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Games Entertainment

Demos, Screenshots Of Cyan's Next Projects 99

Posted by timothy from the lotta-linkage dept.
Stop Making Sense! writes: "First, an overview: To put it simply, Cyan has been a very busy little adventure game company lately. So busy, in fact, that it has left the job of a third Myst sequel, Myst III:Exile, to the notorious Presto Studios. With the impending release of realMyst, a realtime 3D version of Myst, and the accompanying Demo and Trailer, quite a few revelations about Cyan's long-term project have been woefully missed by most. A word about this project, before we get to the sweetness: It is codenamed MUDPIE." (Read on for more.) [updated by timothy] Due to a defective brain node, certain sentences were posted redundantly in this story. The node has been cauterized, and the sentences too.

"It is going to be an organic, realtime multiplayer game running on the same 'Headspin' 3D engine (which Cyan bought from the now-defunct Headspin Technologies along with a bunch of Headspin's programming staff)as realMyst and is going to take place in the Myst/Riven universe.

In the blizzard of Myst information, the sweetest snippet of all has basically gotten lost in the shuffle: a Screenshot of MUDPIE. People think at first it's a small chamber until the realize that the blob front and center is a person.

The engine is very pretty and relatively low on bugs, if a bit slow. Some people think the edges of the front pillars aren't soft enough, but they look fine to me :). For more info and clarification, see [this info page on Cyan's site]."
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Demos, Screenshots of Cyan's Next Projects More

Demos, Screenshots of Cyan's Next Projects

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  • Sweet, thanks for the info.
    Living in the Twin Cities and not somewhere like SF I often just assume that cool technical events just do not occur here, apparently I'm wrong.
  • No longer content to post the same story two times in a day, the editors decided this time to just post the duplicates together in one news item!

    Everyone is, of course, required to submit comments subtly different in appearance yet identical in content.
  • An organic realtime multiplayer game is a piece of software that people claim to be better for the environment even when it's not and the farmers get to charge more for it.

  • As King Crimson once put it:

    I repeat myself when I'm under stress. I repeat myself when I'm under stress. I repeat myself when I'm under stress.

    Great, now I have an Itch to go on audiogalaxy for King Crimson.. I guess trance music would be good too.

    Anyways, I've played the demo, and besides the fact that it is fully 3d, there is very little difference in anything else.. It's the same puzzles but more interactive.. I have (and completed) the enhanced version of MYST, and I've played all of Riven, but I don't see these games of having much replay. Life's boring when you have good recall.

  • Re:notorious? (Score:4)

    by moriya ( 195881 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @04:23AM (#653739) Homepage
    Okay, late on the posting. Thought I'd give my two cents in. Rather than trying to find who said what, I'll just refer them here...

    A friend of mine who's on the other side of the US didn't like it. He thinks that it's all boring fancy slide-show puzzle game. I thought it's interesting. Sure it didn't have any action but that's the point when you look at how much power a PC needs to render all that in real-time (which is now made possible via realMYST). I thought the puzzle was great, even though it took me a couple of months to actually finish the game.

    Someone brought up the point that it had a rather shotty ending. Yes, it had a shotty ending and it blatently advertises a sequel to the next game which we now know as Riven. But there's backing to that, if anyone went out and bought the 3 supplemental novels that're published. Because of the success of MYST and because it raises so many questions to the history of the characters themselves, these 3 novels were created to add depth to the culture and personalities behind Atrus, Catherine, Gehn, Sirrus & Achenar, as well as background information to the D'ni culture itself.

    The novels themselves explained how Gehn came to be. It also explained how the intro speech was created when you played MYST. These novels, to me, are essential to understanding more of Riven's background, to me that is.

    I've read all 3 supplemental novels to the MYST game. They're great reading, IMO. I found myself more fascinated by the fictional D'ni culture as I read the books.

    For Riven's ... uh, "substance" or core or plot or gameplay or puzzles (however you wanna define Riven in itself), I didn't find anything wrong with it other than the puzzles being harder than MYST was. Riven's puzzles were a lot more complicated in that it requires users to write down specific information or forever find yourself getting stuck at a particular point. But that's the only problem I ran into when playing it. And while Riven's ending brings a close to the MYST & Riven story, I thought that there won't be any more sequels. Guess I was wrong...

    I viewed the MYST 3 trailer and looked through the credits. And I knew as I watched the trailer that something was missing. The Miller brothers who created the MYST & Riven world aren't doing the game. Somehow it seem to lack that authentic feel. Or maybe it's just my imagination. It just strangely doesn't seem right anymore to have a MYST 3. But that, and everything else, is, of course, my opinion.

  • Personally, I though Myst lost its appeal after a couple hours of playing it for the first time. It had its "wow look at this cool world" factor going for it, but they completely fucked it up with puzzles that don't have any connection with the plot.

    I loved Cyan's first project, The Manhole. It was a lot like Myst, but it didn't have any puzzles, just a very strangely connected world to explore.

  • Ok, this is too freaky.....I was just listening to that song on the way to work a few minutes ago.
  • Actually we do have OpenGL drivers for the engine. We will be using OpenGL to support that OS you get when you buy the pretty colored translucent boxes. I am interested in doing a linux version, but right now I think finding suitable video support under linux/Indrema will be a bigger obstacle. We are currently using a combination of Indeo and Bink.
  • Ten bucks says that if they ever invent a holodeck that Myst WILL get ported to it at some point.(Of course I want that 10 adjusted for inflation.)

    BTW, what ever happened to quicktimeVR? I only ever saw it used for myst, riven and the ST technical manual. Did it just not catch on?

  • I'll get started on a server mod....
  • Something that's been overlooked recently is that realMyst will have a new ending. The ending to Myst was one of the most disappointing endings in the history of adventure gaming. Hopefully, realMyst's ending will be substantially better.
  • You missed the point...

    These days it's controversial _not_ to have sex and violence.

    Rick
  • Yes, realMyst will have a new ending. Those who remember Myst's ending will remember the sheer disappointment you got... no congratulations at all, if I do say so myself.

    realMyst will have a new ending. This, more than real-time lighting, has me excited.

  • For all of those who despise browser plug-ins, here [zdnet.com] is the direct FTP URL for the realMYST trailer in MPEG format. Viva lynx!

  • The simplest form of raytracing can be done at about 15fps on a modern computer in software. That doesn't imply that that will look good at all. It must be a far more complex (ie expensive) version of ratracing to look good.
    Though with some recent advances in techniques combined with the fact that raytracing is a very intuitive method to distribute over multiple processors, I see problems other than cost in creating a Beowulf cluster only for the purpose of making Quake III look extra pretty.
  • The controversy was between those of us that thought these games were the most boring load of crap to ever hit the games shops and those weho didn't.

    Dull, dull, dull games.

    TWW

  • I get really tired of hearing that Myst and Riven sucked and that the millions in sales are thanks only to clueless newbies who like art, unlike "real" gamers who can see the games for the lousy pieces of work they are. This is total bullshit.

    Myst and Riven didn't suck by a long shot. They were the first two PC games I ever actually finished or whose plot ever made any difference to me as I played. I played both from beginning to end without spoilers and I still have all of the notes I kept during Riven as a part of gameplay.

    I now own about $5,000 worth of computer games, including Quake II, Quake III, Descent III, Half Life, Deus Ex, Soldier of Fortune, Myth II: Soulblighter, Ultima IX, Ultima Online, King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, Unreal, Unreal Tournament and tons of other "big smash" games. My gaming rig is an Athlon 1GHz with 450MB RAM, 3D sound, 64MB ATI Radeon DDR, 21" monitor and U2W SCSI all around. I'm not a clueless newbie.

    And somehow still, my two favorites games of all time are -- you guessed it -- Myst and Riven. I continue to search in vain for games which will match the immersive experience I had with these two. Riven especially is a truly incredible piece of entertainment. I check Cyan's page often and can only hope that "mudpie" lives up to the lineage.

    Some people do like to be made to think and to explore when trying to play a game, contraty to popular wisdom that all gamers only want a mindless violence experience.

  • Conclusive proof that you can be clueless without being a newbie.

  • Demo experience (Score:3)

    by maxharris ( 110387 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @12:08AM (#653753)
    Interactive Myst is beautiful.

    Realistic water, changing skies (day to night and back), and even realistic thunder make the demo something you just have to get, even if you didn't like the original.

    The static screenshots don't really convey how insanely great this really is. All the effects are incredible, and really show how awesome 3D can be. Everything was so rich, I didn't even notice aliasing on any objects at 800x600x16 (yes, this is partly because everything was moving - even the water has realistic waves).

    This game will sell a ton of GeForce2 cards, because the geometry behind every scene is pretty complex. It runs at about 15 fps on my slow system (TNT2Ultra, K62-350, 128MB, Win2000), and I can see how it would easily hit 60 fps on a newer system.

    I was worried about how they would handle interaction before I tried it, but it's perfect. It's pretty intuitive, and extends the model used in the original game. And you can't fall off from tall places (it seems obvious, but sometimes developers don't get this right).

    I think this would be a killer game to get on Indrema, if they can get someone to port it. It uses D3D instead of OpenGL, so it's non-trivial, but it sure would sell a lot of those boxes.

  • Doh! I meant Real-time Myst.
  • Sorry about that.

    First there was "Myst." Then there was "Riven: More Myst." Then there was, " Hey, guess what? It's Myst again!" Now there's going to be "Myst you all over."

    Oops, sorry again.

    I'm sorry, but I'm in the crowd that found Myst boring and a wee bit silly. My wife, who is no champion gamer, solved it in an evening.

    Now it's become boring, AND redundant.

    Cyan, please. It's been years now, could you possibly go so far as to * come up with a new idea?*

    Around my house if Myst went away and never came back it wouldn't be. . . um, well,. . . myst.

    Ok, sorry again. I'll shut up now.
  • Better for the environment, eh? So what, Tuxracer [tuxracer.com] will soon sport a nice add "No penguins were (seriously) harmed in the production of this game"... Erf
  • Damn, knew there was a trick to the 3D effect. And here I was sitting (nearly) naked in front of the computer at 1 in the morning looking like like a real geek wearing those Red/Blue 3D glasses.
  • Wish I could have gotten that tour of the place before I graduated.
    and Prof. Singhrs moved out west. I don't know if they really were
    busy or just tired of people touring their VERY unique facility
    I imagine that Jason Baskett is still working there, but I don't know
    From back in the day('96 ish), here is what got a local boy hired at Cyan
    http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~irl/ANIM/ [wsu.edu]
    Scroll down to bonkers...
    or here is direct link bonkers movie [wsu.edu]
    I have no idea why that old stuff is still there, some people never update their webpages =P
    My animation was almost that good....yeah right!
    Eric
  • Surely people have wised up to the fact that the Myst series of games sucked?

    Good game design make a good game, not pretty graphics, sorry but Myst and Riven both sucked.

    I mean, people learnt their lessons after Rise Of The Robots didn't they? ... Didn't they?


    --------------------------------

  • You can get the same effect by stopping every 5 minutes to play minesweeper.

    Actually, you can get the same effect by stopping every five minutes and trying to get the fireplace in your living room to warp you to a secret room in your house where an odd-looking man is hiding.

  • For those of you who did like the Cyan products the first time round, yes, I'd say the new products are going to be thoroughly enjoyable.

    I had the chance to meet Rand Miller, one of the brothers creative, at a festival this past summer. He gave a well-spoken talk on subcreation, and talked about a little history and a bit of backstory. We also saw an earlier version of the RealMyst trailer; very nice.

    Highlight, of course, was a glimpse of a Mudpie demo, an in-house version. Along with the expected superb graphics, the motion base seemed smooth and well developed. It will be interesting to see how they incorporate the multiplayer aspect. It should be rewarding to interact against the backdrop of such an immersive created world.

    Also, Rand was funny.


    ---
    "The Constitution...is not a suicide pact."

  • Re:At last, the unified news item... (Score:4)

    by sanderb ( 9539 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @12:26AM (#653762) Homepage
    No longer content to post the same story two times in a day, the editors decided this time to just post the duplicates together in one news item! Everyone is, of course, required to submit comments subtly different in appearance yet identical in content. No longer content to post the same story two times in a day, the editors decided this time to just post the duplicates together in one news item! Everyone is, of course, required to submit comments subtly different in appearance yet identical in content.

  • Deathmatch mode? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After watching the realMYST trailer, I realize that all the game needs to be truly complete is rocket-launchers and deathmatch mode.

  • I've only played Myst, but perhaps part of the controversy comes from the fact that after all the puzzle-solving (which is time-consuming even if it's easy) you get nothing but a thinly-disguised ad for the next game? God knows I was ready to break the CD in two. It seems even worse than the 'CONGRATURATIONS' [sic] at the end of the 8-bit Nintendo's 1946, because you know they could have done better.
  • left the job of a third Myst sequel, Myst III:Exile, to the notorious Presto Studios.

    Would some one kindly explain what is so notorious about Presto Studios? I've never even heard of them.

    have a day,

    -l

  • Important Stuff: * Please try to keep posts on topic. * Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads. * Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. * Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. * Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
  • You know, if they had managed to get "The sequel to the sequel to Myst" out in 2000, aka y2k, they could have called it Myst3K. It could even have taken place on the Satellite of Love. The mission: find Joel, Dr. F. and T.V.'s Frank. Of course it would have to be 3rd person unless we have to be cambot.

    I feel better now.
  • The demo download site appears to be Slashdotted (1000 concurrant downloads, feh). To tide you over, enjoy a direct link to the trailer:

    (Urk, the Slashdot lameness filter choked on the very long URLs, you'll need to delete the spaces inserted. Grumble.)

    • Low Quality - 224x164 4.7 Mb Quicktime 4 [akamai.net]
      http://a864.g.akamai.net/5/864/51/a1fd2644e6dcf8/1 a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a 8d80d3cb12453c02589f25382e94ab71c8fbe3095f662cf48b b2f/realmyst_144.mov
    • Medium Quality - 344x224 8.9 Mb Quicktime 4 [akamai.net]
      http://a1168.g.akamai.net/5/1168/51/94e9a89268a4 ce/1a1a1aaa2198c62797 0773d80669d8 457 4a8d80d3cb12453c02589f25382e94ab71c8fbe3095f662cf4 8bb2f/realmyst_ISDN.mov
    • High Quality - 448x328 15.8 Mb Quicktime 4 [akamai.net]
      http://a1440.g.akamai.net/5/1440/51/2b1dc47f9c5b 96/1a1a1aaa2198c62797 0773d80669d8 457 4a8d80d3cb12453c02589f25382e94ab71c8fbe3095f662cf4 8bb2f/realmyst_T1.mov

    These are direct links to the .mov files, suitable for downloading and viewing at your leisure.

  • Some things never change (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Myst & Riven "Controversial"? That's an interesting way of putting it. "Buttock-clenchingly tedious slideshows" would be more accurate.

    Cyan : give up.

  • MYST and Riven never used QT VR. That doesn't mean it didn't take off though; it's quite commonly used on websites for "virtual tour" type things. Never really took off on CD-ROMs and games though.
  • Robyn Miller had left Cyan a while back, and had started some company called Land of Point. He was supposedly working on some movie... Anyway, he was interviewed by Wired around the same time that he left Cyan. In typical Wired fashion, Land of Point was creating something that was going to revolutionize the way we.... sat around watching movies, i guess. Anyway, my point is the other day i was trying to find their site (www.landofpoint.com [landofpoint.com]) and it appears to be gone. Has anyone heard anything about the elusive "Land of Point?"

  • There are many games just as immersive as Myst or Riven. Download a version of the Inform interpreter (for Windows, the most popular version is WinFrotz, for other OS's, I'm not sure), and then download the games to play on them.

    I recommend Christchurch or Curses, but there are many others.

    Yes, the lowly text adventure is still the most immersive form of game ever created. I know that some will crticize the annoyance of verb/noun guessing, but there is much more to it than that. The storylines can be deep, complex, and satisfying. The verb/noun interaction becomes intuitive and painless, and you get lost in the game as thoroughly as in a good film or book.

    Try 'em, you'll like it!

  • grin

    Love 'em. I still have my whole stack of old Infocom game originals (360k floppies). I lost half of my eyesight playing those things on an old "green screen" display that was only 8" across to begin with (I couldn't afford anything else at the time -- even the 8" green screen cost me $190).

    I also loved all of the Sierra text/graphic adventures -- King's quest I-IV and similar games that were around at the time... I thought they were incredibly fun and were good for weeks of spare-time gameplay.

    I actually think today's games (i.e. Quake III, Unreal Tournament) are the ultimate triumph of graphics of substance that so many people are accusing Myst and Riven of. I own a huge number of first-person shooters (because that's what's being sold today) and they're okay, but I play them more for "cool graphics" value than for anything else -- really, they're all just the same:

    Stick one, two, or fifty low-detail humanoid figures in a room and then frantically blast, blast, blast away while saying to the other users online: "shit, boog, gonna get blown away!"

    I still play King's Quest I sometimes. I almost never play Quake or Quake II anymore.

  • Good game design make a good game, not pretty graphics, sorry but Myst and Riven both sucked.

    Ah, but those games had much more than graphics. People were pulled into them because of the intriguing world and sense of mystery, similar to books like Clarke's Rendevous with Rama. The graphics weren't really that impressive, considering they were stills.
  • Along those lines, am I the only one that played Peter Gabriel's Eve [on.net]? Definitely computer game as art. As a Gabriel fan, I found it interesting and visually stunning but difficult to follow whatever plot you decided it had.

  • ...third Myst sequel, Myst III:Exile...

    Myst III: Exile will be the second Myst sequel, not the first.
    --

  • Here's a rule:

    If an Electronic game comes with a notebook for you to write things down, you are in trouble.

    -nme!

  • ... (Score:1)

    by Faluzure ( 3650 )
    Um, I was casually reading until I got hit by a suddent attack of deja vu.

  • Good/Bad (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02, 2000 @10:41PM (#653779)
    Good: Copy. Paste. Submit.
    Bad: Copy. Paste. Paste. Submit.

  • Re:... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Um, I was casually reading until I got hit by a suddent attack of deja vu. Um, I was casually reading until I got hit by a suddent attack of deja vu.
  • Actually, I imagine it was just an on-line stutter. :) and I imagine people will look at that screen shot and go "wow!, that room is huge!"... until they realize that the entire game probably takes place in that one room...... :) haha
  • Forgive my ignorance, by why were Myst and Riven ``notoriously controversial?'' I have played neither, and have not heard anything about this. Could someone please explain it to me?

    thanks
  • Either that, or characters in the game _always_ look that small. :)
  • After watching the trailer for realMYST (very well done, by the way), I remembered back a few years ago, playing the original, and thinking to myself, "won't it be something when we can do this in real-time someday." It looks like we're there. Still, I'm waiting for the oft-quoted "Toy Story in real-time." Someday. :)

  • Geez... (Score:4)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Thursday November 02, 2000 @10:52PM (#653785) Homepage
    With the impending release of realMyst, a realtime 3D version of Myst, and the accompanying Demo and Trailer, quite a few editors are having trouble paying attention to what they're doing...



    ---------------------------------------------
  • ...at least if you loved the original Myst, that is. If you didn't love the original Myst, you probably won't give a damn. After all, with the exception of one new age, it's just Myst all over again with better graphics and sound.

    But it's much better graphics and sound. If you're not sure whether you'd care about realMyst, but you have decent bandwidth and hardware, download the demo and give it a try. Myself, aside from marveling over the graphics, I was surprised to learn that I still remembered how to solve the Age. :-)

    --

  • Looking for the trailer? (Score:3)

    by CritterNYC ( 190163 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @10:52PM (#653787) Homepage
    Links to the trailer can be found on the realMyst site here [realmyst.com]. The trailer is available in three varieties:
    • Low - 224x164 - 4.7Mb
    • Medium - 344x224 - 8.9Mb
    • High - 448x328 - 15.8Mb
    NOTE: The trailers are ONLY in Quicktime 4 format. The links are the three right-hand pictures at the bottom of the page. And yes, you have to mouse-over them to even figure out what they are.

    I suggest taking a peak... quite cool looking.

    And yes, if you're wondering, the links on the realmyst.com site link to video frames on apple.com which link to the video file at akamai.net.

    Some day I hope to have a .plan.
  • I just thought of the best way to describe the frustration that came with beating this game. Mental blue balls. It was like spending two hours dinking around and then not being able to blow my puzzle-solving load, and boy did it make me upset.

  • At last, the unified news item... (Score:5)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @11:00PM (#653789)
    No longer content to post the same story two times in a day, the editors decided this time to just post the duplicates together in one news item!

    Everyone is, of course, required to submit comments subtly different in aperance yet identical in content.
  • For those of us in the Twin Cities...well we have a little treat comming up next week. A group going by [electronictheatre.org]
    minnesot electronic theatre is holding a event in minneapolis next wednesday (nov 8, 2000).....why do you care...

    well greg uhler [myst3.com] and mike brown (vp and senior animator respectively at presto) will be talking about how "cutting edge tech and the artistic mind merge". I can only assume that they will be concentraing how they hav used these approaches to create the latest sequel in the myst realm.

    This might be an opp. for us lucky locals to check out some new stuff from myst.

    This event appears to be quite interesting...lots of animation and new media innovators. Very pretty website [electronictheatre.org] to.

  • And to get the fireplace to warp you, you must click on every single square millimeter of it with your finger, replicated the 'thrashing' effect that made Myst so enjoyable.
  • "notoriously controversial Myst & Riven Series" "notorious Presto Studios" OK, I admit that I don't follow gaming all that closely -- but how are these things "nortorious" or "controversial"?
  • the lighting in that screenshot looks pretty problemated to me. either the front pillars should be lighter, or the shadows they cast should be longer. Also the lighting level difference between the main floor and lower level looks a little extreme, but its hard to tell whats going on down there in the shot so maybe theres a legit reason for that. Looks good, otherwise
  • Oh my, I hope these people never get ahold of the lion king, you know animals chasing the heroes and all....

  • And why don't so-called editors ever do any editing? This may be one of the more irritating examples, but it's pretty clear from the spelling and grammatical errors that are in nearly every piece that submissions run unedited, with at most a bit of editorial comment following.

    I don't mean to minimize the effort involved in choosing interesting articles, but being an editor usually involves, well, editing.
    --meredith
  • I know Cyan has limited resources, but why did they hand off Myst 3 to another studio? First off, Myst 3 is unnecessary in the story line, I think. It attempts to continue the story by bringing up something we thought about briefly when we completed Myst. Nothing really worth while - it's not original. Ghen did the same thing to Riven. Plus, after reading the trilogy, I think it's a brilliant story that should be left as it is. This is just a poor attempt to milk the series for more money.

    Second, I am very unconvinced by the screen shots I saw on www.myst3.com. It's HOW many years after Riven, and the quality has declined? Everything looks fake and plasticky, even though the poly count is a lot higher.

    *sigh* I'm disappointed. To me, the last game in the series was Riven (and the last book was The Book of D'ni). Let it rest, Cyan!

  • Will realtime engines ever reach the quality of raytracing at the consumer level? If we ever see raytracing happen in realtime simulations, I for one will finally find an aerial-combat simulator I can be happy with. No matter how much they say the graphics are improving, they still don't realistic enough to suit me. I want photrealism, dig?That being said...What kind of horsepower will be required to do this? Is there any supercomputer system anywhere that raytraces scenes at several frames per second?
  • The game was notorious, because its design concept was outrageous. What kind of game is it that, by actually playing the game as one would be expected, you lose? Instead, the entire purpose of the red/blue page nonsense is only to discover that it's the white page that you can get in less than 5 minutes that helps you win. A game with 5 minutes of replay value.

    Sure, it was pretty, and the puzzles may have been neat, but there was something fundamentally wrong with the bloody game that just killed the whole experience. Zork: Grand Inquisitor was a better run for your money.

  • I wanted to play the demo, but it REQUIRES a 450Mhz PII/compatable, AND a graphics accelerator card.
    Apparently my K6 233Mhz is not good enough...

    THAT is B.S.

  • http://thesilicondragon.com/realmyst.h tml [thesilicondragon.com]

    Go get realMYST since the main download sites are busy. Enjoy!

  • I would have to second that. I would have been about 10 when the manhole came out. That was one incredible game. Like myst, I guess, without all the annoying puzzles.

    In Myst, things would be completely unrelated to anything. Pressing buttons in the right order had nothing to do with anything.

    What was the deal with the red and blue pages anyways? You get all of them, and it's game over. You die. WTF?


    -Ando
  • be doing something right. :)

    The article itself SAID that the game was controversial, and it is. I happen to be on one side of the controversy, and I said so.

    It is my absolute honest OPINION.

    Being on one side of an issue does not make you a troll, and should not make you a troll just because you are on one side or another of a controversial issue.

    That would be a * controversial * post.
  • For faking screenshots of JP3 at higher-resolution rendering levels :-P (BTW, as far as I know, the repeat wasn't my doing, but I may be wrong)
  • This is their last Myst rerelease. Now they're going on to MUDPIE, something totally new :) look at the screenshout -- that aint Myst :)
  • Presto made the Journeyman adventure game series, which was like a quasi-3D adventure game wherin your views are on the inside of spheres and you rotate to see a pre-rendered image skinned on the inside of the sphere. Then you lock onto a new sphere. In any case, they faked screenshots at higher res, wheras the actual game sucked. Now THAT's notorious.
  • Realtime! FPS-like, realish, realtime! At least it'll be buttock-clenchingly tedious in a different way :P
  • Land of Point's Green Tea project is supposed to be an independant film set in ancient times or something... Robyn has decided to take a few years' break on it and sit on his pile of money in the orchards of Meade :-P Oh, it's so stressing to make a movie with merely the money resulting from the most popular games in world history.
  • I'm pretty damn sure I didn't do that, though I'm not about to actively deny it. Fine, I'm to blame if it was my fault. Either way, the editor should have fixed it :-P
  • Good question. I've seen Myst and own Riven (which I love). I don't remember hearing anything controversial about them. They wouldn't be controversial for the standard video game reasons (ie. violence, sex, etc). Possibly for their story lines which speak of parallel worlds and a race's ability to create (or link to, depending on the viewpoint) worlds just by writing about them. That might be controversial in the same way that a group of odd people believe that the Star Wars' concept of the force is a tool of satan [geocities.com]. Ok... yes... these guys are fake... but, it could happen.

    Some day I hope to have a .plan.

  • I need to strafe (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I tried out the realMyst demo, and I've got an urgent one-word request: "strafing". Okay, this is a non-violent game, if you prefer "sidestepping" I don't mind. Maybe I've spent too many hours in FPS games, but I just can't navigate a 3D world without the mouselook/strafing combo.

    Okay, back to Rune.

  • that is pretty damned funny.
  • It is disabled by default. Take a look at your ini file in the myst demo folder. There are some hash marks before a few lines, one of them is the extended keys. Unfortunatly you cannot bind your own, but they are in there.
  • Due to a slew of recent difficulties, in 2.5 we've decided to concentrate our efforts into improving the usablity of the copy and paste functions. We hope it will put an end mysterious slashdot stories like this one.

    Linus
  • I know, this has been mentioned, but don't you guys have a preview button?

    Gfunk. I know, this has been mentioned, but don't you guys have a preview button?

    Gfunk


    --Gfunk

  • Re:notorious? (Score:3)

    by f5426 ( 144654 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @02:04AM (#653815)
    > why were Myst and Riven ``notoriously controversial?'

    Because Myst was an adventure games with no characters and feraturing only "nice" static graphics.

    Myst had a very good athmosphere. *If* you liked it, you would like it much. Everything is very very logical, and is pretty immersive. Myst was plesant to people *not* attracted to traditional adventure games. But, well, compared to a *real* adventure game (say Zork or Day of the Tentacle), it is was so different that many adventure gamers just hated it.

    Personally, I loved Myst because it was well thought and very original. The problem is that, after its success, everyone (including Cyan) thought that making nice graphics and impossible to understand plot was what adventure gamers wanted, so, basically, quality of traditional adventure games just went downhill (Riven was a big pile of shit, IMHO. Much less logical than Myst was, and without the novellty factor). Every moron under the sun, tried to duplicate Myst by merging lame puzzles with ugly 3D graphics.

    And, as an aggraving point, Myst totally lacked humor, so did all those boring sequels and myst-wannabees...

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • Hah!! Your "31337 firewall"! [127.0.0.1] was easy! I broke through in seconds after examining the TCP fingerprint, discovered it gave access to an entire class C network , rooted the server in 5 seconds, and then destroyed the evidence of my visit with a trusty cd / ; rm -r !!

    Now visit my haXor honeypot in my sig: it's the ultimate in Alien Tech!

    struggles to get on-topic
    What engine does Myst use? It it a variation of the Quake or Unreal ones? Reason I ask:
    I wanna dreamcast port! I've given up trying to keep my PC "recent" at home, as I only use it for music ... I just use my trusty company laptop for everything else, but it's got no 3d :-)

  • It seems even worse than the 'CONGRATURATIONS' [sic]

    <flamebait>You're an idiot</flamebait>

    This is an usual error in japanese->english translation. There is no difference in japanese between 'R' and 'L'. For instance you can see this in a lot of casio graphics calculators, in the form of 'IRREGAL ERROR'

  • You didn't kill people or blow things up. That alone makes it outrageous in the gaming world.

    I think it demonstrated that computer games can be art, not just entertainment. Other people think like me. This of course create resentment, the arrogant claim that a game for no objective reason is more than other games containing the same elements.

  • I hate to say it, but Myst III looks cooler than realMYST to me, and I'm a graphics nut.

    Will realtime engines ever reach the quality of raytracing at the consumer level?

    My thinking is that their next game should be an interactive DVD movie.
  • > If you want to know why just about every game has bucketloads of crap fmv to wade through, blame Myst.

    Mmm. I would blame Myst for the lack of humor, lack of characters, lack of explanations, lack of feedback.

    But I would blame the 7th guest for the full motion video. There is a *very* interesting read about trilobyte/7th guest/11th hour/Tender Loving Care/software development/ego/death march projects at http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-tri / [gamespot.com].

    Repeating myself, it worth the read. Great depth. Quite long. Read it.

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • I don't think he was complaining about the translation, so much as he was complaining about "Wow... I just finished the game, and here's this insincere "Congrats" message floating on my screen". That's the maddening part... realizing that you've finished the game, and really have nothing to show for it. That's a classic game design rule: "Make the reward worth the effort".
  • No, more like 3 A.M. "Go-to-sleep-dammit" endorphins :P
  • You're right, it's " Myst: ain't it really grand this time." :)
  • It doesn't support hardware T&L, but it DOES support Glide and has a switch built-in to toggle FSAA.

    So basically it will sell a ton of Voodoo5 cards...
  • Robyn said something about how outdated the lop web site was, and has apparrantly been back at Cyan working on MUDPIE... so he took down the web page.

    WorldMaker
  • ..any FPS game out there right now? Why doesn't someone attempt at recreating one or more of the Myst maps in UT or Q3 format? They could make for some great deathmatch mods or teamplay maps... would be smoother and more people could enjoy a possibly higher framerate with all the movement functionality (for mr.'I need my strafe ability!')...

    I'd love to see that!
  • It is going to be an organic, realtime multiplayer ...

    Am I missing something with this "organic" bit? How exactly can a computer game, a program run on a machine which is triggered by small electral impulses, be organic?

    The only possible explanation of this is that the Media Monkeys behind Cyan/Headpsin have watched one too many commercials for Herbal Essences. Does this mean will seem some heavily anti-aliased busty blonde in our "gaming trade magazines", with the caption:

    MUDPIE: It's a totally organic experience....... Just be careful, when you play with MUD, things get messy.

    Rather humorous though, but please, someone explain this concept of organic computer games.
  • Forgive my ignorance, by why were Myst and Riven ``notoriously controversial?'' I have played neither, and have not heard anything about this. Could someone please explain it to me?

    Yes they were notorious, notoriously awful. If you want to know why just about every game has bucketloads of crap fmv to wade through, blame Myst.
  • Gamespot has an MPEG version at http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/filters/products/med ia/0,11100,430806,00.html

    Unfortunately, it's been recompressed with their 'G' logo in the bottom right corner, and it's a bit grainy, but at least it runs on my machine without skipping frames.

    They also have crappy streaming versions, but I can't stand those. :p

  • A referance to the fidelity of the images (Score:3)

    by sanemind ( 155251 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @11:54PM (#653830) Homepage
    A buzzword used to describe 3D models with sufficient detail to look closely akin to real life; not chunky like doom, or often visibly broken down into simple geometric forms to reduce polygon count to something manageble [like the original quake, where much of the architecture was texture mapped rectangular prisms, peoples arms were not much more then extended pyrimids, etc]

  • The quality of the game is controversial (Score:4)

    by MrShiny ( 171918 ) on Thursday November 02, 2000 @11:57PM (#653831) Homepage
    Some thought Myst was a brilliantly original and simple game concept and others thought it was boring and stupid.

    Personally, I think it's a little of both. There are some good ideas there and some nice art direction but the puzzles aren't very interesting or well integrated into the game. You can get the same effect by stopping every 5 minutes to play minesweeper.

  • Hrrm.. Learn something new every day... Although isn't the greater difficulty in loosing that '3D' look. Not necessarily the poly count, but that plasticine look that a large majority of photo-realistic 3D pictures seem to have. And I'm not talking about stuff like the blatently obvious Toy Story or Dinosaurs, but even the subtle 3D photos seem to have some sort of, I guess, spray on sheen or plastic look. It's like everything has some high amount of reflectivity, or there's always an all illuminating omni-light. Just my thoughts on 3D modeling at present.

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