Uru Live to let players create ages with developer tools [update 1]
by Zack Stern 
{ Sep 28th 2006 at 1:30PM }
As mentioned in our interview with Rand Miller, co-creator of the Myst empire, Myst Online: Uru Live will eventually let users build their own ages. Miller has always had this poetic goal of letting players "write" Myst environments of their own; Cyan Worlds plans to provide its own development tools to gamers to make this happen.While Miller states that this is "forward looking" and may change, he thinks ambitious gamers are up for the challenge. He says, "We're always amazed at what our fans are able to accomplish, frankly, and by making those tools available, I think we'll be even more surprised. ... Essentially what we're creating in the mythology of all this is a writer's guild."
Miller anticipates that the development tools will be available in about six months, the time he thinks is needed for them to stop being updated.
Developers rarely give their own game- or level-creating tools to fans. This move is especially uncommon in an MMO with a plot, versus online sandbox games like Second Life. We're interested to see how Cyan Worlds lets players move between its content and community-created ages.
Myst Online: Uru Live will launch this "holiday season" as part of GameTap's standard $10 monthly fee.
[Update 1: fixed ship date error.]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MeatPopSci @ Sep 28th 2006 1:54PM
so basically Second Life better get more interesting or this will wipe it's servers clean.
vid @ Sep 28th 2006 2:06PM
A lot of people went over to Second Life when Uru Live was forced to shut down before it's full launch so long ago... I expect we'll see all of those people come back, and probably bring quite a few people with them.
...mmmm... age writing tools.
Tom @ Sep 28th 2006 2:19PM
It's pretty cool that they're letting people design their own ages. However, I think it would be even more exciting if the age creation was more of an in-game thing. It would be so cool if you could learn D'ni words in the game and use those words to describe an age. Then the game would procedurally generate that age based on the combination of words you used. Once the age is created, you could go into it and build things like in Second Life. Maybe I'm just dreaming.
Henk Boom @ Sep 29th 2006 1:47AM
I remember one of the plot elements in the Myst novels was that you wrote ages at the low level, dealing with the physical properties of the materials making up the age, and they were largely governed by the emergent behaviours that arose. It would be awesome if the tools were something like this; making the worlds would probably be more fun than playing them. In reality, the tools are probably going to be little more than simplified geometry editors though. . . =(
Arnaldo @ Sep 29th 2006 9:22AM
I also hoe that you get to go in and write the underlying mechanics of the ecosystem and geographics of the age and then the engine renders it either Stable or Unstable. Sort a good way to encourage people to have a sence of workmanship. That would be soo cool. Unstable Ages! The Art of WRITING!!!!