Minkata Update 2021.03.27 (targeted for April 2021 MOULa update)

[rarified]

Shorah fellow explorers!

Today I've started updating Minkata with the first of the changes that will be sent to Cyan for our April 2021 update.

Minkata has been updated with some small changes that bring over convenience functionality from the GoW H'uru client. They are:

• Case-insensitive matching of player names in KI commands c.f. Marten
• Chat Commands (those starting with a slash "/") now are case-insensitive Marten

Update 1: A few more new goodies for today. This bumped the client version to #269.

• Chat player name completion (by <TAB> key after typing a few characters) c.f. boq via Marten
• Chat history browsing (by <UP-ARROW> and <DOWN-ARROW> keys) Filtik via Marten
  Allows you to look at past things you've typed.
• Improve screen/window rendering for wide screen ratios Hoikas via Marten

Update 2 (2021-04-07): New content updates!

• Lighting in Relto has been fixed for recent updates of Windows 10 (20H2). Those updates caused Relto to go completely dark when you closed the window shades.Hoikas
• Minor tweaks to the Neighborhood clock to be more accurate. estherbolik via Hoikas
• New age: Tre'bivdil, linking book in Chiso Preniv. Lontahv via Doobes
• New age: Serene, linking book in Chiso Preniv. Andy Legate via Doobes

Update 3 (2021-04-09): New game server for Minkata and content updates.

• The game server for the Minkata shards (MOSS) has undergone it's first updates in several years. Handling of age state (book visibility, door positions, etc) has been improved to address some issues that have appeared since we have been rapidly updating and changing Fan content. The vault has been moved to a more recent version of the database server (PostgreSQL). rarified, cjkelly1
• Fixes to the Neighboorhood clock to properly move as time passes. Hoikas

Update 4 (2021-04-10):More display/window resolution improvements. This bumped the client version to #270.

• More improvements for display/window resolutions on high-resolution or large monitors.Hoikas, Deledrius via Marten

Update 5 (2021-04-12:

• New age: Vothol, linking book in Chiso Preniv, Rustee via Doobes

Update 5 is the last addition to this update for MOULa. Please give it a good workout on Minkata. I'd like to make this delivery the end of the week (2021.04.16).

As usual, please post issue reports with these changes as replies to this forum topic. And if you encounter serious bugs not related to the changes in this update, follow JWPlatt's reminder here.

Thanks, as always!
_R

[catherwood]

I see a third book on the pedestals in Chiso but the newest one on the far right is not clickable (The panel shows a new winter garden age, perhaps?)

In the Messengers Pub, Eddie is stuck under the entry stairs, and the cones make no sound when I kick them or slide them. [nevermind, i guess this was already a problem in the MOULa current release, just hadn't noticed until now. Maybe a future fix?]

[hhhenry]

Don't mean to be a nag but, could you please get the butterflies fluttering around in second Kadish? The page is there and works but the bugs are not, same in MOULA.

[Marten]

Re: butterflies - Hi Henry, I know you've mentioned this before.

When is the last time the butterflies worked in the 2nd vault? Were they working in MOUL (2007)? Are they appearing on any other shards?

[hhhenry]

I had not noticed it but no, not in Deep Island and Not in Ghen, not in Uru offline. Where have all the butterflies gone??

[Marten]

They SHOULD be there in offline, if by offline you mean Complete Chronicles.

But what I don't know is when the butterflies vanished in the online version. Were they even there in 2007? I'm not sure.

At any rate, there's a group that specializes with the editing of Ages - the Writers. They would be your best bet to inquire about the missing butterflies. Perhaps try asking in #hood in the Open Uru Discord server, or in #writers-pub in the Cyan Chat Discord.

[Treehugger]

I looked at Complete Chronicles yesterday and there was a butterfly fluttering around. So that seems to be OK. After a quick piece of research, I've not yet found evidence that there were ever butterflies flying in the vault in the online game: all the references in the forums seem to be to the relto page, and to having butterflies on Relto. But this isn't to say there never were at any point....

[Korovev]

I’ve found references from 2010 (MOULa) and 2007 (Gametap) about the butterflies missing.

Edit: actually, it seems the butterflies were there in Gametap.

[hhhenry]

Just a gol darn minute here! Butterflies were present before Minkata update 2020.09.18 before Sept of last year.
Clarification: by off line I meant UAM

[Marten]

I spoke with some folks, and according to Someone Who Knows(tm), the butterflies simply do not exist anymore in the data for the Kadish 2nd vault in Myst Online. They should still exist in shards that are based on Uru: Path of the Shell or Complete Chronicles, or in offline versions of those.

They seem to have disappeared from Myst Online sometime in 2007, during an update sometime that year, and they have never been in MOULa (see Korovev's post above about them missing in 2010). There's no "enabling them in the vault" because the data is gone.

Over the course of the year Myst Online spent on GameTap, a number of things were clobbered or broken as Ages were updated:

• Kadish 2nd Vault Butterflies (removed)
• Cones in Ae'gura (removed)
• Neighborhood Clock animation is wrong (was changed from PotS and apparently never made right)
• Ahnonay Sphere 2 lighting (not correct)
• Er'cana textures (not correct in various places, messed up when the external path at the end was added)

The good news? Since Cyan has made the resources for Myst Online available to developers as of last year, we can try and fix these issues. Your memory of the missing butterflies has triggered some discussion about things that were broken along the way (producing the above list) and people seem motivated to address these things.

No promises on the timeline. But thank you!