My Myst Wish List

lspace · **Joined:** Sun Aug 06, 2017 4:11 pm **Posts:** 43

I read somewhere at one time dropping a substantial amount of pellets would light up the cavern but Cyan removed this part of the game. It would be nice if they would return this feature. This time lower the number of pellets needed to a doable amount and place a meter in a central part of the city so progress could be measured. Pellet dropping events could be organized as needed.

Another thing I would like is a Wanted Ads Bulletin Board also in the city. People could post asking for another player(s) to journey through the game with them. They could specify their time zone, days and times available and if they are looking for someone who is a beginner or with experience. It could also be used to ask for door runs.

I would like to see the city pub cleaned up and perhaps some games to play there, and a bartender behind the bar.

Anyone else have a wish list for Myst? Feel free to add them.

JWPlatt · **Posted:** Fri Dec 15, 2017 5:13 pm

lspace wrote:

I read somewhere at one time dropping a substantial amount of pellets would light up the cavern but Cyan removed this part of the game. It would be nice if they would return this feature. This time lower the number of pellets needed to a doable amount and place a meter in a central part of the city so progress could be measured. Pellet dropping events could be organized as needed.

TL;DR Summary: Pellets work as well as they ever did.

Greetings. My name is Jonathan. I'm not an avatar, but I've played one (or five) in The Cavern. I'm going to throw open the curtain and lay bare some OOC truth, which has always been my favorite kind:

Pellets and lighting have not been removed. It's just as "functional" as it ever was. You can still organize "Pellet Challenges" any time you want, and have great fun with good-spirited team competitions.

At the risk of sounding unhumble, I am a bit of an expert with pellets, they being one of my specialties. Other than "Manufactured Divisions," (my thoughts that the Myst Online Uru Live story encouraged "choosing sides" based solely on say-so without rational cause, and that I preferred to reward cooperative gameplay rather than divisive gameplay), OpenUru.org, and MagiQuest Online, I like to be remembered for efforts on the Lake Lighting Project (and the great fun with dearly-missed Zardoz in his roleplay against the pellet efforts). My thesis against Manufactured Divisions fits very nicely into believing the Lake Lighting Project as a cooperative effort was more beneficial to the social construct of the game. I did not know at the time, however, the significant technical limitations to its implementation.

As you will see, it was a very manual process. The good part is that it got fans more deeply involved in cooperation with each other and even with the good people at Cyan.

The "Dalek" - or "R2D2" if you like - lake light level meter installed by the lake in Ae'gura was never functional. If things worked out, maybe it would have been. There was no automation in the data collection to provide feedback into the meter and thereby the community. Hence, there was no closed-loop, direct feedback from pellet to lake to explorer to simulate an immediately responsive true ecosystem. After my deal with "Mr. Laxman", RAWA began sending me monthly emails with the daily pellet drop tallies. The IC part of the story had Dr. Watson still in the Cavern to take the measurements and send them to me. I would post them to the forums. Then Eric started producing graphs from the data, and Tai'lahr took over producing the graphs when Eric could not continue doing it. I would post the graphs and also email them to RAWA. He would copy them onto the server and into my KI. I put the KI images on various Cavern imagers under the guise of my "Pellet Points" avatar and shared them with others who did the same to help inspire the community within the game. You can see the posts and graphs now at the OpenUru.org website links at the bottom of this post.

RAWA faithfully sent me the numbers for many years, long past when it would have been reasonable to stop. RAWA only stopped sending the pellet numbers when he had to concentrate on his health. He further explained that he runs an offline simulation, separate from the game servers, to model pellet performance on the lake. He self-leveled the lake effect to always grow "tolerant" of the current pellet levels, which means the "algea" brightness always returns to the mid-level steady state. The light level only has three settings. I suppose you could think of it as an accelerometer with negative, 0, and positive (the setting values are 1, 2, or 3). This means that any consistent "speed" or volume of pellets will keep the lake healthy so long as there is some volume, and sags and surges have only temporary effect. With only three settings, there's no "up" from three, so it had to be constrained.

So pellets were never integrated into game automation. RAWA interpreted the model to set one of the three available light levels using the Vault Manager - the same way Cyan manually sets holiday features or anything else that can be turned on and off in the game. I actually tried this for myself while managing a MagiQuest Online demo server Cyan initially set up with MOUL to show the Creative Kingdoms owners, for whom I worked, what the game engine could do.

The biggest visible effect the Lake Lighting Project has on MOULa is not the lake - it's the effect on the people. Have fun.

Pellet References:
Long RAWA post explaining everything
Mr. Laxman Keeps His Word About Experiment
Lake Project Pellet Data Readings
Lake Project Annual Pellet Graphs
Lake Lighting Project Historical Data Links

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