruft’, and revert it to the way it was “meant to be”. And multiplayer it was meant to be. So while most of it can be done alone, you can’t finish it that way.

That Yeesha’s speech gets misinterpreted so many is unfortunate. But the reason so many object to the idea of multiplayer interaction is related to the same reason they play Uru Live to begin with: social ineptness. I don’t mean that in an offensive way; I certainly count myself among those who have a hard time talking to random strangers as well. But the same kind of people (again, that includes yours truly) who have been talking in Internet chatrooms and discussion boards instead of real-life places of discussion (say, a pub) now choose to play games online rather than meeting up with local people to play street basketball. That’s a stereotype, but as with all stereotypes, it may be exaggerated, but does have a basis.

And when you, as an explorer, pay a subscription fee as to use Uru Live as a refuge from real life, and don’t really want to get reminded of the hard time you have dealing with other people, being forced to talk to other explorers really smacks you in the face in the very moment you wanted to relax. That you only need one other person to help, and only for a brief moment of time, helps, but not by much.

I do not believe Cyan should adjust Ahnonay to make it completely solvable for a single player. Nor do I think they should leave their current path of having some hybrid Ages and some singleplayer-only or multiplayer-only ones. One thing that can be said about Uru is that it’s concept has been changed back and forth and back again far too many times; it’s too late to do this yet again. But it is clear now that they did a poor job communicating this intention of theirs to customers.

“Alone or Together” is a catchy phrase, so much that they used it thrice. It’s also far too vague. As part of the intro, it breaks the fourth wall: just about everyone has drawn conclusions from what Yeesha says. And, many of them, the wrong ones.

Josh Staub’s departure from Cyan is troubling. As one of the few remaining employees who has been around since the Riven days, it’s almost as if the rats are deserting the sinking ship. (Not that Cyan is a vessel, or Josh a rodent. But I digress.)

He wasn’t just a long-time employee, but also one of the most influential ones – and better-known ones among fans. Such representative images as the initial view of the Cleft in Uru, or the Caldera (with the dagger from Riven) in End of Ages were his work, as was The Mantis Parable, a short film that won awards and – though entirely unrelated to the Universe – was quite popular among Myst fans. And so he’s had two good offers, and picked the one at Disney. Seriously: good for him. Not so good for Cyan. Appropriately enough, many posts on the matter are ambivalent in the same way: happy he got such a great offer; sad that it means he likely won’t ever be contributing to Uru or anything else Myst- or D’ni-related any longer.

But you know what’s sadder? That Cyan, once again, isn’t taking this as an opportunity to lay their cards open and say what they still do have. Inevitably, this makes some (including yours truly) suspect and worry that there just isn’t that much left. Covered in ambiguity and perhaps sometimes even contradiction, the (few!) moments where they do say something just don’t cut it; they’re just not good enough to tell the community at large (and/or the Uru subscriber base) “there is hope yet”.

No misunderstandings: there is hope, I’m sure. But it appears it’s so faint that even the craziest marketing honcho just couldn’t spin this in a positive, encouraging way. A question as simple as “Will there be a second season?” is responded to with “Cyan wants one; GameTap wants one.” Great, both parties want one. Or not? Perhaps more like: “Cyan wants one badly, much like its fans, but can’t afford it; GameTap wants one badly, but won’t invest in it.” At least, not all that much.

The finale is coming in a few days, and I have reason to believe it’ll be one of the more successful episodes of this first season. Unfortunately, people will not be able to block out their lingering feelings as to what, if anything, happens next.

Cyan needs some good news for us, and they need it soon.

Yay for another time-waster!

Surely you know the kind of game: two pictures, almost identical copies, except for a few teensy details.

This one (via reddit) consists of vector art, and comes with a bit of a twist: portions of each image are animated.

Clever: the number of “errors” you have yet to find is integrated into the graphic itself.