Uru can be played together with others via the internet. There are even two options to do this: The content offered by Untìl Uru is very similar to that of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and its first expansion pack "To D'ni"; with Alcugs H'uru one can even play the second expansion pack "The Path of the Shell" (or Uru Complete Chronicles) online (however, this variant is still under development and hence rather buggy).
Here you find instructions on how to play Uru online. The descriptions are for Microsoft Windows XP but it should not be very difficult to apply them to other versions of Windows.
Please note: You cannot
purchase Authentication Keys any longer. Instead, Cyan offers access
keys for their official D'mala shard for free. Additionally, players
who already own an Authentication Key can create invitations for other
players. I will update the following instructions accordingly as soon
as possible. Until then, you can get more information from Cyan's Untìl Uru website in
section Getting
Started. You might also want to ask for invitations at the D'ni
Guild Forums.
In order to play online, you need an Authentiation Key which you can purchase for 5.95 US Dollar. You can not use the CD Key for Uru Live that was shipped with the original Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. Please, see Cyan's Kagi Howto for detailed information on obtaining such an Authentication Key.
Finally, to play online, you must use the Authentication Key to register an account with Cyan. Go to the page Account Registration and enter the requested data. The username and password that you provide there are used in the Uru client to log into any of the shards.
Untìl Uru is a patch provided by Cyan which allows to change an installation of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst (with or without the expansion pack "The Path of the Shell") or Uru Complete Chronicles into an online game. However, after applying the patch, you can not play the single player version any longer but only the online version. Here you find a description of how to install and use both versions in parallel.
Unfortunately, the following instructions do not work for Uru Complete Chronicles. However, it is actually possible to do a dual install of Until Uru and Complete Chronicles. The way to do it is work in progress and not very well tested yet. If you want to help me to improve these instructions, you could try it and tell me about your experiences: See the thread Dual Install for CC in the D'ni Guild Forum for more information.
This is not really necessary for setting up Untìl Uru. But just in case something goes wrong, it is a wise thing to have a backup. Find more information about this topic in a separate section.
Obtain the patch from Cyans Untìl Uru website. Be sure to download the version appropriate for your version of Uru:
(x.yy.z is an arbitrary version number which is not relevant in this context.)
The renaming is only temporary, so remember or even better write down the original name of the directory. Example: Your Uru installation resides in directory "C:\Program Files\Uru - Ages Beyond Myst". Rename this directory to "C:\Program Files\Uru - Ages Beyond Myst.temp".
Install Uru: Ages Beyond Myst or Complete Chronicles in a directory named after the original directory from the previous step. Example: Create a new directory and name it "C:\Program Files\Uru - Ages Beyond Myst". Install Uru in this directory.
The new installation is going to be patched to become Untìl Uru, so give it an appropriate name. Example: Rename the directory "C:\Program Files\Uru - Ages Beyond Myst" which contains the new installation of Uru to "C:\Program Files\Untìl Uru".
Start the patch executable and direct it to the directory holding the new installation of Uru. Example: Apply the patch to the directory "C:\Program Files\Untìl Uru".
Finally, set the name of the directory that was renamed in the beginning back to its original name. Example: Rename directory "C:\Program Files\Uru - Ages Beyond Myst.temp" to "C:\Program Files\Uru - Ages Beyond Myst".
Now you can play Uru: Ages Beyond Myst or Complete Chronicles as single player as well as Untìl Uru online with others.
Note: With all this renaming we achieved that it is still possible to apply updates or expansion packs which may be available in the future to the single-player game. The installation of Untìl Uru will not be affected by this. It is also possible to uninstall both versions independently from each other: Remove the single-player version by using the respective entry in the start menu. To uninstall Untìl Uru, first start the program Uninstall Uru - Ages Beyond Myst.exe in the subdirectory "UninstallerData" and then delete the installation directory manually.
To backup your current progress in the game, copy the complete contents of subdirectory "sav" in the installation directory of Uru to a save place. A save place could be anywhere on your hard drive as long as it is outside the installation directory. But it is also an option to save it on a writable CD or DVD. To find out where the installation directory resides, use the desktop symbol which you use to start Uru. Click on this symbol with the right mouse button and select "Properties" from the context menu. In the appearing dialog box window, the directory is shown in the field "Start in:".
If you want to restore a save game from a backup, then copy the contents of the backup into the subfolder "sav". Before that, you should delete all files and subdirectories within this directory. Otherwise, you could end up with an undesirable mixture of current data and data from the backup. If you restore from a CD or DVD, then remember that Windows usually sets the read-only attribute for such files and directories. If you do not reset this attribute, then Uru will not be able to store any game progress.
Use the Windows Explorer to reset the read-only attribute. Click on the "sav" subdirectory with the right mouse button and select "Properties" from the context menu. Remove the checkmark next to "Read-only", click on "OK", and confirm to apply the change for all files and subfolders.
Please note that it is possible to have shards which run Alcugs H'uru Server but require the Untìl Uru client. In such a case, you just play with Untìl Uru on this shard; a special configuration is not required then.
To create an Uru client for shards running Alcugs H'uru Server and require a TPotS client, you need an installation of Untìl Uru on your hard drive. Futhermore, you need to have either Uru - The Path of the Shell or Uru Complete Chronicles installed (in the following, I refer to both with the term "TPotS"). Follow these steps to create a TPotS client:
Copy TPotS into a new directory.
Copy the files UruSetup.exe, plClientSetup.cfg, and serverconfig.ini from the Untìl Uru installation into the new copy of TPotS.
With the help of an utility software (e.g. UruFun, see below), change the line "UseDataserver true" into "UseDataserver false" in file plClientSetup.cfg.
Now you can start UruSetup.exe in the newly created directory, and you can log into a shard which is running Alcugs H'uru Server and requires a TPotS client. If you want to, you can place a shortcut to UruSetup.exe on the Windows desktop.
You can find more detailed descriptions of each step in the following sections.
Create a new directory for the TPotS client and copy all files and subdirectories from the original TPotS installation directory into the new directory. For example, my TPotS installation resides in the directory F:\Spiele\Uru - Ages Beyond Myst. I copied all contents of this directory into the new directory F:\Spiele\H'uru - The Path of the Shell.
Of course, you need sufficient free space on your hard drive for this copy. For instance, my TPotS installation directory has a size of roundabout 2.7 GByte. It requires up to several minutes to copy this amount of data, so don't get impatient, please.
You need to copy the following files out of the directory where your Untìl Uru installation resides into the newly created directory:
If the file plClientSetup.cfg is missing, you must log into any shard with Untìl Uru. During this process, the missing file will be created.
The file plClientSetup.cfg must be edited in order to prevent the client from retrieving data from Cyan's data server. (The data server does not know anything about an online version of TPotS and thus would overwrite your copy with "clean data" for Untìl Uru.) The file plClientSetup.cfg needs to be decrypted before you can edit it with a text editor. There are several tools available which are able to do the decryption and encryption. You can download them from the Tools forum of COBBS. (A mirror of the COBBS downloads is available at Kirk's website in the "H'uru" section.) There is only a single line to edit in the file: change "UseDataserver true" into "UseDataserver false".
The tool UruFun makes the update quite simple. It does the decryption and encryption and also contains a simple editor. Hence you can do all required actions with this single tool. After downloading and extracting the files from the ZIP archive DistUruFun12.zip, simply copy the executable urufun.exe into the new copy of TPotS. Start the program and select the file plClientSetup.cfg in the list on the left-hand side. The decrypted content of this file is then shown in the editing area on the right-hand side. After applying the changes to the line containing the text "UseDataserver", click on "Save Encrypted" and then on "Quit".