Live & Prime - What Changed?

Lehnah · **Posted:** Mon Sep 30, 2019 3:41 pm

Shorah everyone,

I'm writing an article for GameTripper about my early experiences of playing Uru. I'm trying to find info on what Cyan did when Ubi asked them to release a solo campaign of the game. I understand a lot, if not all, of what we saw in Ages Beyond Myst had already been built, but do we know what, if anything, they changed so that the intended MMO content worked as an off-line, solo game?

I understand the puzzles were already there, but did they change them at all? Was the whole Journey Cloth/ Yeesha thing there, or was this implemented just to give solo players something to do/ work towards (that's how it feels)? Was there any content created specifically for the solo game at all?

If anyone has any information on this, or could point me to somewhere I might be able to find it, that would be great! I have had a look at a few sites and fan wikis but no luck yet.

Thanks in advance.

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Mon Sep 30, 2019 3:54 pm

This thread: MOULa or CC? might be a good place to start. A few posts in, dgelessus points out some of the differences as do other posters.

AdamJohnso · **Posted:** Tue Oct 01, 2019 1:15 am

Tai'lahr wrote:

This thread: MOULa or CC? might be a good place to start. A few posts in, dgelessus points out some of the differences as do other posters.

This is not actually what OP asked for. They are asking for changes from the original Uru Live concept to make the single player game back in 2003 and earlier.

I was not around at the time, but I believe I am familiar with some of the changes that were made. The primary change that I know of is that there were seven journey cloths in the entire game instead of the seven per age. You can see some remnants of this by looking at the city.sdl file and playing with the islmJourneyCloth[XX]Vis variables--the cloths will appear in the city! Further, there was only one bahro door in the whole game, and it could be found in Eder Kemo.

If you do more poking around in the game files, you can find that all of the prime ages have linking books in the Ae'gura library that can be toggled on. There are additionally pedestals with Teledahn linking books in the plaza and in front of the library. I'm not sure what the story was here.

In Ages Beyond Myst, there is a (nonfunctional) linking book to Todelmer in the Ae'gura Museum. You can't access that area without exploits, however. It was removed in To D'ni. Additonally, linking books to Eder Kemo and Teledahn can be found in the Neighborhood book room where Delin/Tsogal and the Tre'bivdil (er, GZ on MOULa) book are found, respectively.

Teledahn required two players to complete.

[Reveal] Spoiler:

One player had to pull the lever while another player was inside the bucket. The timer was added for single player.

Eder Gira was based off the original D'ni in Real Time "surface" area.

I can't say specifically if any of those (aside from Teledahn...) were to help with the transition to single player, or if it was just the consequence of changing design/scope. Who can say at this point? That's all I can think of right now--without getting into the interesting dirt descent demo and talking about the engine design evolution. Maybe a really old timer will come along with more practical details...

HenryMikel · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2019 7:12 pm

AdamJohnso wrote:

Teledahn required two players to complete.

[Reveal] Spoiler:

One player had to pull the lever while another player was inside the bucket. The timer was added for single player.

So did Gahreesen

[Reveal] Spoiler:

In the Maintainer's HQ where you power up the doors and elevators, the platform you stand on to start the timer was/and still can be triggered by the second explorer. CYAN added extra time for the single player version

Lehnah · **Posted:** Sat Oct 05, 2019 10:17 pm

Thanks folks, that's really interesting and helpful.

Live & Prime - What Changed?

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