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Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM [video]

• sp332 7y ago
  Transcript: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Myst_Transcript.txt https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Myst_... Much longer (1 hour 47 minutes) cut of this interview: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/an-extended-interview-with-atrus-himself-myst-creator-rand-miller/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/an-extended-interview...
  • jeffhuys 7y ago
    Weird, that transcript link gives a "Cannot decode raw data" error in Safari, and just doesn't load in Chromium. Well, `curl` it is!
    • ChrisSD 7y ago
      Weird. It's just a plain .txt file. There isn't a HTTP Content-Type though, which might be what's tripping some browsers up.
• amatecha 7y ago
  Coincidental timing - a bunch of people online just did a weekend game jam using HyperCard (the same product used to create Myst and other Cyan games): https://cancel.fm/hyperjam/ https://cancel.fm/hyperjam/ I didn't get a chance to participate myself, but you can see all the stacks everyone made at https://itch.io/jam/merveilles-hyperjam https://itch.io/jam/merveilles-hyperjam
• neom 7y ago
  There is a fun review of the game from Computing Gaming World 1993 here: http://cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_113.pdf http://cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_113.pdf I never completed Myst, it was such a frustrating game. Granted I must have been 10 or 11 when I played it, I've thought a few times about going and playing it as an adult but I still have PTSD from the frustration it caused me.
  • moron4hire 7y ago
    There is a remake that has full 3D movement. I found it significantly easier. With the updated interface and graphics, the puzzles are still a lot of fun https://cyan.com/games/realmyst/ https://cyan.com/games/realmyst/
    • sp332 7y ago
      I tried playing that and it's funny how tiny the main island feels when you can just walk across it instead of click-click-clicking.
  • LeoPanthera 7y ago
    The reward for (let's be honest) suffering through Myst is that you get to play the absolute joy of a game that is Riven, possibly the finest exploration/discovery/puzzle game ever created by humans. I love it really quite a lot.
    • kabdib 7y ago
      I didn't get very far with Myst. I really enjoyed Riven, however. Fantastic game. Right up until the penultimate puzzle, and it's a doozy that basically requires you to have paid careful attention to things along the way (my notes were mostly sufficient), and to not be red-green colorblind (wups, I am genetically screwed). I wrote in to support, and actually got a refund on the game.
      • lb1lf 7y ago
        -I had the same issue, after cursing my bad luck I eventually got around to using a couple of coloured cellofan candy wrappers as colour filters. :)
    • Brendinooo 7y ago
      I've always loved worldbuilding and exploration in games and movies, and I'm pretty sure it was Riven that kicked that off for me. I was obsessed with D'ni stuff for awhile; knew all about base 5 numbering, read all the novels. I got a "making of" book about Riven, and I'd say that book is at least partially responsible for my interest in computer graphics and software development.
• lathiat 7y ago
  I'm loving this series from ARS, another great one about Crash Bandicoot where apparently they needed extra RAM so selectively overwrote the sony libraries in RAM with their own data, by experimenting which areas were needed on whether it crashed or not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o
  • jacobush 7y ago
    Wow, that's so crazy and wonderful. And yet very okay, since it wasn't like there would be any other application running. :) If I recall correctly, (original) XBOX games would often go the the next level of whatever game by just loading a new EXE and start over from scratch, rather than bothering with some kind of "level loading and init" code.
    • remarkEon 7y ago
      The Command and Conquer episode from last year is also excellent: https://youtu.be/S-VAL7Epn3o https://youtu.be/S-VAL7Epn3o
    • Insanity 7y ago
      guess that could make sense in a way. Dump all 'state' to disk, start new exe that begins by reading that state, and go from there.
      • jacobush 7y ago
        And often that state would be minimal. What character am I playing, what is the total score, stuff like that.
      • akx 7y ago
        Reminds me of how Emacs is built, with a `temacs` executable whose state is dumped to generate `emacs` which boots faster... https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Building-Emacs.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Bu...
      • 7y ago
• jonas21 7y ago
  This is part of a great series of interviews with the developers of some of the most influential games in history. Two of my favorites are Andy Gavin on Crash Bandicoot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o and Sid Meier on Civilization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwUM33VJRbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwUM33VJRbY
  • monocasa 7y ago
    A new one released today on Homeworld. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38556KTTR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38556KTTR0
• earthtourist 7y ago
  I've really enjoyed this series. I do wish they just told stories about developing their games without the contrived framing of every one as a "near death" story. It's just unnecessary and rings pretty false in most cases. It feels a bit like tricking non-technical people as well. Despite that flaw, I do like it. I hope they keep em coming.
  • travbrack 7y ago
    Gotta get those clicks
  • boffinism 7y ago
    To be fair, the ones that are genuinely focussed on overcoming serious problems are the best in the series, especially when the problems are a bit technical. Crash Bandicoot and Prince of Persia, for example.
    • myself248 7y ago
      ref: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-prince-of-persia-slew-the-apple-iis-memory-limitations/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/war-stories-how-princ... Very much worth watching.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    Agreed. They're over-dramatizing the typical bumps that you hit in any major software engineering project. "X was hard, and we had to spend longer working on it than many other parts of the project, but we figured it out."
  • jerf 7y ago
    "I do wish they just told stories about developing their games without the contrived framing of every one as a "near death" story." Unfortunately, the gaming industry really does seem to work on a model where darned near every major game is a near-death experience for the company in question. It remains fairly common even today for relatively large companies to essentially be brought down by one bad release, resulting in them getting acquired by EA. If you look out at the studio landscape over history, it is still very, very frothy. There aren't really that many studios that have been around for even five or ten years; most of the names that will leap to mind are now actually particular name brands of conglomerates. I think it's a real thing to a large degree, not a contrived framing. (I would credit this to the way that games have been getting exponentially more expensive over time; in such an environment, the next game is going to naturally take most of your money, even if your previous game was a wild success. I think we're now about in the middle of that no longer being true. We're not done yet; AAA games are still trying to slug it out on the exponential curve, but more and more we're seeing successful games made at an earlier plateau of cost, including the entire output of companies like Nintendo.)
• laurieg 7y ago
  Hearing about Myst and CD-ROMs reminds me of my trouble with the sequel, Riven: Riven came on multiple CDs. When you moved from area to area you had to swap the discs in your PC. I got part way through the game and it said "Please insert disc 5". I couldn't see any disc 5 and wondered if this was some kind of clever, 4th wall breaking puzzle. Well, turns out the jewel case would open up an extra door and the 5th disc was there. It wasn't supposed to be a puzzle, it was just unexpected...
  • coldpie 7y ago
    The shift from Myst to Riven and the following sequels is really interesting. Myst really clicked with me, while I was never able to get into the later titles, Riven included. I know the dev team had major changes between every title, so I suppose it's not surprising that they don't gel together very well. I wonder if anyone's done a deep dive comparing the first two titles' gameplay philosophies and technical and development differences. Certainly the 5 CD release was itself a stumbling block. It penalized exploring the island freely, which has some bad gameplay effects. When you're stuck on a puzzle in a Disc 2 area, should you keep exploring that area, or is it possible the clue you need is on some other disc? Which one? Are you willing to put up with the hassle? It wouldn't be so bad if each area was obviously self-contained, as they were in Myst, but in Riven they tried to change from a collection of puzzle boxes into a real world where the "puzzles" were diegetic. So there aren't really discrete "areas" anymore, or even puzzle themes restricted to an area. The clue you need may well be anywhere, which in combination with the disc swapping, makes finding clues into a huge chore instead of a delightful exploration. And the biggest shame is it was built on very crappy technology (Quicktime) that even back in the day was held together with spit and string. For the better part of two decades, it was basically unplayable on any modern PC without major effort. So I haven't gone back to replay it since the original 5-disc release in the 90s. They did a re-release a year or two ago, which I guess is probably worth a shot, but my memories of Riven are just so soured by my experience. Meanwhile Myst holds a special place as a fun, quick little puzzle game.
    • Rounin 7y ago
      I remember working around Riven's disk swapping problem by mounting all of the disks at once in five virtual CD-ROMs. To prevent audio and video crashes, the entire game had to run on one single CPU core. Finally, there was a part when some buttons had to be clicked, but the game only occasionally captured the mouse presses. So I made a button mashing script to work around that. Nowadays, though, the game runs fine in ScummVM. It's amazing how many games they've saved over the years. Myst III runs in a similar project called ResidualVM.
• Imnimo 7y ago
  He mentions Lunar Lander as one of the things that got him into computer games. There's a lot of interesting information from the creator of Lunar Lander here: https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander.html https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander....
• ngcc_hk 7y ago
  I thought what he refer to might be called sub-second response time which is impossible to do for wide area network under cics.