Dates are now displayed in local format.
For most countries this means dd-mm-yyyy instead of mm-dd-yyyy.
Shorah and a save New Year,
Eder Gira by day or night, this new calculator will tell you what time of the day it is in Eder Gira and show the actual Age from 3 different viewpoints: one looking at the waterfalls, one looking at where the sun rises and one looking at where the sun sets. Showing the color changes over the course of the day. Should you want to come back later, it can also tell you when the next sunrise will be.
Go to the new Eder Gira Clock.
Sometimes when you climb onto the harvester, the camera moves away towards the facility and warps your avatar directly to the facility without the harvester. When you continue climbing up or down, your avatar will fall down and panic-link back to Relto. Fortunately, this glitch is not as evil as the one in Ahnonay and I believe it can be prevented the same way: make sure you have your KI visible in the top left of the screen before you climb onto the harvester.
Go to the Er'cana Guide.
The Event Galleries have been updated: dark images were made more bright or the colors were corrected where needed and the occasional mouse-cursor was removed from the images. This is something I usually do much sooner after the event but I have been quite busy lately.
Some work was done on a few topics like: 'The Algea Light Cycle', 'The Eder Gira Clock' and 'Uru on Linux'. I just need to write the final piece (and code) in order to finish it. I'm also behind in updating my site about the Magic bots and I'm pretty sure there was something else as well. I will try to finish most of these topics this year, so the next two months could get interesting...
Go to the updated Live Event Gallery.
In my original Ahnonay Guide I wrote about the device in the middle of the pool and called it a 'lifesign detector'. OMG! Did I really write that? That's not very D'ni-ish. Pressure plates and such are D'ni technology, but lifesign detectors are not! Ok, I will submit myself to [X] for a public flogging later, for now I reworded the pieces about the device. I also added a few lines about the three places where you can get back on the island from the water.
Go to the Ahnonay Guide.
I'm still working on a new Gira "clock" that can show when it will be day or night in Eder Gira. It will show the actual sunrise and sunset with images that change as the Gira sun moves across the sky. More will follow soon.
This is another delayed project of mine as I started taking the first pictures over a year ago. However, I wanted to include a picture of one of the snakes in the tall grass. Unfortunately, these snakes have a nasty habit of not showing up when you are waiting for them. Anyway, Noloben is a very beautiful Age with a very realistic ocean surrounding the main island. This Age is not included in Uru but can be added to either the Deep Island Shard or the UAM Shard using the Drizzle program if you have the original Myst 5 game already installed.
Go to the Noloben Image Gallery.
Although I thought about making this topic last year, it was after I recently met a few new people that I decided to actually make this topic. It is about commands you can use while chatting with other people; things like waving hello, laughing, tapping your foot and many others...
Go to the Chat Commands Topic.
Contrary to what I previously stated, the Deep Island Shard has widescreen support. You need to create a simple text file (.ini) to enable it. A link to the forum-topic that explains how to do it is also included.
Go to the Deep Island section on the Shards page.
I also added a button to open my weekly music stream from this page. I like that it also shows the album cover for each track that has the cover-image embedded. You'll find the new button in the 'Upcoming Events' section a little more to the top of this page.
Last week's Fan Age Touring Club expedition has been added to the Event Gallery. Although this event does not take place in MOUL(a), I decided to add it to the gallery anyway. This event takes place in the Deep Island Shard (online version) every sunday from 11:00 KI-time. It is led by Korov’ev.
The Ages that were visited are: Doobe's new Messenger Pub, 'Chiso Preniv' and 'Veelay Tsahvahn'. These Ages were added to the Gehn Shard a few months ago and are now also available in the Deep Island Shard.
Go to the Live Event Gallery for the Fan Age Touring Club gallery. (Under Previous Events.)
The Portal Countdown (Timer) shows when and where the next portal will appear in the Pod Age. From now on it also shows for how long the portal remains open. No other changes have been made. It should work just as well as the old one but just in case, I moved the old Portal Countdown here.
See the new Portal Countdown in action.
The Ages 'Chiso Preniv', 'Veelay Tsahvahn' and an updated Messenger's Pub have been added to the Deep Island Shard. These Ages were already in the Gehn Shard but are now also available in the Deep Island Shard.
Although no new galleries have been added yet, I've added a table of contents to the image gallery, listing the Ages that are included in the gallery. The new table of contents has not yet been optimized for mobile devices but that will follow soon. The Fan Ages have moved to their own page which will improve the loading time of the galleries.
Go to the Image Gallery for the new Age Image Gallery.
While still recovering from an arm injury, I'm picking up where I left. The previous two Cavern Tours have been added to the Event Gallery. Nowadays, you can end up in strange places when going on a Cavern Tour. The April Cavern Tour was a good example of that...
The Gehn Shard has two new Ages: 'Chiso Preniv' and 'Veelay Tsahvahn'. The first is a new library for fan Ages and the second is a memorial Age. Pictures of the memorial Age 'Veelay Tsahvahn' have been added to the Gallery of fan Ages.
Go to the Live Event Gallery for the Cavern Tour galleries.
Go to the Veelay Tsahvahn Gallery for the Memorial Age gallery.
Shortly before the 10th Anniversary in Februari, I moved the past Event Galleries to a new location but forgot to update the links on my site to these pages. (Ouch...) The links have now been corrected, so the Event Galleries from before the Anniversary are accessible again.
Go to the Live Event Gallery.
Still on my TODO-list: Deep Island received a few updates, including new Fan
Ages, I will update my Shards topic soon. I also noticed a little bug in my KI
time converter that only seems to occur during the time between the US going to
DST and Europe going to DST. This bug only affects converting a Ki time to local
time and not the other way around. I will have to correct that very soon.
This new topic is about the Gahreesen Wall Game. It was written for the MOULa 10th Anniversary in Februari 2020. Although I wanted to include the Wall game in my Gahreesen Event on Februari the 6th, it was simply not possible because the MOULa Wall room is just too unstable. The only shard where the Wall game can be played is in the Deep Island Shard (and maybe the tPotS variant of The Open Cave). I added a short video to give an idea of how the game is played.
Read the rest of my 'Gahreesen Wall' Topic.
In the past few days I have been writing a new Gallery that will be used for the events in the Cavern. As I was not happy with the time it took me to finish writing a new gallery, I came up with a way to publish screenshots from events instantly. Screenshots are uploaded to this website the moment they are made, so they will be online even during an event.
From now on, images from events will be available in the new Live Event Gallery.
On Saturday Januari 11 was the first Cavern Tour for this year. A guided tour, led by Larry LeDeay and CT Hostess Susa'n. They showed us around in the Cleft and Larry had quite a bit of information about the place. It was however very difficult to follow as Larry had some problems with his microphone. Had Larry been the only speaker then I could have turned the volume up all the way. However, the moment Susa'n started speaking, my speakers would have blasted out of their enclosure. So, I had to settle for a lower volume, making it extremely difficult for me to hear him speak. Hopefully, Larry will have found a better microphone before the next tour.
Go to the Cavern Tour Image Gallery.
It took me longer than I had hoped for to finish this gallery. (Blame RL for that...) So, I decided to start working on a new experimental gallery. From now on, I will be able to upload each image the moment I take a screenshot. This option became available to me only recently as I managed to get Uru running under Linux. I intend to use this technique for the first time at the Gahreesen party during the 10th Anniversary in Februari.
A few updates to begin this new year: 1) The info on the 10th anniversary is updated and 2) One of the fan Age galleries (Elodea) now has screens from the underground parts of the island.
See the updated Elodea Image Gallery.
On Sunday December 15 a Christmas Party was held in snowy Eder Delin. Everyone attending was greeted by Yoda's 7 dwarfs. They looked taller than I expected though. The floating statue was transformed into a tree of light and the snowflakes looked better than ever. Yoda certainly knows how to transform any Age into a party scene.
Go to the Christmas Party 2019 Image Gallery.
On Saturday November 16 was the second part of the Bahro Glyph Tour. A guided tour, led by Shokhootahn Rehn who showed the Bahro glyphs that you can find in a number of places. Not even the rain in Eder Kemo would stop him from explaining the meaning of these glyphs.
Go to the Bahro Glyph Tour Image Gallery.
Cyan made a number of changes to Uru Live recently. Unfortunately, the file 'Releasenotes.txt' that you can find in the game directory, only lists the last changes and not the ones that were made before the last update. With the prospect of more updates following, it would have been nice if Cyan released a changelog somewhere, but as far as I can tell they don't....
Among the changes are: better widescreen support in-game, a snowy version of 'Eder Delin' and the removal of Peter Gabriel's song on Zandi's radio. About Zandi's radio: I understand the reason why Cyan removed the song. However, what they put in its place just isn't my kind of music...
Because of these changes, I have updated my topic about Image distortion. I also added a picture in the Garden Ages Gallery to show what Eder Delin looks like in the snowy version.
Last month I reported that a few new Ages were available for the offline Deep Island Shard: 'Palamary Bay', Peridia, 'MYST Refuge' and 'The Ruins of Azmar'. These Ages are now also available in the online version of the Deep Island Shard.
Go to the 'Palamary Bay' Image Gallery.
Palamary Bay is a fan Age that is still under development and currently only available in the offline version of the Deep Island Shard. The Age comes with three other Ages: Peridia, 'MYST Refuge' and 'The Ruins of Azmar'. They will have to be installed manually, read more about it on the Guild of Writers forum.
When you link to Palamary Bay, you'll find yourself in a setting that reminded me of the Kings Quest games, especially because of the large red mushrooms. This Age has its own way of opening doors: you'll have to find a hand symbol elsewhere in the Age to open each door. As far as I can tell, this is the first fan Age with a day and night cycle. Although I have to say, the day could use a lot more light as there are way too many places that are pitch black. In real life you would find very few pitch black areas because the light of the sun bounces off all surfaces, thus removing most dark areas. That being said, this Age is one of the very few fan Ages that actually use light sources, as most fan Ages use only the standard illumination setting that removes most of the atmosphere in an Age.
Go to the Image Gallery.
On Thursday October 31, a Halloween party was held in the Mir-o-Bot's Ae'gura. It was a scary hike through some parts of the city, followed by a lightshow and party in Descent (The Great Shaft). Strange things happened that evening and never before have I been coned, stoned, beach balled, pumpkinned and what not in a single evening...
Go to the Image Gallery.
This new topic is about some of my own experiences during the first weeks of my explorations in the cavern. It also explains why I changed my avatar name to PodHopper.
While I was working on this topic, I have also been preparing an event for the 10th Anniversary of MOULa in february 2020. Such an event can't go without some music, so I've also set up a music channel on Urutunes. In the meantime, new Fan Ages have been made for use in the offline version of Deep Island. Although they are not finished yet, what I've seen so far is really impressive. I am looking forward to adding some screenshots from these Ages to my gallery soon.
Read the rest of my 'From Myst To Myst Online' Topic.
The Pod Age Portals page was one of the first topics that I wrote for this site. Although I have observed some portals appearing before the time indicated by my calculator, I never mentioned this before. For completeness' sake, I have now added a paragraph called 'Variation' in which I try to explain this variation in portal appearance times.
Read the rest of my Pod Age Portals Topic.
On Saturday September the 28th, a meeting was held in the Minkata Shard. The meeting was about how to proceed with Minkata. The maintainer of Minkata (Rarified) had done a lot of work to ensure that no-one would lose his progress or Relto-rewards in case something went wrong, like a server crash. For that reason the Minkata-alpha Shard was introduced. Although that was an admirable goal, the extra work involved introduced the need for people with certain special skills that are simply not available among the people that are willing to help. Continuing on that path would have meant more long delays before anything new could actually be tested on Minkata.
All participants of the meeting agreed that it was better to actually start testing new things instead of trying to preserve everyone's progress like a normal Shard should do. Minkata is a testing Shard and everyone using it should be made aware that there's always the risk of losing your progress. In the end, I feel that approach has better chances of actually making some progress. Better to use the skills available than to keep looking for people with skills that are hard to find anyway.
As to my own progress, I have not finished writing my new topics as real life keeps throwing in things that have to be addressed. That doesn't mean I have not been busy. One of the things that I have not mentioned before is that I am setting up a music channel to be added to Urutunes soon. Converting my CD collection to Flac and putting it on my server is quite a time consuming task. Like my website, I may be slow, but I'm always steadily getting somewhere.
On Tuesday September the 3rd, a party was held in the Mir-o-Bot's K'veer. It was the 'Day Of Dancing' with Ghaelen taking the lead in the dance show. It was the first event where I used Fraps to make screenshots. Considering that I was participating in the dance show, I would not have been able to make screenshots the old fashioned way as I did up until now.
As promised, I have started writing new topics too. The first one will be about my experiences from playing Myst 1 to 5 as a complete mute, to playing Myst Online where you can actually say something. The second topic that I have planned will be about playing Myst Online on Linux. More on both topics will be coming soon...
Go to the Image Gallery.
This is the second Age from Crowthistle. Much of what I told about The Great Marsh, is also true for Rowan Green. Within Uru, you won't see the tall grass waving in the wind. Other than that, the Age looks the same as in the original game.
This Age concludes the summer season of holliday pictures. After this, I'll get back to the more serious stuff, like writing topics and guides. That's not to say there won't be any more new galleries. No, already I have two more galleries planned, one of which will be Noloben from Myst 5.
Go to the Image Gallery.
While the temperatures are rising to 30 degrees Celcius and up around where I live, it's time for a refreshing beach or lakeside. I selected a few Ages that fit perfectly into that category: Aerie, Ahreeuhtahv, Denkasen, Llantern, Tehr'Dovah, T'vel and 'Zephyr Cove'.
Go to the the 'Beaches & Lakesides' Gallery.
About a year ago, I wrote that Cathedral is one of the most beautiful Ages among the fan Ages. That being said, I can't make such a claim without adding the Age to my Image Gallery.
So here it is: the Cathedral Gallery.
This is another Age that is not included in Uru, but can be added to either the Deep Island Shard or the UAM Shard using the Drizzle program, if you have the original game installed. This one has always been my favorite Myst 5 Age and it is for that reason the first Age from Myst 5 that has been added to the Gallery.
Like all other Ages from Myst 5, you can move about the entire Age, but you can't operate any of the devices within Uru. For example, you cannot use the cable car in Uru, but you can use the Bahro pedestals to link to various places within the Age.
Go to the Image Gallery.
At the same time, I've also made numerous changes to this site, like moving the screenshots - that used to be at the bottom of this page - to a seperate page, adding support for smartphones, and a few other minor changes.
In the online version of Deep Island, you may have noticed a new book on the lower shelf in Relto. The book cover certainly is an eye catcher compared to the other books. It's a new Age that was recently added. The text next to the linking panel pretty much sums up what the Age is about: Find out what the shop owner was doing.
The rooms that you will be visiting are very detailed. The usage of light adds to a realistic atmosphere. I don't think any other Age uses keys to open doors like in this Age. You have to pick up a certain key before you can open a certain door. Maybe it's classic, but I wish there were more Ages like that.
Go to the Image Gallery.
In my original Alabaster guide (part 5), I missed the fact that the tiles on the floor in the room with the red pillars can be clicked. I also incorrectly stated that the iron gate there could not be opened. These errors on my part have now been corrected.
Go to the Alabaster Guide.
Screenshots from Argosy and Giloto have been added to the Laki'anay gallery. More screenshots from other Ages will be added to the gallery in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm also working on a few improvements for this website, like adding better support for mobile devices.
Go to the Image Gallery.
This is one of the Ages that are not in Uru, but can be added using the Drizzle program if you have the original game installed. Crowthistle is actually not a game but a novel. The second book is called "The Well Of Tears". The hardback version of this novel contained a disk that allowed you to explore some of the scenes in the novel. It's kind of a virtual tour thing.
Nowadays, it can be hard to obtain the disk that came with the novel. Although the novel is still being sold, it is only available in a paperback version that does not contain the disk. You may be able to find the original on ebay or amazon. If you do, you'd better make sure it contains the disk as well. If you search the internet, you may even be able to find a disk image somewhere.
Crowthistle does not seem to run under Win7 (just like 'Uru - Ages Beyond Myst'), but it does run under WinXP and previous versions. Within Uru, you won't see the reflections in the water. Also, the two horses that roam the swamp are not animated. Other than that, the Age looks the same as in the original game.
Go to the Image Gallery.
The garden Ages 'Eder Delin' and 'Eder Tsogal' are excellent "Ages for resting", as Esher (from Myst 5) would call them. These two Ages are also the places where the so called Door-Runs are being held. Now, a Door-Run requires at least 5 and if possible 8 people to participate. However, it can be difficult to find that many people when you are ready to do a Door-Run. It's good to know that at the end of each All-Guilds-Meeting, you can ask people to do a Door-Run with you. The All-Guilds-Meetings are held in Kirel at 13:00 Ki-time, each first saturday of each month.
Go to the Image Gallery.
Laki'anay is a very well made Age. It has an interesting story in the journals, good textures, a few puzzles and certain details like with the jukebox in the tavern. Laki'anay consists of four Ages: Laki'anay, Argosy, Giloto and Cholanay. By means of linking books within the Age, the other Ages can be visited.
You won't find any journey cloths in this Age. That means that there's no way to save your location. As Laki'anay is not very big, that shouldn't be a problem. It is easy to find the linking books to the other Ages, but there's no way to link to one of the other Ages directly (via the nexus or otherwise).
If you're interested in knowing how the Argosy Age actually works, I suggest trying the '/flymode' command in Deep-Island (offline version). What you will see when you fly away from the ship, is probably not quite what you expected...
Read the rest of my Laki'anay Guide.
As my work on a guide for Laki'anay is almost finished, I decided to add a gallery for Laki'anay first. Laki'anay has linking books to two other Ages: Argosy and Giloto. As soon as the guide is finished, I will add a few screenshots of Argosy and Giloto as well.
Go to the Image Gallery.
This topic is just a slight detour from the world of Uru Live. Rime is an Age that you can only find in 'Realmyst' and 'Realmyst Masterpiece Edition'. The Rime whale is less elusive compared to Shroomie, but it is still difficult to spot this whale. That is mostly because it is always night in Rime, but the extreme cold doesn't help either...
Read the rest of my Rime Whale Topic.
This is definitely 'The Longest Journey' among Ages. Although you could argue that Elodea is even bigger. The thing is however, that Elodea could be explorered as four seperate Ages, while this is not possible in Alabaster; you can't do Alabaster2 or Alabaster3 without having visited the main island (Alabaster1) first. You would be missing essential clues to get anywhere otherwise.
As always, this guide will bring you to all the locations in the Age that are relevant to the story or puzzles. In the case of Alabaster, that means that you will visit pretty much all the places you can go (with only a few exceptions), without having to walk the same path repeatedly. Although I use Ki-commands extensively for making pictures, no Ki-commands (like '/jump' or '/flymode') are used to move about the place.
Although the D'ni town looks convincingly enough like it was built by the D'ni, the medical facility and the justice office in the tower do not. Granted, it does look good, but only for a facility here on earth, say 30 years ago. In my opinion, it just isn't how the D'ni would have built it.
Read the rest of my Alabaster Guide.
The main island of Elodea has many locations that are perfectly suited for a few
screenshots. There aren't many trees on the island, though. And most of the trees
carry only few leaves. Let's hope that the Age "Gallardien" will be greener
in that regard. The Gallardien Age is not yet available, but that may change...
This Age is available in the UAM Shard and Deep Island.
Go to the Image Gallery.
I'm still working on an Alabaster fan Age guide, but that Age is huge and so making the guide takes a little more time than it usually does. But, I'm pretty sure it will be finished soon™. ;-)
As of februari 10th, the Minkata Shard is open again! The technical issues from the last couple of months seem to have been solved. I was able to complete a few Ages without running into any issues so far.
Read the rest of my updated Shards Topic.
This website has moved to a new location: www.podhopper.dds.nl. Only the address (URL) has changed and the old links to this site will be redirected to the new site for at least another year.
Link to the new location of PodHopper's Journals Website.
So, nothing else has changed. I have plans to write several new Fan Age Guides, Laki Annay and Alabaster are the first on my list. I am also thinking about listing fan websites. How many will there actually be? Many will probably come and go. How strict will I limit this list to Uru-Live websites? Including Myst related sites may be unavoidable. And so my list of considerations goes on. I will let you know what I decide to do.
Only a few days left before we are living in the year 2019. I have added a few Christmas pictures that I took in the Open Cave Shard to the Screenshot section. I would like to use the occasion to announce that this website will soon move to a new location: www.podhopper.dds.nl. Only the address (URL) will change and after the site has moved, the old links to this site will be redirected to the new site for at least another year.
Link to the new location of PodHopper's Journals Website.
The last couple of months I have been working on a topic about the Shards. People that are new to Myst Online might get confused by the mere existance of multiple versions of the same game. That's the main reason I wrote the Shards topic. It explains what each Shard has to offer and what the differences between them are.
Read the rest of my Shards Topic.
Last week I received a letter from my energy supplier, informing me about the new prices of energy in the netherlands. The current head of the government named Rutte, intends to turn off the lights in the netherlands and throwing us back into the dark ages quite literally. With tax rates on energy nearing 300% there's no turning back: I will have to remove as many devices as I can away from the grid. My only luck is that I'm quite at home in electronics and electricity.
There is also good news. The last couple of months I have been working on a topic about the Shards, explaining the differences between them. There are still a few things that I cannot verify regarding the TOC-tPotS Shard because in that Shard I have been unable to use the nexus. Anyway, only minor things will change in the coming days so I have made a preview available and plan to integrate the topic into the menu some time next week.
Preview of my Shards Topic.
I finally found the time to finish my guide on the Cathedral Age. After the gong puzzle I expected to find more puzzles about the D'ni musical notation. However, there were none. The remaining puzzles were a lot easier than I expected. The hints given by Yeesha in this Age, pretty much tell you exactly what to do. Nevertheless, this Age is among the most beautiful of all Fan Ages.
Read the rest of my Cathedral Guide.
During one of the All Guilds Meetings, I had a conversation with Focus-mocus about the appearance of the Pod Age animals. He was told by Shokhootahn Rehn that an animal would appear sometime in the hour prior to the opening of a portal and another one would appear sometime in the hour following the time that a portal opens. However, that idea is not based on facts. It is for this reason that I decided to add the piece of code that controls the animal appearance times to my topic. Normally, I would not go as far as bothering my readers with a piece of python code, but I decided to make an exception for this particular instance.
Read the rest of my Pod Age Animals Topic.
Finally, the fourth episode of Elodea. In this episode you will find the hidden treasures of the lost D'ni civilization on Elodea island. You won't find much puzzles in this Age. Only one actually, and that one requires not many brain cells left to solve it. Most of the time, you'll just be looking for hidden things.
Read the rest of my Elodeas Schatzkammern Guide.
The Fan Ages, or Ages created by players of Uru, can be visited using either the UAM Shard or the Deep Island Shard. The UAM Shard offers one simple installation method that is explained on its website. The Deep Island Shard on the other hand, offers two installation methods: for Offline and Online use. As these are two slightly different ways to install the Deep Island Shard, I will start by explaining the difference between the two.
Read the rest of my Deep Island Installation Topic.
In several Ages you will find a spark floating above the ground. The spark moves in the shape of an 8 or the mathematical infinite symbol. Underneath the spark is a symbol on the ground consisting of a sun, a moon crescent and three small swirls. They are also called Sparkle, Sparklie, Sparky or Blue Flame, depending on who you talk to.
Read the rest of my Sparklie Topic.
Based on my observations in the Open Cave Shard, I have revised my explanation of the pod Age battery charging. Essentially, the batteries are being charged, even when they are being used, but only during the pod Age day. The amount of charge during the day seems to be equal to the amount of power used by the internal lights during an entire pod Age day. So, no everlasting power, but just enough to keep the internal lights on.
Read the rest of my Pod Age Power journal.
MOUL(a) Pods Have Everlasting Power? 1535196600A few weeks ago, I noticed that the power was still on when I linked into one of the pods. Obviously, I forgot to turn the power off the last time I was in that pod. The question which arose, was whether the battery behaviour had been changed? I decided to turn the power on in all four pods and didn't return until a few weeks later. When I returned, the power was still on in all four pods. That means that the MOUL(a) pods have eternal power now. I'm still verifying the battery behaviour in the other Shards, but it looks like the other Shards still follow the original battery behaviour, meaning that these batteries will be drained when you leave the power turned on.
New Fan Age Gallery Added: Relativity 1534082400This Age was inspired by the work of M. C. Escher. Although many games have done something like it before, none was as realistic as this one. This Age is available in the UAM Shard and Deep Island, although the UAM shard uses an older version of this Age. The house in this Age has three different planes you can walk, each has it's own season: summer, autumn and winter.
Go to the Image Gallery.
New Fan Age Guide: Cathedral 1533475800After my wanderings along the lava canals of Elodea, I decided to visit a more spiritual site. Peace of mind and that sort of thing. Cathedrals have that calming effect on me. Although this cathedral is unlike any other cathedral I have ever visited, the general atmosphere is much like it. The copper work is polished like you will never again see it these days. This Age is really beautiful and the puzzles are quite good. Although I haven't finished the Age, I decided to publish what I have, instead of waiting until it is finished.
Read the rest of my Cathedral Guide.
New Fan Age Guide: Elodeas Tunnelgang 1533034800This Age is the third episode of Elodea. This episode adds little information to what we already know. It offers a few real puzzles to solve, a lot of buttons (both needed buttons and completely useless buttons) and a lot of jumping around.
Read the rest of my Elodeas Tunnelgang Guide.
Update: Minkata Shard Account Creation 1532599200Although it was possible to create an account for a couple of weeks now, a new problem had risen after that problem was fixed. The Avatar-creation failed due to some SQL problem. Today I was able to create an avatar and started collecting my first linking books. All problems relating to account creation have now been solved. For those interested in testing and problem reporting (that's what the Minkata Shard is for), can use the following link to sign up for the Minkata Shard: Minkata Shard Website.
Payiferen Night Page Updated: A Rocky Mystery 1531738800The Payiferen night holds some mysteries that I still can't seem to figure out. I've added a paragraph about the glowing rocks. The Payiferen rocks are the only rocks in all of Uru that seem to be crafted specifically for the purpose of making them glow (at certain times). I've also added a few pictures showing the four different states of glowing.
Read the rest of my 'Payiferen Nightfall' Topic.
The bots play an important role in Myst Online - Uru Live. They are used with almost every major event in the cavern as they can change things in an Age. For example, fireworks and lightshows would not be possible without them. Actually, most of the fun-stuff in Uru Live is made possible by the bots.
Read the rest of my 'Bots For Fun' Topic.
This Age is the second episode of Elodea. This episode continues where Elodea ended: behind the waterfalls by the lake. Time to further explore what secrets the island holds...
Read the rest of my Elodeas Unterwelt Guide.
Minkata Shard Account Creation 1529060400About two weeks ago, I contacted the webmaster of the Minkata Shard. I had tried a number of times to create an account there but all attempts failed because of a script or configuration error on their server. I got a reply stating that he was out of town and would look into it as soon as possible. He did not mention how long he would be out of town, but it is now two weeks later and it is still impossible to create an account. For now, I'll let it rest. I'm still hoping this issue is going to be resolved soon, but already it is taking a lot longer than is to be expected. :-(
New Image Gallery Added 1527591600KIimages are not that big, only 800 x 600 pixels. Some Scenes just look better on a larger picture. Therefore, I have added a fullscreen image gallery. Although I would have prefered fullscreen as in 1920 x 1080 pixels, I decided to settle for 1360 x 768 pixels. It is less space- and bandwidth-consuming, especially considering that I will be adding more pictures along the way.
Go to the Image Gallery.
Added A Newsfeed To This Site 1527332400A newsfeed channel has been added to this site. Some programs like Chrome show the contents of the xml file instead of adding the feed to a newsreader. Update: Chrome needs a plugin or extension to be able to handle newsfeeds correctly. At least Mozilla and even Internet Explorer do the right thing and allow you to add the feed to a newsreader. I have noticed however, that browsers for the smartphone usually also lack support for newsfeed files...
To add the newsfeed to your newsreader, click here.
Pod Age Animals Page Updated 1527332400I've added more info on the animals themselves, explained the mechanism that determines when they appear and I've added a few more pictures of the Urwin, the two-tailed monkey and the Sandscrit.
Read the rest of my Pod Age Animals journal.
Shroomie Journal Updated Again... 1526036400After I finished the previous update of this topic, I noticed that Shroomie would not show herself again within four minutes after she has appeared. The log files from both 'The Open Cave' Shard and the Gehn Shard confirmed that this is indeed the case. The game also seems to keep track of how many times you've seen Shroomie. However, I have been unable to determine if that number is used for something.
Read the rest of my Shroomie journal.
Shroomie Journal Updated 1525690800I've added new pictures of Shroomie and explained some of the differences between MOUL(a) and the Shards in regard to Shroomie. All in all, it has practically become a completely new page, only the first two paragraphs are still the same.
Read the rest of my Shroomie journal.
New Topic Journal: Why Are KIimages Distorted? 1524654000If you play Uru using a widescreen monitor, you may have noticed that KIimages do not look as expected, especially when you upload them to an imager like the ones in the Bevin neigborhoods.
Read the rest of this topic: Why Are KIimages Distorted?.
Menu Improved 1524564000The menu on this site shows a pulldown menu when you hover the mouse over the main menu. As many devices nowadays have no mouse at all (tablets, ipads and smartphones) the old menu would not work as no submenu would be revealed. I have now added support for these mouseless devices. When the buttons "Topics", "Guides" or "Calculators" are clicked or tapped, the submenu will now show. The old behaviour of opening the submenu when you hover the mouse(cursor) over one of these buttons still works too.
Happy D'new Year 1524477600Saturday, April 21st was the celebration of the new D'ni year 9674. It was a spectacular event, especially the fireworks and lightshow. I've added two pictures below. For more photos and a video, visit the forum of the event at Mystonline.com.
Shroomie is among the strangest creatures in the entire game. Many have speculated about her, but most forum posts remain in the realm of guessing. That alone was reason enough for me to try to uncover what secrets she holds. Making a really good picture of her was also requested by one of my oldest contacts in Uru Live. So I took the challenge and ended up writing the first draft of my Shroomie journal.
Journals Rearranged 1523959200For a while I have been thinking about how my journals should be organized on this site. Until now, the journals could either be a topic or a walkthrough. The menu did not show which one a journal would be. To make the menu more clear about that, I decided to make a menu entry called "Topics" for journals that go into a certain aspect of the game or Age, and "Guides" for journals that are a complete walkthrough of an Age. The Fan Age journals will be found in this last category.
Negilahn Animal Photo Added: Kiris 1523872800Although I had taken pictures of the Negilahn Kiris over two months ago, I never got around to posting one of them on my Pod Age Animals page. Today (04-16-2018) I finally managed to post one. Kiris is plural for Kiri. It's the small firefly-like creatures you'll find in Negilahn. It is said to be the only source of food for the Urwin.
The journal in the Ae'gura museum was recently removed from the game. My journals about the Pod Age Animals and the Pod Age Portals have been updated accordingly.
Elodea is the first episode of a much larger Age. It is - unlike many other Fan Ages - still in development. I refer to Elodea as the first episode as the Age used to be larger, but was split into several Ages because the Age was getting too big for the game to handle. It has a lot of landscape to explore and you can climb the hills and take an alternative route if you want to. It may not be as polished as Cyan would make their Ages, but on the other hand, apart from Riven, this Age is larger than any Age Cyan created in their Myst games. If you add the other episodes of Elodea to the mix, then this Age is even bigger than Riven.
After working on the Portal Calculators and having done many date and time calculations, I decided that I might as well put a KI Date and Time Converter together. It's finished now: a Local date and time vs. KI date and time converter. You'll find it in the menu under 'Calculators' or click here. If the Converter or any of the Portal Calculators is not working for you, please let me know as I'm still regularly updating this site.
The calculators have been updated. The Portal Calculator will now display local time instead of defaulting to CET. All calculators will handle daylight-saving changes properly.
Last weekend the Daylight Saving Time started in the USA. To my surprise the KI also observes DST. Well, I suppose that's what you get for trusting the information on the official Myst Online - Uru Live forums. On the forums I had read about Cavern time. That it actually had the time of the state New Mexico without observing DST. My calculators were based on that information. Well, I have seen it for myself, the information on the Myst Online forums is dead wrong about KI time. The KI does seem to use DST. I will have to update my calculators accordingly. Fortunately, local times are not affected by this, neither is the Portal Countdown affected as it uses only unix times in its calculations. Update: The Local / KI time Converter shows the correct KI times again.
The calculators have been updated. The Portal Calculator will now display local time instead of defaulting to CET. My tests revealed that the calculator - both the old version and the new version - would handle daylight-saving changes properly.
The Portal Countdown needs further testing as I suspect that it will not yet correctly handle situations where the portal time coincides with the interval between 2 and 3 o' clock AM on days where the daylight-saving time starts or ends. I also noticed that in other timezones the countdown may not display at all. Update: The countdown timer should now work correctly in all timezones, but I have not yet had time to look into the possible daylight-saving issue. I will use the next three weeks to test the new calculators and process the feedback I get, hopefully before the next daylight saving time change occurs.
I have added new journals about the Ages Er'cana and Ahnonay. When I started writing I had no idea how long it would take me to put it all into words. I greatly underestimated the task, but I finally did it! Only one page is still missing about the combined Bahro cave at the end of these Ages. I am working on it and expect to finish that one very soon.
I have added the fourth journal about the Age Er'cana. This one completes both the Er'cana and Ahnonay Age. I'm considering writing a fifth Er'cana journal about the pellet game, although I doubt anyone but Cyan can tell anything conclusive about it.
Besides the Portal Calculator, I have also created a Portal Countdown timer. This timer will show which portal is upcoming and how much time left until the portal opens. It also shows where the portal will open inside the pod. It is designed in such a way that it also displays more conveniently on smartphones. If your computer's time is accurate than this timer is also accurate.
Although the timer is still experimental and it does not yet take into account which timezone you're in, in my tests it gives the correct time, even if you're in another timezone than i am in. In case of doubt, compare the time from the Countdown timer with the times given by my Portal Calculator.
The Portal Countdown Timer is on the following page: Portal Countdown Timer.
Now that I have finished the Er'cana and Ahnonay journals, I'm about to start working on getting the calculators aware of what timezone my visitors are in. I will be using the moment.js library with included timezone information to accomplish this. As that means I will have to rewrite some of the code that I wrote, I plan to put the first version for testing online around the first of March at the latest. That will give me about three weeks to test the new calculator and process the feedback I get, before the next daylight saving time change occurs.
During the 8th Anniversary Festival I noticed that in the Payiferen pod some trees had begun to grow. Although the pod could use some decoration, I decided to remove it as it wouldn't have survived anyway...
