Myst Online Trailer

Allaran writes "The latest installment in the Myst story, an online experience entitled URU: Ages of Myst, is ramping up to its release. This has been up and coming for some time, but a trailer (Warning:20MB) [BitTorrent link via GameTab] has just been released, made entirely from within the game engine. Apparently, there is a significant offline game that can be played, with the option to subscribe as well."

Comments

No Macs

[pudge]

"Currently Uru is only planned to be available on the PC. But we are exploring options to expand to other platforms. Check back with the Uru website for updates regarding additional skus that may become available."

Dear UbiSoft: fuck you.

"Let's screw the platform that made the Myst franchise what it is today!"

Re:No Macs

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

"regarding additional skus that"

What's a sku? Some sort of term for a conversion of existing software?

Re:No Macs

[fadeaway]

Erhm. Perhaps Myst was born on the Mac, but it was the PC sales that broke software (and CD-ROM) sales records.

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

Wow, that attitude 'll get you more support. Yes sir.

I imagine Ubisoft would say the same thing to you.

And why would you be worked up over, of all series, Myst? Unless they've made serious improvements, all the games have been mediocre at best.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

A SKU is a product. Really, a SKU is a product number (Stock Keeping Unit), but some people use it as shorthand for the product itself.

Re:No Macs

[t0qer]

Why are you mad at UbiSoft? They're just the publisher, not the actual people doing the work of creating the game right? Like when Myst was originally made, broderbrun was the publisher. It was 2 guys in their garage that actually made the game.

I can't really blame them though... People don't buy macs as "gaming machines" From what i've seen, mac's are primarily used by a few types of users..

Graphic Artists (scrotumshop)
Desktop Publishers (Quark)
Coders (using codewarrior dev enviroment)
Amatuer film makers (can't remember the name of that new apple video editing suite offhand)

Gaming is just not what mac's get used for. For getting serious work done, yes but playtime on the mac is almost non-existant. I don't think it has to do with the mac being harder to code for, as it's more a profitability issue.

Re:No Macs

[John Hurliman]

I toured Cyan's studio a few months back, as it's local to the area. The sound engineers and artists primarily still use Macs, but the programmers have entirely shifted over to MSVC/Win32 platforms, to speed up the release cycle and avoid cross-platform issues. The game is based entirely on DirectX libraries, so doing other platforms wouldn't be an easy task. It's hard enough to find competent programmers at all in Spokane, let alone ones that can write cross-platform 3D games.

Re:No Macs

[zakezuke]

While I'm not a mac person, Myst was actually made for the Mac platform in the first place. It seems to be a major fuck you to the people who actually made Myst popular.

I remember Myst version 1. I typicaly didn't play video games on the PC, so as I didn't really have a spiffy video card. As a result, I found gameplay much more acceptable on the Mac. It was one of the new applications you could show the average PC user what a stock Mac can do that your PC could not. I think it was probally the first time I had to actually invest in a sound card as well.

This does however fit with the Myst theme of *we will not support this platform*. I also remember that people who made Myst never supported windows NT because they felt it was a business rather then a home platform.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. I guess its O.K. when Apple shuns other platforms(quicktime for linux *cough*) but its not O.K. when someone does the same to Apple?

I suppose when Apple buys up yet another company and decides to cut the Windows version I'll just keep quiet then as well.

Here's to hoping Apple never gets popular enough where they have enough money to buy Adobe. We all know what would happen then.

Re:No Macs

[Cliff]

SKUs are generally inventory numbers or stock keeping units. By asking users to watch their webpage for "additional SKUs", they are basically asking the users of other OSes (ala Macs) to hold their breath until they decide to release to something other than Windows.

What I want to know is what is so different about this latest version of Myst where they couldn't have completed a Mac version to begin with. They had 2 versions of Myst under their belt, already, so it's not like they haven't had experience developing for the Mac.

I can understand if they gave an explicit reason as to why a Mac version wasn't created, but saying "watch this space", is kind of a cop-out. Generally, and at least in this industry, when you say "watch this space", what it really means is "yeah, keep looking. We might do another version, but we want to keep the hype machine going at your expense"

In all fairness, I'll have to take a look at the trailer and see what the new game looks like, but the preponderance of the "games only sell on Windows" attitude, I'm wondering if game studios are willing to live with the fact that they are making this a self-fulfilling prophesy and if any of them are ever interested in trying to get out from under Microsoft's shadow.

Re:No Macs

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

SKU is a product number (Stock Keeping Unit)but some people use it as shorthand for the product itself.

Makes sense... saying "products" would have been clearer on their part, or maybe "supported platforms", but it's their choice of words, I guess.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

And it never would have had the chance for such popularity had it not broken all the records on the Mac, first. No offense, but, um, duh.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Wow, that attitude 'll get you more support.

So I would get zero support instead of zero. What do I lose?

I imagine Ubisoft would say the same thing to you.

And I should care?

Re:No Macs

[El]

It's hard enough to find competent programmers at all in Spokane, let alone ones that can write cross-platform 3D games.
I'd be willing to relocate...

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

From what i've seen, mac's are primarily used by a few types of users..

You haven't seen much. No, really.

Re:No Macs

[azadism]

Bastards. It also won't work with Mozilla. Requires IE

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

If this is true, it's sad. Fuck them for using Microsoft, though. Not that they need me to say it: using Windows means getting fucked on a daily basis.

Re:No Macs

[oscast]

"Hmmm. I guess its O.K. when Apple shuns other platforms(quicktime for linux *cough*) but its not O.K. when someone does the same to Apple?" No, its not okay, because Apple made MPEG4 Quicktime, which means... they not only made it for Linux... they made it for everybody. You must be talking about sorenson because Quicktime is just a container format.

Re:No Macs

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

I'm wondering if game studios are willing to live with the fact that they are making this a self-fulfilling prophesy and if any of them are ever interested in trying to get out from under Microsoft's shadow.

I think part of the problem is that, at the head of most game developement groups, there's a CFO who says, "The cost/benefit ratio for that platform is so low, we're just going to ignore it." They don't seem to care much about long-term investments in different market niches, they just want a quick buck.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

While I'm not a mac person, Myst was actually made for the Mac platform in the first place. It seems to be a major fuck you to the people who actually made Myst popular.

This is what I am saying.

Re:No Macs

[BWJones]

"Let's screw the platform that made the Myst franchise what it is today!"

Indeed, when Myst was originally created by Cyan back in 1992/1993, it was an all Macintosh operation. They used all of the video and audio built into Macs leveraging Quicktime (on Quadras I seem to remember) for the production and play of the game. All audio and video was a Macintosh operation. When it was ported to Windows, I had a friend complaining it simply did not look as good as it did on my IIci or my Quadra 840av. The really cool thing was, this was created using Hypercard and Hypertalk scripts! and is probably one of the all time greatest Hypercard programs.

Re:No Macs

[fadeaway]

And it never would have had the chance for such popularity had it not broken all the records on the Mac, first. No offense, but, um, duh.

Yeah, I forgot all about those 39 (and counting!) Mac copies. Sorry. =P

Re:No Macs

[t0qer]

Ok then answer this for me...

UT2003 was released for all platforms. What were the sales figures for those broken down by platform. Just pulling these figures out of the air but I would guess that.

Windows UT2003 sales accounted for %85
Mac UT2003 was probably around %10
Linux UT2003 was around %5

I'm not trying to bag on the mac (In fact I just rescued a 7600 from the dumpster, installed YDL/bootX on it, with Samba and netatalk, now it's a very nice fileserver for the company that was going to trash it) It's just not the platform you want to go to if you want to sell a lot of games.

Re:No Macs

[alex_ant]

Apple doesn't shun other platforms. QT is already available on the platforms that matter (Windows/Mac). Linux users don't need QT Player because they have Mplayer.

Anyway, can you imagine what the slashdot response would be if Apple were to port QuickTime Player to Linux? "Thanks a lot Apple for not making a Gnome version," or "thanks a lot for not making a KDE version," or "gee thanks, Apple, for forcing YOUR UGLY UI on us, and not allowing themeing, you FASCIST CORPORATE BASTARDS," or "GOD DAMN YOU APPLE, I can't control it via the command line," or "fucking apple idiots, how come you didn't make a special optimized RPM for my overclocked athlon running Redhat 8.0 with the low-latency kernel patch, you inconsiderate pricks."

I think Apple's programmers have better things to do than listen to cheap geeks whine about shit.

Re:No Macs

[Teach]

I can't really blame them though... People don't buy macs as "gaming machines"

DrunkGamers.com would agree:

• http://www.ionvideogames.com/refresh/movies/dg_swi tch.mov (14 MB)

Re:No Macs

[Cutriss]

Why are you mad at UbiSoft? They're just the publisher, not the actual people doing the work of creating the game right? Like when Myst was originally made, broderbrun was the publisher. It was 2 guys in their garage that actually made the game.

Ubi Soft is not just the publisher, but it is also the company *commissioning* the development of the game.

Just as it isn't up to Valve to decide to make a Mac port of Half-Life, it's not up to Uru's developer to make a Mac port. Ubi is calling the shots. So, I think the parent poster has a right to bitch at Ubi.

By the way - The Miller brothers pretty much signed away the franchise during the development of Myst III. One of them (Robin, I think) is still a "consultant" on the series, but they're both pretty much out of the picture now.

Re:No Macs

[spudchucker]

I played Myst on my Amiga with a Mac emulator.
Lightwave 3D started on the Amiga.
Macromedia's Director (Macromind back then) started on the Amiga.
Why don't they support the Amiga anymore.

Dear NewTek: fuck you.
Dear Macromedia: fuck you.

"Let's dive into financial ruin by pleasing a few unappreciative morons who would probably bitch about every detail of the game even if we handed it to them on the inner thighs of super models."

Re:No Macs

[CynicTheHedgehog]

Amen. This is a disturbing trend...it seems like there are fewer and fewer titles being made available for Mac since OS X came out. Team 17 made a few Worms titles for Mac back in the day, and now you can't find them anywhere.

Still, it seems odd that they would release RealMYST on the Mac and not Uru. I imagine the Uru engine is derived at least somewhat from the RealMYST engine...so why not?

I bet we'll see a Mac release about 6 months after the debut, which may be a blessing in disguise, given the bugginess of online games (especially early on).

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell do you think Ubisoft owe you something? They are a company, they have duty themselves to do what is profitable. Not noticed the number of unemployed programmers around? If you don't like that move to communist China or write your own software. Quit with the whinging.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

No, it was probably more than a million copies for Mac. Cerainly hundreds of thousands, if not a million, before there was ever a PC version.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Wow. If your numbers are correct, then a HIGHER percentage of Mac users than PC users are playing that game, since Apple has less than 10% of the market.

Really, you make this too easy.

Re:No Macs

[t0qer]

DrunkGamers.com would agree:

http://www.ionvideogames.com/refresh/movies/dg_s wi tch.mov

LOL that nearly made me fall out of my chair laughing!

There's tons of great games on the mac, warcraft3, breakout, superbreakout, (timid voice)photoshop

Definetly one of the better peices of net humor i've seen in a while. Thanks!

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Why the hell do you think Ubisoft owe you something? They are a company, they have duty themselves to do what is profitable.

If any computer company does not have some loyalty to its users, it will not BE profitable, as long as the users have other options.

Not noticed the number of unemployed programmers around? If you don't like that move to communist China or write your own software. Quit with the whinging.

Quit being a Brit.

Re:No Macs

[PenguiN42]

By the way - The Miller brothers pretty much signed away the franchise during the development of Myst III. One of them (Robin, I think) is still a "consultant" on the series, but they're both pretty much out of the picture now.

They signed away the Myst franchise, correct, but they did so in order to focus all their (Cyan's) development effort on Mudpie, now known as Uru

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixK7]

Well hell, macromedia seems to be on the road to not supporting the mac either. Dreamweaver MX on Mac OS X is rather awful at dealing with directories containing many files. Horizontal scrolling in source is painfully slow, and overall application performance is generally slow.

At it and Lightwave are still shipping for mac.

Re:No Macs

[t0qer]

Wow. If your numbers are correct, then a HIGHER percentage of Mac users than PC users are playing that game, since Apple has less than 10% of the market

What you just said made absolutely no sense at all. Even if %100 of the mac users buy a game, it's still just %10 market share. Compared with PC's that have %85 market share if %100 of them bought a game it would have a %850 lead over mac sales.

It's very simple, Check the box that applies.

When developing a game do you...
[ ]A. Develop for a platform that has the greatest market share, thereby making a lot of money if the game is a best seller and have lots of free press for.
[ ]B.Develop for a platform that has a little market share, not make as much and not get as much press because the platform isn't really that popular.

Somewhere in the great slash database there's a comment from John Carmack (yes we all know who he is) stating why Id released most of it's games PC first, then Mac and linux as an afterthought. I'd give you a link, but I tried searching (and judging by how low your UID is, you know how shitty the slash search system can be)

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Dude. What we are talking about is whether Mac users are gamers, not whether most gamers are Mac users. You said, People don't buy macs as "gaming machines" From what i've seen, mac's [sic] are primarily used by a few types of users and then went on to exclude "gamers" as a type of person that buys Macs.

It's a given that PC has a higher market share, but that is not what YOU were talking about. It's kinda sad that I have to remind you of your own argument.

Re:No Macs

[Rozinante]

"Let's screw the platform that made the Myst franchise what it is today!"

If only Hypercard were still around today, they wouldn't be so bold....

Re:No Macs

[aronc]

Just as it isn't up to Valve to decide to make a Mac port of Half-Life,

Actually, that isn't true with Half-Life. While VALVe is only working with a publisher so someone else can handle all of the logistics of printing boxes, getting promo crap to retailers etc. The game is completely self-funded and thus they get to make all the calls completely internally. Some of that power could have been given up in the details of the publishing contract, but given their incredibly strong bargining position at the time, I somehow doubt it.

Re:No Macs

[Prior Restraint]

"Let's dive into financial ruin by pleasing a few unappreciative morons who would probably bitch about every detail of the game even if we handed it to them on the inner thighs of super models."

Damn right I'd complain: they'd be in the way.

Re:No Macs

[Wesley Felter]

People don't buy macs as "gaming machines".

Not everyone has the luxury of buying a separate gaming machine.

From what i've seen, mac's are primarily used by a few types of users..

And the Myst series of games tends to appeal to people other than traditional gamers.

Re:No Macs

[adpowers]

Oh man, typical PC gamer. That is the stupidest video ever. I bet you were the guy who asked if Half Life 2 would run on his 286 (during that 600 meg preview video a few months back).

PS: I own a PowerBook and I am a gamer.

Re:No Macs

[Khomar]

Here is the response as seen in the forum on their site:

Given the state of the computer market, the PC client was developed first, and Cyan has since run out of money for further development of additional platform support. We've been given assurances by a couple of people at Cyan that if the PC version of the game sells well, there will be a Mac version released at a later time, similar to (though hopefully with less of a delay than) realMYST. Of course, if the PC version bombs, it won't matter either way... so talk it up to your PC-owning friends!

Reference

Re:No Macs

[randyest]

You just made me think of this:

Has (or why hasn't) Apple considered developing a DirectX-compatible graphics API, or OpenGL wrapper, or similar? Seems to me that even moderate compatibility with the most popular, most heavily-developed (and by many accounts pretty good these days) graphic subsystem (DirectX 8+) would go a long way toward helping revive the flailing mac gaming market, which would be a good thing.

I, for one, would certainly love to be able to frag some of my mac-using buddies in Battlefield 1942 (though I'm afraid to consider the cost of a max that could run bf1942 at the resolution and detail settings I'm accustomed to (1280x1024x32bit, all options at max on an XP2400/1GB/GeFX5900U).

Re:No Macs

[EvJSmon]

If any computer company does not have some loyalty to its users, it will not BE profitable, as long as the users have other options.

Agreed, to a certain extent. Are there any other options? Just because some arrogant sod wants something doesn't mean they will get it, it's always nice to ask though.

When Amigas became less popular what did we do about games that were on other platforms (mainly PC, but Myst was there somewhere)? Answer: Some nice fellows got licenses and ported them for us.

Same with Linux. Loki Software stepped in and made some games available.

Mac users had a fair bit of a "community" last time I looked. Do something about it, show that you are interested and, maybe, UbiSoft or some other company may decide that it is worthwile to create a Mac version.

I hate to be drawn in by this comment:

Quit being a Brit.

What exactly does being a Brit have to do with a statement about moving to a communist area or writing your own software? No, really, I would like to know.

Re:No Macs

[t0qer]

pudge wrote: blah blah .

Look, it's obvious you're just out for a fight. Go ahead and respond to this if you want the last word cause really, I don't give a shit.

And I doubt anyone else cares either.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why are you mad at UbiSoft? They're just the
>publisher, not the actual people doing the work of
>creating the game right? Like when Myst was
>originally made, broderbrun was the publisher. It was
>2 guys in their garage that actually made the game.

You obviously don't know much about the game industry. Very few developers are so privilaged today that they can make any significant decisions regarding the game. When it comes to platforms, it's mostly up the the publisher. Perhaps a developer could manage to write a port(Perhaps by being intelligent enough not to develop on windows) but chances are that the publisher won't fund that and that the deadlines don't allow time for that. Today it's publishers running(controlling?) the show, not the developer.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

What exactly does being a Brit have to do with a statement about moving to a communist area or writing your own software?

It was merely a pointless and irrelevant ad hominem designed to match the ones in the post being replied to.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Excuse me for replying to what you were saying, and then bringing it back to your own point when you tried to change it. Bad pudge!

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

all the games have been mediocre at best.

Sounds like somebody didn't figure out how to get behind the bookcase!

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

And I should care?

I couldn't say. I don't really see why they should care about you, though, especially if your reaction to not having support is "fuck you".

As someone said after me below, Macs are not made with gaming in mind, and you should have known that when you bought one.

Re:No Macs

[GryphonTech]

Cyan sold over 1 Million before the PC version saw the light of day. Besides when Myst first came out on the Mac, PC graphics and CPUs were not powereful enough to run it. I'm sure this was even pre-Pentium days back when the 386 was the dominant seller and the 486 was just out. They were forced to wait a couple of years before it could work decently on a PC.....

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know, The Servers do not run on Windows.

The servers run on *nix. Its not like they choose to only release the game on windows. It is a mater of making money. Since they can choose the server platform, they obviously choose the better one.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. You have just captured both the essence of /. whiners and the attitude of corporate folk like Apple.

I can seriously picture Jobs or someone thinking about /. geeks:

"Wow, these people all have a lot to say! They all talk about saving money by buying their own systems, tweaking and overclocking. Oh, and they save money by either using a free OS or pirating Windows. I'm glad they aren't our market, whiny shits."

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

But with Uru, CyanWorlds's funds were running low and they turned to the publisher for financial support through release. It's been in Ubi's court to fund a Mac release, and so far they've decided not to. If Uru is successful, there WILL be a Mac version.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

And then Apple proceeded to produce some of the most embarassingly bad hardware and software ever seen, had upheavals in management that almost put them out of business, allowed and then disallowed clones, and basically fucked up royally.

Re:No Macs

[jdavidb]

Not sure where they got the idea only coders using CodeWarrior used Macs. Personally, the main programmers I've seen using it are Perl programmers. Personally, I use the Mac as a coder, running Debian. But I'm a bit out of the ordinary. :)

Excuse me while I go back to this exciting Freeciv game on my Mac. :)

Re:No Macs

[isoteareth]

"Let's screw the platform that made the Myst franchise what it is today!"

Or, more likely, let's not waste money on developing for a platform that represents almost no market share until we get an idea of how the game will sell from the much larger PC market and determine if the cost is justified.

Shocking, how business is about money...

Re:No Macs

[fadeaway]

No, it was probably more than a million copies for Mac. Cerainly hundreds of thousands, if not a million, before there was ever a PC version.

Pudge, buddy.. I seriously doubt there was even a million Macs in 1993. But.. you're the resident Mac expert. If you can find figures to prove me wrong, I'm all ears.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right..there's also the militant freaks like yourself, plenty of those around.

Re:No Macs

[Illbay]

Cyan sold over 1 Million before the PC version saw the light of day.

Ah, you know those Mac-heads.

They liked the game so much they all went out and bought another copy.

Re:No Macs

[Seth Finklestein]

Dear pudge: fuck you.

Nobody cares about Macs any more. There's not much money to be had selling games to such a tiny segment of the market. It's like saying "Let's develop a game for Dell computers."

There's already a standard for computers, and that standard is Windows. The users have spoken.

By the way, pudge, congratulations. You have risen to the level of 0.5 microSimses of indignation and antagonism. That's the highest level of any Slashdot editor besides Michael Sims himself. If you steal sethf.com, you'll jump way out into the lead!

Re:No Macs

[Seth Finklestein]

I bet you were shouting "Fuck you" the second Microsoft bought Bungie, and you realized that it would take 15 more years before you could play Marathon Aleph Infinity Plus One G Turbo X on your Mac. You still think that Microsoft will release Halo for Mac.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some games to play on my real computer. Enjoy your candycoated toybox. I hear that puzzle game with the Apple logo is really fun!

Oh yeah, keep swearing at Microsoft. Call them "Micro$oft" and use the 'f' word a lot. That makes 'em really mad, pudge.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

pudge's low uid is because he's one of the slash developers. He's probably the one that made the search function so stupid. No wonder he is angry.

Re:No Macs

[Seth Finklestein]

So if a game was originally made for the Amiga, its creators are obligated to release future versions for the Amiga in order to pacify a group of whiny zealots.

Face it, pudge; you overspend by thousands of dollars for specialized hardware to grouse about the lack of games. You have a tcsh shell prompt. Congratufuckinglations. Go play moon-buggy on your glorified DEC terminal.

What Apple needs to do is drop the cost of their giant cheese graters by $1,000 and allow other companies to make Mac OS X-compatible hardware. Then, and only then, will that bastard child of a platform gain more than 2% market share.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice pudge. Here's a little background for you (at least, as much relevant background as I can remember... I hope it's accurate). Cyan bought a little graphics company named Headspin for their excellent Plasma3D engine, which is the basis for the engine being used in Uru (formerly codenamed Mudpie). The Plasma3D engine was written in DirectX, and when Cyan bought Headspin, they brought a lot of the Headspin programmers to Spokane, added on to the Cyan HQ, and had them continue working on the engine.

The graphics engine for Uru is absolutely fabulous. I agree that it's a shame that the game isn't available for the Mac (disclaimer, I now work for Apple, so please note that this is all my opinion and doesn't represent the views of my employer, shouldn't be considered a statement by Apple, etc, etc.) but I know that the founders of Cyan (now Cyan Worlds) have always been very commited to the Mac platform. However, one of the founders left for Project Green Tea, and the other was already staring down the most expensive game development project in history (I'm not sure if that still holds), and converting an entire engine between DirectX to OpenGL is an incredible additional engineering expense. Pesky money.

Additionally, they use 3D Studio (sigh, so many marketing changes to keep track of, now called "3ds max") for modelling (at least they did last I heard). 3ds has excellent game development workflow, from all I hear. But, again, Macs.

Somehow, I doubt you would fault them for using SGI workstations to develop Riven, especially if you knew about the constraints they were working under at the time (try rotating a 5 million polygon model on a Mac circa 1998). Bitching at them for their development constraints is about as productive as staring at a cieling.

If you want Uru on the Mac, send the publisher an e-mail, write them a letter, or call them. Promise to pay money for the game, or preorder it if they'll develop it. People in the Cyan fan community have known that Mudpie/Uru would be DirectX based since Cyan bought Headspin, which was a long, long time ago. They've had plenty of time to raise their concerns. But, it's never too late.

-AW (former Lysters [should] know who I am)

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Pudge vs. Slashdot

The battle rages on!

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Or, more likely, let's not waste money on developing for a platform that represents almost no market share

Um. One. Million. Copies. That's how many Myst sales, before there was a PC version. Market share, my ass.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

As someone said after me below, Macs are not made with gaming in mind

Dude, you're retarded.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Pudge, buddy.. I seriously doubt there was even a million Macs in 1993.

You're retarded too.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

There's not much money to be had selling games to such a tiny segment of the market.

When you wrote this, did you intend to summarily discredit yourself? Just asking. If so, kudos!

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

I really have no idea what you're talking about. You must be thinking of someone else.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Again, you really must be thinking of someone else. None of what you're saying applies to me.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

They chose a PC-only path. That didn't have to. Saying it is justified because it is PC-only means they made a poor decision to begin with, and doesn't change anything.

Bitching at them for their development constraints is about as productive as staring at a cieling.

Is that supposed to be a point? I wasn't bitching at them, and I wasn't intending to be productive. I was venting, saying something many people here agree with.

If you want Uru on the Mac, send the publisher an e-mail, write them a letter, or call them. Promise to pay money for the game, or preorder it if they'll develop it. People in the Cyan fan community have known that Mudpie/Uru would be DirectX based since Cyan bought Headspin, which was a long, long time ago. They've had plenty of time to raise their concerns. But, it's never too late.

They don't care about Mac users, why the hell should I bother continuing to support them? It's their responsibility to treat their loyal customers well, or risk losing them. It's not my responsibility to pester them into giving me what I want.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

I WIN

Re:No Macs

[SageMusings]

Not true,

PC's were more than up to the task. There was already XGA graphics and the programming was nothing more than a script-based slide show presentation.

If any hardware breakthrough was responsible, it was only the increasingly available CDROM drives in PC's.

Re:No Macs

[ratsnapple tea]

There's nothing I hate more than people like you: pretentious snobs so confident in their own infallibility that they spout off without the slightest clue what cocks they really are. From http://m.manilasites.com/stories/storyReader$49:

[February 1993]: Apple ships the ten-millionth Macintosh computer.

Welcome to my foes list.

yours

Re:No Macs

[SageMusings]

Pudge,

I've been following your posts. Chill, dude. I'm certain that once Ubi Soft recovers their initial investment in this title on the PC, work will begin on a port. I think the company is very prudent in not immediately committing itself to this effort, as it would just piss people off if it doesn't come to fruition.

I respect the fact you have helped to keep Perl current on the Mac. Bravo. However, I must agree that the hardcore gamers use consoles or PC's in this day. Mac's would be more appealing if they did not cost so friggin much.

Re:No Macs

[FRiC]

I had the first PC version of Myst. The non-animated graphics looked as good as the Mac version (obviously), but for some stupid reason Cyan reduced all animations to 256 colors. So anytime something moves on the screen, it becomes 256 colors, then when it stops moving, it goes back to being 16-bit colors.

Re:No Macs

[Ilgaz]

Gee, remember they are humans too... Imagine you code for mac since OS 7 times and one day Apple moves to entirely different Arch...

You can't expect exact same quality for sometime...

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Chill, dude.

I could not be more chilled. You mistake enthusiasm for lack of calm.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this has been publicly disclosed by the devs before, it still breaks a few NDAs, so I'm posting anonymously... Most of the porting houses already have in-house DirectX compatbiliy libraries, and there's at least one company that licenses theirs out to other people. My feeling is at this point Apple developing one would just be a publicity move and a major assfuck to porting houses, and seeing as how most games get ported just fine anyhow I don't really see it as a good publicity move.

Re:No Macs

[rufo]

Erm. The first Myst was entirely 8-bit graphics, even on the Mac. It was indexed colors, so you could pick and choose which colors those 256 were, but it was still just 256 colors. IIRC, the movies on the Mac version also looked like shit... if I were to take a wild guess, I'd say that Quicktime didn't like being told what colors to use and so dithered everything all to hell, but it's just a guess.

At any rate, I have RealMyst now, so I'm not overly concerned about it. ;)

Re:No Macs

[fadeaway]

Yeah, *I'm* the pretentious dick. I was wrong. I admitted the possibility that I could very well be wrong. I did a cursory search on Google on Mac sales figures before I posted that, and found nothing. I was basing it on the fact that, at the time, the total people I personally knew that had a Mac was one person. Since then, the total is maybe 4. Experience has told me that the Mac is a very rare system for a individual user (as opposed to a business) to own.

And, for the record, see if you can find out exactly how many of those systems were for home users in 1993. I would still bet that less than 10% of those systems were not sold to businesses.

P.S.: You forgot to add me to your foes list.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs _used_ to have a much larger market share. They don't any longer. I think it's perfectly understandable for Ubi/Cyan to hold off on a Mac version for now; Uru is already a very, very expensive game, and if it's not going to make it on PC, it sure isn't going to make it on the Mac.
I wouldn't be so hasty to send Cyan an 'f*** you.' Cyan has expressed, on multiple occasions, their desire to release a Mac version at some point, just like they did with realMyst.

Steven Richards

Re:No Macs

[CommieOverlord]

It's called supply and demand. How are they supposed to know what consumers want if they don't tell them?

Re:No Macs

[GryphonTech]

Ahhh yes. The heady days of XGA..... Fortunatly the Macs of that day, (color not the B&W SEs) had XGA beat by a huge margin. As for the CPU, the Moto 030 out performed the 486 by a large margin.

I'm not saying that the PC systems were not underpowered, but mor to the fact that the MacII series with builtin audio and video had better performance. (even if they were overpriced) That is until third party vendors started coming out with better and faster cards for PC.

PS. Even back then I had both PC and Mac doing programing on both so I'm not just a Mac fanatic.

Re:No Macs

[Tellalian]

...but the programmers have entirely shifted over to MSVC/Win32 platforms, to speed up the release cycle and avoid cross-platform issues. The game is based entirely on DirectX libraries, so doing other platforms wouldn't be an easy task. It's hard enough to find competent programmers at all in Spokane, let alone ones that can write cross-platform 3D games.

Yes, because if Microsoft's known for anything, it's their devotion to illiminating "cross-platform issues" (don't you hate those).

If only there was some sort of industry standard API for cross platform 3D graphics. Some sort of "open" API. An API for a Graphics Library. An Open Graphics Library, or "OpenGL" if you will. But even if such a crazy API did exist, what are the odds that anyone would know how to use it? Especially in a techless backwater like Washington state?

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixK7]

When it costs hundreds of dollars to acquire, I would expect basic functionality to be refined. OS X has been out for a number of years now, with developer previews predating that by at least a year or two. One would think they could do better. Dealing with massive wads of files efficiently, and scrolling smoothly count as basic functionality.

Re:No Macs

[ratsnapple tea]

Are you seriously trying to argue that the % of Macs sold to businesses, as opposed to home users, is greater than the % of PCs sold to businesses, again as opposed to home users?

I won't pretend to know the answer, but I seriously doubt it.

The point, anyway, was that a figure of one million sales of the Macintosh version of Myst doesn't sound unlikely; I'm sure one could find the exact sales figures with a cursory search on Google, as you put it yourself. However, seeing as how you somehow failed to find the numbers for Macintosh sales in 1993 even though they're the second hit on a Google search for those exact same terms, I doubt you in particular would be able to find said figures. No big deal.

As for my foes list, I decided you weren't worth the trouble. Though somehow it's worth the trouble to write replies like this.

yours

Re:No Macs

[sharkey]

avoid cross-platform issues

Such as Mac owners buying the game?

Re:No Macs

[SamTheButcher]

They had 2 versions of Myst under their belt, already, so it's not like they haven't had experience developing for the Mac.

I agree with T4D above, not only are there many factors (that I'm sure you're aware of) but if the original developers have left, it's probably a crapshoot. See: Bungie, and their promise that Halo would be released for Mac. Even after they were bought by Microsoft. The short answer is that there's no *good* reason for not developing for the Mac from the get-go. But, that said, I can't imagine that this game will be any fun.

Also, I'd probably say what I said 8 years ago, which is if you want a gaming machine, get a PS2 (well, 8 years ago I said PSX ;) or GameCube (I'm omitting one large gaming system here for obvious reasons :). The games and graphics are much better quality than you'll get on a PC, as it's a dedicated system, and it's cheaper than a PC, too. Or Mac. :)

Re:No Macs

[bigman8]

Macs would make good gaming machines, so I disagree there. As a fan of the Myst/Riven series of games, I can say why UbiSoft gets the majority of the blame. Cyan (developer of the game) wants to do a Mac version. Their CEO, Rand Miller, and their "official D'ni historian", Richard A Watson (known on the net as RAWA), both use Macs pretty much exclusively at home. So, currently, Cyan is producing a game that their CEO can't play. The main problem here is that UbiSoft isn't funding a Mac version. Since you have to pay your programmers, and it is hard to be an expert programmer on two different platforms, there is decent reason for one platform of support. I too am somewhat disappointed at the lack of Mac support, but if anyone is to blame here, it would be UbiSoft.

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

Wow, such an amazing rebuttal.

As all evidence suggests, and as shown through Apple's marketing campaigns, Macintosh systems are clearly meant for purposes other than gaming.

Specifically- desktop publishing, art & design work, video editing, and lab stations in elementary/high schools. Regardless of how pissed off the original poster may be about not having Mac versions available, gaming is not a priority for Apple or their primary customers.

If you can provide contradictory evidence, please do, but don't be an ass.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Dude, you are a retard.

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

I have a distinct feeling i'm feeding a troll now, but what the hell, eh?

I don't think you understand. I am honestly asking- if you have evidence that the Mac was made for gaming, i'd be more than happy to hear it.

Otherwise you're making yourself look like more of a retard than i'll ever be with these replies of yours.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Funny, I thought YOU were the troll.

You said "Macs are not made with gaming in mind."

Apple has made a very clear effort to make machines suitable for gaming. It's clear in the marketing Apple does of games for Mac, and in the tech specs for the machines.

What do you want? 128MB DDR AGP 8X video cards? Got 'em. High-speed drives? Got 'em. Digital audio? Done. Audio out, USB and FW ports on the front of the computer? OK. Apple has often mentioned video gaming as part of the reason they make some of these features (some of them as options, like the 128MB video card).

What more do you want? John Carmack himself, on stage at Macworld saying, "Apple is making all the right moves on both the hardware and software sides to make the Macintosh a great platform for games."?

Ask and ye shall receive.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

This is perhaps the dumbest argument I have heard this month (although it is relatively early in the month).

First, is presumes that "the PC was made for gaming", which it wasn't, because the PC, based on, ultimately, the 8088 and PC BIOS started its incarnation as an accountants computer.

Second, the argument that a computer is a "specialty" computer is absurd. A Macintosh is as "Turing-complete" as any PC, meaning that given a programming language and compiler, anything that can be programmed on a Mac can be programmed on a PC. I mean how exactly have PC's been "made for gaming"? If you truly want something "made for gaming" then you'd be talking about a PS2 or XBox.

Third, this ignores the fact that Myst was originally a Mac only title. If the Mac was never "made for gaming", then one would have to wonder how the company that built this genre of games would ever have chosen the Macintosh in the first place?

Fourth, if you actually compare, component for component, your average vendor-based computer (say a Dell or an IBM or a Compaq) to a PowerMac of equivalent price, you can not point to any absolute rule across these computers that one is better or worse for gaming.

Fifth, I think your argument would hold a lot more water if you argued from an economic point that the incremental cost to develop a Mac game may not be worth the incremental revenue gained from Mac gamers. Of course, holes could be poked into that argument that suggests that with the right programming and architectural choices, you can overcome that situation, and for proof of that, all you need to consider is that many gaming studios write software for XBox, GameCube and PS2-- The XBox is an x86 chipset, the GameCube is PowerPC, and the PS2 is a custom design...

Add to that that the PS2 has far many more units shipped than the XBox and GameCube, add to it that PS2 titles consistently dominate the top 10/20 sold titles each month, and you realize that if the XBox and GameCube can be viable platforms, so can the Macintosh, given half a clue of the software engineering department of how to write a cross-platform game.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, I got jipped. None of my Macs grate cheese!

By the way, had Apple dropped the price of my Macs by $1,000 it would have cost me $350 for my iMac, and I would have gotten a $5 refund on my iBook. Are you a communist, or do you believe that corporations shouldn't make a profit, or what exactly?

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Market share is irrelevant. What matters is installed base. If they made $X Gazillion then, and the total number of game-playing Macs has not decreased, they should be able to make $X Gazillion today.

The only way they would make less money is if the total number of playable Macs decreased between then and now, but at $30/game at 1M copies, that means $30M for porting it to the Macintosh.

OK, so now are you suggesting there aren't one million shipped Mac game players that would buy this and that they can't charge $30 or more for this game?

In fact, I'd argue that as a percentage of the population, Mac users (who have demonstrated a willingness to pay more for quality) might be less likely to pirate a game than PC users (who potentially made their choice to buy a PC because it was cheaper and may be tempted to pirate instead of buy because they don't tend to value the cost for hardware/software as much as a Mac user might).

There it is.

Re:No Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs would be more appealing to you if they didn't cost as much.

I consider the cost of the Macs I purchased to be well worth it. Thinking back to 1996, the last time when I had a PC, I recall hours of wasting my time, and trying to recover some of it by leaving the case off.

Times I have kept the case off on any of my Macs: 0.

Times I have kept the case on on any of my PCs: 0.

Time I wasted messing around with crappy hardware with a Mac: 0

Time I missed messing around with my crappy hardware on a PC: 0.

I call that a "value proposition". It's also the reason why I buy DVDs, and not VHS. It's why I drive an Audi, and not a Hyundai. It's why I buy fresh vegetables instead of canned.

Just because they're more expensive doesn't mean they're not worth it, but then that's why dogs like dogfood, and humans generally do not.

Just because you're content with dogfood doesn't mean it's a better choice because it doesn't "cost so friggin much".

Me, I'll pay for filet mignon.

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

This is perhaps the dumbest argument I have heard this month (although it is relatively early in the month).

First, is presumes that "the PC was made for gaming", which it wasn't, because the PC, based on, ultimately, the 8088 and PC BIOS started its incarnation as an accountants computer.

Okay...I was not trying to argue in literal terms of hardware. By saying that the Mac was not made for gaming, I meant that the role of a Macintosh has not traditionally been a gaming machine- they are much more widely used as the computer of choice for artists/video editors/advertising work/etc.

In contrast, Wintel PCs are used much more widely as pure gaming boxes, and game development for that platform is the rule- rather than the Mac exception that comes out weeks, months, or years later.

Whatever else you're trying to read into it simply wasn't on my mind.

Second, the argument that a computer is a "specialty" computer is absurd. A Macintosh is as "Turing-complete" as any PC, meaning that given a programming language and compiler, anything that can be programmed on a Mac can be programmed on a PC. I mean how exactly have PC's been "made for gaming"? If you truly want something "made for gaming" then you'd be talking about a PS2 or XBox.

Read my above statement again, and then compare the amount of game software available for PC to that available for Macintosh systems. Again, that is what I meant.

Fourth, if you actually compare, component for component, your average vendor-based computer (say a Dell or an IBM or a Compaq) to a PowerMac of equivalent price, you can not point to any absolute rule across these computers that one is better or worse for gaming.

Yet again, Macintosh hardware is not supported by many pieces of game software. That is enough to make it worse for gaming to a vast majority of the population that uses such software.

Fifth, I think your argument would hold a lot more water if you argued from an economic point that the incremental cost to develop a Mac game may not be worth the incremental revenue gained from Mac gamers.

Been there, done that. I'm already getting enough abuse as is, it seems, thank you.

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

Funny, I thought YOU were the troll.

Funny, nobody modded me down as such, and you were the one that acted like a small child for two posts before making a coherent response. I'm glad you can at least have a semi-civilized disupte now, at least.

Apple has made a very clear effort to make machines suitable for gaming. It's clear in the marketing Apple does of games for Mac, and in the tech specs for the machines.

What do you want? 128MB DDR AGP 8X video cards? Got 'em. High-speed drives? Got 'em. Digital audio? Done. Audio out, USB and FW ports on the front of the computer? OK. Apple has often mentioned video gaming as part of the reason they make some of these features (some of them as options, like the 128MB video card).

Read my post to the AC on this thread, that pretty much sums up what I was trying to say on the hardware issues.

As for the marketing, you seem to be quite taken by Apple's hype. Take a look at price lists for ATI and NVIDIA cards...128 MB has already been standard on anything but budget cards for quite a while now, and even then, it's getting close- you can get a Radeon 9200 AGP w/128 MB of RAM for $99, for example. Apple's not being visionary on that point, they're playing catch-up.

What more do you want? John Carmack himself, on stage at Macworld saying, "Apple is making all the right moves on both the hardware and software sides to make the Macintosh a great platform for games."?

The guy's talented, to be sure, but Doom and Quake can only give him so much credibility, and i'm not impressed. Just because he says something like that, it won't magically change the amount of gaming support the Mac gets. I notice also that the page you link to is from Macworld in 1999...You couldn't find anything more recent?

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Yes. I gave childish responses to a childish post. Waaah. You're saying what is obvious to any observer as untrue, and demanding a response. I gave you a response worthy of your posts.

But I'll humor you. Again: what do you want? I've showed you the hardware matches what is available for PCs. I've showed you the games are available (though more slowly, but the average turnaround is becoming quicker every year). You say Macs are not made with gaming in mind, and yet I have shown you that they are. What do you want?

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

Yes. I gave childish responses to a childish post. Waaah. You're saying what is obvious to any observer as untrue, and demanding a response. I gave you a response worthy of your posts.

Oh, please. I just said something that you didn't like, and you couldn't deal with it in a mature manner, apparently. Heaven forbid there's someone out there that doesn't think the same way you do.

As for being demanding, I seem to have said "If you can provide contradictory evidence, please do, but don't be an ass." in the original reply.

No demand there, just a wish that you would actually write a rebuttal instead of saying "Dude, you're a retard." again- took you almost 3 days to do it, but i'm glad you managed it somehow.

Now that you've actually strung more than one sentence together, I believe i'm fine now, I think. And even if still don't agree with you, I understand your position a bit better.

Have a nice life.

Re:No Macs

[pudge]

Seriously, stop being a retard.

Re:No Macs

[PhoenixFlare]

Wow, you really have a one-track mind, don't you?

Be a little more creative....I've heard 8-year olds come up with better insults :P

Don't need it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still playing the original Myst, with only occasional breaks for sleeping, eating and Slashdot.

Fist Sport

[Anonymous Coward]

A thousand bored geeks clicking on the same barely animated hypercard pages. Nice.

It's a MYSTery no one has destroyed the GNAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

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All we need is your pious financial support, plenty of imprecatory prayer and a good-sized, Leviticus-charged stone or two, and soon the GNAA will be a thing of the past!

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Finally..

[fadeaway]

A game that will ensure that not only will my GF let me upgrade, but she'll *demand* it!

Thank you Ubi!

Re:Finally..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello there. I just caught you speeding past mentioning something about a "girlfriend"? I'm going to have to ask you to step out of your chair and show some identification and proof that your girlfriend is either butt ugly or that you are also a girl. Otherwise you could be facing serious charges like unlawful posting in a Geek-only zone, severe emotional distress to affection-deprived Geeks, and reckless behavior. Your girlfriend is pretty, you say? *thwack* Don't worry, you won't be seeing any girls where you're going...

Re:Finally..

[stungod]

it's funny 'cause it's true...

I've been looking for a justifiable reason to get a shuttle (pc, not exploding space plane) hooked up to the big-screen in the living room. This is exactly the ticket! "Come on...you don't want to spend your time playing this on the little computer in the basement, do you? think how much better it will be if you can sit on the couch and play/chat"

And when you're not doing that, I'll be playing Homeworld 2! And UT 2003.

So yeah, thanks Ubi/Cyan.

Warning:20MB

[MeanE]

Is that supposed to be for us or for UbiSoft?

Re:Warning:20MB

[ashkar]

Apparently for them, although sadly too late.

Re:Warning:20MB

[gfody]

seriously tho.. 20mb direct link, pretty inconsiderate.

im just pissed cuz it was /.'d before I could dl it :\

Re:Warning:20MB

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprisingly, although it took a little while for it to start downloading (~2 minutes) once it started I've been getting a pretty decent transfer. Go figure

Re:Warning:20MB

[Ilgaz]

Well, there is BitTorrent, perfectly legal for such stuff and FREE (nobody will come to their door and want $10k)...

IMHO there is no reason to complain... Also when big companies like that uses that stuff, it will open path for Java (embedded) and ActiveX bittorrent clients which works easily for average user.

I now download it using Shareaza (http://www.shreaza.com) and I am sure I don't even "touch" any of their hosts, bandwidth...

Why companies are so slow adopting excellent stuff which would save hundreds of thousands $$$ for them?

Re:Warning:20MB

[Syberghost]

Since you like to complain that every time you get modded down, I must have done it, I think I'll just reply to this, which will eliminate the +1 you got when I modded your comment up.

What it seems like

[oasis3582]

Seems like just another way for game developers to cash in on the craze of online games. What ever happened to making a solid single player game that you can feel good about spending 50 bucks on and then NO MORE $$$ after that? It just seems to be a dying art outside of RPGs nowadays.

Re:What it seems like

[podperson]

Surely it was RPGs that started the online boom, certainly the pay to play online boom.

Connection refused

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that they have taken the server already offline - I only get a connection refused..

Any mirrors out there?

warning?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

oh my god.. a 20mb download?? Where will I get those 3 seconds of my life back?!?

Wow .... someone is Pyst!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to!

Okay

[Verteiron]

That's damn impressive for realtime. Hell, it's pretty impressive even for a prerendering. I wonder what the specs were on the machine that generated it...

On the other hand, RealMYST had a mind-bogglingly beautiful realtime engine, even by today's standards, so I'm glad to see that they're still making progress.

Re:Okay

[Dillon2112]

As I recall, RealMYST used the Unreal engine...

Re:Okay

[Verteiron]

Actually, I don't think that's true, but I can't find anything to back me up. I do know that the RealMyst engine looks nothing like the Unreal engine and performs a lot of effects that the Unreal engine wasn't capable of at the time.

If it's the Unreal engine, then they modified the bejesus out of it and ended up with something a great deal more powerful.

Re:Okay

[Wesley Felter]

No, realMyst uses the realMyst engine. Uru is based on a more advanced version of the realMyst engine.

Re:Okay

[ewhac]

On the other hand, RealMYST had a mind-bogglingly beautiful realtime engine, even by today's standards

Yeah, but it was chunky as all hell. Certain scenes or viewing angles would reduce the game to little more than a slideshow.

This was especially true of the "extra" age in RealMyst, where you messed with the morphing crystals to get a projected image of Riven. Even though my machine was quite beefy for the time (dual 1GHz P3, 512M RAM, GeForce2 GTS w/64M RAM), it would always come to a grinding halt when entering that room.

In almost all other respects, however, RealMyst was lovely. I would fire up the Stoneship Age and stand on top of the rocks just to watch the never-ending storm.

Schwab

Re:Okay

[nerdguy0]

Actually, both realMYST and Uru use a modified version of the Plasma engine. Cyan bought the company and the code a couple of years ago to do realMYST.

Re:Okay

[fondue]

"That's damn impressive for realtime. Hell, it's pretty impressive even for a prerendering."

You know, it really isn't. A nice terrain engine. Standard architecture. Technically it looks similar to Morrowind. But you can make anything look better by sticking a swoopy camera through it.

Visuals aside, I've always thought Myst was a horribly over-rated game. Considering we can now have games with absolutely beautifully crafted real-time environments that aren't empty and static and offer the player lots of different types of challenge (Metroid Prime, GTA3 and Shenmue spring to mind) I don't really see what there is to be gained by going back to Cyan's outmoded ways.

Re:Okay

[cubicledrone]

So basically, Myst sux. Right?

Re:Okay

[75th Trombone]

Actually, they bought it to do Uru. realMYST was just a trial run. ;)

WOW. Slasdhoted already. MIRROR HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

mirror at GZ

Re:WOW. Slasdhoted already. MIRROR HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

that's the ubi game zone lobby. got the full url?

3 seconds??

[athen66]

after it's been posted on /.? think again my friend...

Re:3 seconds??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a subscriber so i dled it before it went live.. so i dont have to think

Re:3 seconds??

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont have to think
George W. Bush??? Is that you???

SKU means 'stock keeping unit'

[grahamwest]

It's a retail industry term for a physical item. After all, you have 1 game on multiple platforms and sometimes multiple versions per platform (PAL vs NTSC, original vs greatest hits reissue and so on) but it's likely they all have the same general description or title but each would be considered a distinct SKU for inventory tracking and so on.

Hope that helps explain it.

20mb!

[ecantona]

They will be slashdotted in no time!

the bulkiest game?

[civilengineer]

Myst is probably the bulkiest game I ever saw. The version I have has 5 CDs!!

Re:the bulkiest game?

[saddino]

Err, that would be Riven, the sequel to Myst.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[shadowbolt]

My Myst trilogy: Myst: 2 CDs Riven: 5 CDs Exile: 4 CDs Uru: probably 3-4 CDs Conclusion: That's a lot of CDs.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[zakezuke]

Myst, the first version released before CD-rom drives were standard equipment, was a single CD. I can't remember the exact release date, but it was circa 1994 or so.

I remember being somewhat annoyed at the fact that I couldn't borrow a CD-rom drive to copy it to my hard drive as I only had a 1/2 gig drive in the first place.

Keep in mind the fact that this was a game designed to run *well* under a 68030 based mac or a 386pc without a math/co if i'm remembering correctly. If my memory is correct, this would mean NO jpeg compression what so ever. I believe they also had to resort to 8 bit graphics in order to actually get the bugger to fit on a single CD.

I have NO clue about Riven though.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[Mithrandir3791]

Phantasmagoria has Riven beat with 7 cds. It's an interactive movie/game by Sierra On-Line from 1995.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[fuctape]

Riven was 5 CDs because of the base-5 number system in the game and the 5 islands you explore. It could have fit on fewer CDs easily. Or, better still, it could have allowed you to copy all the data onto your HD.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[75th Trombone]

It DID allow you to copy all the files to your hard drive, just wasn't an install option (it was 1997, come on).

If I recall correctly, you can just move the files from the CDs to the Riven/data folder. You can also download Jehon the Scribe's Riven installer to do it for you. :)

SFT

Re:the bulkiest game?

[Anonymous Coward]

This was tied by Wing Commander 4.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[the_greywolf]

Riven, IIRC, uses compressed 24-bit imagery, plus high-resolution (full-screen!) QuickTime movies.

each island was given its own CD.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[Anonymous Coward]

also tied by X-Files: The Game

Re:the bulkiest game?

[Jonner]

Yeah, it was annoying to change disks, but the visual and aural quality were worth it. Exile couldn't even improve much on the environmental immersiveness. There was a DVD version of Riven with slightly better quality video, but that was before many people had DVD-ROM drives.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was annoying to change disks, but the visual and aural quality were worth it. Exile couldn't even improve much on the environmental immersiveness. There was a DVD version of Riven with slightly better quality video, but that was before many people had DVD-ROM drives.

Ummmm, many people still don't have DVD-rom drives. If you are talking your typical new PC i'll agree 100% chances are it's going to be equiped with a DVD drive, but the bargen hunter lower costs PCs are still not equiped with them. To be frank, there really isn't much need for DVD as most release media is still on CD.

The only video media is typicaly released on DVD.

Re:the bulkiest game?

[the_greywolf]

well, if you have enough hard drive space, you can just copy all of the data from the CDs to your Riven directory - no more changing CDs. :)

Re:the bulkiest game?

[Jonner]

Yeah, I did that at one point. The machine I was first playing it on wasn't mine and didn't have enough space.

they're throttling connections

[athen66]

eventually you'll get through... i just wget'd it, with a --waitretry=1 and finally started downloading after a few minutes.

Great game turned bad

[williamcooke2000]

I find the first myst game were great and pioneres in some aspects but to take the game online is going to mess it up i mean everytime they take a game online it turns out bad, ie: costing to much, slow, etc.. Tux889 http://petersawatzky.blogspot.com go read!

Obligatory Meatwad Pseudoquote

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm Mr. Mister" When I get pissed, you get Myst!

BT link?

[jehreg]

Any BitTorrent available, or is it already to late for even that?

Re:BT link?

[spudchucker]

How can it be too late for a BT? I though that was the whole point.

Re:BT link?

[jehreg]

Yeah, but you need a gentle soul to be able to d/l it first and then create a BT seed for it. Publishers tend to not know about BitTorrent yet, so they typically don't use it.

Re:BT link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give this a shot:

http://69.56.172.70/trailer2.mpg.torrent

Re:BT link?

[km790816]

Knock yourself out: Myst trailer2.mpeg.torrent

Re:BT link?

[km790816]

Shit. This MPEG got corrupted.

So much for my first attempt and serving Torrents.

Sorry, kids.

Re:BT link?

[km790816]

This one works: trailer2.mpg.torrent

The FAQ for setting up files needs some work. This was too hard to figure out.

Re:BT link?

[PovRayMan]

Kinad off topic, but I just want to give some props. Bit torrent is such a great thing. This file is 20mb and when you have thousands of people trying to grab it, bandwidth costs rise like mad and end up hurting the person paying for it. Not only that, it hurts the people because they can't get it unless they hammer like everyone else. This news post with the BT link is just fantastic because I'm getting the file at 180k/sec thanks to the group of random people around the internet giving their bandwidth free for a bit.

Great community building...

[Not_Wiggins]

Now instead of being alone and frustrated about what the heck to do next in the game, I can be in a community of people... frustrated about what the heck to do next in the game. ;)

I'm certainly not buying it.

[SargeZT]

I found out a long time ago that I could achieve the same effect as playing Myst in real life by looking at a bunch of photos and making atmospheric noises.

Re:I'm certainly not buying it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now I'm picturing a desert scene with a tumbleweed rolling by, with the sound of wind blowing in the background.

Re:I'm certainly not buying it.

[swordgeek]

Yeah, and the worst part was that they were pictures of someone else's family!

Re:I'm certainly not buying it.

[veg_all]

by looking at a bunch of photos and making atmospheric noises.

Sure, as long as you leaf through the photos

really...

fucking...

slowly.....

Surely...

[pythian]

Yet, with the advent of MMORPGs PC developers have pretty much forsaken the good single player role playing games.

That said, there still are a few that come out now and then -- I'm looking forward to ToEE quite a bit. I haven't really given Lionheart a shot but the reviews are iffy.

The last few years brought out a few nice ones which I still haven't gotten around to getting into (Divine Divinity, Morrowind).

NWN wasn't bad, but lacked on the ROLE part, but then again, most of the so-called RPGs do.

Re:Surely...

[FrownyFish]

Played the Lionheart demo on Fileplanet and it sucked hard (Gamespy's review seems to agree with this too). You should try Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I played through it on xbox and it's a very solid and engaging story with plenty of role-playing. I think it comes out for PC this Winter.

MMOMyst?

[PoPRawkZ]

What happens once the first uber gamer solves all the puzzles in the first week? Is the game then just turned into an overglorified chat room?

Re:MMOMyst?

[LucidityZero]

What happens once the first uber gamer solves all the puzzles in the first week? Is the game then just turned into an overglorified chat room?

Kinda funny you should mention that... I'm fairly young (21 years old) and I had only had AMIGA's before I got my first PC about a decade or so ago. When my dad bought that PC, it came with MYST (Like every PC did back then). When the game started, I walked right to the place you had to enter the final code you discovered through playing the game.

If I remember right, it took me about an hour to beat the first MYST. I never played the game at all, I just started sequentially entering all of the possible codes. (Remember, the same place you entered the "final" code was literally the same tile you started the game on...)

Myst Blows.

[Anonymous Coward]

For real MMOG fun try Starcon2. Toys for Bob will live forever in my heart as kings amount men. Myst will remind me that waiting for computers to pull up a static image off a 2x CD-Rom is dumb. Manhole was a better game than Myst anyway.

screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

only five screenshots, and really, they look horrible. not a good sign if that's all they can do.

and love those avatars. could they have made them look more wooden than that? what a great online game: "let's take the corpse of myst and fill it with the suburbanites you were avoiding."

sorry, i'm disappointed. i'll check the trailer when it resurfaces from /.ing.

mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

here is a mirror on my work's OC3 connected box

Re:mirror

[mikewolf]

hahahahahahaha

Re:Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you, and why are you donating all this bandwidth to slashdotted sites? Doesn't it cost you a lot of money?

Re:Mirror

[inertia187]

It's just an experiment.

Re:Mirror

[Ignorant Aardvark]

It's just an experiment.

Yeah, and I know exactly what type of experiment. I noticed all the referal links to Amazon ... to purchase the latest iPod or Myst game or whatever. You're hedging your bets ... you're paying for your bandwidth and hoping that people will more than make up for it by purchasing things at Amazon through your links. Good luck with that business model; I really appreciate that you offer mirrors, but I really have no use for anything on Amazon at the moment.

Re:Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, my cookies last for 90 days. So, maybe by Christmas, some of the 25,000 people who have used my mirrors will get on the ball. ;-)

Re:Mirror

[preric]

Great! Now I have a place to spend all those Amazon nickels I've earned!

BitTorrent Link!

[eaglebtc]

URU Ages of Myst Online Trailer

Thanks to suprnova hosting! This torrent originates from my home machine on a cable connection. Shadow's client is in use, and super-seeding is active.

Re:BitTorrent Link!

[eaglebtc]

dammit, sorry it's not working ATM. stupid moderators. try this link instead: second link

/.ing

[Anonymous Coward]

a direct link to a 20MB file! abandon ship! she's going down!

System Requirements: 1 dead horse, one stick.

[Anonymous Coward]

Commence beating.

Mirror

[inertia187]

The site is slow, here is a mirror.

Martin Studio Slashdot Policy

IAMME: Myst for Ages

[Anonymous Coward]

URU? What happened to UBU (Sit, UBU, sit)?"

Dammit all to hell

[eaglebtc]

The moderators deleted the torrent. sorry guys, i tried. i have nowhere else to go. consider these links dead.

Three Seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hows this: It takes 3 seconds to download 20 MB. Everyone on dial up takes say 1 1/2 hours? So, if we all live to be 100, guess who dies first. The 3-Second downloader. Why? Three Seconds to that person equals 1 1/2 hours to the dialupers. So, he dies in just a few short years, while everyone on dialup hangs around to be 100.

There's another way to look at this: The 3 Second Man gets a whole lot more life into his 100 years, because what it takes the dialupers 1 1/2 hours to do, he does in 3 seconds! They both die exactly at 100 years old, but, if the 3 Second Man has played his cards right, has been busy, and accumulated much more $$ during his lifetime.

Moral: Get BroadBand.

Website design makes me cringe.

[DaLiNKz]

They obviously spent all their money on the game development. Their website's design is rather.. simple, and crude. Perhaps its the colours. But if you've seen their forum, even that too is well.. rather basic in itself.

Could have picked something a bit more cleaner, like an open source board or even vb..

a 26meg QuickTime link

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyan, prepare to be /dotted!

http://www.cyanworlds.com/goodies/Uru3.mov

Linux version??

[pair-a-noyd]

I found *no* mention of the platform so I *assume* it's M$ only??

I tried the get the *original* myst to run under winex from transgaming and it's a no-go..

Any hope of ever seeing a Linux port of any of these games? I really liked Myst, way back when.

I even have an original copy of "Drowned God" somewhere that I would like to play once again someday. I hate to think of installing M$ just to play a game or two and I can't stand the thought of connecting an M$ loaded machine to my broadband (virus pipe)..

Re:Linux version??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, No inux version.

Re:Linux version??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the heck does someone not just make their own port?

Seriously... myst in the past, for the most part, has been mostly graphics and sound but the actual game has been about as simplistic as your run of the mill adventure.

Re:Linux version??

[pair-a-noyd]

I only wish I were gifted enough to do stuff like that.

Yeah, I know Myst was a simple puzzle game but it was *different* than the other games out there at the time. My kids liked it a lot and I played with them and I got to like it too.

It was a neutral, non violent game that makes you think rather than kill everything.
The graphics and sound were pleasant to see and hear and overall it had a calming effect.
When my son was little he would watch Ninja turtles then beat on his sister during commercials. He would play his NES and do the same thing. Myst gave him (and his sister) a game to play that didn't make them have violent fits. And as far as I was concerned, that was *GOOD*...

I would like to play it again just for nostalgia sake. Like I have an old IBM XT 5160 set aside for playing the original Sierra games like KQ1 - KQ3 and SQ1-SQ3 (and some more if I can find them. Those were fun for *me* back then.. (I'm 42 BTW and I like the older stuff better...)

Stupid question...

[zapp]

Can anyone explain to me what the hell is going on in the world of Myst/Riven/etc?

I played about... 75% of Myst, and then oh... I dunno, 50-75% of Riven... and lost interest in them both before I could finish them (usually stuck at some puzzle).

What is the story, what is going on? Last I knew, people in books were talking to me :)

I'm sure its quite complex, so if you know of any websites that explain it... just point me there :)

Re:Stupid question...

[Anonymous Coward]

I played about... 75% of Myst, and then oh... I dunno, 50-75% of Riven...

You lost interest?!?!? Why would you care now? Anyone who didn't beat the first one three or four times wouldn't have been able to stand the 2nd and 3rd much at all. The puzzles just got too lame (not easy, just lame). The next one will probably have puzzles that suck even more. But I'll still play it . . .

Re:Stupid question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously there's some spoilers.

I haven't played Exile and didn't finish Riven, but I beat Myst multiple times and have read all three novels.

Chronologically, the story begins in the second book, Myst: the Book of Ti'ana. Anne, Atrus's grandmother (the father of the two brothers stuck in the books) finds her way into the underground empire of D'Ni, where human-like people can link to worlds using books. It's considered an art form, they're in their prime, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Long story short, a jealous friend and psychopath destroy the entire empire with a plague, but Anne's family survives by going into a private book world where the jealous friend has a change of heart and decides not to send a body with the plague to them. They return, Anne's husband dies, she takes her son (Ghen, I believe) back to the surface.

Cut to the FIRST book, Myst: The Book of Atrus. Ghen had a son with another human woman, then headed back to D'Ni to try to restore the empire, or at least to rediscover the art of world-linking, or making as he believed. He leaves Atrus, his son, with Anne until he reaches a certain age where he steals him and takes him to D'Ni, where they work on making worlds. Ghen's tend to be unstable, he uses them as playthings to experiment with, and thinking he 'creates' them instead of linking to them, he has the people of these worlds worship him like a God. Atrus falls in love with a human woman from Riven, Ghen's greatest world. Atrus rescues her and locks Ghen in the world of his creation, destroying the way out and using the final book to get back to Myst, the world he created, while falling into an abyss.

The book he used is the one you find at the beginning of the first game. You go into the book to find that Atrus and Catherine (his wife) have had two sons. Atrus set the red book and the blue book to trap his sons in as they were corrupt and had thought like Ghen did, but after he had set the trap, before it was sprung, Atrus was trapped in D'Ni and Catherine in Riven by said sons. You rescue Atrus, and he asks you to save his wife.

Cut to Riven. I'm assuming you save his wife and make it back to Myst.

In the third book, Myst: The Book of D'Ni, Myst and D'Ni (another section of it, not the collapsed room Atrus was in) are both re-inhabited by people from the book worlds. While going through some libraries, they come across a linker book to another civilization (the name fails me), and go to explore it. It's another group of book-writers, but one which uses the book peoples as slaves and playthings. You get your typical, albeit well written, story of outsiders attempting to free the slaves, slaves uprising, etc, etc, etc.

As for Exile, your guess is as good as mine, although I do believe it happens between Riven and the Book of D'Ni. Cheers to anyone who can toss in/tweak what I've put.

The books should all be rather inexpensive now, and they're all easy but satisfying reads. I suggest checking them out.

Re:Stupid question...

[jensend]

You probably don't want to bother reading the books, contrary to what other commenters have said- they're only for real Cyan geeks and are just extrapolations from the good but rather minimalistic story of the games.

The trouble in telling you the exact plot is that the plot and story are given away gradually in the games, and this constitutes much of the point of the games. Find a copy and try playing them again, and if you don't enjoy puzzle-solving and get really badly stuck then grab a walkthrough off the net. [If you can, I would recommend finishing the games on your own, though, even if it means you leave the game for a month and come back; I found it quite satisfying when I finally made a breakthrough in Riven after being stuck for quite some time, and whenever I've consulted a walkthrough for an adventure game, I later felt that I had cheated myself out of some of the enjoyment of the game.]

BTW, don't buy Myst 3. It was made by another company and while the graphics are certainly very pretty it has none of the atmosphere of Riven, a terribly stupid plot, bad lines and bad acting by the non-person characters, and terribly contrived "puzzles just for the sake of puzzles" (an area where the original Myst was somewhat bad, Riven was a huge improvement, and Myst 3 was much, much worse than Myst).

Re:Stupid question...

[Anonymous Coward]

I started reading some of the replies that people have made to this poster's question.

Trying to follow the story is starting to give me a headache and now I don't care. I *like* complicated stories but.. the Myst backstory sounds like overdramatic bullshit that three people besides the author liked.

Re:Stupid question...

[Fwongo]

It's not contrived at all. Tons of people like it. David Wingrove, who basically wrote it (with Rand Miller, a Myst creator to explain the basic plot), is not a bad author. It's not even melodramtic. It's one of the most immersive and excellently fleshed-out works of fiction I've read, surprisingly.

My son..

[geekoid]

..you've seen enlightment.

You know know the path to upgrade is not to upgrade, but to make others want to upgrade.
My wife likes the Might and Magic games. Imagine my 'surprise' when she insited an upgrade, when All I said is 'I don't think the new one will run on our computer'.

Re:Stupid question... = Walkthrough websites

[Anonymous Coward]

Myst:
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow /walkth roughs/mystwalk.htm

Riven:
http://www.hildesheim.co.uk/riven/walkth rough.htm

Myst 3 Exile:
http://www.gamesover.com/myst3nl/chapter_1 .htm

WOOT

[Eric Destiny]

Now I can solve insane, nonsensical, shiny puzzles in the company of others!

Re:RealMyst custom engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

RealMyst uses an engine that was developed in-house at Cyan. Uru uses the next generation of that same engine (now labled PLASMA)...

*cough*cough*

The novels explain it

[Wesley Felter]

There are three novels set in the Myst/D'ni world, and they provide a lot of context for the games.

Re:Three Seconds. (OT)

[snooo53]

I was just thinking about that. I've found that ever since I got broadband I spend an inordinate amount of time on the computer browsing websites. Why? because it's so fast! When I was on dial up I'd be frustrated enough by that wasted time that I wouldn't spend so much online. Now, every free moment at my apt. I tend to gravitate towardst the computer.

Sorta like how I'd imagine having a free beer tap in the kitchen. You'd tend to drink it a lot more and all the time because it's so easy to get. If you have to go out to make a beer run, you think about it a lot more.

So I dunno, broadband is great but I wish I was a lot more diciplined about it.

The next trend in video games

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the next tend in video games are cross-overs, rather like what you saw in 70's sitcoms.

I see Myst meets Quake!

Multi-player first person action.... trapped by a stupid linking book but fortunatly you brought your guns with you. Puzzle solving before you get fragged. Find that evil son and waste him!

Re:The next trend in video games

[Anonymous Coward]

...meets Evercrack meets GTA3 meets reality gaming where sucky players can be voted off the server.

Re:You Are You

[Anonymous Coward]

Myst/Riven/Exile/Novels are all in the past... excellent historical documents, nothing more. They provide a lot of backstory for Uru if you're drawn to explore them.

Uru is in the present. you are drawn up into the REAL world of the D'ni. You are yourself, discovering the ancient secrets of a fallen society.

Online Myst?

[DrCode]

I'm trying to imagine what this might be like:

I pull a couple levers in one room, then walk around to another room to see what happened. Meanwhile, someone else sets the levers back. Then we get into a duel where the weapons are books, each of us trying to snap ours shut on the other person.

Re:Online Myst?

[smack_attack]

Yeah, and you can buy property; But opening your front door takes 3 hours.

Re:Online Myst?

[Mantorp]

When I play games it's to relax for a few minutes (1hr) at a time so I need the instant or near instant gratification of blowing things away (fps) or scoring points (sports or arcade style games) in a short amount of time. I don't need to get so involved in solving a problem it takes me hours to do it, I have work to provide that for me.

Gametab has a working torrent now

[adpowers]

I looked at Gametab a few minutes ago and nothing. I search the comments for a working bit torrent link, but nothing. So, one last ditch to check Gametab and what do you know? Here is the link to the torrent:

http://www.gametab.com/files/torrents.php?fuse=70

Re:You Are You

[thebatlab]

Wasn't the Book of D'ni actuall forward? The first one went back to just before the game Myst came out, the book of Ti'Ana was about Atrus and his grandmother and then D'ni was about Atrus and Catherine going back 70 years after D'ni was destroyed. Maybe I missed something in the final book? I mean, it definitely couldn't have gone back in time as it was about Atrus and Catherine. It couldn't have gone between the game and the book of Atrus.... Somebody fill me in if I'm missing something :)

WRONG

[Trolling4Dollars]

They had 2 versions of Myst under their belt

Cyan had two versions under their belt. Ubisoft only came in for the third release "Exile" and now this. Ubisoft has not been very Mac-centric in the past, so this is not a surprise. It's very wrong in so many ways, but not a surprise at all. I wonder if it will ever be ported to Linux or run under WINE?

Guaranteed lost sale

[reality-bytes]

Well, if there's no linux support, I'll definately not be buying a copy; whether I like the look of the game or not.

Its just a lost sale (but there may be more than one)

And exactly what is 'the PC'

[reality-bytes]

AFAIK PC stands for 'Personal Computer'

Clearly Macs, Linux boxes etc are not Personal Computers; perhaps they are Public Computers......no, thats not it.....

I know, I know, its been said before but its such a bluidy stupid non-generalisation that I thought most people had grown out of using it.

When we hear this term "PC", most think of an Intel derived system running MS Windows.

Perhaps it stands for "Permanently Crippled" - Who knows.........

Re:You Are You

[cortana]

The Book of Atrus concernes the past of Atrus, explaines the relationship between him and his father Gehn, and sets up the backstory to Myst.

The Book of Ti'ana tells the story of Anna, Gehn's mother, and how she stumbled into the D'ni world, fell in love with *Gehn's* father Aitrus (note the change in spelling), and accidently caused the downfall of the D'ni civilisation.

Finally, The Book of D'ni is set after Riven, and details the adventures of Atrus and Katherine as they try to rebuild D'ni.

The first two books are truly excellent reads, but both have gone out of print. Amazon seems to have copies of the third book, but the "D'ni" is nowhere near as great as the other two.

In chronological order:

The Book of Ti'ana
The Book of Atrus
Myst
Riven
The Book of D'ni
Myst 3 (I think)

URU Beta Test

[Andrevan]

Well, there is a non-disclosure agreement. I can't say anything about it other than I am very disappointed. It's glitchy and not at all Myst-like.

Re:URU Beta Test

[75th Trombone]

Glitchy? No way!! You don't suppose that might be why it's in BETA, do you?

Re:URU Beta Test

[75th Trombone]

Oh P.S., you're still under NDA if I'm not mistaken.

Re:URU Beta Test

[delus10n0]

Part of your NDA agreement is that you cannot reveal you are beta testing the game. Good job!

Re:URU Beta Test

[Anonymous Coward]

Without wanting to break anyone's NDA, I think it is important to note that not all beta testers find it 'un-Myst-like'.

It would be best if these two comments stood alone. UbiSoft isn't looking for publicity from the beta testers -- that's not what beta testers are for.

Cheers.

Re:URU Beta Test

[Andrevan]

Note that I didn't actually say that I was in the beta test. Implications aren't covered by NDAs. Well, I'm actually a minor, so contracts are not enforcable. But I am being nice to Ubi Soft, not saying anything else about it.

Re:URU Beta Test

[Andrevan]

It's in late enough beta for a trailer, they should have worked out the really big and obvious glitches right now. It's not in good shape.

Other platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

As a note, parts of this game are python & SDL based, so porting it to other operating systems may not be very difficult at all. I suspect that they want ot see how much demand there is for ports before making the investment in time.

You are a moron.

[arcadum]

Windows PCs have something like 90% of the market of PCs.
Linux has ~5%
Apple has ~5%
if 10% of their sales were due to Apple sales you are wrong.

Re:You are a moron.

[t0qer]

Didn't I say I was pulling my figures out of thin air? RMFC (read my fucking comment) how does me using non-factual (and admitting it) figures equate to my intelligence?

(Btw, just as a side note, if your figures are correct could you back them up with a link? Thanks) Don't be sad about not reading my comment, some of us are slow and have to read things 3 or 4 times before we get them.

Re:You are a moron.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact. The Rune game had PC/Mac/Linux sales figures posted as this:

PC - 210,000 (~77%)
Mac - 5,000 (~19%)
Linux - 1,000 (~4%)

I still think you're a douchebag, though.

dual 1Ghz P3

[dpilot]

Somehow I doubt RealMyst knew what to do with that second P3.

Even so, your machine clearly outweighed the K6-3, 128MB RAM, G400 w/32MB RAM that I played it on. I posted on /. once before that "the Rime Age was downright glacial." My fast machine is now an Athlon XP-2100, still 128MB RAM, and ATI 8500LE w/64MB RAM. Plays much better, but I haven't had time to redo the game enough to retry the Rime Age.

Stoneship Age was the best, I agree.

Hum...

[JFMulder]

... this new Myst seems to be a text adventure set in a computer world like in Tron. The trailer says Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily...

Re:Hum...

[know_gnus]

Mod the parent up, please!

Be a good artist, and know your audience

[Triquint]

Made games for some time - for Console, PC & Mac. Macs are gaming machines, but the tastes of some (many?) users are different.

It's hard to port a PC shooter to a console, but can be done with some adaptation. In the same way, moving PC games to Mac, and - much rarer - vice versa involve tradeoffs.

What you said about users is true, but describes professionals. There are a ton of iMac users doing usual PC things like email, letters, chat, photo albums etc. These people buy a large proportion of the games sold. However, if you are Mom & Pop or Granny and Granpa you usually don't play shooters, but you might play adventure games. Platforms have audiences. Imagine GTA on a N64!

Old figures (2000?) but I think at the time that Mac had 5% market share, only1-3% of big name shooter titles sales were to mac. Adventure games were more like 5-10%.

Should say something about the various Mac adventure games. Biggest deal is it spawned a boatload of them - Manhole, Journeyman Project, Myst, Labyrinth, Nightfall... to name a few. Know some involved in this genre, and they did it mainly because the Mac suited them + tools were available. Hypercard and Director were on the Mac first.

As the tools became x-plat, the PC base far out-numbered the macs, and 3D PC tools/engines far outshone Mac equivalents, there was a natural evolution to the PC. Now I'm waiting for Linux to spawn new genres.

Pity

[theolein]

What I miss with all these OpenGL 3D games is the incredibly beautiful renderings of the Riven game. I wish it were somehow possible to have interactive raltime renderings of that quality.

One can dream, can't one.

Re:Pity

[Anonymous Coward]

This I think looks very much like the quality of the renderings from Myst 3(especially that one amusment park age) but it is actually a screenshot from Half-Life 2. The video it came from("Docks"(torrent)) is probally the most visualy stunning of the videos released to date.

Re:You Are You

[75th Trombone]

Yep that's right. :) And that all takes place roughly 200 years ago. Uru takes place in the here-and-now.

I'm an asshat

[arcadum]

I googled around and unsuccessfully found what I was querying. Anyway http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/20535.html , says that as of January 21, 2003 Apple has only 3.5 market share.

Re:I'm an asshat

[t0qer]

Good link.

But who cares.. Computers are like toilet paper to me, I just use whatever's availiable.

Re:I'm an asshat

[JonathanBoyd]

The link doesn't give a source for the claim. There are a few numbers around that give share of sales, but IIRC they don't account for all sales made and of course give no indication of the installed user base, which is more relevant than the sales share. Could be anywhere between 3% and 10% for Apple.

The author of that article doesn't seem to be too bright either since he thinks initial purchase cost = TCO.

Re:Three Seconds. (OT)

[bryanthompson]

Pretty sure that's the first message i've ever read that actually compared beer to broadband... and it made sense! you're the man.

Warning!

[qmrq]

(Warning:20MB)

For all of you slashdot geeks with analog modems. ;-)

Umm not just Mac and PC

[nurb432]

I still have a copy for my Atari Jaguar.... ( on cd, not cart ) I think this was before the PC version came out... as PC hardware of the day couldnt compare.

Re:Umm not just Mac and PC

[Xugumad]

Jaguar? What about the Amiga version! Although don't ask me where it is, I've got a copy somewhere.

RTFP

[1000StonedMonkeys]

Uh... there's a BT link in the post. Works quite well too... I was getting 300K/s by the time it finished.

Re:RTFP

[Xugumad]

Blame the Slashdot editors for this, the link wasn't there when this was first put up.

Beta Oppinion

[Blacklotuz]

When I first heard of Uru I thought it was just a cheesy attempt to use a popular name to create another usless MMORPG and I couldn't imagine a myst game with other players wandering around and looking for the 'phat l3wtz' but after being accepted into the beta I was supprised how well it actualy works. My first few days of playing were all in the single player area and I didnt see a single person. The game feels very much like the other three myst games in terms of puzzles and atmosphere. Even the other players have added to the experience since unlike most MMO games there dosent seem to be any form of leveling or items. The other players are just other explorers who you can chat with or whom you can ask for assistance when stumped. I was suprised since I beleived adding the MMO aspect to a myst game would destroy the attmosphere.

Re:Beta Oppinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remember that when you joined the beta, you signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), which included this section:

6. CONFIDENTIALITY. Tester may use the Software and related information received from Ubi Soft and all other information relating to the Beta Test, including without limitation both (i) written, oral or visual information relating to the Beta Test including, without limitation, information posted to the beta test web sites and discussion forums, and (ii) the Software and all elements thereto (any and all written information, oral information and visual information relating to the Beta Test and the Software are collectively referred to as the "Beta Information") only in connection with the Beta Test and shall not provide Beta Information, or any portion thereof, to any third party for any purpose. Specifically, and without in any way limiting the foregoing, Tester shall not make any public statement or any private statement to any member of the public media relating to the Beta Information or the Beta Test. Tester agrees to hold the Beta Information in strict confidence, to not disclose, distribute or disseminate the Beta Information or documents or information derived therefrom in any way to any third party and to not use the Beta Information for Tester's own benefit or the benefit of others, except for the purposes provided for in this Agreement. Once the commercial version of the Software has been released to the public by Ubi Soft or its Testers, Tester's confidentiality obligation shall continue only with respect to information concerning the Beta Information and all Tester's Study set forth in Exhibit B herein. Ubi Soft and Ubi Soft's licensor may use any and all Beta Information, whether originating with Ubi Soft, Ubi Soft's licensor, Tester or any third party, for any and all purposes without restriction, and all such Beta Information shall be the exclusive property of Ubi Soft. Tester acknowledges and agrees that the Beta Information is the confidential, proprietary and trade secret information of Ubi Soft and that the unauthorized use or disclosure of the Beta Information could cause irreparable harm and significant injury to Ubi Soft for which Ubi Soft would have no adequate remedy at law. Ubi Soft shall have the right, in addition to any other rights Ubi Soft may have at law or in equity, to immediate injunctive relief without posting a bond to enjoin any breach or potential breach of this Section 6 or this Agreement by Tester. In addition, in the event that Tester violates this Section 6 by disclosing Beta Information to any third party, it is agreed that the amount of damages to Ubi Soft would be difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, so Ubi Soft will be entitled to immediate recovery from Tester of liquidated damages in the amount of One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000) in addition to any other rights Ubi Soft may have at law or in equity. The enforceability of the immediately preceding sentence shall in no way effect the enforceability of the remainder of this Section 6 and this Agreement. The provisions of this Section 6 shall survive the termination of this Agreement for any reason.

Good luck and happy testing.

Hard to keep my mouth shut...

[LostSinner]

ok, as a beta tester, i agreed to a restrictive NDA telling me not to discuss things i see in the game outside of the beta forums... so my apologies if this is lacking in details.

i'm seeing a lot of comments about killing the myst franchise by going online, the game possibly sucking, etc. let me say this: it is by far the most impressive online game i've seen yet. the graphics are great, the music is incredible, the puzzles and ages are wonderful, there haven't been any lock-ups or timeouts, everything is top-notch. don't worry about killing the idea that is myst.

a couple people have asked about what kind of computer the graphics were rendered on. i'm getting the same results using a 2.0GHz P4, 512MB RAM, and an nvidia geforce ti 4600.

overall, absolutely incredible.

Whitespace

[Fastball]

Anybody else looking at a lot of whitespace between the blurb and the threaded responses?

Re:Whitespace

[thinkninja]

Yes, one page of whitespace @ 1280x1024. Great design.

Pyzzle

[Fastball]

There's Pyzzle. I stumbled upon this while considering a go at developing a Myst engine for Linux/PC/whatever. I'm not a Python hack or fan, but this looks pretty good as far as a true to Myst game engine is concerned.

MYST was great but short

[eagl]

I remember when I got the first myst... I had just finished a couple of upgrades (cyrix drx2 cpu and a blazing fast 2x cdrom!) and got MYST to try everything out. I started playing at 10pm and had finished the entire game at 6am the next morning. Even though each puzzle had the same format, requiring you to visit 3 sites in each area to get info and then plug that info into the machinery in other areas, I remained fascinated through the entire marathon session.

The toughest part of MYST was where you had to listen to the sounds to determine which direction to go in the tunnels. Keying in on the sounds took almost 30 minutes, but since I knew the info was there, it didn't stop me entirely. I took approximately 6 full pages of notes and copied down the keys for every puzzle after I figured out the first one and saw that I'd need a way to remember reasonably complex information. The first puzzle probably took 2 hours but the rest came faster as I got used to the puzzle format and navigating around.

On the other hand, I spent a month with Riven, found every area, and never did solve a single puzzle (as far as I know). I managed to drain the big dome once but with everything else, I never did figure out which ones were important and which ones were just toys. Like the button that called in the sea creature to the underwater window... Never figured out what the hell that was for. And the valves in the lagoon near where you put the little metal pea into the cage and lowered it. I spent 2 full weeks there, an hour or two a day plus 5 hrs each weekend, and never managed to get anything useful from there.

I just couldn't find any PATTERNS that applied anywhere else in the Riven world. Frustrating. I had a map drawn of every area I went to, found some things by accident but couldn't duplicate them (knife fell out of the lever once) but I never connected even a single link other than how to get from one area to another. The little window looking thing with the three buttons that raised and lowered... I once did something random that let me see something in the viewport, but pushed the wrong three-button code and 2 hours later didn't have any idea what, if anything, I'd accomplished. I even bought the cheat guide but never read it because I was too ashamed. I must have spent 6 months in that game and felt like I had accomplished nothing. I suppose if I actually read the cheat guide it all would have been amazingly simple once I learned the system, but I was unable to find the relationships between each area, machine, gadget, and creature.

Re:MYST was great but short

[kweerboi]

You drained the big dome? I completed the game and I don't have any recollection of ever draining the huge-ass dome... hmm.

"Like the button that called in the sea creature to the underwater window... Never figured out what the hell that was for." - Without giving it away, put a "pebble" on the plate and then lower the metal sphere. Come back later, and you should notice something right away. It is about the sounds, try to find something elsewhere that makes the sound (think about when you take your first tram ride).

"knife fell out of the lever once" - I've never seen this, I didn't think it was possible... not that I'm necessarily calling BS. ;)

"The little window looking thing with the three buttons that raised and lowered... I once did something random that let me see something in the viewport, but pushed the wrong three-button code and 2 hours later didn't have any idea what, if anything" -- I'm not sure what area you're talking about. The submarine maybe?

No Macs, but open source though

[passthecrackpipe]

Follow a couple of links around on the UBI soft site, and you will find that the creators Cyan have a complete opensource section around the myst stuff. right here http://open.cyanworlds.com/

Debian

[staili]

I must admit that I like that spinning debian logo.

some (vague) hints

[khendron]

You tripped over the same puzzle that had you stuck (for a while) in Myst: sound. The sound of the sea creature that is linked to a sound that you stumble across elsewhere, which gives you part of a key. Repeat 4 or 5 times with different creatures to get the whole key that allows you to finish the game.

What made it really hard was that this puzzle was distributed over the entire world.

Re:some (vague) hints

[saddino]

Even more obscure was the fact that each area that had the creature sound also had a visual marker for the creature's symbol hidden visually in the area (the drained little pond the most obvious). So, even if you didn't get the "sound" clues, you could still finish the game if you noticed the visual clues.

A copy of the movie

[chrispycreeme]

will be up for 300 hits worth at:
65.110.75.24
Grab it quick!

What about RealMyst?

[rufo]

What about RealMyst? I thought it was supposed to use the same 3D engine that Mudpie was going to use, and RealMyst was basically a stepping-stone project on the way to Uru. RealMyst has been ported to the Mac, so if the aforementioned is true then I don't see porting Uru to be that big of a deal...

Or I could just be full of shit. Either way. :)

*trundles off to locate his RealMyst disc*

Yes, Jaguar

[nurb432]

The first 64bit game console.. ( though some debate that number )

It was atari's last effort in the video game world, as a modern 'console'. with real graphics, cdrom, etc.

It only drawback was lack of marketing, ( an atari problem in general ) so not a lot of games were produced.. espcially for the CDROM....

It had a lot of promise and as always, years ahead of its time.

They shouldn't have been so bold

[Ziwdam]

1. Go to store.apple.com.
2. Click the Apple Software link on the left.
3. You'll find Hypercard 2.4 fourth from the bottom.

A brief excerpt from the description:

Exploit the power of QuickTime 3! Write directly with any of the nearly 90 media types supported by QuickTime, including TIFF, JPEG, or PICT images; AVI; or QuickTime videoeven [sic] QuickTime VR.

With that kind of power, only a fool would choose another development platform. Why, I'll bet they don't even use QuickTime VR!

Console's aren't quite there, yet.

[Cliff]

Also, I'd probably say what I said 8 years ago, which is if you want a gaming machine, get a PS2 (well, 8 years ago I said PSX ;) or GameCube (I'm omitting one large gaming system here for obvious reasons :). The games and graphics are much better quality than you'll get on a PC, as it's a dedicated system, and it's cheaper than a PC, too. Or Mac. :)

Sorry, this is also a cop out.

I know consoles, I own 3, and while console games have come a long way, they just can't compete with a well-done PC game. I'm not going to go into this much, except for one of my major peeves: console controllers. I'm sorry, but I can't stand the controllers of today's console, and more often than not, I'm a lot more comfortable with a keyboard + mouse than I am with a D-pad, or even worse, a small analog controllers that more often than not, are worse at fine control than D-Pads.

IMHO, analog controller + D-pad + Triggers and maybe 4 buttons, doesn't make for a very rich control set. It may work for console games, now, but just barely. Most games just don't offer the configurability some people need to feel comfortable with it. I'm one of these people.

No, consoles are not yet the be-all-end-all to video games...yet. The potential is there, and the progress is there, but for some things (complex games, ala Ultima Underworld, or Tron 2.0) are better on the PC.

Re:Console's aren't quite there, yet.

[SamTheButcher]

How's this for a cop out: Agreed, on all points. :) With caveats, of course. But my preferred method for Marathon was the keyboard. I never quite got the hang of the Quake-style mouse and keyboard for FPS. Works fine for DII for me, but never got there for the shooters.

Consoles have other issues - networking games, getting people to buy into those services, etc.

My point was when people complain that there weren't enough games for the Mac. Well, there might not be that many, but there are a hell of a lot of console games, and the Mac games tend to be labours of love (Marathon *sigh*) and very well done. You can do more with a PC, but if you're looking for the latest FPS or whatever, you can find a lot going on a console.

Me, I just have my PSX, still. And I'm still trying to gather money together for a keyboard and mouse for my TiBook, 'cause touchpad and laptop keyboard are worse than console controllers, IMO. ;)

Thanks for replying-