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

[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 Like when Myst was originally made, broderbrun was the publisher.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

[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

[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

[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.....

Finally..

[fadeaway]

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

Thank you Ubi!

Warning:20MB

[MeanE]

Is that supposed to be for us or for UbiSoft?

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.

BT link?

[jehreg]

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

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

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:the bulkiest game?

[saddino]

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

Re:BitTorrent Link!

[eaglebtc]

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

Mirror

[inertia187]

The site is slow, here is a mirror.

Martin Studio Slashdot Policy

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)..

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: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.

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.