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Demos, Screenshots Of Cyan's Next Projects
"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]."
For what?
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!
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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.
-- dR.fuZZo
As King Crimson once put it:
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.
Lowmag.net
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.
~ Old Warriors Society
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.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
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?
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
I'll get started on a server mod....
There is no spork.
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.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
You missed the point...
These days it's controversial _not_ to have sex and violence.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
realMyst will have a new ending. This, more than real-time lighting, has me excited.
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Fortune favors the bold. -Virgil
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.
Dull, dull, dull games.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Conclusive proof that you can be clueless without being a newbie.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
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.
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 will soon sport a nice add "No penguins were (seriously) harmed in the production of this game"... Erf
Information is the catalyst for revolution
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/
Scroll down to bonkers...
or here is direct link bonkers movie
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
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?
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The man from Mars, he say urkle.
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."
"Life. Don't talk to me about life."
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.
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.
Would some one kindly explain what is so notorious about Presto Studios? I've never even heard of them.
have a day,
-l
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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.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
(Urk, the Slashdot lameness filter choked on the very long URLs, you'll need to delete the spaces inserted. Grumble.)
http://a864.g.akamai.net/5/864/51/a1fd2644e6dcf8/
http://a1168.g.akamai.net/5/1168/51/94e9a89268a
http://a1440.g.akamai.net/5/1440/51/2b1dc47f9c5
These are direct links to the .mov files, suitable for downloading and viewing at your leisure.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Cyan : give up.
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) and it appears to be gone. Has anyone heard anything about the elusive "Land of Point?"
However,
Along those lines, am I the only one that played Peter Gabriel's Eve? 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.
Myst III: Exile will be the second Myst sequel, not the first.
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begin 644
Um, I was casually reading until I got hit by a suddent attack of deja vu.
Good: Copy. Paste. Submit.
Bad: Copy. Paste. Paste. Submit.
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
This is my cig-a-nature.
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 give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Either that, or characters in the game _always_ look that small. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
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. :)
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...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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. :-)
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Do I look like I speak for my employer?
- 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
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
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Everyone is, of course, required to submit comments subtly different in aperance yet identical in content.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
minnesot electronic theatre is holding a event in minneapolis next wednesday (nov 8, 2000).....why do you care...
well greg uhler 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 to.
bk
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
wisconsin does not exist.
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
--meredith
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis
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?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
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.
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
Okay, back to Rune.
that is pretty damned funny.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
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.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
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
Black holes are where god divided by zero
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
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
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.
No, more like 3 A.M. "Go-to-sleep-dammit" endorphins :P
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...
..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.
Information is the catalyst for revolution
Gamespot has an MPEG version at http://www.zdnet.com/gamespot/filters/products/med ia/0,11100,430806,00.html
:p
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.
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]
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the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
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.